Timothy Rees, whose 35-year-old murder conviction was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal in November, speaks to the media outside the Superior Court of Justice on Dec. 18 after the Crown withdrew the charge.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
One year after the federal government announced the creation of a dedicated Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission to assess and resolve potential wrongful conviction cases, no staff have been hired and no office space has been secured.
The delays are frustrating to advocates and lawyers, who say clients fighting to have their convictions overturned have been left in a state of limbo.
The official proposal for a dedicated commission was put forward in a federal bill in February, 2023. That legislation – known as David and Joyce Milgaard’s Law – received royal assent and became law on Dec. 17, 2024.
David Milgaard, who died in 2022, spent 23 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of the 1969 murder of Gail Miller in Saskatoon. He and his mother, Joyce, became vocal advocates, and pushed for changes to Canada’s wrongful-conviction review process – including the establishment of a dedicated independent commission.
Ms. Miller’s real killer, Larry Fisher, was ultimately identified through the same DNA analysis that ruled out Mr. Milgaard. Mr. Fisher died in prison in 2015.
Legal groups seek exoneration of Black man from Halifax hanged in 1935
The Canadian legislation was based on similar models in the United Kingdom and New Zealand – all of which saw significant increases in identified and remedied wrongful convictions once their commissions were established, the Canadian government has said.
But progress here has stalled.
“The Commission is not yet operational nor accepting applications for wrongful conviction reviews,” Kwame Bonsu, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said in an e-mail on Dec. 17.
Mr. Bonsu said the next steps will be appointing commissioners, developing procedural policies and securing a physical workspace for the commission.
“I find it quite extraordinary,” said James Lockyer, founding director of Innocence Canada, who represented Mr. Milgaard in his bid to overturn his wrongful conviction. “We’ve now passed the one-year anniversary of the legislation, which was announced with fanfare. And they’ve done nothing.”
Currently in Canada, a panel within the Justice Department considers applications from people who believe they have been wrongfully convicted. Former justice minister David Lametti told a Senate hearing in 2024 that this process is slow and costly, with few cases reaching the point of ministerial review.
In the meantime, people who have been wrongfully convicted can serve years – even decades – in prison before they see a resolution.
Since 2003, according to the latest annual report, the Criminal Conviction Review Group (CCRG) has received 220 applications for case reviews. The Minister of Justice was asked to make decisions on remedy in relation to 33 individuals. The minister has ordered 16 new trials and 15 new appeals.
Between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025, according to the latest annual report, the CCRG had 62 active files before it – including 15 new completed applications received in that period.
In Toronto, the Crown recently withdrew a murder charge against Timothy Rees, whose 35-year-old conviction had been quashed in late November by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Mr. Rees spent 23 years in prison for the 1989 murder of 10-year-old Darla Thurrott. It took him eight extra years to get parole, court heard, because he long maintained his innocence.
With help from Innocence Canada, he obtained evidence that had been previously undisclosed by police. And in 2018, he applied to the CCRG. In 2023, it concluded that a miscarriage of justice had occurred in his case because of the undisclosed evidence.
Mr. Lockyer, who also represented Mr. Rees, said he has six more cases before the CCRG, dating as far back as 2021. But because the group is in the process of being phased out, he said, its work has essentially “ground to a halt.”
How a Toronto-area suspected serial killer evaded police for decades despite violent criminal record
Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto and the author of the book Wrongfully Convicted, said the delays in launching the independent commission create “a difficult position” for anyone with an existing application before the CCRG, or anyone looking to file a new one.
The CCRG looks to determine whether a miscarriage of justice likely occurred. Under the new legislation, the commission will have to determine only whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
“This isn’t simply Ottawa moving slowly, but this is a delay in moving to a more generous and, I would say, appropriate standard to obtain a remedy for victims of miscarriages of justice,“ Prof. Roach said. ”And so this isn’t just a delay story. This is a substantive justice story.”
Tamara Levy, a lawyer and the co-founder and director of the University of British Columbia Innocence Project at the Allard School of Law in Vancouver, said she has five files before the CCRG. She, too, had hoped to see the commission up and running by now, though she also said that “may have been optimistic.”
“It’s disappointing, but also there have been a lot of changes in government, and I appreciate there are all sorts of priorities,” Prof. Levy said. “I’m hopeful that it will happen in the next six months.”
She hopes the delay is a sign of a careful and diligent hiring process, because it is important for the government to get it right. She said she and her colleagues have emphasized the importance of hiring people who not only have experience in criminal law, but specifically with the nuances of reviewing wrongful-conviction cases.
When it does get up and running, Prof. Roach anticipates an explosion of applications.
“I expect that we will see a lot more applications, because the idea is to increase access to justice, to make it easier for a person to apply,” he said.
Another significant change under the new legislation, Prof. Levy said, is that they will be able to consider posthumous case reviews.
“Not only does a commission like this remedy wrongs and give innocent people back their lives, but it also has the ability to really shine a light on some of the frailties of the justice system,” she said.
“These cases … really offer the justice system an opportunity to reflect. Even if there’s not someone who is going to get out of jail or be released from parole, there are still important lessons to be learned from them.”