Covid-19 Pandemic’s Impact On Domestic Assault Cases

In August, I did a video on what is going on in the Ontario Court criminal court justice system. In terms of how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting, and I just wanted to give you an update on about that at this time. So first of all, thankfully, trials resumed in the Ontario Court of Justice as of July 6th, so that’s a great thing. People’s trials are proceeding; we are able to set trial dates.  Additionally, what’s going on is for our intake court that is, remand court, if you hire a lawyer, that lawyer can file what is called an “Enhanced designation”. This is a new form, which allows the lawyer to appear by zoom, or by teleconference at your first appearance, and asked that the matter go over for twelve weeks instead of having these multiple remands that I critiqued in various videos in August. So that’s a great thing, we can then as a lawyer move the matter through the system through the twelve weeks, get all the normal steps done on your file and get it set to set either a guilty plea or a trial date. So that’s called an “Enhanced Designation”. So the systems are moving right now. An increasingly number of courthouses are being renovated, in terms of the number of courtrooms. We only had a limited number in July. Ninety-three, but that’s seemingly increasing each month, so we are getting back to full capacity.  So there’s a lot of positive developments going into the system right now and that’s basically the update about what’s going on in our justice system in the Ontario Court of Justice.