Making the Courts more public

It is generally accepted that anything that goes on in a court of law in Canada is public, unless the judge has ruled there is some good reason to limit access to the details of the court, usually for the protection of one or more parties.

The problem in Canada is that getting easy access to the documents associated with the courts is not easy. There is a simple solution. Canada (and the provinces) need a system like PACER. This allows anyone to review the filings, arguments, and decisions of the US Federal Courts, for a small fee.

This would allow easier access by the public to the goings on in the courts. It should not be horribly expensive (although the government has been known to waste vast sums in IT projects - ie. the Gun Registry) to implement for the federal and provincial courts. It could even be linked to the system by which litigants could file their documents with the courts, electronically.

This would make a lot of sense... and would probably reduce costs for the legal profession in searching documentation.