This week’s blog is written by the Honourable Robert Bauman, Chief Justice of British Columbia, who is a member of The Access Revolution Blog Steering Committee.
On October 21, 2019, I participated in my first “Twitter Town Hall”. Former Chief Judge of the British Columbia Provincial Court, now Supreme Court Justice, Tom Crabtree, initiated the idea of the Twitter Town Hall in BC in 2016 as way for the Provincial Court to engage with people on the justice issues that matter to them.
The format was simple: ask the Chief Judge any question. His initiative was very well-received, and he repeated it the following year.
SRL Jennifer Muller and Justice Robert Bauman at the BC A2J Week Twitter Town Hall
This year, with a new Chief Judge, Melissa Gillespie, in place, the Provincial Court once more hosted a Twitter Town Hall, this time on the specific theme of Access to Justice, coinciding with Access to Justice Week in BC. Chief Judge Gillespie invited me and a self-represented litigant, Jennifer Muller, to participate in a panel-type format where all three of us answered questions from one another and from the public.
From noon until 2:00 p.m., we gathered in a room at the Provincial Court in Vancouver, busily tweeting as many replies as we could to the many fantastic questions we received. Topics included technology, access to justice for people with disabilities, mental health, legal services delivery, the media, diversity on the bench, and many other themes. We had technical and other support from several other people in the room with us.
Was it a success? I think it was. I am grateful to Chief Judge Gillespie for inviting me to take part, and grateful to Jennifer Muller for participating. Social media has become such an important means for people to get information, and it’s a platform underused by the judiciary, including my own Court, admittedly. In particular, Twitter is a useful way of creating dialogue, within appropriate bounds, and providing a route for members of the public and bar to educate and inform judges about their concerns.
These discussions are extremely valuable and have the potential to lead to meaningful action and change. For example, one topic that came up during the Twitter Town Hall concerned the use (or misuse) of litigants’ time waiting around for their cases to be called. I agree completely that there must be a solution to this problem, which is a burden not just on the individuals affected but also on the economy. I intend to explore options for improving the situation for users of the system in this regard.
While I would welcome the opportunity to do another Twitter Town Hall, the limitations of Twitter are of course well-known. It was challenging to answer the questions quickly enough, and we ran out of time before we could answer every question—although I suppose that happens in most in-person public events too. Another drawback is that the character limit restricts any extended or nuanced dialogue on a given subject: the limitations can frustrate communication. But on the other hand, it does force you to get to the point!
To see the discussion, you can search the hashtag #A2JChatBC or you can go through the Provincial Court’s Twitter handle, @BCProvCourt.
i have a question, Why was this open mike session not mentioned BEFORE it happened, i would have liked to try to ask a question or two, One, is the same question i attempted to ask at the session in vancouver, In cases where it is claimed the evidence is wrong, frauded, etc, and requests to review it are made,, as in my case, As in the ivan henry case, as in so many cases in fact, Why does it take years before the courts agree to hear a review of the evidence and rectify the damage done?? The length of time just makes the consequences of the frauds, even worse. Why does this take years before someone has a look see, and examine what is being used as evidence, without any examination of it,
and this is a question for the national self represented organization, Why was an announcement about this impeding meeting,, open to all supposedly,, not made?? i live in BC, i saw no mention of this in any of your announcements, and i read the vancouver sun daily, no mention of it there, So who actually WAS made aware of it, Not me,
Hello Sandra, we did make an announcement on social media before the event and again the day of the event. It was also posted on the BC A2J Week website listed under events. For future discussions like these, we will try to get the information out earlier and encourage awareness of these events on multiple platforms. Thank you.
A2J Committees & Weeks & Town Halls are commendable but until the A2J problem is solved, the great damage caused to the court system & misery caused to the majority that cannot afford lawyers will increase. See: “Law Society Policy for Access to Justice Failure” (SSRN, May 31, 2019), at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3397081 ,
and the Comment of the CEO of the Law Society of Ontario, at: http://www.slaw.ca/2019/07/25/law-society-policy-for-access-to-justice-failure/
It is commendable that some judges really care about the access to justice issues faced by self-represented litigants in different categories. However, the sad part is that they are only a minority, and that the majority of judges consider self-represented litigants are a burden to them and the system and further complicate the already existing access to justice crisis. Perhaps, addressing the lack of competency of those judges may help improve the access to justice crisis.
I have chosen to date not to become active on any social media, including Twitter. When I heard about this Town Hall I thought maybe this was an opportunity for me to test the utility of Twitter. But instead I took advantage of the invitation to submit a question ahead of time by email.
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Fortuitously a member of the legal community provided on slaw.ca an opportunity – http://www.slaw.ca/2019/10/24/the-twitter-town-hall-comes-back-to-bc-on-monday-october-28/ – for me to ensure there was a public record of my question. That same person then put my question – regarding the practice of judges giving speeches to select audiences – on the Town Hall record.
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The immediate response – from @BCProvCourt – was: “We have 100+ judges who frequently speak in their communities, often without a written speech, so we cannot publish everything. However, I will look into the possibility of adding copies of a few of my major speeches to the Court’s website”. There was some further discussion on Twitter and then I was able to offer a response using the slaw.ca record.
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Does this experience encourage me to see Twitter as a useful forum? Maybe it has some marginal value, but from this experience I’d say not enough to entice me to invest any of my time.
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The judges should understand that I am going to continue pursuing this issue of engagements with private audiences. It is a very serious matter.
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Yesterday I sent an email about this issue to the SCC’s Executive Legal Officer. And I cc’d the coordinator for A2JBC and independent MP Jody Wilson-Raybould. Mr. Bauman should ensure that he reads that email.
”On October 21, 2019, I participated in my first “Twitter Town Hall”. Was it october 2019?
This is an awesome idea that should be commended. However I understand the questions about pre-advertising.
Based in my recent experiences I am believing more and more judges are becoming aware of SRL issues and are willing to see that justice is done despite their limitations. Yes. Judges have limitations too lest they be accused of bias and disrespect to the legal profession and all that. Today in Ontario I had one such experience where I had a real boo boo moment and the judges tried everything to keep the process going. I still laugh at how they scuttered out to convene and design a plan to get the information they were looking to get. Only afterwards we all realised I did not understand their procedure. When I sat down they thought I was finished : I thought it was time for the other side to do their “opening statement” and then they’d come back to me to give my argument. It dawned on me today that it is easy for confusion and misunderstanding to take place in courtrooms. Not all courts do things the same
I hope everyone saw the glenn accounn story last night on w5, it was a classic example of how the self represented are treated by the judicial system, The fact that the judges behavior was not mentioned was in my opinion an oversight, Unless he or she is a giant seat warmer, then the flaws in the evidence in this case should have been evident, No indication anyone picked up on that, No indication they even felt it should be looked at, Same in my case, Judges are all indignant when they are told they are wrong, But it seems no one on the bench wants to do anything to change their clearly wrong behavior, At the end of the story,,a crown prosecutor clearly said,, that the handling of the evidence in that case,, hiding it,, refusing to release, destroying files etc, was in fact, criminal behavior, I agree, Same thing happened with the forensic evidence in my case, I say it is criminal as well, Lets see the charges, And why did this case as well,, take so long to have this evidence properly looked at by the court??
i have a suggestion for the national self represented organization,, and its rag tag bunch of us followers, Today in the vancouver sun,, was a rundown on the charter rights of the public as it comes into contact with government bodies,,LIKE THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM! The same lack of regard for our rights and disregard for the effects of this are plain as plain from this government body, I propose a class action, And i propose the staff at windsor law, consider this option, The fellow who wrote this article is david danialson, I believe that with the statistics on how the judicial system victimizes us, all collected here by you at National self represented, we could stop this living nightmare of what is being done to us by the judicial system once and for all, I have said before, unless the judicial systems of our country are MADE to stop their abuse of us,, they will not, Here is a suggestion, i await your response,
Mr Danialson contacted me today, I ran the idea of a charter challenge based on the discrimination of the courts against the self represented by him, He said he had experienced much of the same behavior himself as a self represented, and seemed interested in this idea, I directed him to contact julie Mcfarlane, and to read this site, I hope this is the beginning of something, I am really done talking at town halls, at ANY halls,, We are all talked out, Now it is time to do something to change this injustice, And that will mean taking action, Who would like to join this, If we do not make the change,, i guarantee, tallking to judges etc, is not going to change a thing,
This is a comment I originally tried to post at the beginning of December. This time I’m trying to do so using two (or more if necessary) instalments:
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My previous comment here was dated November 14 and referred to a record on Slaw – “Canada’s online legal magazine”.
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On November 26 another Slaw post – http://www.slaw.ca/2019/11/26/provincial-court-of-bcs-twitter-town-hall/ – about the Twitter Town Hall enabled me to say a bit more and to link to this NSRLP thread.
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Twitter has now proved useful regarding some other matters. Back in the spring I noticed on Slaw a post about two new positions the B.C. Ministry of A.G. was looking to fill. The titles were Chief of Legal Strategy and Chief of Legal Operations. The first of those – that has the more intriguing title – has recently been filled. I didn’t see an announcement. I was periodically checking the government’s directory.
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So then I found on Twitter this – https://twitter.com/kristinhodgins/status/1118273475448201216 – series of tweets from last April. They pose about a dozen questions regarding the Chief of Legal Strategy position. It sounds like an ambitious mandate and one that we should hope will serve the A2J cause. If it does not then I would ask why we are spending an additional $200K or so per annum of public money.
Cont’d from above:
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Even more interesting I think is this tweet – https://twitter.com/qb_alberta/status/986282336420478976?lang=en – from April 2018. Complex Litigant Management Counsel is an interesting title. What does it mean?
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The answer is found in several articles authored by Mr. Netolitzky. Complex litigants are vexatious (or even querulous) litigants. Mr. Netolitzky is working with Associate Chief Justice Rooke. His published articles indicate his assignment is to build the theory and that he has already constructed something quite elaborate.
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At this link – https://www.albertalawreview.com/index.php/ALR/search/search – you can search on his surname and it will find four articles, one published in each year since 2016. And at this link – https://search.proquest.com/docview/2309272620?pq-origsite=gscholar – you will find an article published just this past October. I haven’t fully read any of these articles myself yet, but I certainly intend to do so. That last article includes a section entitled “Building Better Demons”. What is a demon? It is “active gatekeeping”. That is a subject to which I think I can contribute a lot.