The Ontario Courthouse at 361 University Avenue in Toronto is photographed on Monday, May 2, 2022.
Despite facing significant backlogs from the pandemic and a rising number of stayed and withdrawn charges, Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General has refused to track the reasons behind those outcomes as the province's auditor general recommended five years ago.Recent data on criminal charge outcomes in Ontario shows the majority of cases have ended with charges being withdrawn, stayed, dismissed or discharged before a decision at trial since 2020.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the auditor general said the recommendations were intended to help speed up the progress of cases through the system and reduce the costs caused by delays when charges are withdrawn because there is no reasonable prospect of conviction. CBC Toronto asked the ministry how it intends to understand what parties and factors are having the greatest impact on criminal charges being withdrawn by prosecutors and stayed by judges if it does not have aggregate data on those decisions.More than half of the criminal charges laid by police in Ontario never make it to trial, according to data from Statistics Canada. As CBC’s Sarah MacMillan reports, the numbers paint a troubling picture of the province’s justice system.
Auditor General Shelley Spence encouraged Ontario to capture the reasons for stayed and withdrawn charges during a presentation before the standing committee on justice policy in August. But knowing the reasons for stays and withdrawals are just the tip of the iceberg, according to Shakir Rahim of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association."We are fortunate to be in a jurisdiction that has the resources to invest in these kinds of initiatives, and it simply has to be done," Rahim, the director of the association's criminal justice program, told CBC Toronto.
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