Justice committee  I'm going to be as succinct as I can, because that was a sort of tripartite question. First, I don't think using sentence length as a proxy for the need for a prelim is appropriate. They're two different questions. You're saying, “Here is an apple; what does that tell us about oranges?”

Justice committee  When the parties agree, then yes, I think that should be the case. A leave provision might be better than nothing, but in my respectful submission, I just don't think limiting prelims, because we already have the opportunity if you have a prelim to agree, for example, to concede committal.

Justice committee  Okay.

Justice committee  There is a real misconception that has to be dispelled here. Prelims and trials are two very different animals. We do different things in them, and prelims and disclosure have two very different functions. Prelims are a discovery process for the defence as much as they are a charge-screening process for the court and the Crown.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Absolutely.

Justice committee  Is that for me or Mr. Sewell?

Justice committee  If we have to litigate this, it's going to take a long time, and it's going to slow things down rather than speed them up.

Justice committee  We have a treason provision in the Criminal Code. This is not because treason happens all the time but because when it does it's incredibly serious. Non-disclosure has been identified, in many cases, as the primary reason for wrongful convictions in pretty much every wrongful conviction study in this country and elsewhere.

Justice committee  Yes, but if counsel has to apply, then they're providing to the court and the prosecution—and to the public, ultimately, unless the application is sealed—all the information about what they want and why they think the officer should be there. There's nothing stopping the officer from getting that information.

Justice committee  I can tell you that I don't spend a lot of time in traffic ticket court. I'm dealing with matters where police evidence is more often more involved than “I stopped his car, I gave him a ticket, I moved on”. That said, I'm sure my friend will agree with this proposition that Crown and defence counsel routinely, before a trial, try to narrow the issues.

Justice committee  It doesn't make a lot of sense. It seems to me very arbitrary. I understand that the drafters of this legislation were probably trying to figure out how to cut this off and how to make it.... Maybe in the most serious cases, you do need a prelim, but that's not how prelims work and that's not the function that they serve in real-life criminal trials.

Justice committee  Provincial offences....

Justice committee  Yes, I think not only is it overbroad, but it's problematic in that you guys and your colleagues in the House aren't psychic. It's impossible to know before a charge is laid or even a crime has been committed what's going to be important to cross-examine at a trial. I routinely as defence counsel build the defence by cross-examining different police officers and figuring out what exactly it is that is important.

Justice committee  Thank you. Thanks for inviting me to make these submissions. These days, it can sometimes feel a bit like the world's going to hell in a handbasket and there's nothing you can do about it. I suspect each of you ran for office because you wanted to do something about it. You want to make things better for your families, just like I do.