Ontario's shift toward virtual coroner's inquests scoops in high-profile Ottawa case

• The Abdirahman Abdi inquest is being livestreamed during weekdays here.

Mackenzie Peterson gets that we live in an era when so many things happen online. She just doesn't think the coroner's inquest into her father's death should have been one of them.

Four years ago, Hamilton police officers shot her dad, Jason Peterson. According to the Special Investigations Unit, the 42-year-old was armed and wanted to die by police and, after firing in the direction of an officer, police shot him and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Ontario's police watchdog cleared the officers of wrongdoing, so there was no trial.

When the inquest was announced, it seemed like Mackenzie's chance to sit in the same room and come face-to-face with the officer who took her father's life. 

But like a growing number of coroner's inquests in the province, the public deep dive into her father's death unfolded virtually.

Mackenzie and her family, the presiding officer, the jury, witnesses, lawyers, and other inquest participants were linked together by video conference. 

After Mackenzie's opening statement from her home in Hamilton, her camera was turned off — and it stayed that way, she said, until the family complained.

"Look, if this was happening in the courtroom, you couldn't block our faces," Mackenzie's grandmother Lucy recalled saying at the time.

The inquest also experienced technical issues like witnesses' screens cutting out, they said. 

At one point the Petersons had to notify their lawyer they hadn't been placed in a breakout room. It felt, Mackenzie said, almost as if this was the first time Ontario's Office of the Chief Coroner was conducting a remote inquest.

"[The] only good thing I could say is I [didn't] have to pay for parking," she said, adding that if Ontario proceeds with virtual inquests, it needs to do some fine-tuning. 

"And not make us, the people that are grieving the most, feel like we're kind of an outcast."

'Some misgivings,' says Abdi inquest lawyer

Coroner's inquests are not legal processes. They're fact-finding missions meant to classify the nature of a person's death, with jurors asked to make non-binding recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future.

For decades, they've taken place in Ontario courtrooms and other physical settings, assembling all the players who were involved in or touched by a death in one spot.

But since COVID-19, more and more Ontario inquests have moved online, even as other provinces that went virtual during the pandemic, like B.C. and Quebec, have reverted to in-person proceedings.

Saskatchewan has not held any virtual inquests and says factors like public access would need to be considered before any change. 

But in Ontario, several coroner's inquests are set to take place in the rest of 2024 and all appear slated to happen by video conference. Two of those will cover 13 deaths between them. 

Lawrence Greenspon is the lawyer representing the family of Abdirahman Abdi, a Black man whose 2016 death following an altercation with Ottawa police officers will be the sole focus of a mandatory, weeks-long virtual inquest starting on Nov. 18.

WATCH | The Abdirahman Abdi inquest begins Monday. Here's what you need to know: 

The death of Abdirahman Abdi — and the questions that remain

9 days ago

Duration 5:16

WARNING: This video contains graphic content | Eight years after Abdirahman Abdi died following a violent struggle with Ottawa police, a coroner’s inquest is bringing the event back into the spotlight. Here’s what you need to know.

After four decades of speaking to trial juries in person, Greenspon said the concept of addressing an inquest jury by video about "basically life and death issues" seems "completely foreign."

"I certainly had some misgivings about it, and I expressed those," he said. 

"[But] I've got an open mind going into it, hoping that it is not only efficient and cost-saving but effective."

Ifrah Yusuf, chair of the Justice for Abdirahman coalition, said Abdi's death "deserves a big light on it." And whether that's done in person or virtually, "at least it's being done," she said. 

Exactly how the virtual Abdi inquest will work is unclear. 

Though the coroner's office said via email that "everyone will be in their own locations," it's not clear if the five jurors recruited from the Ottawa region will be separated or together in one room.  

The coroner's office added that virtual inquests — which are streamed live but do not appear to be stored online for later viewing — allow more people to watch. They also permit "full participation" by families participants who may not be able to travel to an in-person inquest.

Lawyer Corbin Cawkell, for example, told CBC how one of his clients was part of a virtual inquest earlier this year — one they wouldn't have been able to attend in-person because of their parole conditions. 

Other former inquest participants cite additional advantages — but also pitfalls. 

Broader range of experts

Inquests sometimes don't happen until many years after a death and people move away, so virtual inquests allow more remote witnesses to take part, said David Huggins, a retired presiding coroner in northern Ontario. 

"You don't have to fight traffic [or] to suffer all the usual problems that come with putting all these people together in one place," added Gary Clewey, a lawyer who has represented police officers at inquests for more than 25 years.

Virtual inquests also allow for the most suitable experts to testify, according to the coroner's office, with recent inquests having witnesses speak from as far away as the U.K. and California. 

Some families may want to participate but not share space with a perpetrator, said lawyer Kirsten Mercer, who represented a women's advocacy group during a 2022 inquest in Pembroke, Ont., that was focused on intimate partner violence.

Streaming inquests is "a huge advancement," Mercer added, but when deciding whether participation by key parties should be virtual, the pros should outweigh the cons, she said.

Greenspon said the Abdi family has already been through a criminal trial against one of the arresting officers and has settled a lawsuit with Ottawa police. 

"From their perspective, it's really much more flexible for them and respecting of their privacy," he said of the absence of cameras. 

Worries about jury engagement

Inquests that focus on use of force benefit from having people in the same room, said Asha James, who has also represented families — including the relatives of Beau Baker.

Baker, a 20-year-old armed with a knife, was fatally shot in 2015 by a member of the Waterloo Regional Police Service. The virtual inquest into his death took place last year and declared his death a suicide. 

"In that circumstance, I found it very difficult to fully have the jury appreciate actually what took place in those last moments when you're doing it by Zoom," James said.

"Most people are somewhat visual, right?"

Huggins also worries about jurors' attention spans.

"I would be especially concerned if the jury is not sitting together in an appropriately quiet room as opposed to sitting at home in front of their laptop with their favourite dog licking their foot," he said. 

But Clewey has been at several inquests this year and said jurors have experienced "no diminution" in their ability to consider evidence. Nor have they taken any shortcuts "on the time they get to consider the recommendations," he said.

The virtual inquest earlier this year into the 2013 death of Sammy Yatim in Toronto, for example, led to more than 60 jury recommendations.

'A different level of attachment'

Virtual inquests can make it harder to personalize a victim, whereas in-person inquests help make families' grief palpable, according to James, who also represented Yatim's family. 

"Where now the coroner says, 'OK, let's take a five-minute break' [and] everybody turns off their camera on Zoom and you don't really see the person, when you are in person ... as a juror, you see the person at [the] witness stand. [There's] the family member and they're sobbing, right?

"It creates, I think, a different level of attachment." 

People who've tried to celebrate a family birthday on Zoom know "there is something that is missing when you're participating through a screen," Mercer said. 

"The nature of the inquest process lends itself to a kind of collaboration that's just harder to manifest with little heads and boxes," Mercer added. 

Despite being in the comfort of her home, Mackenzie Peterson said watching her father's inquest was an isolating experience.

"My dad had so many friends and family that loved him and wanted to be there," she said.

Had the inquest been in-person, "the room would have been filled."