In my post titled ‘I am me. I am here’ dated December 17 2019, I mentioned that I had received news about a preliminary hearing being scheduled for the new year. It is actually scheduled for January 2020. Over a year from now.

A 2016 ruling by the Supreme Court Of Canada made it clear that the time between the charge date and the end of the trial should be no longer than 18 months (in provincial court cases) or 30 months (for supreme court cases). These are delays that are attributed to the criminal justice system. The accused person can not simply delay by not entering a plea and then walk.

The reason for this ruling is that it was decided that delays that are a direct result of processes within the criminal justice system (e.g., failure of the police, crown attorney or other key player to submit evidence and reports) may be deemed to violate the accused person’s Charter Right to be tried within a reasonable time. A failure on the part of the criminal justice to establish a verdict within the 18-30 month time frame may result in a stay of proceedings (aka: charges are dropped).

There are exceptions however. If the delay is attributed to discrete events (e.g., natural disasters, emergencies, illness, etcetera) or particularly complex cases.

If the delay is due to discrete events, these delay times are subtracted from the total time from charge date to the end of trial. If after this math (for discrete events only), the time elapsed is still more than the maximum times (18 or 30 months depending on the court), it could be determined that the accused’s Charter Rights were violated.

If the delay is due to the case being a complex case, further calculations of times are not needed due to complexity.

I do not know exactly how many months since his arrest it took the detective to forward the full disclosure (e.g., her report and findings) to the crown attorney (aka: prosecutor and the person that represents Canadian society) however, based on my notes from discussions with the victim/witness office, it was between 3-6. So, the fact that there is a 12 month wait now for a preliminary hearing and 4-6 months has already elapsed, the ‘system’ is cutting it pretty close (12 plus 6 equals …). Keep in mind this is only the preliminary hearing and more time is needed to schedule a full hearing WHICH would be where the trial end date would occur. This is not comforting news given that sexual assault cases have shown the longest times from the first court appearance of the accused to the trial end date (median of 250 days – Chart 4).

And so, unless sexual assault is considered to be a ‘complex case’, the case makes it to federal court (so a 30 month limit), or the crown is able to argue that the delay was due to discrete events, if 18 months elapses that are directly related to being the fault of the system, the man who assaulted me will walk. There will be no trial; a phenomenon that occurred at terrifying rates after this 2016 ruling was first introduced without additional funding or staffing provided to the court system for them to deal with the new time frame demands.

So for now, I will do what I can. Exercise, meditate, focus on things in my life that bring me joy and continue to tell myself that just because the criminal justice system is not equipped to deal with sexual assault does not mean that my life does not have value and that my experience was/is not unjust.