We expect a decision from the Court today concerning the application of the November 30th ruling in which the 90-day IRP/ARP law was held to be unconstitutional. What will it mean? We will tell you when we see it.
One way or another, we doubt it will resolve the issue of outstanding IRPs or provide a complete answer for people who have their matter before the Court in the form of a Petition to review the adjudicator’s decision.
Simply put, the Government appears to have dug in its heels, so it seems probable that the matter will end up in the BC Court of Appeal, despite the fact that they have acknowledged that the review process was flawed.
A moment to digress…
All human societies need some sort of mechanism to resolve disputes. Our common-law court system is influenced by the principles of natural selection i.e. better logic and decision-making can come about through a progression of ideas and better decision-making will win out over less well-informed decisions.
That living things go through a process of evolution over time is a fact. Whether evolution necessarily produces a better result is a case-by-case matter, and depends largely on how you define “better.”
During the era of British imperialism, ideas and social structures were exported or imposed on subjects of the Empire. This includes Darwinism, racial chauvinism, the concept that societies have a natural progression (always slightly or greatly behind the British) and the belief that the common-law court structure with well-developed rules of evidence, precedent and a hierarchy of courts is the best way to get to the truth of legal matters and to find intellectually honest answers to disputes.
In the long run, the court system has worked fairly well — we are still here and our society still functions with what many would agree is an acceptable amount of freedom. The common-law system has also facilitated discrimination and atrocities, served to protect the upper classes, and by its very nature it moves slowly and conservatively.
Taking the long view, it has been very effective. In the short term, it can be painful and frustrating, particularly when you are the regular person going up against the Government. Courts are not perfect or all-wise. There is a necessary deference to previous decisions. However, there is now greater recognition of the problem of chauvinism, and the arrogance that some may have had decades ago has largely faded.
We could go on, but there are a few important points here before you stop reading and click away:
If you were to start with a clean sheet of paper and design a system, most assuredly you will make many mistakes that have been long since resolved in the common-law system. This is an obvious analogy to the IRP system, which was created as a revolutionary process rather than an evolutionary process, and which failed grossly in the protection of people’s rights as a result.
It is terribly arrogant of the Government to assume that it can design a justice/policing scheme while completely disregarding the extensive body of law that has been painstakingly developed on the issue. Simply put, we have rules of evidence in over .08 cases that have developed to ensure justice and that people are not wrongly convicted. This was tossed out along with the bath water when the Government introduced the IRP scheme.
Finally, for the people who have suffered under this system, no doubt you may lament what you have been through, and what lies ahead, but you can take some comfort in the knowledge that this imperfect court system can also be credited for protecting most of the freedoms we enjoy today. We live in a society with some social mobility, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, freedom to quit your job, freedom to divorce your spouse, freedom to sit around a campfire and have a drink and look at the stars. If we did not live in a free and democratic society with independent courts and the rule of law, it is possible that none of us would have these freedoms.
The Personal Decision
Over the course of the last 15 months, many people made the decision to challenge the IRP scheme because of opposition to the “judge, jury, executioner” aspect of the law. It is encouraging that we apparently still have the ingrained sense of what is fair and we know when something stinks.
As lawyers we tried to best explain to our clients what we thought would happen, and to date we have been more or less accurate. We may take criticism for not putting more pressure on those who contacted us unsure whether to review their IRP. We tried to explain to people that they needed to make a decision that was rational for them. We cannot predict the future. We have tried to anticipate the position of the Government and the ruling of the court as best as we could. We researched the issues, had heated discussions and finally forged what we concluded was the appropriate course of action with each step of the process.
It is important to us as lawyers to work toward solving our clients’ problems. To that end we have tried to move quickly to put our clients in the best position regardless of the final decision of the court. If we were in our clients’ shoes, this is what we would want our lawyers to do.
We know that for many people it was a gamble. We also note that in many cases it was an issue of self-preservation. We have been comforted by the fact that for many of our clients, the decision to challenge their IRP was at least partially motivated by the desire to protect our freedoms.