Joining forces
The Canadian Conference of Judicial Mediation (CCMJ) was founded in November 2008 in Montreal, Quebec, to promote judicial mediation: a method of resolving judicial litigation that allows traditional justice to be enriched with a powerful instrument designed to facilitate access to justice and ensure global management of files. Judicial mediation constitutes a form of justice that benefits all parties.
Judicial mediation calls upon two innovative principles of justice:
- Responsibility of parties with respect to their conflict
- Empowerment of parties
In 2014, the CCMJ joined forces with the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice (CIAJ) to promote mediation in justice. The CIAJ will now pursue the objectives the CCMJ was created for.
In Canada, judicial mediation found its ways of expression in all areas of the law.
In Canada, judges, law officers as well as public and private mediators work towards solving disputes pending before the courts.
Judicial mediation is a system of resolution of judicial litigation which allows traditional justice to enrich itself with a powerful instrument designed to favor access to justice and to ensure a global management of files. Judicial mediation means the work of consensual resolution of litigation carried out by judges, adjudicators and the persons who exercise the functions of mediator, conciliator or facilitator in a judicial institution or at the request of a judicial institution, while they have judicial seizin of a suit. Through judicial mediation, the parties, with the assistance of a mediator, attempt to settle their suit while respecting law and public order. Two innovative principles of justice are promoted by mediation: the responsibility of the parties with respect to their conflict and their empowerment. Judicial mediation constitutes a new form of justice which benefits all parties by raising the credibility of judicial institutions and the justice offered by them.
The CIAJ favors the emergence and the implementation of judicial mediation. It gives assistance with respect to the implementation and development of new systems of judicial mediation and provides cutting edge education based on theoretical and empirical knowledge.
The CIAJ makes possible the exchange of knowledge and experiences in all provinces and territories in order to harmonize practices and to better know each other. All this for the purpose of developing mediation into efficient vehicle for the resolution of dispute within the Canadian judicial system.