IT’S ALMOST A CRIME
Criminal lawyer Mark MacDonald shows just how cramped Courtroom 3 is at Perth’s historic courthouse. Space is so tight that even a judge is complaining.
The heritage courthouse in Perth, an imposing stone fortress erected in 1843, is a lovely old structure and a modern-day mess.
The legal community is fed up. The public should be too.
Judges rarely do public advocacy, but one day last week, there was Ontario Justice J. Peter Wright, a tall man in black robes, arms folded, leaning against his desk — not hearing a plea, but making one.
“We’re concerned,” he says, measuring words the way these Solomons do, “about the future, and making the place work.”
Wright, who began to sit in Perth in 2014, is part of a committee laying the groundwork for a major expansion of the courthouse, the main judicial building serving Lanark County’s 70,000 residents. It is long overdue.
There are three main shortcomings with the “complex,” which includes an unused, historic (1863) jail at the rear: not enough courtrooms or meeting spaces; technology that is outdated or non-existent; and security that is dangerously absent.
These are not the quibbles of privileged lawyers with fat briefcases. The people of Lanark County are putting up with conditions that would never be tolerated in Ottawa, or even Brockville.
Space is so tight that defendants regularly mingle with witnesses in the tiny lobby, victims and families are forced to sit on steps, and judges have no choice but to routinely walk through the public portions of the building, as do prisoners in shackles. (In Ottawa, as in most places, there are separate streams within the building.)
Security? Ottawa now has only one entrance to the Elgin Street courthouse and everyone walks through a scanner, like an airport. Perth? Basically, it has nothing, except a lot of confused people milling about in a building designed in the horse-and-buggy era. (Not long ago, an accused in the satellite court in Sharbot Lake was found to have dynamite tucked in a pocket.)
“People are coming here for important things. You’re either coming here as an accused, a victim or a witness. You want to show sufficient respect,” said Wright.
Mark MacDonald, 40, is a criminal lawyer who spends a good deal of time in the courthouse.
“There’s no meeting-room space. I have to talk to my clients in the hallway. So, I’m talking to a client in the hall and saying, ‘Oh, the Crown is offering you a deal on a sexual assault,’ and we’re doing this as people are walking by.”
He took us on a tour. It only has three courtrooms, including tiny No. 3. It is smaller than a school classroom, so small a prisoner standing in the glassbox can literally high-five about half the room. At the counsel table, lawyers are jammed like sardines.
This courtroom is sometimes used for family law cases, which can be the most emotionally explosive (custody, foster care, child removal), or for small claims, which can have bitter rivals seated next to each other.
“I think we’re just lucky we’ve made it this far without anything serious happening,” said Smiths Falls lawyer Teresa DuBois, who does a lot of family law.
“It’s very tight in there,” she said of No. 3. “You might be talking about taking a child away from parents permanently. And you have (opposing) counsel stuck in the corner.”
There seems to be general agreement that Perth should have five or six courtrooms, not three. Technology? There is no Wi-Fi in courtrooms and no capability for video remand, which can be a big money- and time-saver. (Instead, inmates are needlessly trucked from Brockville or Ottawa for simple two-minute, up-and-downs.)
The locals point to nearby communities that have incorporated old courthouses in new surroundings. About $23 million was spent to overhaul Pembroke’s courthouse in 2007. Some $15 million was spent to expand Brockville’s court landmark, completed in 2005.
And Perth? It got a new elevator and staircase in 1998. (Even that isn’t right. A person in a wheelchair has to be fishtailed through the main courtroom, via a side door — pulling a big bench aside — to reach other parts of the second floor. Crazy.)
MacDonald also pointed out other serious problems: The “Crown attorney” office is MacGyvered as a video room for special witnesses like children; right outside is a waiting area for the legal aid office, which is beside a broom closet that serves as duty counsel meeting space. It’s all way too small.
“If you stand by the door,” said the defence lawyer, “you can clearly hear conversations.”
There was a plan being shaped in 2006 for the expansion at the rear of the building, probably on an old lawn-bowling site to be connected by walkway or tunnel. “Our courthouse capital investment decisions are guided by long-term planning and the need to ensure that courthouses with the greatest needs are given priority,” responded the Ministry of the Attorney General.
The local committee is hoping the new minister, Ottawa Centre’s Yasir Naqvi, will soon pay a visit for a first-hand look.
Behind the solid-rock facade, past the cannons on the lawn, it should be a real eye-opener.