2023-10-29 23:00:00
Around twenty members of the Hasidic community of Montreal will not have to pay their tickets received for non-compliance with the curfew during the pandemic due to unreasonable delays in court.
The latter wanted to challenge the constitutionality of the curfew imposed by the Quebec government in court, claiming that it violated “their freedom of religion as well as their right to liberty.”
The 22 members of the community, represented by Me Jessy Héroux, had received these tickets in 2021 and 2022 when Quebec had imposed a curfew from 8 p.m.
The Council of Hasidic Jews of Quebec at the time turned to the courts so that its members might escape the curfew, because the third prayer must be held 2:30 hours following sunset. Their request, however, was refused.
After receiving the reports of infractions, the members turned to the courts in order to have them invalidated. Cases of this type must be heard within 18 months, due to the Jordan ruling.
However, between 23 and 32 months would have passed between the start of the prosecution initiated by the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions and the dates set for the trials and motions for unconstitutionality, which were scheduled for next April.
In all, 23 files had to be grouped together and all had to be held with the help of a Yiddish-French interpreter, which tends “to complicate a file which is initially intended to be simple,” said Magistrate Justice of the Peace Johanne White. in its decision rendered this week at the Montreal courthouse.
Labor shortage in Montreal
Trials for offenses under the Public Health Act must be held before presiding justices of the peace. The latter, of which there are only eight in Montreal, must hear thousands of cases each year in areas as varied as occupational health and safety, environmental protection and road safety.
No judge was added to hear the hundreds of additional cases generated by the various findings issued in connection with the pandemic, emphasized Justice White.
“The applicants’ attorney is therefore not entirely wrong to assert that the legislator has created new offenses in matters of public health without necessarily allocating sufficient resources for the processing of these files,” she clarified. by pronouncing a stay of proceedings in these 23 cases.
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