Justice committee  Thank you very much. My name is Michael Spratt. I am a criminal defence lawyer who practises here in Ottawa. I practise exclusively criminal defence work, and as such, I've done extensive work involving intercepted communications. I'm here representing the Criminal Lawyers' Asso

Justice committee  It took 20 years, from 1993 until the Supreme Court rendered its decision last year, for the constitutional problems inherent in this section as it was to come before the courts. In 20 more years, I don't know whether I will be practising criminal law; maybe I'll be relaxing on a

Justice committee  I do have some concerns. In subclause 5(3), proposed subsection195( 2.1) requires in its paragraph (a) a reporting of the number of interceptions made; then you have a proposed paragraph after that requiring a reporting of the number of people against whom proceedings were commen

Justice committee  Well, practically this section isn't required for constitutionality; it was discussed a little bit in some of the cases that the Supreme Court did an analysis of. Frankly, with these types of orders.... For the last wiretap case I did, the authorizations were from 2006. If the

Justice committee  Ultimately, the discretion about how broad and narrow the Supreme Court seems to be saying is within the purview of Parliament. We're supportive of Parliament taking a narrow and focused, and as least over broad definition as possible when it comes to criminal law. I don't think

Justice committee  Nothing comes to mind. In the wiretap cases that I've dealt with, all have been offences listed under section 183. I can't look back and put another hat on. I can't put a prosecutor's hat on or a police officer's hat on and say that if only we had had wiretaps for these other off

Justice committee  I'll stay to answer, for sure.

Justice committee  We're in agreement with that. The more data that citizens and Parliament have the better when evaluating extraordinary provisions such as this, especially if you turn your attention to the previous reports prepared under that section and look at the difficulty and the work requir

Justice committee  I've never been a member of a police force and I can't speak to institutional policies. It would perhaps be useful for the committee to have information about how these things are normally done. But from the cases I've seen, and from my view of the legislation, which is very extr

Justice committee  Yes, I definitely prefer the language as it is now; it's more restrictive. It's the CLA's position that any legislation, especially criminal legislation, should be as narrowly defined and restrictive as is possible to address the ills it seeks to prevent. Again, I am quite please

Justice committee  Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair, and good morning to members of this committee. My name is Michael Spratt and I'm a criminal defence lawyer. I practise locally here in Ottawa at the firm of Webber Goldstein Abergel. I'm here today on behalf of the Criminal Lawyers' Associatio

Justice committee  The reasons provision applies only to proposed subparagraph 732.1(2)(a.l)(ii), so in exceptional circumstances. That would reduce the number of cases. In a busy trial court that's dealing specifically with domestic pleas or domestic matters—and there's a court set up just for th

Justice committee  I suppose they could. It certainly would be advantageous to have a process or exception to allow victims to obtain court transcripts at no cost. That would be, I think, something very supportive. There are some technological measures put in place right here in Ottawa that allow

Justice committee  I think that is a well-reasoned position.

Justice committee  That's correct. I think the practical point is that when you have the geographical exception where two kilometres, for example, might be overly broad because of those services that we've talked about, the problem arises when multiple exceptions are needed to make that geographica