We have been dealing with a topic that is particularly concerning to us. It should be on the minds of every British Columbian, and that is the steps that the Government is taking to oust the jurisdiction of the courts for most matters and to move adjudication to in-house tribunals.
If our courts were properly funded, there would be no backlog in dealing with matters. The Government is going to use piles of our tax money to create these new tribunals. And the purpose, we think, is so they can control the outcome of the cases. The Government has tried to influence the courts without success. As a rebuke to the courts, they are taking away the idea of impartiality from the process by sending matters to tribunals they can influence or control.
Part of the problem is that the mechanisms by which the Government influences decision making are very subtle. As we noted with IRPs, police officers are pressured in subtle ways to falsify their reports. If an IRP they issued is lifted on appeal, an email goes out to all members of the detachment announcing it. The reason for this is to humiliate the officer so they and their fellow officers get the message: next time make the report tight even if it takes lies or material omissions.
The officers who approached us to tell us about this knew the real reason for the emails is to pressure them to taint their evidence. The ostensible reason for the email was to encourage quality work. The point is, if challenged the people who send out those emails have a reason they can point to in order to deflect from the real reason. We call that plausible deniability. There is a plausible reason that allows them to deny the real reason that they are doing something.
Is that clear? Here’s another example:
When the Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) scheme was first introduced, we conducted one of the first review hearings (which is still before the Court on appeal). We asked the adjudicator to adjourn the matter to get the material evidence. She told us she needed to ask her supervisor.
Of course, this is wrong for so many reasons it’s ridiculous. If you’re an independent decision maker how is it that you have a supervisor? It turns out, as we were told, there is a boss to answer to. When we demanded to speak to the boss — to make our submissions to the person who would make the decision, we were flatly refused and our request to get the evidence was denied.
Would the supervisor have done the same thing? We don’t know. There shouldn’t be a supervisor in any event. But it may well be that we were denied the request just so the person didn’t have to go ask for permission.
We later learned that before decisions go out lifting an IRP, the decision is first reviewed by a supervisor and the other adjudicators. In other words, an adjudicator must expose themselves to the scrutiny of their co-workers and their boss if they want to revoke a driving prohibition.
These are internal rules, created by the Government and not disclosed in any public way. They create, by the very structure of their system, a disincentive to revoking a driving prohibition. If you wish to revoke a prohibition, you must open yourself up to criticism by your supervisor and the scrutiny of your co-workers. In other words, peer pressure.
What is the ostensible reason for this? Quality control. If challenged that this is in actuality an attempt to dissuade an adjudicator from lifting a prohibition, the Government can deny the accusation by pointing at the ostensible reason of quality control.
From our perspective this is none other than the application of peer pressure as a method of influencing a tribunal.
In any event, you can either accept the Government’s talking points or you can examine the matter more closely. There are subtle ways that the Government can influence the process if we haven’t the protection of the courts. They deny this. And their denial is plausible if you don’t stop to conduct a close examination of the process from beginning to end.