Courtrooms littered with paper. Courthouses with poor access to Wi-Fi, or none at all. A heavily used fax machine in the main office. The scenario might have made sense in another era, yet it is still the way Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice operates today, at a time when inefficiencies and delays in the legal system are under increased scrutiny and the outside world has gone almost completely digital. Aside from the fact that recordings of court proceedings are now digital, “there really is no difference walking into a courtroom at 361 University Ave. than there was 40 years ago,” said Superior Court Chief Justice Heather Smith.As she prepares to retire at the end of June, Smith highlighted the successes of her court in a wide-ranging interview with the Star at her Osgoode Hall office and through written answers to other questions. But she also pointed to challenges that she said cannot be fully tackled until the court receives the support it needs from Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General, which is responsible for funding the courts and has control over issues like staffing, facilities and technology.Smith spent a decade as a prosecutor with the federal Department of Justice, and is believed to have been the first female federal prosecutor in Canada, before she was named to the bench in 1983. The Superior Court handles all civil cases, a large proportion of family matters and the most serious criminal cases including murder. When Smith was elevated to become its chief justice by prime minister Jean Chrétien in 2002, she says the court’s main challenge was technology.In 2019, it still is. The struggle in bringing the court fully into the 21st century is primarily due to an “inadequate” level of activity by successive provincial governments, she said. Smith bluntly describes the amount of paper that must still be filed in each case, often in person or by fax, and moved through the courtrooms in baskets and ...
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