Verdicts & Voices

In 2016, when the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in R. v. Jordan, it called out a “culture of complacency” toward delays in Canadian court proceedings. The decision revolutionized Canadian criminal law, imposing strict timelines for bringing cases to trial: 18 months for provincial court, 30 months for superior court. If the timelines aren’t met, charges are stayed, and the accused can be released.

A decade later, some are pushing back, arguing Jordan is undermining trust in the justice system by causing guilty people to go free. And new federal legislation proposes to limit stays by having judges consider (undefined) alternative remedies, while taking into account factors such as impact on the victim.

One of the lawyers on the Jordan case was Tony Paisana, a partner at Vancouver’s Peck and Company and a former chair of the CBA’s Criminal Justice Section. In this episode, he recalls the history of the case, explores what’s happened since, and contemplates whether new legislative measures could make the culture of Canada’s criminal courts complacent once again. 

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Notes:

CBA submission about Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act

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Cops and lawyers are famously “separate but equally important groups” within the criminal justice system. Police officers often encounter the practice of law – lawyers, warrants, the witness stand – but what makes some of them join it? How do they manage the transition? And how does their policing background help or complicate their legal careers?
Louis-Philippe Thériault is a lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Moncton whose practice focuses on commercial and corporate law. He spent 12 years with the RCMP, working on patrol, general investigations, and financial crimes, and he’s a Major in the Canadian Army Reserves.
Alain Babineau spent 30 years in law enforcement, including with the Ontario Provincial Police, the Military Police, and the RCMP. Now, he's articling at the Ontario Bar Association. He has also done anti-discrimination work in Montreal, notably with the Office of the Commissioner for the Fight against Racism and Systemic Discrimination, the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, and the Red Coalition.
Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

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On November 21, 2025, a Divisional Court judge ruled that the Black Legal Action Centre could intervene in a case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The only problem? Twenty-four hours earlier, a different judge had made the opposite ruling.
How did that happen? How was the situation resolved? And what can we learn from it about different approaches to third-party intervention in Canadian courts?
Demar Hewitt is Executive Director and General Counsel of the Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC), a community legal clinic that is intervening at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in Dosu v. York University.
Claire Boychuk practices labour, employment, and public law at RavenLaw in Ottawa. She is the author of Intervening in Canadian Courts.
Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

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It’s been a rocky twelve months for the idea that countries’ actions should be governed by rules. Does that mean international law is dead? Was it ever alive? Or is it more relevant than ever?
Join two of Canada’s leading experts for a conversation that runs the gamut from tariffs to the ICC to Greenland to Davos to Venezuela and Caribbean drug boats, even a callback to Huawei and Meng Wanzhou, as they make the case that international law is real and necessary, whether it’s followed or not.
Gib van Ert practices public law and civil litigation at Olthuis van Ert in Ottawa and Vancouver and is an expert on the application of international law in Canadian courts. 
Joanna Harrington is Vice-Dean of the University of Alberta Law Faculty, a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council on International Law, and a former member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Links:
Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at Davos
CBA letter about responding to U.S. ICC sanctions with the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act
Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.
 

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Canada’s Supreme Court will have a lot on its docket in the coming months, and friend of the pod Nadia Effendi is back to talk us through it. Among the highlights:
Will the Court recognize a tort of family violence? (Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia v. Amrit Pal Singh Ahluwalia)
Are the findings of Parliament’s Ethics Commissioner subject to judicial review? (Democracy Watch v. Attorney General of Canada)
Can your dad be your lawyer? (Maxime Bergeron v. Assemblée parlementaire des étudiants du Québec inc., et al.)
Was a Bloc Québécois candidate who lost by one vote entitled to a do-over? (Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné v. Directeur général des élections du Canada, Directeur du scrutin de la circonscription de Terrebonne, et al.)
Who exactly do lawyers in class actions represent? (Québec Major Junior Hockey League, now doing business as Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League Inc., et al. v. Lukas Walter, et al.)
What do tenants who back out of leases owe their landlords? (Aphria Inc. v. Canada Life Assurance Company, et al.)
Has Facebook failed to get users’ meaningful consent to disclose their personal information to third parties? (Facebook Inc. v. Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
How will the judges view Quebec’s secularism law and the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause? (English Montreal School Board, et al. v. Attorney General of Quebec, et al.)
Can courts rule on a law’s constitutionality even if the notwithstanding clause has been pre-emptively invoked? (Government of Saskatchewan as represented by the Minister of Education v. UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity)
Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

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