The Quebec government’s resolve to establish harmonious labour relations with its Crown prosecutors will be put to the test after the National Assembly received a report by a special committee that made a slew of recommendations to improve their labour conditions.
It will take a healthy dose of political will, huge investments and nearly a generation for the Quebec government to implement the wide-ranging recommendations an inquiry that examined treatment of Indigenous people made to the province’s justice and correctional systems, according to legal experts.
In the latest of a growing body of reports examining the plight of Indigenous people in Quebec, retired Quebec Superior Court Justice Jacques Viens concluded after an 18-month examination that “it seems impossible to deny” that members of the First Nations and Inuit are victims of systemic discrimination in accessing public services in Quebec.
A lawsuit by the Quebec and Montreal Bars to compel the Quebec government to implement measures to ensure the legal equivalence of the French and English-language versions of Quebec statutes was quietly settled out of court.
The Quebec government increased legal aid eligibility thresholds by 6.67 per cent, but that’s not good enough, asserts to the Quebec Bar.
A month after an Ottawa lawyer with serious memory problems was disbarred after failing to help the Law Society of Ontario investigate complaints made by a raft of clients who are collectively owed more than $2.5 million, a Montreal lawyer who misappropriated approximately $130,000 suffered nearly the same fate.
Antonella Petrolito, a member of the Barreau du Quebec since 1989 but no longer practicing since she went bankrupt in 2016, has been disbarred by the Quebec Bar’s disciplinary committee for 10 years and ordered to pay the victims a total of $137,900, the amounts she pilfered, after she pled guilty to the charges.
Petrolito, now working as a legal assistant for a lawyer, has a history of misappropriating funds. In 1999, the disciplinary committee sanctioned her for misappropriated on three occasions amounts totaling $3,350.
“In spite of three decisions rendered against her in 1999, one in which she was struck from the roll for two years, she did not change her conduct and blatantly disregarded her ethical obligations,” said the disciplinary committee.
The Quebec Bar and the Quebec Ombudsman want to make it easier for alleged victims of sexual assault to gain access to the legal system and are calling on the provincial government to follow in the footsteps of the overwhelming majority of Canadian provinces and eliminate the prescription period for civil actions in cases of sexual assault.
The fallout from the arrest of a well-respected former high-profile officer by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad continues unabated.
Questions linger more than a week after the bombshell that has been described as an “unprecedented attempt at intimidation.” Quebec Premier admitted that “we are faced with many more questions and answers of course and that includes me…It’s not trivial. We haven’t seen this very often. An elected parliamentarian being arrested without any true motives being been given.”
The number of lawyers in Quebec has grown by 17 per cent over the past decade, with women leading the charge and now representing more than half of the Quebec Bar, according to a survey by the Quebec legal society.
Barely a few minutes after reciting the oath as new president of the Quebec legal society, Paul-Matthieu Grondin laid bare uncomfortable truths about the Quebec justice system and the Quebec Bar itself.