Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan
Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan
United for a Safer BC Policy Proposals
This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan:
An analysis of various policy proposals the BC United Party issued concerning the criminal justice system.
The proposals include hiring additional police and Crown, ending the decriminalization of drugs, funding body cameras for all police, opening more courts, and pursuing civil claims against people who traffic drugs that cause death.
Follow this link for a transcript of the show and link to full policy details.
time for a regular segment, joined as always by barister and solicitor with mulligan defense lawyers. Michael mulligan with legally speaking morning michael, how we doing.
Adam Stirling:They were doing great those that we hear lots of interesting things on the agenda, and you, of course, operating as a criminal defense council, have given us your opinions on various proposals to supposedly improve bc's criminal justice system or at least support public safety, and I know it was an announcement earlier this week you want to apply upon if there was, and there are a whole number of interesting elements uh in it.
Michael Mulligan:Uh that uh sort of run the gambit in terms of, uh I think, uh likely effectiveness if they were implemented.
Michael Mulligan:What it is, with a policy announcement by and so, I guess, interesting today in the context of the bc united verses uh conservative issue, yes, but this is a uh series of uh proposals policy, but proposals by the bc united party.
Michael Mulligan:They tell united for a safer bc uh with a number of uh suggestions to try to improve upon what looks like in victoria and I think that other uh larger uh towns and cities around the province.
Michael Mulligan:We seem to have created a all ages and abilities open air drug use zone uh in uh various uh uh urban centers, and so I I think there's probably lots of uh interest in uh trying to to uh rain in the uh some of that activity in the associated uh social disorder that that produces uh. I must say also today smiled reading the announcement about the uh proposal to ban uh drug possession within fifteen meters of various things, but one of the things that they've listed there is within fifteen meters of a waiting. So I have visions of all manner of small business people heading off to canadian tire stock of turtle outside there in or outside their uh business to try to deter the open air drug use. So anyways, if there's a run in shortage on waiting pools will know what's going on I wonder how it's defined in statute yet early, it's within fifteen years of a police by play structure, playground, a spray or waiting pool or skate park.
Michael Mulligan:So waiting pool, get yourself a turtle pool and see if you can get some response to that. Oh, the list of proposals is. One of them is to provide funding to help hire 500 additional police officers across the province. The language they use and their proposal is to aggressively hire the 500 police officers. I don't know if aggression is the issue, but certainly funding might help. I mean, we've come to a state where you know the victoria police department has banners hanging off the police building trying to encourage people to apply and I recall a little while ago, driving to the ferry in bank hoover and the delta police department had erected, you know, those flashing highway signs, usually directing, you know, some sort of a detour or something yes and it was a flashing sign trying to encourage police officers from other departments, who were exempt from training requirements, to come and join the delta police.
Michael Mulligan:They were so desperate to find people, and so there is a really serious in addition to sort of the funding issues that we've seen locally, there is a real issue about capacity to get people to take what can obviously be a difficult job, and so additional funding there. I think that's probably a sensible one and would have some hope of helping, assuming that there are people to take the positions they've also announced their policy would be to they use this language and the ndps failed and reckless decriminalization of illicit drugs. Now I suppose it's a matter of how that might be interpreted. There's, I think, little doubts that the model of simply decriminalizing drugs without providing treatment or, in some cases, mandatory and secure treatment for people who were addicted, is obviously not working. But we also need to bear in mind that the model of prosecuting people criminally for possessing drugs is something we tried for decades and that didn't work either, so clearly more needs to be done. I think one of the analogies might be the what happened when we closed secure treatment facilities for people with mental illness in in bc said, yes, we're going to provide help in the community, and then just didn't follow through with that part of it. Right, so that's the policy. I'm sure there'll be some resonance when people see the. You know, anyone who drives down pandora or the equivalent in the other city of bc is going to obviously conclude something has to be done. But I think perhaps the emphasis there should be on the reckless part of it, rather than thinking that the criminalization of it or banning it near waiting pools is going to be the solution. Another proposal they've announced here is an idea that people would be given who are convicted of a crime and had a drug addiction, would be given a choice between what they describe as traditional incarceration or secure treatment, and indicating they would construct new facilities for the purpose of doing that and repurpose existing prison space.
Michael Mulligan:Now, on that front, clearly we have a need or additional secure treatment or treatment facilities and, in some cases, secure treatment facilities. But, as we've talked about before, waiting for people to go and commit some crime, waiting to see if they are convicted of any crime and then uh, providing some form of treatment or secure treatment, uh, seems to be not the best approach in the world. Uh, we should perhaps consider something a bit more proactive. Right, as we've talked about before, we already have legislation that permits somebody to be involuntarily detained if they suffer from a mental disorder and they're a danger to themselves or others, and if you have somebody who's taking a drug which has a very real prospect of killing them and is unable to stop doing that. It seems to me, even with the current legislation, you'd have a basis to act in a proactive fashion, but you need somewhere for them to go. So, um, clearly, the idea of building facilities is a good one. Whether you need to wait for a crime to give people a choice. Maybe we should act on it a bit more quickly.
Michael Mulligan:They also have a proposal they entitled treat all crimes seriously, indicating there should be accountability for offenses like bike theft, vandalism and shoplifting. Now, clearly, there should be consequences for things. This seems to be a sort of a take on uh number of decades ago, the approach in New York city, sort of look, if you crack down on graffiti and so on, you might help with more serious crime. That seems to where it be where that's coming from. Uh, they also this proposal, which is probably a gong uh, a proposal to pursue civil consequences for drug trafficking that causes death, pursue civil litigation against dealers in cases where they sell lethal drugs that results in the death or overdose, that that one seems hopeless. Um, are you really going to engage in years of civil litigation, uh, with the hope of seizing somebody's tent and stolen bicycle if you're successful? Uh, that is not very likely to get too far. So probably, at the list of things so far, that one perhaps is a uh one that might be put on the back burner.
Michael Mulligan:They have an interesting proposal here to fund body worn cameras for all police in British Columbia. Um, that's an interesting one. Um, you know they they give rationals for here about uh protecting the public and police alike, providing accountability and transparency. Uh, I'm saying this should be in place for all uh police agencies. Um, there's certainly, I think, uh compelling argument for the use of uh police body worn cameras.
Michael Mulligan:One of the impacts that you might have would be to reduce pressure on the court system, uh, where you don't have the same kinds of disputes about what happened.
Michael Mulligan:It's on video. You're not going to have to spend a bunch of time sorting out what exactly did the police officer say or do. It's going to be on video, um, and so that might be helpful both in terms of, uh, increasing the speed and efficiency of the court process. It might also eliminate the need for uh police to be attending to testify, uh, in some criminal cases, right, bearing in mind that in in many criminal cases, the police weren't there to witness whatever happened. Their role in it was, you know, you know, arresting the person. When they got a phone call, right, yeah, uh, and so if there was some issue about that, it was captured on video. It strikes me that that might be, um, uh, an effective way to eliminate, uh, uh, some of the time they would spend at the courthouse, and that seemed like a a good idea in terms of funding. So hopefully that's get some traction, yeah, um, they've also proposed this idea of a dedicated hate crime team.
Adam Stirling:This one.
Michael Mulligan:I think it's a little more dubious. They say provide funding to enable units of dedicated liaison officers in all cities, regardless of size, to work with community led resource groups to reduce hate motivated crimes against minorities and marginalized communities. Now, of course, no one can be in favor of hate crimes, no right. So we're all in favor of reducing hate crimes. Whether you need to have a dedicated team in every community, regardless of size, I don't know about some communities in the province of a few hundred people. Do you really need a dedicated hate crime team in every you know town of 700 people? Probably not, um, but that's one of the things they've got on the agenda. Uh, and then there are several things I wanted to spend some time talking about in terms of the justice system in particular, uh, in terms of prosecutions, bail offenses, hiring crown and, uh, court access, um. So I don't know if this would be a good time for the morning break, but there's several things that are let's do it and the justice system.
Adam Stirling:I think we're talking about all right, let's take our first break as, legally speaking, we'll continue with Michael Mulligan, from all good defense lawyers, right after this. All right, legally speaking, with Michael Mulligan, from Mulligan Defense Lawyers, as we continue Michael's analysis on a suite of policy proposals that were announced earlier this week by BC United with respect to public safety. Michael, where were we?
Michael Mulligan:Well, we're sort of right in the heart of it in terms of proposed changes to the justice system itself. One of the proposals here in that category they listed as more prosecutors and contractors to fill gaps, and the proposal is to aggressively I guess much like with the police hiring address the shortage of crown prosecutors, including contracting with private sector external council, settling the ongoing contract dispute with crown and reducing the caseload for prosecutors. There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, in terms of the idea of trying to hire, recruit more crown, I should say there was an announcement by that about to that effect by the current government, and that was several months ago. And I looked yesterday at the number of unfilled job postings for crown in the province and currently there are postings in 13 different communities all across the province, everything from Vancouver, richmond, north Dane, vancouver, all the way to Dawson Creek, fort Nelson, fort St John, prince George, you name it all over the province. And so they are currently trying to hire people, and the challenge, I think, is that they're trying to hire people with some experience right, and there are only so many sort of senior lawyers who do criminal work that would want to go and work for the crown right, and so they've got all these current job postings and they are just not filled. Now there may be other factors there. They talked about settling ongoing contract dispute. There's contract disputes. The Crown Council Association was running ads on C-facts about that and so pay may be an issue there for senior crown, the number of years ago the province tied crown salaries to judges salaries and then has ever since tried to desperately keep judges salaries down to avoid having to pay more money to crown, and so no doubt that's not helpful when you're trying to recruit a bunch of people to come and join them, and so, whether the Crown ranks or Crown is, maybe they'll have banners outside their building and highway signs, like the police are trying. But there is an issue there.
Michael Mulligan:The idea of having people do it on contract is an interesting one. Some prosecution work has traditionally been done on a contract basis, like, for example, other than in Vancouver Federal prosecutions, that is to say prosecutions for things like drug offenses, fish, you know any other kind of things that are federal but not criminal code. Income tax prosecutions are handled by lawyers who are not government regular employees. There are contracts where a firm would have a contract to do that particular type of work, and so perhaps that's what they have in mind. The year is currently a procedure in place where they would hire what would be described as ad hoc crown to do some particular prosecution or to try to cover something where they are completely short staffed. That is challenging because of what they pay. The rate of pay is a fraction of what most lawyers would charge to do that kind of work, and so if you're trying to hire experienced people to do it, that's hard. So clearly they've there's some plan to try to do something about that, and it is complicated, but that's what's proposed there. They also have a proposal which they title equal access to courts for all British Columbians. Who can be against that? Yeah, but they say deploy community courts focused on crimes like shoplifting, vandalism, graffiti, low level drug dealing and similar crimes.
Michael Mulligan:Now, I don't know how you quite parse those things out, but there's a really interesting history about that and the current reality about that. The history of it in British Columbia is that back in 2002, the then then liberal government closed more than 20 courthouses all across the province, some of them in quite busy places like Delta. Now they shut them to save money, and so you know, the court system has just been not only then, but frequently is just very much over stretched right. You have a limited number of courtrooms we got rid of a bunch. We have a shortage of judges and we have a profound shortage of all the court staff necessary to make a court system function, like if you want to have another courthouse opened, you need to have the building, but you also need to have judges, and in order for a judge to do anything, you need to have things like sheriffs, court clerks, other people to make it work, and at the moment, the court system is facing a profound shortage of, for example, sheriffs.
Michael Mulligan:We have in some places, including in Surrey currently, cases being adjourned because there's no sheriff to provide security in the courtroom and they're unable to recruit people because they don't pay enough. They pay significantly less than what municipal police forces pay, and the police forces are hanging banners outside their buildings trying to hire people and so, best of luck, trying to encourage people to take a job, doing, again, very difficult and important work, and so we have a profound shortage of a number of things right and the idea of additional court space if you're trying to increase public order and prosecute, you know, every minor offense of bike theft, for example, that's fine, that may be a good policy idea, but you need to have people to do it. You need judges to do it in courtrooms. Maybe we can reopen some of the ones that they shut. You also need to recruit all the incillary people necessary to make that work and, furthermore, you need crown and you need defense counseling. You need all of that right, and it's clear that we are stretched trying to make things function. So the idea of opening some additional quote, community courts you know, all courts are, of course, in a community somewhere is probably a wise idea. But all those things need to be addressed and I must say, some of those things at the moment are on the cusp of being a breaking point. Because, for example, if you don't have enough sheriffs to keep the courtroom open and the case gets adjourned, then the case winds up getting stayed for a delay. That's how that plays out. And so so much for the treat all the crime seriously, right, that's how that. That's what happens. And if you want to attract sheriffs, you better pay them properly so that people join and do the work, or it's not going to function.
Michael Mulligan:They also indicate here, they propose a policy of crackdown on bail offenders, and that's been an issue of course we've talked about. They describe it as an NDP practice of not seeking detention, or only half of the cases are they seeking detention. As I've talked about before, there is not really some epidemic of the crowd not making appropriate decisions on bail, so I don't think that's really a solution to anything. It's sort of a political talking point. But certainly increasing court availability and trying to hire people to fulfill the roles necessary to make that happen is a good idea. It's more than crown, though. You need to bear in mind all those other things. If you, if you manage to hire a bunch of crown but don't have judges, sheriffs, quirks and defense counsel, you're not increasing the capacity of the system. You need to have all those things, so hopefully there is some investment in it. And then they have a proposal here for various things, involving one of them seems like something anyone can be in favor of establishing preventative programs to protect vulnerable kids in school, and they talk about funding for targeting after school sports and at risk youth. That's an excellent idea.
Michael Mulligan:And then a couple of other ones which seem maybe a bit of wishful thinking. They describe them as a partnership to reduce drug imports, trying to share information to keep illicit drugs out of BC, and another one to better control illicit drug supplies, working with the federal government to control and monitor importation of precursors. Part of the problem, one of the reasons why we have the really visible problem in six or seven people a day dying in British Columbia, is that that is an almost impossible task. And the reason why it's an almost impossible task these days is that the cost and density and potency of some of these drugs, like fentanyl, they're worth almost nothing, a very tiny amount, right, they could come in in a suitcase, could provide hundreds of thousands of doses, and so thinking that you're going to manage to interdict every possible, every shipment the size of a suitcase is a hopeless endeavor.
Michael Mulligan:And while anyone and everyone should be in favor of coordination and hard work, thinking that we are going to stop the epidemic of people dying and using drugs by finding every package and packaging, package and box that might contain something is just not realistic. And you know we have tried. We collectively, the community tried for decades, you know, with the approach of let's just see if we can get all of this by way of a criminal response to it. It just doesn't work. All of those things have the effect of just marginally driving up the value of what would otherwise be a valueless substance, so that you have a team of people, figuratively speaking, who are addicted to drugs and spend their entire waking life committing property crime in order to get the money to buy the drugs to eventually, with some regularity, kill themselves. And so you know, we're not going to solve the problem, that problem, serious problem, by having a sufficient number of courthouses.
Michael Mulligan:Those things are good ideas. There are other reasons why you want them and there is a role for them, right? But it is not the complete answer, and so I guess my take on all of this, as somebody who works in the system, is that there's more good than not in this list of proposals. Right, yeah, some of the things don't have much chance of success, like suing drug dealers when somebody dies that's a talking point without any hope of success. But other things, like properly funding the police, creating perhaps additional secure treatment facilities and so on, those do have some prospect of success.
Michael Mulligan:We don't need to, however, my judgment, wait or a criminal offense to occur, a criminal conviction to happen, if that happens, in order to try and ensure people who are going to kill themselves by continuing to use drugs and commit crime all day long in order to get the drugs are treated. You know, thinking about it, we only have so many resources. We cannot like the jails. Don't hope, it's hopeless. We don't have enough space there.
Michael Mulligan:You know we have currently they've taken over and purchased all of these motels and hotels to sort of house people, but I think in many cases, housing well, that's obviously a positive thing is insufficient. Perhaps there would be some opportunity to use some of that space to, in an immediate way, provide some form of secure treatment, so that you don't have people simply living in a hotel room, going out every day, committing crime all day long, using drugs and going back to the hotel at night. That's not a solution, and so perhaps there could be a conversion of some of that space to ensure that people just aren't choosing a lifestyle of crime and drug use which is both deadly for them and completely undermining in terms of the community. So maybe there's some opportunity there. So an interesting list of things and good to see that there's some thought being put into it, because I'm sure there are a lot of people who are gravely concerned about what's going on right now.
Adam Stirling:Michael Mulligan, with Mulligan Defense Lawyers, legally speaking during the second half of our second hour every Thursday Pleasure as always. Thank you so much. Have a great day you too. Bye now.