VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Another judge is blaming Metro Vancouver’s backlogged courts on a lack of resources from the province.

This comes after two people charged in a dial-a-dope operation applied to have their drug charges stayed because they say they have waited too long for their case to go trial.

Barrett Richard Jordan and Kristina Lorna-Marie Gaudet are scheduled to appear before a judge on January 21, 2013. That’s more than four years after they were charged.

“This delay is overwhelmingly based upon limits of resources in the Provincial Court,” BC Supreme Court Justice Frits Verhoeven says in his ruling.  “The combined amount of delay attributable largely to limits of institutional resources at the Provincial Court and Supreme Court levels is therefore approximately 32.5 months.”

Jordan and Gaudet were arrested after police seized drugs and cash when the raided a home in Surrey on December 17, 2008.

Verhoeven acknowledged they’ve had to wait a long time, but dismissed their application.

NDP Justice Critic Leonard Krog says the case illustrates how bogged down courtrooms are in this province.

“The first thing you have to do is examine how the system works and you have to consider putting more resources in it because there is no question [we have fewer] provincial court judges from where we were in 2005, the only jurisdiction in Canada to be in that position,” Krog says.  “It’s not the only solution, however.  It will require more coordination with the Crown and how they operate.”

Justice Minister Shirley Bond asked lawyer Geoffrey Cowper to review the system earlier this year to find ways to make it more efficient.

Cowper released a report in the summer and made several recommendations, including the immediate hiring of five Provincial Court judges.

Bond responded with a ten point action plan and called on the court system to make better use of technology to help ease the backlog. She has said several times throwing money at the problem isn’t the answer.

Bond is expected to release the second phase of her action plan sometime early next year, after the government has a chance to review a report into murdered and missing women in BC.

More than 100 cases were stayed because of court delays last year.