The government recently passed Bill 46, which doubled down on a band-aid solution to our court-staffing problems. Instead of expediting efforts to hire more judges, retired judges can now return to work up to 75% of full-time hours, a plan that is expensive, flawed and unsustainable.

My question to the Premier is simple: Why won’t his government clear the court backlog with a proper plan which includes actually appointing more new, full-time judges?

Last week, the case of a police officer accused of sexual assault was thrown out, not because of the merits of the case, but because it was assigned to a semi-retired judge who took an extended vacation, which then caused an unconstitutional trial delay. These kinds of scheduling issues are entirely predictable, and they will happen more and more as this government increases our reliance on part-time judges.

Our justice system is now being held together by duct tape. Speaker, is this government so out of touch that they don’t recognize the long-term investments needed to ensure that the people of Ontario get access to justice in a timely fashion?