Cost of getting court papers worrisome for Ontario journalists

The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) have awarded its Code of Silence Award to Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant for the excessive fees his department charges citizens, mostly journalists, to view and copy public court documents.

“These fees are without question preventing journalists from telling incredibly important stories,” said Robert Cribb, past-president of the CAJ, the professional reporters’ organization.

“These are the documents that tell us how justice is done in our province. Far, far too many journalists, especially at smaller news outlets with less money to spend, can’t access them.’’

Ontario’s fees for accessing public court files are the country’s highest. The province charges $32 to view a single court file. The cost rises to $62 if the file has to be retrieved from outside the court building. On top of viewing fees, the province charges $2 per page to photocopy court documents.

These fees represent a  barrier for journalists trying to document the course of justice in courtrooms across the province.

According to a CAJ submission prepared for a June 2005 panel on justice and the media, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick all charge $10 to access a court file; British Columbia charges $8 or less; Nova Scotia charges between $1.07 and $6.39; Newfoundland and Labrador charges $6; and Manitoba charges $5.

In Quebec and Prince Edward Island, viewing court documents is free.

Cribb said Ontario hiked its fees in the mid-1990s during Mike Harris’s tenure as premier.

At the time, he said, the Progressive Conservative government insisted the higher fees were necessary to recover costs.

“Our position on that is that it’s ridiculous,” Cribb said. “This far exceeds cost recovery. When you walk up to a counter at a courthouse and ask to view a file, what we’re generally talking about is a clerk walking about 17 steps, retrieving the file, walking 17 steps back to the counter and providing it to you. It’s inconceivable to us how that costs $32.”

Recently Northern Life was asked to pay $200 for a copy of a 50-page court document.

Runners-up for this year’s Code of Silence prize were the federal Privy Council office for regularly failing to meet access-to-information deadlines, and Ontario’s Ministry of Health for delaying access to basic information about how more than $260 million was doled out by an agency called Smart Systems for Health.

In the latter case, attempts by The Toronto Star to obtain the records from the Ontario ministry, beginning in 2002, were met with a request for $9,000 for the information.

In an appeal, the provincial information commissioner ordered the records released for $193.

In a second appeal over blacked out names of some consultants hired by the agency, the commissioner again ruled the information be released saying the ministry showed a “fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the freedom of information legislation.” The information was finally released three and a half years after the original request.