I bumped into this old article written by Alan Shanoff at http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/alan_shanoff/2011/01/14/16894621.html who seems to be a trained lawyer who expresses opinions about how lying and perjury is taken in the Canadian court system.

Based on my personal experience, the court hadn’t shown anything to demonstrate that it is taken seriously as well. With the people I have spoken to and reading various articles like these it makes me wonder how such a widespread issue never gets resolved. At the same time, I feel the public is essentially duped into believing that when you take an oath or pledge to tell the truth you will be held accountable if it is clear that one went out of their way to tell a false story.

It’s almost like I have no choice but to agree with the phrase one person told me where things like perjury and lying under oath is only enforced if a judge becomes personally offended. So in a way, it’s almost like the processes of determining perjury isn’t say looking at what was written in an affidavit and comparing it with facts to see who is lying or not per se. Instead, it would be more along the lines of whether or not a judge is emotionally attached to a specific case where the law is then used as a personal weapon based on personal preference should one choose to. In my opinion, that isn’t right.

I don’t know about everyone else, but my initial assumption was that a judge scrutinizes a case from beginning, middle and end where there are two categories to determine. Basically, do they feel anyone is clearly lying to mislead the court which means they need to punish the party for that? At the same time, are there enough facts for a case for them to confidently rule on it? Not punishing contradictions and inconsistencies that are clearly an intent to mislead is essentially telling people that a court is nothing more than a game of creative storytelling, theatrics and a lottery of who you get. Essentially, it encourages a person to keep going even if they are lying. Hence, the clogged up court system with the extreme wait times as well.

Now even from my experience I think I clearly demonstrated that there is a huge discrepancy in terms of a case outcome depending on what judge you get in the BC court system. I know in any other industry that is unacceptable. Example, if a company has an extreme issue of say harassment it shouldn’t matter who is working on shift to follow procedures and take appropriate action. Unless you are telling me it’s procedure to not take lying and perjury as a serious matter in court. That opens up a different can of worms.