Justice committee  It's 18.

Justice committee  Before I answer that, could I just add one more thing to the jury issue? The issue is, indeed, the representative sample. Beyond that, it's about who can actually have the privilege if you actually have the representative sample. Take national child care. Every single mother who I've had on a jury wants out, and it's not enough to throw a few bucks; it's national child care that supports people to serve on juries and participate fully, as one prong.

Justice committee  Perhaps I'll use the example of a police officer who engages in a search. The officer will always say what he did and where he found it, but the subjective motivations of the police officer—what he was thinking, why he thought certain aspects of his observations were important, and how those related to what he did—are often not recorded in notes, especially dealing with those important charter issues.

Justice committee  It would satisfy a lot of my concerns. I don't think it would necessarily apply in all cases, because there still is that screening function. As a practitioner, even though that committal threshold is so low, I've done lots of cases where committal hasn't been ordered on all counts or at all.

Justice committee  If we're looking at a day or two in custody, we might be looking at four to eight months, and out of custody we could be looking at over a year to get that court time. The other thing about the discovery process is that we don't need judges. That can be done in the absence of judicial intervention for the most part.

Justice committee  If I could just add this very briefly, in terms of just the practicality of scheduling a preliminary inquiry, I can't walk into court and say that I want to set a date for a preliminary inquiry and they'll just hand out that court time. In virtually every jurisdiction, you need to have a judicial pretrial with a judge to actually obtain the court time, so there's a front-end limit on wasting court time or scheduling time that may not be used appropriately.

Justice committee  Quite right, and I don't want to waste my time or my client's time either.

Justice committee  I haven't set a preliminary inquiry and then waived it at a later date in recent recollection. I'm sure I have at some point, but that's not a common occurrence. That's because court time is so precious. When we're talking about the root causes of delay—why does it take so long, in some cases, for matters to be heard?

Justice committee  I think so, and especially with such a low standard for committal, I prefer the discovery process. It can be arranged much more quickly and be done much more flexibly. I don't have to stand up when I ask questions. I don't even have to wear a suit. There are lots of advantages to that discovery process, but I think if we're going to rely on it, it has to be a uniform, legislatively based process, because different jurisdictions have different rules, and I don't want to be dependent on the discretion of a Crown about whether they're going to agree or disagree to that process.

Justice committee  I certainly don't have that sort of evidence on the tip of my fingers. My experiences are more anecdotal. I know that this committee in the past has heard from Dr. Doob and Dr. Webster, and they might be in a better position to provide some supplementary information about the statistics.

Justice committee  No, quite the opposite. I can say that preliminary inquiries are rarely set. I rarely set them. When they are set, even for very complicated matters such as second degree and first degree murders, they have been very constrained and very focused, especially lately, and I can say without a doubt that every hour I spend in a preliminary inquiry saves tenfold hours at the door of the superior court.

Justice committee  I haven't, and part of the reason I haven't seen that sort of abuse is that for the very serious charges that are set for preliminary inquiry, many of my clients are in custody, and one of their big issues is that they don't want to delay their trials, and getting court time can be a delay.

Justice committee  Thank you. It's always an honour and pleasure to appear before this committee. I have submitted a brief. It's nine pages, so I don't intend to go over that in detail. You have that information. I think you will find that my friends and I are perhaps in violent agreement on some of these issues.

Justice committee  Thank you.

Health committee  I do.