It’s been said that if you live long enough, you’ll see everything. I’ve lived long enough to see one thing, and frankly I’ve had enough. The fight in this province over the role of masters has gone on since time immemorial.
Heck, they were fighting about masters when I was an articling student in the 1990s and got my head handed to me at my first motion by, as I vaguely recall, Master “Blaster” D.H. Sandler. It was a rite of passage.
For decades now, masters have been the poor cousins to their judicial brethren, sitting at the side of the table hoping to land some meaty scraps, only to be denied.
Yet, like the wicked stepmother in Cinderella, the powers that be — which decide how the courts should operate in this province — foist more work upon masters for less pay than traditional judges.
Rather than phase out masters, as was the plan in the 1990s under civil justice reform, they now do the work of traditional masters and have case management duties. Much of what masters do seems to fall into the purview of judicial authority, which requires the same type of independence protections and pay scale as judges. They are more than traditional civil servants.
Lawyer Larry Banack’s Report of the First Case Management Masters Remuneration Commission points out the pay inequities. Typically, case management masters are paid $94,000 a year less than a provincial court judge, and their annual pensions fall short by $100,000.
Masters have a long history in Ontario’s court system. The Banack report traces them back to pre-Confederation and the Court of Chancery, where the office was officially introduced in 1837. But the roots of the role date back to as early as 1794, with the clerk of the crown and pleas.
A 1973 Ontario Law Reform Commission report concluded that “Masters are essentially judicial officers…” and the government responded by providing near-pay equity with provincial court judges.
Since then, they have lost ground. If it walks like a judge, talks like a judge, and acts like a judge, then chances are it’s a judge.
Paying the 16 masters on an equal footing with judges is certainly not chump change when you factor in pensions. However, it would provide a lot more value than the billions of taxpayer dollars the McGuinty-Wynne governments have frittered away on scandals such as e-health, shutting gas plants to win votes, the MaRS building bailout, and Ornge, to name just a few.
The challenge is that a much-deserved raise for judges doesn’t sell well when you’re billions of dollars in debt and have doctors and civil servants seeking more.
Wynne has been boasting about infrastructure investment. She should call the raises an investment in provincial infrastructure. There might be no more important infrastructure in a civil society than its judicial system.
To steal a line from Nike’s CEO’s playbook, Just Do It. It’s time to right decades of wrong.
Heck, they were fighting about masters when I was an articling student in the 1990s and got my head handed to me at my first motion by, as I vaguely recall, Master “Blaster” D.H. Sandler. It was a rite of passage.For decades now, masters have been the poor cousins to their judicial brethren, sitting at the side of the table hoping to land some meaty scraps, only to be denied.
Yet, like the wicked stepmother in Cinderella, the powers that be — which decide how the courts should operate in this province — foist more work upon masters for less pay than traditional judges.
Rather than phase out masters, as was the plan in the 1990s under civil justice reform, they now do the work of traditional masters and have case management duties. Much of what masters do seems to fall into the purview of judicial authority, which requires the same type of independence protections and pay scale as judges. They are more than traditional civil servants.
Lawyer Larry Banack’s Report of the First Case Management Masters Remuneration Commission points out the pay inequities. Typically, case management masters are paid $94,000 a year less than a provincial court judge, and their annual pensions fall short by $100,000.
Masters have a long history in Ontario’s court system. The Banack report traces them back to pre-Confederation and the Court of Chancery, where the office was officially introduced in 1837. But the roots of the role date back to as early as 1794, with the clerk of the crown and pleas.
A 1973 Ontario Law Reform Commission report concluded that “Masters are essentially judicial officers…” and the government responded by providing near-pay equity with provincial court judges.
Since then, they have lost ground. If it walks like a judge, talks like a judge, and acts like a judge, then chances are it’s a judge.
Paying the 16 masters on an equal footing with judges is certainly not chump change when you factor in pensions. However, it would provide a lot more value than the billions of taxpayer dollars the McGuinty-Wynne governments have frittered away on scandals such as e-health, shutting gas plants to win votes, the MaRS building bailout, and Ornge, to name just a few.
The challenge is that a much-deserved raise for judges doesn’t sell well when you’re billions of dollars in debt and have doctors and civil servants seeking more.
Wynne has been boasting about infrastructure investment. She should call the raises an investment in provincial infrastructure. There might be no more important infrastructure in a civil society than its judicial system.
To steal a line from Nike’s CEO’s playbook, Just Do It. It’s time to right decades of wrong.
