Thank you for appearing today, Mr. Corbett. I appreciate that. I have about four questions that I've jotted down here. Maybe you could just make note of them. I'll run through them very quickly and hopefully leave you half of my five minutes, at least, to respond, if that's all right.
The first one has to do with what's included in determining what's in the public interest. If I understood you correctly, you said there were a number of criteria, including the following: do we really need to prosecute; is there reasonable likelihood of success if you suggest the laying of a charge or put it over at least for further investigation as to prosecution; and is it in the public interest?
As part of whether it is in the public interest, do you include any consideration of deterrence? It would seem to me that if the offending person is contrite or remorseful, the terms you used, that's fine for that particular individual, but what about others who might have committed a similar offence? Is there any consideration of deterring them from their activities in the future, if it has not become known but is simply a cautionary letter or something that's sent to that particular individual?
The second thing is that this would have an impact, I would think, on the statistics. This gets into the issue that Mr. Guimond was raising, I think, in the sense of his table or list of the number of offences that are investigated. Statistics can be skewed, and we have a debate right now about Bill C-31, as to whether we really need to address the whole issue of voter fraud right now.
People point to the statistics and say there haven't been very many investigations; there haven't been very many charges laid; there haven't been very many people prosecuted and convicted. Therefore, from that we extrapolate that there is no problem, and yet we continually hear as elected members that there are problems. So is there any consideration that the public interest might also lie in the fact that statistics can be used by people to say, well, the present system is working quite well, thank you very much, so there's no need for any further reform?
My third issue deals with the two instances that you said you investigated and you found no hard evidence—I think is that's the term you used. That was in northern Saskatchewan and Edmonton Centre. Could you give the committee some idea of the amount of time that was invested in those two investigations, the cost that was involved? I guess what I'm trying to find out is just exactly how much was involved in investigating those complaints before you made the determination that you were not going to proceed any further.
My last question, as an appendage to that, is that you didn't mention Trinity—Spadina specifically during your remarks today, yet I think if we were to look at the minutes of our previous meetings, when the CEO was here, he did make a commitment to this committee to have that particular riding looked into, investigated. Could you give us any indication of whether that's still ongoing or where you're at with that particular investigation?
With those four questions, I don't know how much time I've used up. Thank you, Mr. Chair.