In 2002, the Vancouver police, with the help of the RCMP, “mounted what was described as the largest commercial crime investigation in the department’s history,” writes Dan Fumano for the Vancouver Sun. In 2008, criminal charges were laid against alleged real estate fraudster Tarsem Gill and Martin Wirick, Gill’s lawyer.

Wirick cooperated with the investigation. He pleaded guilty in 2009 and he was disbarred and sentenced to seven years in jail for his participation in “more than 100 fraudulent real estate transactions between 1999 and 2002.” The case against Gill, however, still hasn’t come to trial, and, as Fumano wittily puts it, “those charges against Gill are now old enough to drive. But they have never been tested.”

In 2013, David Baines for the Vancouver Sun wrote that “while Wirick mercifully expedited the proceedings, Gill not only maintained his innocence, he played a game of musical chairs with his lawyers.” The more that image is considered, the more it gives.

Six lawyers and four avoided trial dates later, Gill shook the court process again by entering a guilty plea just a few days before his five-week trial in May 2013 was to begin. He then requested to withdraw his guilty plea in January 2014 when a defence psychologist gave evidence that Gill was suffering from severe depression at the time of putting forward a guilty plea. The judge allowed Gill to withdraw his guilty plea and the case seems to have been stalled ever since.

The reasons for the decade-long delay between 2014-2024 remain unknown; though there are some hints. The Vancouver Sun asked the B.C. Prosecution Service for an explanation for the delays and a Crown spokesperson responded in email saying “there have been a series of pre-trail applications, which have been time-consuming.” Gill has continued to do business ever since.

The Vancouver Sun reached out to David Baines who had retired shortly after his 2013 article on the Gill case. “The tail has wagged the dog throughout this entire process,” he remarked wryly. “The Crown and judiciary may be able to rationalize these inordinate delays, but in the end they are just excuses for a very distressing level of individual and institutional ineptitude.”

What makes the delays more baffling is that there are actually a lot of incentives for everyone involved to bring this case to its conclusion as quickly as possible. The Law Society decided that they had “a moral obligation to compensate the victims… B.C. lawyers had to pitch in hundreds of dollars a year for several years into the fund to repay $38 million to Wirick’s victims.”

Former Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin remarked in a speech on March 8, 2007, “as the delay increases, swift, predictable justice, which is the most powerful deterrent of crime, vanishes.”[1] Gill has yet to stand trial and has yet to be acquitted/convicted. Nonetheless, he continues to operate while his trial is pending. When justice stalls, crime continues. And this lesson may be more literal in Gill’s case.

According to Dan Fumano, a 62-year-old widow named Emi Herwati was convinced by a notary named Jitendra Desai, that he could “help her invest the money” she gained from selling her house. Herawati was to take the proceeds of the sold house ($200,000) and invest it “as a mortgage loan on a residential property in Vancouver.” Herawati raised concerns with Desai when the money was not repaid on time and her friend, Mike Brown, informed her that Surinder Gill, the borrower she signed had with, was the wife of Tarsem Gill. In September 2023, Desai arranged a meeting with Herawati, Brown, and Tarsem Gill. According to Brown, “when he raised the five outstanding criminal charges at the meeting, Gill calmly replied with something like: “They’ve been trying to get me for years. And I’m still standing.””

The role of timeliness in the hierarchy of justice values is a hard one to figure. For example, where does it rank when it conflicts with “fairness” or “access to justice?” That being said, it is a sign of a weakening, inefficient, and antiquated system that these values conflict at all and do not work as smoothly as cogs in a well-oiled machine. Though timeliness is intrinsic to the definition of justice, some cases, such as the Gill case, are required by justice to continue to their verdicts, despite the absence of timeliness.

[1] Beverley McLachlin, “The Challenges We Face” (2008), High Court Quarterly Review, vol. 4, no. 2, 33-39.