Thank you, Mr. MacDonald.
Certainly you've been informative of what the process has been. I'll have a series of questions that maybe you could attempt to answer. I'll put them together as I speak.
First, you indicated with respect to SIAC that there was a change after 9/11 that made it difficult for you, as special counsel. I'm wondering if the change of legislation caused that and whether you were able to perform your duties better before that.
One of the other issues in dealing with it in a criminal court is that turning intelligence information into court evidence would be problematic. I think one of the witnesses testified that no democratic country has found a way to effectively prosecute people where part of the evidence is secret and cannot be disclosed to the individual. It's a dilemma that all western countries face. You may have hit on part of what the problem is in the fact that you don't actually get to see original evidence; it's more opinion-based evidence.
Part of our recommendation was that the special advocate would have the ability to test the confidential or secret evidence and give an opportunity for the detainee to meet the case against them—all subject of course to balancing that with national security.
One of your comments was that you had no legal team or time to scan through websites or to dig up original evidence. If you had the resource base, could you not test some of the information to verify its authenticity or accurateness, to actually turn it into original evidence?