Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says no criminal cases at risk over delay — but there are thousands

Less than two weeks into his role as Alberta Justice Minister, Tyler Shandro — who is being investigated by the law society for misconduct — has sparked controversy after making comments that the province has no criminal court cases at risk of being tossed because of unreasonable delay.

In fact, Alberta has thousands of cases at risk of being tossed because of unreasonable delay. 

Speaking at the Alberta Municipalities Conference on Wednesday, Shandro was asked by Edson Mayor Kevin Zahara whether the province planned to hire more Crown prosecutors as promised in the last election.

"We don't have any Jordan situations right now," Shandro said in response. "And typically Alberta has been a lot better than other provinces in making sure we don't get to a 30-month window."

The Jordan decision was issued by the country's highest court in July 2016 and deals with an accused person's right to be tried within a reasonable amount of time. It puts hard timelines on what is considered unreasonable delay in getting a case from charge to trial. 

For provincial court cases, the timeline is 18 months while superior court matters have up to 30 months. 

The minister is simply "wrong," says defence lawyer Andrea Urquhart, who has several cases — including a murder trial — that could be tossed because of unreasonable delay.

"He really is on an island on his own in terms of what actually is going on day to day inside the courts," said Urquhart.

"It's concerning that a minister who was very recently appointed in this role is speaking about such crucial issues without knowing the information or the facts behind those assertions. Clearly he's wrong."

In provincial court alone, there were more than 3,000 cases beyond the 18-month threshold as of Dec. 31, 2021, according to numbers provided by the Alberta Crown Attorneys' Association.

Of those cases, 1,281 involve "serious and violent" charges, says association president Dallas Sopko, who called Shandro's comments "inaccurate."

"The current numbers are likely somewhat higher than that, as a result of a period of reduced court sittings caused by the Omicron variant in the new year," said Sopko.

Those numbers do not include the statistics from the Court of Queen's Bench, Alberta's superior court, which even more than provincial court deals with serious and violent offences.

"If for political motivation he wishes to make these statements to perhaps project the effectiveness of himself in this role, that's concerning because what it means is that the Alberta government will continue to do nothing to address the systemic delays in the court system," said Urquhart.