Supreme Court of Canada Committed to Online Factums
I’m blogging from the LexUM conference Conférence Internet pour le droit / Law Via the Internet Conference, live. At the moment, Justice Bastarache is telling us that the Supreme Court of Canada is planning to make factums available online next year, at least in some measure. He is explaining all of the issues that the Court is currently considering, as it struggles to develop a workable policy concerning the electronic publication of these documents. The Court has not yet decided whether and how to “clean” the files of sensitive business or personal information; they are still consulting, but a decision on these various matters is “imminent.” The Court, then, is convinced that the values of openness and access to justice must outweigh all other interests in principle, at least.
It seems to me that the SCC has already answered the privacy issue (you filed it; there’s no sealing order; it’s public) if the material is provided in hard copy to anybody who attends at the court and asks so long as the requester pays the $$ per page copying charge.
I think it is a good idea to get this type of information out to the public as well. I have been pursuing a private prosecution (see my web site for details) and have found it incredibly difficult to find any information on the Provincial Offences Act and how to proceed. Good work Supreme. Now to get the court cases all on the web like they do with cpac.