Crown prosecutors were unable to speak “legal French” before a judge during the first two court appearances of Dave Faucher, a Quebec man accused of first-degree murder in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
On Sept. 8 and again Tuesday, judge Wynne Anne Trahey was forced to translate the hearing into English to ensure the Crown prosecutor present understood what was being discussed.
On Tuesday, when she asked prosecutor Zachary Roberts to speak to her in French, the official language elected by the accused for the proceedings, Roberts responded: “C’est difficile pour moi,” which means, “That’s hard for me.”
“Ouf, I don’t know if I can do this in French”, said Roberts, before adding a few minutes later, “I do understand and I do speak French, but I don’t speak legal French.”
During the Sept. 8 appearance, senior prosecutor Brandon Gillespie also explained to the judge that he could understand French but wasn’t comfortable speaking it in court.
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For both of Faucher’s court appearances, interpretation services were also lacking.
For the first, two separate interpreters from the Association for New Canadians connected by videoconference. However, the line dropped for both of them.
During the second appearance, no interpreters were present. The judge said the interpreter cancelled the night before and that despite best efforts, no replacement could be found.
While the hearing should have occurred in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, no bilingual judge was available. Trahey oversaw the appearances from Wabush, where she is based.
After Radio-Canada published its initial story, Gillespie, the prosecutor who attended Faucher’s first court appearance, said that a French-speaking Crown, Mary Bellefleur, was assigned to the case last week.
“It is our intention to have a French-speaking prosecutor at all subsequent appearances,” he said.
Faucher, 30, was arrested in Saskatchewan earlier this month. He is accused of first-degree murder in the death of Franz Drosch, who was killed Aug. 4, 2023, in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
Faucher’s lawyers are based in Quebec and police believe Faucher is originally from Sherbrooke.
In July, when Radio-Canada reported the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal could soon hear its first-ever case conducted in French, Crown prosecutor Paul Thistle said “multiple lawyers” within the Prosecution Service “are fluently bilingual and we regularly conduct trials in French throughout the province.”
The province’s justice minister, Helen Conway Ottenheimer, declined an interview. Asked by Radio-Canada, her department did not comment on why prosecutors unable to speak “legal French” would appear in proceedings related to a murder case.
The department also did not comment on the recurring interpretation issues.
“As the matters raised relate to court operations and ongoing court proceedings, I, as minister of justice and public safety and attorney general, am unable to comment,” wrote Conway Ottenheimer in a statement.
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