Coquitlam Provincial Court Judge Pedro de Couto is stepping down after 6 years as the President and another 5 years on the Board of the Justice Education Society of B.C. Under Judge de Couto’s leadership the JES has expanded its activities, coped with funding challenges, and continued to provide innovative and outstanding services – including, in the last year:
- Parenting After Separation workshops on parenting and finance attended in person by over 1600 parents and many more on-line
- a Court Information Program helping over 4000 immigrants to understand Canadian courts
- Justice System Education and Northern Native Public Legal Education programs introducing over 21,000 young people to the justice system
- JES web resources helping about 10% of British Columbians (over 425,000 online visitors viewed over 1.3 million pages)
JES has been contracted to provide web resources around the world, and its international program has trained more than 2000 justice professionals in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Ethiopia in the last 5 years.
Judge de Couto was appointed to the Court in 1998 and became a Senior Judge, sitting part-time, in 2013. He is the first Provincial Court judge to lead the JES, and served as Administrative Judge of the North Fraser Region from 2003 to 2008.
Provincial Court judges volunteer in their communities in many ways while maintaining full court sitting schedules.