Sex assault training for judges not simple

Rona Ambrose’s swan song private member’s bill on sexualassault training for judges is wellintentioned. But as the Senate considers it, it must ask what this bill will actually achieve.

It must also confront the perception that justice can be bent by political agendas, no matter how well meant.

But let’s start with the basics: We’re all agreed that a judge asking a complainant if she kept her legs shut during an alleged assault is deeply inappropriate. How best to correct for such outrages from the bench?

Already there is a robust educational program for federally appointed judges run by the National Judicial Institute — which includes sexual assault training, developed with input from sexual assault survivors among other groups — and judges are taught about everything from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to evidentiary law and how to write legal decisions. These courses are overseen by the Canadian Judicial Council.

What Bill C-337, which glided through the House of Commons, proposes is that lawyers applying to become judges on federally appointed courts must have sexual assault awareness training before they can be appointed. The idea is to close a hypothetical loophole wherein a person could become a judge and hear sexual assault cases without having such training or getting it from the National Judicial Institute as a part of new judge school or other seminars.

But trial co-ordinators and senior regional judges already strive to ensure only federally appointed judges who are experienced or educated hear such trials, says Paul Calarco, with the Canadian Bar Association’s criminal justice section.

Then-judge Robin Camp, who made the infamous comment about knees, was a provincial court judge at the time, and did not have any training on sexual assault cases.

But that brings us to another issue with the Ambrose bill: it wouldn’t affect provincial judges. (In Ontario, Attorney General Yasir Naqvi announced Wednesday all new — but not current — provincial judges will receive some training on sexual assault law.)

Further questions about the bill: Who is going to pay for any newly mandated education prior to appointment? Who will teach it? (Justice Adèle Kent, the National Judicial Institute’s executive director, says it won’t be her organization; it focuses solely on existing judges, not those who may become ones.) Yet the government itself obviously mustn’t be seen as interfering in the education of possible future judges.

Changes to the justice system can have good consequences. But not always. The senators should tread carefully.