The roster of provincial court judges in Prince George will increase by two over the coming months after Attorney General Shirley Bond announced new appointments to the bench on Tuesday.
Victor Galbraith will begin work on Feb. 13 and Randall William Callan's appointment is effective April 2.
The appointments will boost the roster of provincial court judges in Prince George to six and comes after five cases were stayed in the span of a year because they took too long to get to trial due to understaffing - the last stay occurring in September.
There are currently five full-time judges in Prince George, but while one of them, Roderick Sutton, is being transferred to Vancouver Island, the office of the chief judge said Tuesday.
Each provincial court judge costs the provincial government up to $1.4 million annually, including the judge's salary and other costs for court administration staff, sheriffs, prosecution services and judicial support, according to the ministry.
"Our government has been consistent in saying it would always consider appointing judges as one of the solutions to ease pressures on the justice system, but these newest appointees are only part of a solution for a justice system in need of reform," said Bond, the MLA for Prince George-Valemount, in a statement.
"In the coming days, we'll be looking very closely at larger reform of the system and specifically how we can find efficiencies and long-term solutions to the pressures our courts are facing, instead of just looking at more funding as the only answer.
"We will continue to work with the judiciary, the legal profession and others in the system to come up with common-sense ideas to help us do this."
Galbraith has practiced law for more than 20 years and he is currently administrative Crown counsel in Quesnel. Galbraith was also Crown counsel in Williams Lake for seven years.
Callan is a legal officer with the Canadian Forces in the Office of the Judge Advocate General. He has been deployed to Afghanistan and Sudan and was counsel for the Government of Canada and the Canadian Forces before the Somalia Inquiry in 1996.
They were among nine appointed provincewide.
"My congratulations to the new appointees and I wish them all the best as they start the next chapter in their distinguished legal careers," said Bond.
In a statement, B.C. provincial court chief judge Thomas Crabtree welcomed the appointments calling them "a very helpful first step towards restoring the required complement of provincial court judges."
Provincewide, there are the fulltime equivalent of 121.35 judges, below the full-complement of 143.65 the office of the chief judge believes should be in place.
The other provincial court judges in Prince George are Micheal Brecknell, Michael Gray, Darrell O'Byrne and Randy Walker.
There are also two B.C. supreme court justices based in Prince George - Ron Tindale and Glen Parrett. However, Parrett is down to part-time duty. Tindale began work as a Supreme Court Justice last month, 11 months after he was named a provincial court judge.
