Effective Oct. 1, the Cold Lake Provincial Courthouse will be have an additional docket day added to their monthly schedule. Court will now convene on the second, third, and fourth Wednesday of each month.
Chief Crown Prosecutor based out of St. Paul Jeff Rudiak said the Cold Lake docket times often stretch late into the day, and something had to be done about it.
“The length of time that Cold Lake court sits, and sometimes the docket days in Cold Lake stretch on until seven, eight, even nine o’clock at night. We thought this was unacceptable,” he explained.
Bonnyville-Cold Lake MLA Scott Cyr is pleased that another day will be added to the court schedule, ensuring that people are prosecuted for the severity of their crimes.
“Right now, they’re deciding on what cases they can pursue and what cases they can’t pursue. That means some cases are being withdrawn from the Crown, or pled down to a charge that doesn’t really fit the crime,” he explained, noting that a major crime, such as drug trafficking, would be pursued over a property crime.
The announcement comes after many in the area advocated for the need of an additional docket day.
Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland said it’s a good example of the region working together to get an issue addressed.
“It’s good news for everybody, and we’ve got to push these court cases through the system faster. We’ve gotta try to hire more Crown prosecutors, or pay them a little bit better so we aren’t losing them to the private sector,” he noted.
Copeland was pleasantly surprised when Cold Lake was given another docket day. He said “the government is realizing the system needs some help,” and that everyone has to work together to improve the process.
“It’s a great grassroots story that the community itself deserves a lot of credit. The people in the area have really made this an issue... A lot of the check marks on this file should go to the residents themselves, the business community, the chamber of commerce, the local RCMP detachments, and the Crown prosecutors,” he noted.
Since there was a higher demand of cases in Cold Lake, a docket day was taken from Lac La Biche Provincial Court and given to the city’s docket schedule.
“The reason for that, is Lac La Biche isn’t busy right now,” Rudiak detailed. “In a sense that I’m not saying crime is going down in Lac La Biche, all I’m saying is that we’re able to, in the court days that we have in Lac La Biche in the month, to have a trial within 90 days. In Cold Lake, we can’t.”
The city has a higher mount of cases, adding another will hopefully speed up the trial process for everyone.
“I would hope that we’ll see trials occurring at a faster pace with an additional court day added,” expressed Cold Lake RCMP S/Sgt. Jeremie Landry.
Rudiak noted that the wait time in Cold Lake was up to two years, which was similar to Bonnyville court a few years ago.
“Bonnyville got two extra days, we took one from Lloydminster and a day from Lac La Biche. Then, we were able to get our delays under control,” he said, adding Bonnyville court originally only sat four times a month, but now it sits six.
Along with not having such long docket days, there’s a hope that trial days will be reached quicker.
