Yukon, N.W.T. at bottom of justice system report card, Nunavut fares better

High crime rates, high costsand limited access to legal aid have put Yukon and the N.W.T. at the bottom of a list ranking criminal justicesystems in the provinces and territories.

The MacDonald-LaurierInstitute on Monday issued its secondreport on criminal justice in Canada. It's based on StatisticsCanada data on crime and the legal system.

The think tank's first such report came out in 2016, and since then N.W.T. has dropped from 11thto 12th in the rankings of Canada's 13 provinces and territories. In both reports, Yukon is at the bottom of the list.

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Nunavut, meanwhile, has improved since 2016 going from 10th in the rankings to eighththis year.

"It's a pretty remarkable jump," said Benjamin Perrin, a University of British Columbia law professor and one of the new report's co-authors."Nunavuthas actually pulled ahead of a number of provinces [that have]significant resources ...to tackle their crime rate."

Yukon, meanwhile, has made little progress.

"It's really unfortunate," Perrin said. "There are major concerns and major problems with the justice systemin the Yukon."

Yukoncrime'off the charts'

Yukon scored poorest when it came to the cost and use of resources by its justice system. Part of that is attributable to the territory's geographic size and its sparse populationand, inpart, to its relatively high rates of violent and property crime.

"There are just astronomically higher rates of all types of crime," Perrinsaid."They're actually off the charts we had to limit how much of an effect that would have on the grade, because it was so disproportionate."

Yukon also has high rates ofprobation breaches, failure to comply with court ordersand relatively high numbers of accused persons on remand.

At the same time, Yukon spends relatively little on legal aid, compared to other jurisdictions. Perrinargues that legal aid can make the justice system more fair, efficientand less expensive.

"If governments are trying to save money by cutting legal aid, they actually end up paying probably much more in the end," he said.

On the plus side, the report found that Yukon has relatively few unsolved crimesand the median length forcriminal cases islower than average.

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Victim support poor in N.W.T.

The N.W.T. received failingmarks for the cost and use of resources by its justice systemand its support for victims. The report says victims receive one of the lowest proportion of restitution orders in Canada.

The N.W.T., like the other territories,has high rates of crime. It has the second-highest rate of violent crime (after Nunavut)and the highest rate of property crime (although, that's declined since 2016).

Like Yukon, theN.W.T. also has relatively high rates of breach of probationand failure to comply with court orders. The territory also spends little on legal aid, compared to other jurisdictions.

The N.W.T. also sees a relatively high proportion of criminal charges stayed or withdrawn. According to Perrin, that can reduce the system's efficiency.

"The Northwest Territories is charging more people than they probably need to be," he said.

At the same time, though, the N.W.T. has the second-highest rate of solved crimes. The other territories also did well on that score.

"So, while the crime rates up North are just dramatically higher than in the rest of Canada, the police up North are doing quite a good job at ...solving crime up there," Perrinsaid.

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Nunavut scores high for access to justice

Nunavut has made marked improvements since the 2016 report, Perrinsaid, despite itcontinuing to have some of the highest crime rates in the country.

He says Nunavut has seen a decline in federal statute violations, such as drug crimes. There are also fewer accused offenders failing to appear in court, the lowest rate of accused persons at largeand more support for victims.

Perrin says Nunavut scored high for fairness and access to justice, as itspends more on legal aid, per crime, than any other jurisdiction.Those expenditures have been steadily increasing in recent years,he says.

"What Nunavuthas seen,is by investing in legal aid, they're actually having some positive potential impactsin addition to making the system fairer," Perrin said.

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Learning from each other

Perrinsaid even though the three Northern territories are all in the bottom half of the rankings, they can learn from each other. For example, Nunavut's investments in legal aid might inspire the other jurisdictions to review the issue.

"I think it would be a real benefit to having, at the territorial level, some ongoing discussions on improving the criminal justice system up north," he said.

Perrin also hopes the territorial governments take his group's report to heart. He says it's based on Statistics Canada data provided by police and courtsand it's all been adjusted for population differences, "so we're able to compare apples to apples."

He saysafter the last report came out in 2016, the previous Yukon government chose to "nitpick and criticize the methodology of the report, rather than trying to learn from it and taking real steps for reform."

He hopes that doesn't happen again.

"I'm a professor. Students come in after an exam and I see one of two things one is, students want to fight over a mark, and the others want to learn and improve."

Perrinwould also like to see Statistics Canada begin to collect data on public confidence in the police and the justice systems in the territories. That data is factored into the provinces' rankings on the report card, but is not available for the territories.

• Read the Macdonald-Laurier Institute's second annual justice system report