International Law

R. v. Rybak

The Ontario Court of Appeal clarifies the s. 14 right to an interpreter.

The appellant urges a bright line rule that essentially proceeds from any showing of a need for interpreter assistance to provision of continuous, precise, impartial, competent and contemporaneous interpretation as the only means of ensuring that the language deficient have the same opportunity as those conversant in the language of trial. Such a rule would render the procedure followed here per se constitutionally flawed.

In my respectful view, the teachings of Tran are that the interpretation provided must be sufficient to ensure that the language deficient have the same opportunity as the language proficient to understand and be understood in the proceedings. Some require more than others, as in Tran, to reach the required level of understanding. Tran recognizes allowable departures from its general, though not unremitting rule. Tran at 250. This appellant had difficulty with certain words. He was offered and accepted a method of interpretation that serviced his language deficiency. He made no complaint about any inadequacies at trial and has introduced no evidence on appeal indicative of any deficits.

It is plain from what happened on the first day of pre-trial motions that the appellant fully understood the trial judge?s direction that he (the appellant) was to speak up or indicate to his counsel whenever something was said or done that he did not understand or wanted repeated. He made no such request either of his counsel or of the trial judge at any time during the several weeks of trial proceedings. Indeed, even with a transcript of trial proceedings available for painstaking review, the appellant offers nothing to ground his claim that he did not have the required understanding of the evidence adduced or proceedings conducted that he sought and to which he was constitutionally entitled.

Full post as published by Criminal Review on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).