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Jury duty should be essential service during COVID-19, advocate says
coronavirus pandemic and fast-track the support jurors will need once courts reopen, a former juror and mental health rights advocate says.“Jury duty is essential to our justice system and one of the cornerstones of our democracy,” said Mark Farrant, founder of the Canadian Juries Commission, a non-profit group that seeks to improve Canada’s jury system.“It needs to be declared an essential service in this pandemic and post-pandemic.”Jury duty, along with nearly all court proceedings across Canada, has been suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, including jury selection, which typically sees several hundred people gather in the same location to decide if they’ll be among the jurors.Farrant served as a juror in the 2014 murder trial of