AGDoug Downey

3I was just gonna say, I was just gonna talk to you, but now I feel all this pressure. All these people are watching.

5I'm from a small town called Bond Head. It's north of Toronto. It used to be very north of Toronto, but now Toronto's creeping in. As you go north on Highway 400, you see a great big flag at the Husky. Well, I grew up 2 miles, 2 kilometers actually west of that in a little town. It's a, you know, a little subdivision and then farms around it. It was a great, great place to grow up.

7I went to high school in Bradford, so I played hockey in Bradford. So Bond Head is sort of connected to Bradford socially. That's exactly right. Yeah,

9A lot of commuters. My dad still lives in the house I grew up in. A lot of the original neighbors are still there, surprisingly. But yeah, it's a— it was a great place, the Bond Head Golf Course. I've never golfed that golf course. I used to farm those fields. I— wow, school. So

11Sure. Yeah, I know, huge, huge influence. My, my dad drove trains for a living. 35 years. He's an engineer. Real camaraderie with, with the other engineers. It, it just— it is that way in, in locomotives. When I used to tell people that my dad was an engineer, they'd say, oh, what kind? I'd say locomotive. He drove trains. It's very cool. It was very cool. But he he grew up in, in Belleville area and spent many years of his life in Sault Ste. Marie, Quebec. As well. His parents died when he was very young, and so he was he went and joined the Navy for, for a couple of years, and then afterwards joined the railroad.

12And he's you know, great, great guy, just fantastic, full of principle, hardworking handy. He can build anything. Yeah, real influence.

14Yeah.

16Yeah, so my, my mom also grew up— she grew up in, in a little town called Ameliasburg which is in Prince Edward County. She was the youngest of three. Her father passed. He was a doctor in a small town, and he passed when she was two. He had contracted something from one of his patients or one of the hospitals and didn't work out. Her mom was tough. My grandmother was a tough lady raised the 3 kids. And then my mom went on to become a nurse, and she traveled with her nursing friends before they got married, before my mom and dad got married. And yeah, just gentle soul.

17After, after nursing for a number of years, she felt she couldn't really help people the way she wanted to, and she went back and took training, and she got into family counseling, into victim services. She was one of the founders of the York Region Abuse Program and just really very compassionate, very insightful woman. She passed in 2011, unfortunately.

19That's a great question. You know, nobody's asked me these questions since I got elected. I actually— it kind of chose me. I, I was in high school in the time when they were making OACs, when you could go— they wanted people to start to go in 4 years, but I was the first year of that, so I was really supposed to be 5. I did some night courses, summer courses. I was eager to get out. I had done a student exchange to Spain. I'd done some other really interesting things. I wanted to get out in the world. So I finished high school in the 4 years but then didn't get into university until late August because of course I had to do night courses and summer courses to get there.

20So I went into a general arts degree because that's all that was available, but my plan was to become a chartered accountant. My sister was on that track. She happens to be a chartered accountant now, along with my nephew. But I was up late at night many nights in a row with a good buddy of mine, a guy that I just happened to move into a house. He was in one of the rooms, I was in another room, arguing politics and history at 3 in the morning. And he was in poli sci, his name's Andrew Elric. And I said, that's— this is my path, because I loved it. Geography, history, the You know, but I didn't plan to be an elected politician.

21That wasn't the goal at all. It was to more be on the academic side. But the backdrop to that, I had actually been a page in Queen's Park when I was in grade 8, 1984. And in that time in the legislature, Bill Davis was Premier, and of course Frank Miller was beside him. He became Premier. Mike Harris and Ernie Eves were back row. They became premiers. David Peterson was there and Bob Rae was there. So there were 6 premiers in that space when I was there. That had to have had some sort of effect.

23It's like public administration but for courts. A very unique program. Dr. Carl Baar who is very well respected around the world had developed the program, and there were 6 people per year in that program. Again, was part of the administration. I had worked for a couple of summers as a court clerk, taking paper filings over the counter. And so I thought this seemed like a fit for me. I wanted to go into the administration and make some change, 'cause I knew things weren't working quite right. And so I applied to the program, got into the program, and Dr. Baar, who I'm still in touch with, to this day, ran just this amazing program.

24It has since been transferred to York as a program as part of the public admin. But yeah, there are some really, some people that you would know who have been through the program. Lynn Norris, who's helping with, real leader in government on change, and some others who have been through the program before me. Yeah, it's just, I gravitated to it. I don't know why. I don't know why. Judge Kovacs at the time said to me, He was teaching civil procedure. He came in as a guest lecturer, and he said to me, you should be in law school. I said, I don't want to be a lawyer. I, I want to go in and make change.

25He said, when you realize you should be a lawyer, you call me and I will write you a letter. And so when I did call him eventually— we may get to that— He said, where am I sending it? First thing out of his mouth.

27Yeah, I got— I finished at Dal in '97, and then you start articling. My intent was— the reason to go to law school for me was because working as a registrar, I realized I couldn't make change in the system without the law degree. I needed the credibility. I realized all the decision makers by and large were lawyers, either judges or lawyers. By definition, I have a law degree, so I I really went to law school to get the credentials to be able to go toe-to-toe to make the change. But I came out and I articled and I fell in love with the practice of law. It's, you know, just the clients, the stories, the helping people.

28And so yeah, I practiced from '97, of course, and then the way our system works, I got called in early '99 and then practiced up until I ran in 2018.

30I, I— it has deadlines it's a positive area of law 99% of the time you really are helping people with the biggest— often the first time they come in contact with, with the system, with, with the law and it allowed me to compartmentalize. I I knew that I could do other things that mattered to me, community things, and commit to projects because I could control my time a little bit more with real estate. And I just sort of had— it's like jigsaw puzzles for me. I just felt like I had a mind for it. I gravitated to it. That, corporate law. But I've argued in front of the Court of Appeal.

31I've done litigation. Been up at whatever hours writing factums. You know, I do have an appreciation for, for that side of it. The opportunity was there for real estate, something that fit, and I ran with it.

33No. Yeah, I, I've been around politics for a long time. I— the one thing I know about politics is I don't know what's going to happen. You know, you do it, you go forward, you, you do it for the right reasons, you do it for the, the things that matter to you, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. I've lost more things than I've won in terms of campaigns, helping people. I ran campaigns for people that have won, and I've run them for people that have lost. You just do it out of, out of passion. And I was hopeful, of course. You know, this spot is a natural fit for me, I think.

34I had a whole basket of things I wanted to change, and I'm lucky enough to be here.

36Yeah, so there's two things that drive me in terms of what I'm trying to do in the seat and before the seat. I don't want process to determine outcome if it's not just. And we've had a lot of that in this province where structures and rules dictate the outcome when that's not really the outcome any of us would have picked. So I think we have to right-size all of that. And that's a pretty simple way to say we've got to change the system. So that's one piece. The other piece that has just been part of my community involvement and everything before this is power differentials, understanding power differentials, and whether the person with the greater power is actually leveling it justly.

37And there are all sorts of examples. I can give you small examples where lawyers, I had one example, my cousin told me one day, he said, look, I've got this lady I work with, she doesn't have a lot, she put a down payment on a car, they won't give it back to her. They know they've kind of got her. Is there anything you can do? I said, sure, let's find out who the lawyer. I phoned the car dealer, car dealer says, well, it's the way it is. So I said, well, who's your lawyer? I phoned the lawyer, I said, look, here's the deal. You're all the way in Brockville, I'm here in Orillia, I'll come down any day of the week to have the hearing.

38So, you know, she's not paying. And that power differential made the difference. They gave her money back, right? And so— and that's a very small one, but our system has to be seen through the lens of creating a proper balance for people.

40Yeah, well, again, hindsight. I mean, nobody, nobody knew it was going to last this long. In the fall of 2019, we had already brought Bill 161, which talked about some, some advancements, some online commissioning, stuff like that. Like, I was already wanting to move in that direction. There were projects that had been on the books for a long time that were creeping forward, and then COVID hit, and it was a chance to— some people were in shock, some people froze, and then I was lucky, my team said, here's the opening, let's do it, and everything's on the table. Instead of saying, instead of saying, let's wait and see, let's, you know, Maybe not now.

41We were like, why not? The question is, why not now? Otherwise, we're doing it. And I can tell you, exhilarating time to put all ideas on the table that came from every corner. They came from the judges, they came from the associations, practitioners across the board. And, and I tried to make it clear that communication lines are open. We need to know what can we do. And I was very fortunate all the way through this process. That was not a, a one-month process. All the way through, I've had the backing of the Premier and my colleagues at Treasury Board, the Finance Department. We've put a lot of net new money, more than I think the history of the province, net new money into justice, and that's helped us do some of the things that we've envisioned.

44There was a shift in mindset. And we opened the door and said, why not? There was always a why not. There was always a we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't do that, here's a glitch, here's a thing, here's a whatever. I'm into get it out there and clean it up. And, you know, I'm not— I wouldn't have the computer programming knowledge that you have, but I spent a lot of time in databases. I spent a lot of time— I was the computer guy at my law firm, right? So something's not working, get him out of his meeting, go fix it. So I have some sense. And I'll give you a concrete example. We I don't know if you remember, again, if you were doing litigation, you may not have used them, but there were kiosks in the courthouse and doing commercial deals and stuff, you go check the list, whatever.

45And of course, courthouses were closed. You couldn't get at the list. I'm like, why is this not on the web? I've built webpages. I've done all sorts of stuff like that. I said, why is this stuff not on the web? And they said, well, they got this project, they're working on it. I said, can I please speak to the people actually doing it? So we had a Zoom call. I said, can you not— I said, I know in the background of Access or whatever, it's just a spreadsheet. Can we not just pull the fields and drop them out there? And they said, yeah, we could, but we were going to do this. Oh, fine, but let's just do it.

46They did it in like 10 days. We have the knowledge in the department. We need to give them permission to do what they're good at. And it doesn't have to be the full robust documents attached to it for that list. People just needed access to the list. And then there's some positive unintended consequences. I didn't realize that those, those kiosks were being used by reporters. They now had line of sight in real time and that's great. It's good for openness. So yeah, it's, it's some, some of the stuff's been kicking around for a very long time, but it took a couple of things. It took somebody to say it's okay to try, and it also took resources.

47And I'm all about get it done, get it landed. I have a keen sense I'm just passing through, so let's get stuff done while I'm here and and then go get the resources. And luckily I have supported my colleagues to do that.

50Yeah, you know, and I'd be remiss if I didn't add to that people who provided solutions being our Chief Justices and their teams, you know, Chief Justice Maisonneuve and Chief Justice Morawetz and Chief Justice Strathy. Every— we, you know, it used to be It's my understanding that, you know, you'd have scheduled meetings, the AG would have a scheduled meeting with the Chief Justice. And we evolved very quickly to texting, you know, and we need to meet, okay, and my Chief of Staff, Joseph Hillier, he's doing his thing and everybody's moving. And everybody's moving for the same reason. And that's the remarkable thing about all this. There was so much goodwill. And then the OBA steps up.

51They provided hundreds of licenses, training to so many judges, and, you know, all the associations stepped up with ideas and with resources. You know, we just knew it was the right thing. Some people had been using Zoom and GoToMeeting and different platforms in previous years. I'd done some similar things. but not on the scale. The scale of it was phenomenal. But again, kudos to, to the profession— professionals in, in MAG and in government. They talked in for our, for our part, but there were a lot of hands in there. I'll give you one really neat example of how unprepared we were to try and do bail. We, we, we went to 100% in custody, remand bail right away or very, very early on.

52But for the criminal lawyers who may be watching this, they will know that there are outgoing calls from those phones in the facilities, but there are not incoming calls. And nobody knew what the phone numbers were or the lines. They had to run new lines in some facilities 'cause they couldn't twin the wires to figure out how to run some of the data in, like really basic stuff. But even then, the people in the field, they got to work and they got it done in record time. And it wasn't perfect, but man, it was pretty near. In those early days, it was, it was hectic, but it was, again, everybody communicating, which is really key.

53A lot of goodwill. And I don't think I can— I honestly can't think of anything where somebody's being territorial just for the sake of it. I really can't.

55Yeah, we've got it. We've got to get small claims court kick-started, and we have to get POA courts up to speed. Those are the two of intense focus right now. The backlogs that we see in other areas are Nothing compared to what's going on there. That's, that's an intense focus as we speak. It's got to happen.

57Well, there's several, several parts to it. One is resourcing it like the human resourcing of it, getting that moving, making sure we have the right clerks and, and the right technology there to happen. And then the other part is working with the, the judiciary to make sure that of all the competing priorities they have, because they have some fairly significant competing priorities that we allocate appropriately there to get those moving. So those are the discussions that are happening right now is we're now to the point where facilities are reopened, you know, physically some plexiglass is coming down, things are changing. So now that we have facilities reopening, we need to get our satellite courts open and we need to get our small claims and our POAs open.

59I take recommendations from the Chief Justice on that. I don't level an opinion on how many is enough. Same with JPs. I take recommendations from the Chief Justice on how many they need and where they need them.

62Yeah, so I'll preface it by saying this. When, in two, two terms ago, I actually ran for bencher. I lost by 6 votes to be regional bencher. So I didn't get on convocation. I kind of took the long route. I'm now on convocation. I have the right to vote. I don't vote because I believe in lawyer regulation, self-regulation. I think if they need me to vote, then they're asking for something different than they have. No, I'll reserve my right to vote on something if I feel really strongly about it, but, you know, to the point where I think it's fundamental. But I have chosen not to all the way along, including election for treasurer.

63I just— so I do believe in lawyer self-regulation. To bring it into the government fold is to presume that the government will do a better job. And I think we could have a full debate on whether the end result on that— as somebody who believes in in letting businesses do what they're good at, letting individuals do what they're good at. Really, government facilitates those who can't do things for themselves or are in a vulnerable position, but otherwise stay out of the way of progress. So I think the lawyer— I have strong opinions on a whole lot of things. I won't level some of them publicly, but I do believe in self-regulation. And I think the bencher elections are very important.

64I really, I wish we had a higher turnout for those elections.

70Yeah, so in change management, we— and, and, you know, Susskind writes about this, about, about transformation, not automation, right? And same, same language you're using. I suspect you've read some of, some of his stuff. And we didn't have the luxury of time to do what I would've seen as a transformative process. So we went to automation on some things, which is, you know, and the team came forward. And when I say the team, it wasn't my direct team. It was people who were empowered within the bureaucracy. I was in a meeting one day and they announced that they had automated 400 more forms. On their own. Like, phenomenal stuff. That's the kind of thing that you want to see happen.

71So are we there yet? No, we're not there yet. But we've, we've changed the culture, we've changed how we make change. And that is fundamentally important because now we can have a discussion about the transformation. And it includes everything from the rules of civil procedure to the product line. And, and how people interact with the system. It may even take us to different resolution tools. We're just not there yet, but we're building the backbone for it. And so ideas like that are still very welcome. It's not like we're done. We're barely getting started, to be honest. We were so far behind. So yeah, I, I think that kind of thing, we're still, still open to it.

72We're, we're trying to land some more of the automation But we're at a point now where people are talking about more creative ideas and more transformative ideas. And we'll have to rely on our partners to have those discussions. Again, we'll have to hear from the profession. We'll have to hear from the judiciary what works for them as we move through that transformation. But I can tell you, we are very lucky to have the chief justices that we do who are all open to change and open to good change and fast. And some of that comes from their direct experience. And Chief Justice Morawetz was on, you know, on teams for a decade trying to create ways to move forward.

73Chief Justice Maisonneuve was in the trenches as a practicing lawyer and then, of course, as a judge. So, and Chief Justice Strathy is just a brilliant guy, quite frankly. He gets it right away. So, We're so well positioned to do that transformation, but we're just not there yet.

75Yeah, I think it starts with the fact that we have different rules all around the province. Regardless of what the rules say themselves, we have different practice directions everywhere. So I think the discussion has to happen. The Rules Committee is doing yeoman's work. Like, they, they are doing a ton of work. I think I, I don't want to, I don't want to sort of start us off on the wrong foot on what should change. I, I just want to make sure that the, the parties, the groups are having a discussion, and I'll weigh in as we go in terms of what, what I think can happen. But there's, there's some stuff, I mean, I'll be straight up, I've been public about it the accounting that we do for passing of accounts.

76It's a lawyer-made accounting system. It makes no sense to me. And I did a lot of it. It works for some reasons. There's principles behind it. I think we have to have a fulsome discussion with that kind of stuff. So I will be a key part of the discussion, but I'm not really the one who's going to drive all of the ideas. I know The Chief Justice have their, their ideas, and, and again, they're in the trenches. I'm, I'm a little bit removed from the day-to-day practice now. It's actually I rely on people who are, who are actually doing it to see what the effect is.

78Yeah, so it's interesting because land titles actually is part of Government Consumer Services, MGCS. But I brought a private member's bill dealing with the Planning Act, and then I got appointed as a minister, so I had to advance it a different way. And we made, with the help of Sid Troister and LawPro, Ray LeClair and others, we made 23 fundamental changes to the Planning Act. And that's because we were practicing lawyers, we knew what the traps were, what the problems were. In terms of Land Titles itself, I'm not advancing any particular change, partly because it's not my ministry, but any ideas I get, I certainly talk to the minister responsible, and if I can help with that.

79And Jeff Lem is doing a tremendous job as Director of Land Titles managing the challenges that we've had. Their track record through COVID is remarkable. Their uptime is really remarkable.

81Well, again, prefaced on, on the fact that they're not going to be listening to my thinking in 10 years. But the trajectory that we're on is that we will be a jurisdiction where businesses and people can have their matters resolved in a predictable, efficient way so that they can get back to their lives. We know that long matters, longstanding trials, lot of family issues, they get worse, they don't get better with time. So we need to be responsive. We need to be accessible and we need to be efficient. And the economic spinoffs of that and the social spinoffs of that, the way people interact with the system, we're building justice centers, we're working with diversion programs in the criminal world.

82We're trying to create the tools that put people back in a better spot, respect their dignity, and don't grind them. Don't have a process result. That we have an actual just result at the end of the day, whatever the area is.

84Thank you for your time. It's great.