Thank you for your question, sir.
With regard to your first point, at the origin of the bill, there's no response to a specific problem that would have made this government feel obliged to intervene quickly with regard to the creation of a DPP, as might have occurred in other jurisdictions, where the establishment of the institution of the DPP was the result of a commission of inquiry. Among other things, I'm referring to Nova Scotia and, to a certain degree, perhaps as well to a case in British Columbia with which you are very familiar. As a result, in preparing this legislation, we had occasion to refer to the work and recommendations that you prepared in the early 1990s.
That said, you know as well as I do, sir, that, in the administration of justice, appearances are at times as important as, if not more important than, reality. During my nearly 33-year career of prosecuting criminal cases in government, both Quebec and federal, I have never been involved in a situation in which a political intervention occurred in the prosecution of a case. However, I was faced with situations in which the public perception, fortunately not in many cases, was that a political intervention might have occurred, which was incorrect. It is extremely difficult, once a perception is rooted among the public, to eliminate that concern and prove that no political intervention occurred.
So what emerges from this bill with regard to the Director of Public Prosecutions is that you want to create a climate of independence and transparency with regard to public prosecutions. You want the public to get the impression, as a result of the way in which the individual has been appointed to perform that office, that the decisions he makes, which are final, are made independently of any political intervention. The public's perception of a prosecution or a decision is extremely important. A number of parameters are associated with the independence of the person who holds the position: the fact that he occupies a position from which he cannot be removed, except for misconduct; the job security he enjoys; the fact that the Attorney General, although he does not lose his powers of prosecution, must, if he wishes to prosecute instead of the Director of Public Prosecutions, state his intention in writing and make the proceeding public. Why wait for a scandal, when the public wants the assurance that criminal prosecutions are instituted by someone who is completely independent of all political intervention? From the start of my remarks, I have emphasized that, over the years, the attorneys general who have preceded the one who currently occupies the position and all those currently working in the Federal Prosecution Service for a number of years have performed their duties with complete independence, free of all political intervention. However, what is important, and I want to point this out again, is knowing whether the public perceives every day that all decisions are made completely independently. It is this situation that the bill addresses.