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In 2015, shortly after the NDP took over, significant cuts were made to both the prosecution service and the Justice division that includes the court clerks. An already far too lean prosecution service was forced to maintain a vacancy discount of five per cent of our workforce.

That meant as people quit, went on leave et cetera. we could not replace then until we reached more than a five-per-cent vacancy. The discount for the clerks was much higher. Then in early 2016, that “vacancy discount” was increased to eight per cent of the prosecution service.

So with the significant population growth since the last increase in the prosecution service, serious crime on the rise and the complexity of the most serious criminal cases growing Minister Ganley slashed the prosecution service to 92 per cent of its 2015 levels. This move crippled the service and put it on the brink of collapse.

The situation in the clerks’ office was even worse. The vacancy discount they were forced to maintain left them so short that for the first time in my memory, cases that had a judge, a prosecutor, defence counsel, an accused and witnesses all present and ready to go were adjourned because there was no clerk to staff the courtroom. The injustice and waste involved in that when compared to the savings of the cost of a clerk’s salary for that day is shocking. As both a taxpayer and a citizen I was outraged.

Since the NDP took over in 2015, no new prosecution positions have been added except those positions that were necessary to comply with a court decision that required that prosecutors take over all first-appearance bail from the police.