It’s a staggering price tag for a criminal investigation and trial.
But as Canadians have gotten used to big bills for major court cases and inquiries, news last week that the B.C. government spent $105 million to investigate and prosecute serial killer Robert Pickton wasn’t necessarily a surprise.
In fact, earlier estimates suggested it could cost as much as another notoriously expensive legal matter, the Air India case, whose price tag had reached $130 million by 2005.
At least the Pickton trial resulted in conviction, a decision upheld by the country’s highest court.
At the same time, while some people might question the cost of such drawn-out investigations and trials, it’s probably wiser to look at the big price tags as symptoms of the problems with police and Crown actions in the first place that we should instead be looking to fix.
In the Pickton matter, it’s clear that the government will continue paying given that it will be convening a public inquiry into police mishandling of their investigations into the disappearances of women on Vancouver streets who later turned out to be the serial killer’s victims.
It’s certainly worth going through that exercise. Too many women across the country, many of them aboriginal and some of them sex-trade workers, have gone missing for society to continue ignoring the issue.
Of course, the public could have saved much of the cost of investigating and prosecuting Pickton if the police had done more to solve the disappearances in the first place. So if the inquiry helps us avoid police errors like that in the future, it will be valuable.
Aboriginal groups, meanwhile, have called for an even broader process that goes beyond probing police actions to analyze the social conditions that make women so vulnerable in the first place.
On that score, critics could make a valid argument that doing so would be going too far. Nevertheless, the issue of missing women has become such a haunting stain on our society that it’s time to explore it fully.
While calls for public inquiries have become somewhat of an automatic reaction in this country, this is one problem that the country needs to address more fully, whether by a B.C. commission stemming from the Pickton case or a national process led by the federal government.
It takes a lot to ensure a fair justice system. So while the government had no choice but to spend the money on the Pickton trial, it would be wise to keep paying what’s necessary to prevent such tragedies from happening again.
- Glenn Kauth
