DRUG PROSECUTOR QUITS OVER POOR PAY

Lawyer Was Told A Year Ago That There Would Be A Salary Review

KITCHENER -- One of two senior drug prosecutors in Waterloo Region has
quit, saying Ottawa's Department of Justice isn't paying him enough.

Gerry Taylor, who was appointed a federal prosecutor in 1984, will leave
effective April 1, he said yesterday. The pay of $82 an hour simply isn't
enough to cover his office overhead, Taylor said.

"As a lawyer responsible for running a practice, I can't make money," he
said. "I can't cover the overhead and everything I need to run the office
on the rates they've been paying."

The main part of Taylor's job involves prosecuting drug cases, such as the
many marijuana grow operations that have been sprouting up across the region.

Because he carries half the caseload of a burgeoning number of drug cases,
his loss to the courts will be great, says the other senior federal
prosecutor, Pat Flynn.

Tremendous Loss

"It's a tremendous loss," said Flynn, who insists he's in no position to
pick up Taylor's workload at the region's three courthouses in Kitchener
and Cambridge.

"It will be chaotic for a while," he predicted.

Taylor said he believes the Department of Justice will send staff lawyers
from Toronto to deal with his cases for an interim period. No one from the
department was available to comment yesterday.

In large cities, full-time prosecutors handle all federal prosecutions.
Along with drug cases, these include income tax evasion, GST cases,
smuggling cases, fisheries cases and bankruptcy cases.

But communities that aren't big enough to justify setting up a full-time
prosecution office use "standing agents" such as Taylor and Flynn, to
prosecute cases on behalf of the attorney general.

More than half their work involves drug cases, and the sheer number of
home-grows alone in Waterloo Region has swelled the caseload, Flynn says.

Both Taylor and Flynn also run their own law practices. Taylor, who also
practises civil, matrimonial and criminal law, said he can make an hourly
rate of more than three times what he's paid as a federal prosecutor in
these other areas of law.

He has three lawyers in his practice and an assistant, who all spend time
on federal prosecutions at the low hourly rate.

When he goes, two of his staff lawyers who have prosecuted federal cases,
will also leave. They are Ed D'Agostino and Ali Nowak.

Taylor said the pay has been stagnant for more than 10 years. His last
raise of $5 an hour was in 1990, Flynn said.

Taylor said he was told a year ago, after federal prosecutors across
southern Ontario raised the issue of pay rates, that a review was being done.

"We were told there would be a review and an increase processed in the very
near future," he said.

When he inquired again in February, the response he received indicated,
"There is no rate review imminent. So I thought about it for a while, and
decided I wasn't prepared to continue on," he said.

Taylor said he hung on as long as he did because, "I've enjoyed it. I
didn't want to terminate my relationship with a lot of really dedicated,
hard-working people."

Asked if the low pay rates will relegate the job to new, young lawyers,
Taylor said, "If the Department of Justice wants their federal prosecutions
to be handled by first- and second-year lawyers, they're going about it in
the right way."

Taylor also performs another role in the region. He's been the federal
representative for the Solicitor General's Department for obtaining
wiretaps. When police seek a judge's authorization for a wiretap, a
prosecutor has to be present to argue for it.

If the Department of Justice doesn't replace that function, Flynn said
police may have to go to London to get authorization for wiretaps.

Flynn said Taylor brings experience and continuity to his job.

"You're going to find he's really admired by police and judges and defence
counsel and everybody," Flynn said.

Asked why he's willing to continue at the low pay rate, Flynn said, "Maybe
I'm a masochist, I don't know."

Then he added, "We love the work. It's very interesting lawyers' work."
However, he said he's also reviewing his "business plan. No one's going to
pretend it's permanent. You just have to put two and two together. How can
I hang in?"