Verdicts and Voices

Justice by the numbers: Hon. David Brown on delays, data, and thumping the drum

Episode Summary

How can Canadian courts reduce delays? According to retired Ontario judge David Brown, it starts with actually understanding the problem, and he has some outside-the-box ideas to make it happen.

Episode Notes

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.

In this episode, Hon. David Brown draws on his 18 years of experience as an Ontario Superior Court and Court of Appeal judge to explain why justice in Canada can move so slowly. He argues a big part of the problem is a lack of transparency about how long cases actually take and where the holdups are. And he proposes “some cracking of eggs and bumping of heads” – for instance, can financial incentives be used to extract more data and speed things up?