Judicial Declarations: Secret Trials in the Family Division

Secret Trials in the Family Division

EXTRACT

Updated to 1 September 2015

© Éditeur officiel du Québec
This document has official status. [Only online by the government]

Chapter C-25
Code of Civil Procedure

BOOK I
GENERAL PROVISIONS

TITLE I
INTRODUCTORY PROVISIONS

[...]

13. The sittings of the courts are public wherever they may be held, but the court may order that they be held in camera in the interests of good morals or public order.

However, in family matters, sittings in first instance are held in camera, unless the court, upon application, orders that, in the interests of justice, a sitting be public. Any journalist who proves his capacity is admitted to sittings held in camera, without further formality, unless the court considers his presence detrimental to a person whose interests may be affected by the proceedings. This paragraph applies notwithstanding section 23 of the Charter of human rights and freedoms (chapter C-12).

The rules of practice may determine the conditions and modalities relating to sittings in camera in respect of advocates and articled students within the meaning of the Act respecting the Barreau du Québec (chapter B-1).

1965 (1st sess.), c. 80, a. 13; 1975, c. 83, s. 2; 1982, c. 17, s. 2; 1984, c. 26, s. 1; 1993, c. 30, s. 1.

On the “Rule of Law”

“In public regulation of this sort there is no such thing as absolute and untrammelled ‘discretion’, that is that action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the administrator; no legislative Act can, without express language, be taken to contemplate an unlimited arbitrary power exercisable for any purpose, however capricious or irrelevant, regardless of the nature or purpose of the statute. Fraud and corruption in the Commission may not be mentioned in such statutes but they are always implied as exceptions. ‘Discretion’ necessarily implies good faith in discharging public duty; there is always a perspective within which a statute is intended to operate; and any clear departure from its lines or objects is just as objectionable as fraud or corruption.”

— Mr. Justice Ivan Cleveland Rand writing in the most memorable passage in Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R. 121 at the Supreme Court of Canada, page 140.

Random Quote

Fears are mounting that the psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin is near to death in the notorious jail of Christopol in central Russia. Letters that have reached the West from his wife and a friend indicate that he is so weak that unless he is given expert medical care he could die at any time. Dr. Koryagin has been in prison for the last four years for actively opposing the political abuse of psychiatry. The abuse takes the form of labeling dissidents as mad and forcibly treating them with drugs in mental hospitals. ― Peter B. Reddaway, "The Case of Dr. Koryagin", October 10, 1985 issue of The New York Times Review of Books

A Word on Caricature

“Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.”

— “The Education of an Organizer”, p. 75, Rules for Radicals, A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky, Random House, New York, 1971.

I am no fan of Saul Alinsky's whose methods are antidemocratic and unparliamentary. But since we are fighting a silent war against the subversive Left, I say, if it works for them, it will work for us. Bring on the ridicule! And in this case, it is richly deserved by the congeries of judicial forces wearing the Tweedle suits, and by those who are accurately conducting our befuddled usurpers towards the Red Dawn.

— Admin, Judicial Madness, 22 March 2016.