As I said before, all we really have are the federal, provincial and territorial guidelines of 1988. They have a cap of $100,000 in any award, and the guidelines also indicate that nobody other than the wrongly convicted person is entitled to recover that. For the most part, those guidelines are just that: guidelines. Courts and public inquiries have ignored them. They've awarded much larger awards than $100,000. In the case of David Milgaard, they awarded Joyce Milgaard compensation. It was the same thing with Steven Truscott: His wife was awarded money because, during the time he was on bail, she had to change her name and move away from her home and what have you.
The current system is unworkable. The only thing we have, apart from the FPT guidelines, is litigation. It's malicious prosecution, against the Crown, and proving malice is a very high threshold to get over. We have negligent investigation. Canada is the only common-law jurisdiction in the world where you can sue the police for negligence. This has been in place since 2007 and the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Hill v. Hamilton-Wentworth. What happens there, of course, is that you have to be able to bring the action to begin with, have the funds to hire and retain counsel to do so, and sue the police. That's a relatively promising way to pursue it because, in the 200 cases that have been heard and adjudicated since 2007, 28% of them have been successful for the plaintiffs. In fact, there has been a great deal of liability placed at the feet of the police, which is often where the errors leading to a wrongful conviction start.
You also have the opportunity for charter damages if, in fact, there's been a charter breach leading to a wrongful conviction. There are very few systemic causes of wrongful convictions that don't have a charter breach at the base of them. Again, it requires retaining counsel and issuing action. You're now suing the state. The state has unlimited resources to defend its position, while plaintiffs, particularly those who were wrongfully convicted and recently released from prison, have next to nil in resources, so it's not a very appropriate remedy.