The Quebec government says it hopes to greatly reduce the use of paper in the province's judicial system in order to make it much more efficient.
The emphasis on making sure documents and files are computerized is part of a $500-million investment over five years in the justice system that was announced in last month's provincial budget.
Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee also said today there will also be more use of video conferences between detention centres and courthouses when an arraignment is expected to be brief.
The goal is to cut costs related to the transfer of people who face charges.
At Tuesday's press conference, Vallee contrasted a Quebec courthouse's paper trail to a digitized airport.
The "roll," a list of the accused in any given courthouse, changes multiple times a day and requires revision and reprinting. Vallee pointed out that this process could never be functional if used in an airport, which also undergoes a number of flight and schedule changes on a daily basis.
"There's still efforts to make, and we still have to do better," she told reporters. "Obviously if we just keep doing things the way we used to, we're going to go back to the situation that we knew before 2016. So today the message is that we're going to do things differently, because we have no other choice."
With files from CTV Montreal.
