Justice committee  It's been a privilege. Thank you very much.

Justice committee  On a worldwide basis, the European Union and a great many nations—including China, for that matter, and African nations—include compensation as a function of their international rights legislation. As I mentioned earlier, the U.K. does it, although in 2014 it imposed a factual innocence component, which destroyed its effectiveness.

Justice committee  It varies from state to state. There are different qualifying thresholds to get over. There are things that disentitle you to compensation. For instance, in some states, if you have a felony that's totally unrelated to the wrongful conviction, that disentitles you to any compensation at all.

Justice committee  I don't mean to be glib, but it's not brain surgery. Everybody knows.... I mean, we had seven public inquiries in Canada that determined what the causes of wrongful convictions are. We all know what they are. Everybody in the field knows what they are: mistaken identification, false confessions, jealous informants, etc.

Justice committee  I wouldn't necessarily go there. I actually haven't thought about this, but I wouldn't go there. The UN has this optional protocol system, which is what Monsieur Dumont used in order to get to where he was. Unfortunately, the Government of Canada ignored what the United Nations Human Rights Committee directed it to do.

Justice committee  I have absolutely no qualms including anything in the bill that will trigger somebody's entitlement to compensation for whatever miscarriage of justice has taken place, wherever it's taken place. I just think that working domestically, at this stage in the game, is probably the most appropriate approach.

Justice committee  There are five other commissions that are referenced in Justice LaForme's report, and all of them are funded, and funded well, to a great degree. If they're not funded well enough, then they need to be. You have to go back to Parliament and make sure they are properly funded.

Justice committee  Sure. As I said earlier, we endorse every recommendation as made, including ensuring that among members of the commission there are representations from indigenous persons and Black persons, so we totally understand that. It's an excellent recommendation, and we endorse it. The only recommendation we don't endorse is 51.

Justice committee  Having lay people involved in the process brings humanity into the process. Obviously, legal minds are important, but having lay people there.... The committee also recommends that a criminal conviction not be a bar to sitting on the commission. I think it's absolutely fine to have somebody with a conviction sitting on the commission—somebody who knows the ins and outs of what prison is all about, who knows what a sentence can do to somebody's life.

Justice committee  As James Lockyer said earlier, there's no doubt that once this commission is put into place—whether it's in its current form, Bill C-40, or amended as requested—there are going to be a lot of applications. There will be a lot of people who are going to go through the process of trying to see what this commission can do that a section 696.1 application to the Minister of Justice couldn't do, and I think that's great.

Justice committee  It depends—and we don't have this—upon how those members of the commission make decisions. There's no indication that, for instance, the entire panel has to make the decision. Most of these commissions around the world break it into smaller panels of two or three people, and they decide.

Justice committee  Thank you very much.

Justice committee  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.

Justice committee  Absolutely. At the end of the day, somebody's going to have to be exonerated.

Justice committee  It's elementary. Everybody can appreciate that if something happens to you and you're unable, for a relatively modest period of time—three months or six months—to go to work, you perhaps can't make a mortgage payment, can't pay rent and can't make payments on your truck. In a relatively modest period of time, you're going to lose everything.