On Thursday morning I attended bail court and plea court from my couch.

The Scarborough courthouse is one of only two in Toronto so far allowing journalists to access the remote hearings by phone. This is not only the safest way to cover court during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s increasingly the only way.

As of this week, the majority of the province’s courts are closed to everyone but essential staff, according to the Ontario Court of Justice. And media have been told to contact the courthouses about getting remote access to those courts that are still open for urgent matters.

So far, the Scarborough courthouse is only Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto that has provided access. Two other courthouses in Toronto told me remote access for media was not possible, but I could still attend court in person “at my own risk.”

The Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, which deals with the most serious criminal cases, launched remote access for media, victims and families of the accused on Friday.

For the past three weeks, the criminal courts have been hearing only the most urgent matters — bail hearings as well as plea and sentencing hearings for people in custody.

However, since daily dockets have not been posted online following the shutdown, it has not been possible to know what hearings are taking place without physically visiting each courthouse.

And, for safety reasons, many of these hearings are now taking place partly or entirely remotely.

The principle that the courts must be open to the public is a fundamental part of Canada’s justice system. It is through open courts that the journalists and the public can scrutinize the administration of justice, hold it accountable and maintain confidence that the system is working as it should.

It’s an old saying: Not only must justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.

In the the two “virtual courtrooms” I sat in on Thursday, I saw a preview of what covering courts will look like as remote access becomes more widely available over the next several weeks.

The accused, judge or justice of the peace, lawyers, police officers, and court staff phoned in from different locations. Paperwork was exchanged between the lawyers, judge and court staff by email.

Other than the usual teleconference hiccups — like not knowing who is talking, strange noises and the occasional dropped call — it could have been another other day in court.

“Kindly have one person speak at time,” the court clerk interjected more than once. “The court reporter is having a hard time.”

The main problem this morning was how to have confidential conversations between defence lawyers and the accused, or between defence lawyers and the Crown — temporary imperfect solutions involved everyone else putting down their phones for a few minutes or waiting silently while the two parties connected on a different line.

The idea of open courts is especially important as COVID-19 is affecting court decisions in unprecedented ways, including the way judges and justices of the peace are recognizing the heightened health risks in Canada’s jails and prisons.

On Thursday, the court heard that one man had spent weeks rather than days in custody due to the difficulty in scheduling a bail hearing. Later in the day, a lawyer asked for a sentencing decision to be delayed for a month, to avoid the chance her client would be transferred away from his range in jail, where he feels relatively safe from COVID-19.

In the first remote hearing open to media at the Superior Court of Justice on Friday afternoon, Superior Court Justice John McMahon gave a 20-year-old man a year less in custody than he otherwise would have, acknowledging the extraordinary circumstances, including the risk from COVID-19 in jail, specifically at the Toronto South Detention Centre, where a guard and an inmate have already tested positive.

McMahon also recommended that the man be released from custody now under the province’s temporary absence program through which 2,192 inmates have been released from jails since March 16 — a 26 per cent reduction in the province’s jail population.

Stefan Grcevic, 20, would have normally gotten a four-year sentence, McMahon said. Instead, he was sentenced to three more months in custody and an 18-month conditional sentence to be served at his mother’s home, as requested by Grcevic’s lawyer David Heath.

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Grcevic — he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for running over a teenager, dangerous driving and being in a car in which there was a firearm — had served the equivalent of two years and nine months in pretrial custody, including credit for 285 days on lockdown — in part due to staffing shortages at the jail and, most recently, because of COVID-19.

Grcevic is cognitively impaired and has shown good prospects for rehabilitation, Heath told the court.

“We find ourselves in a very, very unique time globally... and I will be asking for a unique sentencing approach,” Heath said in his submissions.

The plea and sentencing were done entirely through the teleconference hearing, with Grcevic calling in from jail.

It will be difficult to protect open access to the courts during the pandemic, media lawyer Justin Safayeni said in an interview.

There are technical and practical challenges. And while media may ultimately be granted access, public access may still be limited.

“I’m not going to pretend like it’s an easy challenge to meet,” he said.

One way this could be solved in matters of intense public interest — a possible legal challenge to COVID-19 legislation, for instance — would be to live-stream the hearing just as the Ontario Court of Appeal did last year for the federal-provincial carbon pricing case, he said.

Despite the difficulties, it’s a problem that has to be worked out, Safayeni said.

“When it really is a new normal, there has to be a way that the public can see what is happening in the criminal courts, in the civil courts and in tribunals too,” he said. “Or the system itself risks losing some of its legitimacy.”

Access concerns prompted the Canadian Media Lawyers Association to send a letter to chief justices across the country urging consideration for the media as the courts become virtual. Among the issues raised were access to court hearings and to court documents and exhibits and hearing lists. Courthouses have said media can still visit court to view documents but, in practice, this may not be possible due to court staff shortages or closures. The

Ministry of the Attorney General said Thursday it would give updates on these issues, when available.

“The practical reality is that most people can only be informed about what is going on in court by journalists because they can’t attend court themselves,” said Canadian Media Lawyers Association president Iain MacKinnon in an interview. “So, at the bare minimum, a journalist has to be able attend a virtual court in the same way as they would an in-person hearing.”

This is a chance for the courts to finally bring their technological capacity into the modern-day, he said. “It sometimes takes an event like this to cause real change.”