Honourable senators, I wish to speak in favour of Bill S-212, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (disclosure of information by jurors).

This is a simple bill that proposes one important amendment to existing legislation. It is designed to help jury members who have suffered mental injury following exposure to trauma-creating experiences during a trial. The bill removes the prohibition that makes talking to a health care provider about the trial and its negative impact on the mental health of a juror a crime.

Think about that for a moment.

Psychological treatments for PTSD usually include discussion about many aspects of a traumatic situation in order for an effective healing intervention to be implemented. As it currently stands, the law prohibits a juror who is suffering from a mental disorder or a mental health problem resulting from their discharging their civic duty from receiving effective treatment for an injury that arose from that activity. That’s unfair.

The outcome of this bill may help mitigate that unfairness by offering a better chance at recovery to those who have suffered a mental injury as a result of their work as jurors. It removes a barrier to jurors who need to speak freely and confidentially to a health care provider in service of them receiving treatment for their mental injury.

Yet, while I fully support this bill, I am also of the opinion that it does not go far enough. While we certainly need to ensure that those jurors who suffer mental injury in the discharge of their duty are able to obtain the treatment that they need, we also have the ability to do more. As a society and as legislators, we have the ability to potentially decrease the probability that such injury will happen in the first place. In short, we have an opportunity to possibly prevent a mental disorder, such as PTSD, from happening as a result of jury duty. It would not take much to do so.

First, potential jurors could have their risk for developing PTSD as a result of their trial participation identified during the course of jury selection. The nature of the trial is well known prior to jury selection. Should the trial contain substantive traumatic elements that are known to possibly lead to PTSD for persons with greater risk, why can’t those potential jurors who are at greatest risk be excluded from participation in that trial?

Research has shown us — for example, see the comprehensive review by Bryant published in the journal World Psychiatry last year — that risk for PTSD with exposure to a traumatic event is not equally or randomly distributed in the population. Some persons are at greater risk than others for development of PTSD as a risk of traumatic exposure. Experts know the risk factors that increase the probability for the development of PTSD. Given this knowledge, why can’t jury selection be informed by screening for those risk factors and providing those potential jurors who score at greatest risk an opportunity to recuse themselves from a trial in which traumatic material will be presented?

Since most people in a population do not develop PTSD when exposed to the same traumatic experience, this simple step could possibly prevent cases of PTSD developing in jurors without substantially impacting the capacity for jury formation.

Second, it is also known what the early symptomatic indicators are that show PTSD might be developing, and experts know what interventions can mitigate this development if these interventions are applied early in the course of the disorder, when treatment response may be more robust. So why can’t this knowledge be applied to jurors who are being exposed for prolonged periods of time to traumatic materials?

Jurors who enter these types of trials could be provided educational material about what emotional states to expect, what kind of symptoms might signal the development of PTSD, and even a briefing session on this with a specially trained counsellor or psychologist, as is currently done with military and RCMP working in other countries. These specialists can be appointed by the court to also be present to help identify if symptoms experienced by a juror exposed to traumatic material in the trial are likely to be normal, or those which may signal the development of a mental injury. For example, the appearance of acute dissociative reactions, in which a juror experiences episodes of not feeling real, of not knowing where they are and of not being able to differentiate being awake from being asleep. It would be ideal if, when such symptoms arise, jurors could be assessed by a court-appointed mental health expert who could confidentially determine if continued exposure would likely be detrimental to the juror’s mental health.

This simple intervention may have a positive impact in preventing the development of PTSD, thus mitigating the often soul-destroying symptoms that PTSD can engender, and concurrently, saving the individual and the health care system the time and treatment costs related to PTSD when it has become entrenched.

Third, everyone in this chamber knows that rapid access to best available evidence-based mental health care is a problem across all of Canada. Therefore, it is likely that if a juror develops PTSD as a result of their jury duty, it will take some time for them to access effective treatment. During this time — which in many locations can be counted in months — the disorder can worsen and thus become more resistant to treatment when treatment is finally initiated.

In order to mitigate this unsatisfactory outcome, could the courts not have a cadre of mental health care providers who are expert in the diagnosis and treatment of trauma-induced mental disorders available to any juror who requires that care? This could work similarly to how institutions make mental health care available through EAP programs, or how workplace compensation boards link those needing care to providers.

Honourable senators, these opportunities for prevention that I have raised are not complex. They are, however, based on our best current scientific knowledge. If well applied, they may be able to prevent a number of mental disorders, such as PTSD, from arising in people asked to serve on juries.

Surely, we should not be putting our citizens, who are doing their civic duty, in harm’s way, especially when it is already known how to provide the inexpensive and easily applied interventions that can mitigate the risk of them developing a mental disorder that may arise as a result of them fulfilling the civic duty that our society has asked them to undertake on our behalf.

I realize that many of the issues I have raised are not addressed in this bill. I raise them to add to the discussions during study at committee of this potentially impactful bill. Hopefully, with the passing of Bill S-212, jurors who work to help our justice system operate will not be punished for their civic undertaking.

With that, honourable senators, I urge this chamber to take the steps needed to move this legislation forward as quickly as possible.