Ontario jurors paid less than minimum wage,

Those summoned and selected for jury duty in Ontario receive no compensation for the first 10 days of service. From days 11 to 49, jurors are paid $40 each day rising to $100 a day from the 50th day onwards.

Jurors are not compensated for parking, meals, transit or child care. And while companies are required to grant leave for jury duty, they are not required to pay.

By comparison, Quebec pays jurors $103 from the first day, rising to $160 from the 57th day forward. Expenses for parking, transportation, meals and child care are covered.

Alberta jurors are paid $50 per day, are reimbursed for travel and child care and provided with parking. Nova Scotia jurors earn $40 a day along with mileage reimbursement and parking.

In Newfoundland, employers are required to pay jurors the same wages and benefits as if they were working. Child care costs are also reimbursed.

As a result, many prospective jurors simply ask to be excused from their duty as a matter of financial survival.

Ontario’s compensation has been criticized for years and financial hardship is the main reason. “If somebody isn’t getting paid by their employer, $40 isn’t going to cut it,” says Phil Rees, the Toronto Superior Court jury office supervisor. “They’d need 100 per cent of their salaries.”

A Toronto Star/Ryerson School of Journalism investigation into flaws in Ontario’s jury selection process looked at what the jurors would have been paid in the Brampton trial of Melissa Merritt and Christopher Fattore, who were found guilty last month of first-degree murder in the death of Merritt’s former husband.

That jury sat for 70 days, not including a two-week break for Christmas. If they were paid the legislated remuneration, they wouldn’t have been paid for these two weeks and for the first 10 days of the trial.

For days 11 to 49, jurors would have been paid $1,560, at a rate of $40 a day. They would have received $2,100 for the remaining 21 days, at a rate of $100 a day. When divided by the number of hours the jury sat — calculated at six hours a day — the total of $3,660 works out to an hourly rate of $8.71, or $5.29 less than province’s current minimum wage.

By comparison, jurors in Quebec would have been paid a total of $7,951, or $18.90 an hour.

Dave Kenyon served as the jury foreman in the 2010 murder trial of Robert Badgerow that lasted for more than three months. Kenyon was 46 and worked for a company that was supportive of his duty. But he says that if he were younger “there’s no way I could disappear for five or six months … it would have affected me financially far too much.”

Toronto defence attorney Spratt says underpayment of jurors is a long-standing policy in Ontario.

“It is a token gesture that does nothing to ensure that juries are representative of the community,” he says. “(Even) $100 a day isn’t enough to live off of — it’s not enough to feed your family, pay your mortgage and take care of the necessities of life.”

Beyond pay, there are other missing supports that remove vast swaths of potential jurors from serving.

Ontario — unlike Quebec — does not offer to make child-care arrangements for jurors, for example.

“A single mother who supports her children, who has a tight arrangement with work and daycare — I’ve seen a person in those circumstances excused,” says Toronto defence lawyer Eberdt.

Former Ontario chief justice Patrick Lesage says jurors should be adequately compensated and “one thing is for sure, they shouldn’t be out of pocket.

“(Jurors) have a significant responsibility to decide the guilt or not guilt, the criminal liability or the civil liability of other human beings. That’s a very serious responsibility. As a chosen juror you know you’re going to be in a way a captive for the period of time for the trial — you must be there, you must listen, you must pay attention, and you must work very hard at it.”

Judges can exercise discretion. In a Brampton courthouse last year, a prospective juror told the judge his wife was unemployed. Justice David L. Edwards responded, saying, “I will pay you $100 per day.” The man swore an oath and was accepted by both counsel and prosecution.

But most often, people are simply excused.

In a Toronto court last year, a middle-aged Asian woman spoke up. She worked as a part-time cashier at NoFrills and said she would not be paid if she was on the jury.

Justice Ian MacDonnell responded “that’s fair enough, it’s financial hardship.”

The woman was excused.