Courts Will Not Return to Business As Usual Until Vaccine
The Courts in Ontario have undergone much stress and uncertainty in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the outbreak, most courts have only been hearing urgent matters. However, despite some of the restrictions beginning to lift in Canada, the Chief Justice has recently announced that the courts will not return to ‘business as usual’ until a vaccine for COVID-19 is available.
Since the COVID-19 restrictions were put in place, the Ontario Courts have done much to adapt to this new normal through technological advances. The Chief Justice called for further adoption of technology to aid the availability of justice mechanisms and states, ” get rid of the paper, get into the electronics end-to-end. So if there’s a silver lining out of this very, very difficult time we’re in… we are poised and ready to move forward”. This news mirrors our recent call for technological advancement of the justice system in order to prevent the backlog of cases.
Indeed many of the Courts across Ontario are planning to revamp in some regard beginning July 6th, however this target is subject to change and the re-opening measures will follow a tiered approach.
But how far off are we from a vaccine? There are currently over 100 potential vaccines currently being tested, with some beginning to enter human trials. The current timeline sits at an optimistic 12-18 months.
