I can advise the committee that I have had an opportunity to read the terms of reference for Mr. Iacobucci. From my reading of it, Mr. Iacobucci will essentially be providing a second opinion on the national security redactions that have already been made to documents already disclosed. It's a large volume of documents that have come to the fore since early 2007 and that had been disclosed in various litigation, both in the Federal Court and before the Military Police Complaints Commission.
As I read those terms of reference, he's doing nothing more than providing a second opinion on the redactions already made. I would point out that I would have some concern about the function of that and what is the utility of that.
My clients have continued to advocate for a full judicial public inquiry. We have raised concerns, but the Military Police Complaints Commission is really only looking at one very narrow aspect of this issue that obviously goes over several departments. It's not even looking at everything the Canadian Forces do; it's just the military police. That has been our view.
I would also point out in terms of timing that it has taken Department of Justice lawyers in the national security group an extremely long time to review and redact those documents. In the litigation before the Federal Court, I know there were rolling court orders for them to produce those documents, and they kept coming back and saying that it's taking too much time, or it's taking time, and the court granted them more time. But I can say that it took them a very long time--over a year, at least--to produce just a small amount of those documents.
With respect to Military Police Complaints Commission, on the documents that have still not been disclosed from, for example, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the commission has been asking for those documents for over two years. It's our understanding that one of the reasons why they've not been disclosed is that it's taken that long to complete the national security redactions.
All I would say is that I would be concerned that Mr. Iacobucci's mandate is no doubt going to take an extremely long time, and frankly I'm not sure what it's going to achieve, other than to provide a second opinion on what Department of Justice lawyers have already done.