CITATION: Sui v. Ontario, 2022 ONSC 5600
DIVISIONAL COURT FILE NO.: 307/22 DATE: 20221005
ONTARIO SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE DIVISIONAL COURT
BETWEEN:
HUA SUI
Hua Sui, self-represented
Applicant
– and –
MINISTRY OF ATTORNEY GENERAL
Respondent
In Chambers, In Writing
ENDORSEMENT[^1]
D.L. Corbett J.
[1] In this court's explanation for the R.2.1 notice, the court asked why Mr Sui's recourse for issues concerning transcripts of OCJ Criminal Code proceedings ought not be in the OCJ (as the court with jurisdiction over its own record) or in a court to which an appeal is taken from a decision of the OCJ (as the court controlling its own appellate process).
[2] Mr Sui did not address the jurisdiction of the OCJ, or a court hearing an appeal from the OCJ. Instead, he argued that the public service member exercised a "statutory power of decision" in refusing to provide a certificate for the recording furnished for preparation of a transcript by a certified transcriptionist.
[3] Mr Sui is in error in this argument. Statutory authority is not the same thing as a statutory power of decision. All manner of tasks, from the important to the mundane, are performed by the public service pursuant to direct or indirect grants of statutory authority; only a small subset of them rise to the level of being a "statutory power of decision." Providing a recording of a court proceeding - with or without a certificate - is a matter of day-to-day public administration and is not exercise of a statutory power of decision.
[4] If there is jurisdiction in this court, it arises pursuant to s.2(1)1 of the Judicial Review Procedure Act. To establish that basis of jurisdiction, the applicant would have to establish that there was a sufficiently "public" aspect to the issue to ground the exercise of this court's review jurisdiction: Setia v. Appleby College, 2013 ONCA 753; Air Canada v. Toronto Port Authority, 2011 FCA 347, para. 60. But this was not the issue behind the R.2.1 notice.
[5] This court will not exercise its discretion to grant judicial review if there is another more appropriate process available for an applicant (see, for example, Michalski v. McMaster University, 2022 ONSC 2625, para. 11). In this instance, clearly there is. The OCJ controls its own process and Mr Sui may seek assistance from that court to access the record in OCJ proceedings, including transcripts. If Mr Sui requires the transcripts for purposes of an appeal from the OCJ, he may also seek assistance from the appellate court, though an appellate court would expect Mr Sui to follow ordinary processes in the OCJ before raising the issue with the appellate court.
[6] Mr Sui is aware of some of these principles by reason of a prior proceeding in this court (Liang v. Sui (Div. Ct. file 056/22). In that case, Mr Sui raised similar concerns about a requirement for certificates of recordings provided to transcriptionists. During case management of that case, this court directed that transcripts be prepared from recordings provided by the LTB in the usual course. Mr Sui refused to follow this direction because he did not agree with it, and ultimately his appeal was dismissed for failure to follow case management directions.[^2] In that instance, this court had the jurisdiction to control its own appellate process from the LTB, and directed the process for furnishing transcripts. If, in the result, there had been issues about the accuracy of the transcripts so obtained, this court would have had continuing jurisdiction to decide those issues. This is a usual process followed to settle a transcript where an issue arises on appeal in respect to it: see for example Chen v. WSIAT, 2020 ONSC 6287; Chen v. WSIAT, Chen v. WSIAT, 2021 ONSC 527.
[7] Mr Sui should pursue his concerns with the OCJ or the appropriate appeal court, and this court should not be involved in settling the record of OCJ criminal proceedings. The application is dismissed as frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of process pursuant to R.2.1, without costs. This court reserves the possibility of editing these reasons to add case citations and to correct typographical or grammatical errors for distribution of the decision to legal databases.
___________________________ D.L. Corbett J.
Date of Decision: June 20, 2022
Formal Endorsement Released: October 5, 2022
DIVISIONAL COURT FILE NO.: 307/22 DATE: 20221005
ONTARIO SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE DIVISIONAL COURT
D.L. Corbett J.
BETWEEN:
HUA SUI
Applicant
– and –
MINISTRY OF ATTORNEY GENERAL
Respondent
ENDORSEMENT
D.L. Corbett J.
Date of Decision: June 20, 2022
Formal Endorsement Released: October 5, 2022
[^1]: This decision was provided to the parties by email on June 20, 2022, and was effective as of that date. [^2]: Through administrative error, the dismissal decision was not rleased to the parties until October 4, 2022 (2022 ONSC 5623).