IV	The Impact of Illiteracy in the Courts
		by the Honourable David M. Stone, Ontario Court of Justice, Provincial Division
Introduction
		Suppose that those of us who preside over criminal proceedings insisted on doing so using a language which was not fully understood by up to 70% of the accused and other participants. Suppose further that we did so while failing to provide an interpreter at any stage of the proceedings. Let us suppose that for some reason, counsel for the defence and the Crown not only let us proceed, and without any objection, but they also compounded the problem by insisting that they too use our chosen language. Let us finally suppose that this language was English or French, and was in fact nominally the language of preference of those before us who did not understand us. It is becoming obvious that the impact of illiteracy among the participants in criminal proceedings has not been adequately recognized or fully understood. The judiciary has not deliberately ignored the problem, and we are capable of responding quite well when we recognize that a party has this or any other difficulty in following all the proceedings. My own experience is that it is very rare to hear from counsel or see in a presentence report that the accused is illiterate or functionally illiterate. However, persons with varying degrees of illiteracy are before us almost every day, and it is likely that their disability is never identified.

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