Prosecutions in the Northern Territories

PPSC Operations in the North

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada is responsible for the prosecution of all Criminal Code offences in the territories as well as offences under all other federal legislation, such as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Cannabis Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and the Fisheries Act. The PPSC also prosecutes most territorial offences in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories (NWT), but not in the Yukon.

The PPSC has regional offices in each of the territorial capitals, Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and Iqaluit, with a total staff complement of approximately 125 employees, 54 of whom are lawyers. All three regional offices occasionally need the services of fly-in counsel from other regional offices or prosecutors from provincial prosecution services.

Challenges Relating to Northern Prosecutions

Accessibility

PPSC prosecutors and Crown Witness Coordinators (CWCs) attend court in over 60 communities across the North. Court is held at varying but regular intervals in each community, most of which are accessible only by air. All of the communities in Nunavut are accessible only by air. Those in the NWT are mainly accessible by air. The communities in Yukon are generally accessible by car.

Cultural Awareness

A significant percentage of the population, particularly in communities other than the territorial capitals, is Indigenous. In the Yukon, approximately 25% of the population is Indigenous; while in the NWT, 50% is Indigenous. In Nunavut, 85 % of the population is Inuit. Cumulatively, there are twenty Indigenous languages spoken in the Territories. Cultural awareness training is a priority for non-Indigenous employees within the PPSC, and is of particular importance in the North.

Travel Costs

Core mandate travel for prosecutors and CWCs is a substantial part of the regional office budget. In addition, civilian witness travel costs for prosecutions in the North are significant, approximately $1.1M annually. For example, travel and accommodation for one person to a remote community in Nunavut for a trial is around $11,000.00. In addition, the PPSC has become responsible for all civilian witness travel in the three Territories. Traditionally, these costs were paid by the territorial governments. However, in 2015, the territorial governments refused to continue the arrangement, and the PPSC now books and pays all the civilian witness travel costs without an increased source of funds.

High Rates of Violent Crime

The Territories have among the highest rates of violent crime in the country, particularly as it relates to sexual abuse (including historical sexual abuse cases) and domestic violence. There is also a high rate of homicide. The PPSC currently has a total of 28 active homicide prosecutions and 4 appeals before the courts.

High-Risk and Long-Term Offenders

There is a coordinated high-risk offender flagging process in place in all the Northern offices, resulting from the high rate of violent crime involving offenders with significant rates of recidivism. In each regional office, paralegals assist in coordinating the flagging of high-risk offenders in the territory. This enables a more effective and organized preparation of prosecution files in order to conduct long-term offender and dangerous offender applications effectively.

Crown Witness Coordinator Program

The unique cultural setting for prosecutions in the North led to the creation of the Crown Witness Coordinators Program in 1988. The Program provides a service to bridge the cultural gap between the court system and First Nations and Inuit victims and witnesses engaged in the court process.

Currently, the PPSC’s northern regional offices employ 17 Crown Witness Coordinators, in addition to three CWC Supervisors, one in each regional office. CWCs work closely with PPSC prosecutors and travel to communities during court circuits to assist victims and witnesses. A large percentage of the workload of CWCs involves domestic violence cases and other crimes of violence such as sexual assault and homicide.

The main role of Crown Witness Coordinators is to help victims and witnesses understand the court process, the roles of the court participants and, for the victims, their rights and responsibilities under the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights. Crown Witness Coordinators provide court updates, accompany witnesses to court, provide support during and after testimony, and assist with trial preparation. CWCs also act as liaisons between Crown counsel, victims, and witnesses, to ensure that their concerns are considered during the justice process. Their responsibilities include identifying support needs of the victims and ensuring they are referred to appropriate territorial support agencies to address those needs. The CWC program is coordinated by a Crown Witness Program Coordinator (CWPC). The CWPC liaises with CWC Supervisors and CWCs in the territories, with prosecutors, and with senior management in the regional offices and at headquarters in Ottawa.

Specialized Treatment Courts in the North

A large proportion of offences in the North involve spousal violence. Each territory has specialized spousal abuse treatment court programs to address domestic violence through a comprehensive multidisciplinary treatment-based approach aimed at ensuring domestic violence offenders receive therapy to eliminate or reduce recidivism. To participate, the accused must accept responsibility by entering a guilty plea. They are then eligible to receive treatment focused on spousal violence and addictions. Upon completion of the process, the offender receives a sentence mitigated by his or her involvement in the process, which usually means a community-based sentence. PPSC prosecutors in the three northern regional offices actively support these therapeutic court programs.

Community Wellness Court

The PPSC has also been an active partner in the therapeutic court programs known as the Community Wellness Court. Wellness Court programs aim to reduce recidivism by providing support to chronic offenders by helping them deal with the addictions and/or mental health issues that contribute to their criminal behaviour. These programs constitute judicially supervised alternatives providing multidisciplinary support for offenders with mental health issues, drug and alcohol addictions or cognitive challenges. An offender who successfully undergoes the extensive treatment, generally over a year in length, associated with this program usually receives a community-based sentence. Wellness courts were implemented in the Yukon in 2007, in the NWT in 2014 and in Nunavut a therapeutic justice program pilot project, designed by Inuit for Inuit, began in April 2019 in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

Article 23 of the Nunavut Agreement

The Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Agreement created Nunavut, which became a Territory on April 1, 1999. The Nunavut Agreement protects Inuit rights, including employment as set out in Article 23 of the Agreement. The legal obligation on the Federal and Territorial governments is to increase Inuit participation in government employment to a representative level of 85% of the population in all occupational groups and levels.

The PPSC Inuit Employment Plan contains the employment strategy aimed at increasing the number of Inuit employees to a representative level. For the PPSC, this poses a particular challenge given the current insufficient pool of Inuit who meet the essential requirements to be hired as lawyers. Accordingly, the PPSC is working with the federal sector to develop education strategies to increase the number of Inuit lawyers and, in particular, is supporting two Nunavut Regional employees enrolled in the Nunavut Law Program. Other measures in place to address meeting the representative levels in other occupational groups include strategies to remove employment barriers, all-Inuit staffing panels, career laddering within the office and an emphasis on acquiring leadership skills through formal and on the job training. These measures have significantly improved Inuit employment in the Nunavut Regional Office.