Law in Quebec

Bill 2, adopted less than 24 hours after it was tabled as the provincial government invoked closure, forces a new remuneration system on doctors that will be partially linked to performance targets over the number of patients they care for. The new law, which is already the subject of a legal challenge, is prompting an exodus of doctors, with more than 100 doctors having already begun the process of applying for licences to practice in New Brunswick and Ontario even though they may face stiff fines of up to $20,000 per day if doctors take “concerted actions” that adversely affect both access to and the quality of health services.

The justice system is not being spared the scalpel. Shortly before Premier François Legault delivered his inaugural speech before the national assembly at the tail end of September, announcing that the Quebec government will introduce measures to combat crime with the stated aim of making justice “severe and repression swift,” some 50 Crown prosecutors lost their jobs after government cutbacks. With 400 cases per prosecutor, that represents more than 20,000 cases that have to be redistributed among the 759-strong workforce, said Guillaume Michaud, head of the Quebec Association of Public Prosecutors for Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (APPCP).

More bad news may yet surface. About 150 Crown prosecutors on contract, or nearly 17 per cent of the workforce, are on edge, waiting to find out if they will have a job at the beginning of November, said Michaud. “If they are not renewed, it will be a disaster,” he said. “We cannot function properly without these casual workers.” On top of that, over the past two years, many permanent positions that have opened up because of maternity leaves or appointments to the bench have not been or will not be replaced, added Michaud.

The situation is not better within the confines of the Quebec Ministry of Justice, said [[Christian Daigle|Christian Daigle]], president of the Quebec Public and Parapublic Service Union (SFPQ). Over the past year, more than 136 positions were slashed at the ministry, including 98 represented by the SFPQ. Between 2023 and January 2025, some 775 staff departures from courthouses were recorded, more than half of which were resignations, according to statistics compiled by the SFPQ based on data from the ministry. In addition, a staggering 41 per cent of the staff working at the ministry have less than two years of experience, said Daigle. It’s no surprise to him that half (50.9 per cent) plan to leave their job, or at least are thinking about it, according to a recent survey of 600 SFPQ members who work in the justice ministry. The survey also revealed that 60 per cent of employees report an increase in their workload.

“With the recent cuts that have been announced and limited budgets at the ministry level, it is certain that there will be difficulties in getting things moving quickly and smoothly to prop up the justice system,” said Daigle. “For us, this is a glaring issue, a cry of alarm that is being sounded by both us and the deputy minister.”

In March, Yan Paquette, Quebec’s deputy minister of justice and deputy attorney general, warned the government that cutbacks could lead to wrongful releases, unjustified detentions and unpunished crimes. “There is a real risk that crimes will go unpunished (Jordan decision), not because of a lack of evidence, but because of a lack of resources,” he said in an exchange with the treasury board recently obtained by the French-language Montreal newspaper La Presse through the Access to Information Act. That admission set off a tripwire within Quebec’s legal circles. The new head of the Quebec bar, Marcel-Olivier Nadeau, said the treasury board “must adequately fund the justice system, commensurate with the critical problems we are experiencing, so that the Ministry of Justice has the necessary resources at its disposal. Our justice system has reached its limits and presents obvious risks of failure.”

That’s already happening, said Michaud. In 2023, the Quebec Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DCPP) issued a directive that compels prosecutors to prioritize the completion of more serious criminal offences to clear backlogs in the justice system. Cases dealing with death or serious injury, sexual or domestic violence, and elder and child abuse should be on the top of the list, said Patrick Michel, DCPP’s head, in his directive. But the directive makes no sense, particularly at a time when prosecutors are short-staffed, because if some cases are prioritized, then “we have to drop others,” said Michaud. That means that non-violent crimes, such as drug trafficking or fraud, are not necessarily a DCPP priority, added Michaud, who wrote to Michel asking for clear new guidelines. In the absence of a new directive, there is a risk that prosecutors will turn to their code of ethics to act individually, said Michaud.

“If we prioritize cases of sexual violence and domestic violence, there is no room for other cases,” explained Michaud. “What do we do? We have to settle. To settle as many cases as possible, we need to have as few cases as possible proceeding because we don’t have the time. So what’s happening right now is that we’re settling several cases at a discount, which we wouldn’t have done before, which prosecutors don’t want to do. But they have no choice right now if we want to get it done.”

According to Lucas Bastien, a criminal and penal prosecution lawyer and spokesperson with the office of DCPP’s director, cases involving victims remain a priority for the organization. “Cases are being prioritized so that victims are not affected by the current situation,” he said. Crimes involving victims of abuse, whether domestic violence, sexual violence or exploitation, will continue to be treated as a priority by the DCPP, he added. Other cases are prioritized based on “specific” public safety issues within the community, such as urban violence stemming from clashes between criminal groups, said Bastien.

The churn is taking its toll on Crown prosecutors. According to a 2023 survey conducted by the APPCP, 73 per cent of prosecutors are experiencing psychological distress, 36 per cent have symptoms of depression, 19 per cent have suicidal thoughts and 62 per cent are experiencing or are at risk of burnout. Michaud believes that if a new survey was conducted, the figures would be “catastrophic.”

Former Court of Quebec judge Nicole Gibeault, who sat on the bench for 22 years, likened the situation afflicting the justice system to “Groundhog Day, over and over and over again.” Part of the problem is that successive governments have poured monies into the justice system in an ad hoc basis, like a “band-aid to a wound,” she said. What’s more, she added, the Quebec government keeps on introducing new initiatives, like the specialized court for sexual and domestic violence, without necessarily propping them up with resources. “The idea is wonderful,” said Gibeault. “What tools are we providing to ensure that it can be implemented? It needs to be funded. It needs to have staff. It needs to be supported.”

By claiming to do more with less, the system ends up doing less, and not doing it as well, remarked Marie-Pier Boulet, Montreal criminal lawyer and head of the Association of Defence Counsel of Quebec. The cuts are more likely to lead to a gradual paralysis of the justice system, she added. For the justice system to remain accessible, credible and humane, it must be provided with the resources necessary for its full functioning, she said. “The justice system is not an ancillary service that can be adjusted according to budgetary constraints; it is a pillar of the rule of law, and any weakening of it has repercussions on public confidence and the fundamental rights of citizens,” said Boulet.

But it seems unlikely that the Quebec government will pour money into the justice system, noted legal actors. This summer, Quebec postponed the full-scale implementation of the Lexius program, a widely anticipated initiative that would have led to the full digital transformation of judicial processes in the province. The project should have been completed last year, but the government pushed back the project deadline to 2029 after a public inquiry began its hearing on the contentious and problematic rollout of the digital transformation of the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ).

“This is a big loss,” said Université de Montréal law professor Shana Chaffai-Parent, an expert in civil procedure and the judiciary. It may sound trivial “when we talk about digitizing files,” but most justice systems in the world that use “technological efficiency tools can do so because their files are digitized, because they have a court reporting system that is more technologically advanced than ours,” she said. That data in turn, she added, will “feed” technological systems that can support work in case management. “Postponing the Lexius project and then the digitization of files means that we are still depriving ourselves of data that could otherwise support judicial activity,” said Chaffai-Parent.

The challenges facing the Quebec criminal justice system also plague the civil justice system, remarked Chaffai-Parent. “The issues are different, but they’re challenging,” she said. “It’s quite deplorable to see that most of the measures put in place with regard to justice are, let’s say, window dressing in some cases. We are trying to integrate new structures but without integrating funding with those structures. So how can we hope to transform practices?”

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This story was originally published in Law360 Canada.