I don't want to prejudge Justice O'Connor's report, but what I would be very concerned about is to have someone analyzing evidence and not understanding the full context of that evidence. That, for me, is a very serious problem. And if that analysis is going to be done on strictly legal principles—and by legal principles I mean our British common law statutory interpretation type of system—if that's how we're going to do it, by respecting the rules of hearsay, opinion evidence, and the strict formal rules of evidence, and then trying to apply those standards to evidence gathered by security services around the world, I think you're going to have a huge difficulty in accepting much of the evidence that is considered. So I would just caution against applying court standards, in terms of testing the evidence, and standards that security forces need to rely on in terms of making an assessment.
The context, as well, has to be borne in mind. This is not a criminal process with respect to the security certificates. It's a civil administrative process, where the person is in custody, is detained, and the individual does have the right to leave. Now that situation might not always be the best alternative, but the concern that security forces may have is, what is the alternative? Do we release that individual here?
So am I interested in Justice O'Connor's comments? Absolutely. Would we consider those comments? Absolutely. I think we have to take it with a caution about simply trying to make this into another legal process in the same way as you would prove, for example, a criminal offence and those types of standards, because it's a very different process.