Minutes of the May 6th, 2003 conference call

The teleconference was chaired by Frédéric Pelletier and begun at 12:35, Montreal time.

The following members attended: Edna Brewster, Martin Felsky, Jennifer Jordan, Rick Leech, Denis Le May, Jane McDonald, René-Luc Morin and Ruth Rintoul. Carolle Piché-Burton was replaced by Johanne Carré.

The agenda was set as follows:
1- Report on the meeting with Quebec Justice;
2- Discussion Re: postponed meeting with Justice Kiteley;
3- Word Template;
4- Our resolution at the CALL conference.

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1- Report on the meeting with Quebec Justice

Last week Denis, Daniel and Frédéric met with Ms. Louise Roy, associate deputy minister at Quebec Justice, and two of her assistants, Sylvie Lachance and Pierre Lagacé. Two main topics were addressed.

The first topic was of course the implementation of the Neutral citation standard for case law in Quebec courts. Our interlocutors were not too familiar with the standard and its benefits for law dissemination. They believed that the attribution of unique ordinal numbers to decisions would add too much weight on court staff workload. Besides that, given that an integrated judicial information system (the "SIIJ") is on its way to be implemented, the Department is not going to invest any resources in the current system. However, after a very good sales pitch performed by Daniel and Denis, Ms. Roy accepted to recommend the implementation of the Neutral citation in the Court of Appeal as a pilot project. This level appears much more manageable than the lower level courts since it deals with less decisions and less staff.

The second main topic of the meeting was the presentation of the Guide, which Ms. Roy's assistants have obviously read quite thoroughly. They had many questions to ask and seemed satisfied with the answers. Among other things they were encouraged by the fact that there is not much difference between the layout of data elements prescribed in our Guide and the one that is currently adopted for Quebec judgments. They stated that the Guide was a good initiative and that they will take it into account as much as possible while implementing the SIIJ project, over the next few years.

Finally, Ms. Roy and her assistants were stunned to realise that electronic judgments that contain hidden metadata such as revision marks are sometimes mistakenly distributed.

2- Discussion Re: postponed meeting with Justice Kiteley

Due to a very busy schedule, Justice Kiteley was not available to meet with our representatives within the last weeks. However, since Jennifer and Martin will meet her along with Daniel next Friday at the next JTAC meeting, they'll have a chance to talk with her about the implementation of the Neutral citation in Ontario courts.

3- Word Template

The last version of the Word template has been distributed this morning. The shipment contains the main template (the "developer's" version) along with another file that represents what could be an adapted template (a "user's" version) for the NBCA.

This version is much better than the last, although a few improvements are still needed. Frédéric will meet again with Irosoft IT staff to do it. On a more technical side, it seems that the template doesn't work well in some configurations. René-Luc asks members to try the template and report any bug information to Frédéric so the problems may be systematically resolved.

4- Our resolution at the CALL conference

The English and French versions of the resolution we want to put forward in the next CALL meeting are ready (see the rtf version). Rick and Denis will take care of the adoption process at the conference.

In order to avoid long discussions before the vote on that resolution, Denis is offering to use his C.I.T.A.T.I.O.N. e-mail distribution list for inviting CALL members to look at the Guide prior to the conference. Frédéric will draft the invitation, including the URL for the Guide.

***

Our next teleconference will be scheduled later, with at least a week's notice. It will be set on a Tuesday at 12:00, Mtl time.

The meeting ended at 13:15.

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