Justice committee  It is true, it did respond.

Justice committee  Yes, that is correct.

Justice committee  If I may, based on the wording of sections 530 and 530.1, they do not apply to appeals.

Justice committee  Yes, it stated that there were no real issues. I have the letter in front of me. It says, “Generally speaking we are not having any difficulty meeting” the 2008 amendments. It is a very short letter.

Justice committee  I see. I would like to come back to a point you raised and specify that the Supreme Court, in the Beaulac decision, found that the proficiency of the accused in the other language is not relevant in any way. The accused may exercise his or her right and request a trial in French

Justice committee  In the Beaulac case, various appeal courts had dismissed the applications for a French trial, and the dismissals rested exclusively on the fact that Mr. Beaulac understood English. The Supreme Court clearly found that this factor was not relevant in any way.

Justice committee  I believe Alberta has not responded.

Justice committee  It kind of comes back to the question raised by your colleague. Bail hearings per se are not covered by sections 530 and 530.1. I was happy—

Justice committee  That issue came up when we were consulting the provinces prior to Bill C-13. We decided that to extend at that point was not a good idea basically because provinces were telling us that they still had problems ensuring a full implementation of the current language regime, so they

Justice committee  I do. I remember seeing this letter, and in fact, if you look at the case law, it's not a problem. No, it's not a problem.

Justice committee  No, exactly.

Justice committee  No, the case law is pretty clear. When there's an order for a trial, whether it's a bilingual trial or a trial in the official language of the accused, the prosecutor and the judge must use that language almost exclusively. So it's not an issue. On the Ontario letter, we were q

Justice committee  On the issue of....

Justice committee  I would like to address the issue of disclosing evidence. I think you mentioned, over and above the issue of the availability of interpreters and stenographers, a lack of resources to have disclosed documents translated. Saskatchewan mentioned the problem as well. I would like t

Justice committee  Yes. What I was going to say was that you're absolutely right. As the law now stands, only proceedings at the preliminary inquiry and trial are subject to the language of trial provisions of the Criminal Code. This being said, we know that in certain areas of the country, in s