Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Comartin.
I wanted to speak about certain other recommendations concerning increasing protection against abuse.
Now, the first two recommendations that I made are going to be among the more important: first, let's narrow the scope of the act, so that it speaks only to instances where it is necessary for police work; and second, let's oblige prior authorization by way of a senior police official, a judge, or perhaps by way of another person. Maybe we could think of giving it to a member of another police force that is not as involved in investigating the crime itself, so we would have some form of independence there. Those two would go a long way in protecting against abuse.
A second suggestion I have would perhaps be to prepare, or have the public officer who uses these exceptional powers prepare, a written report every time the powers are used. Currently the law only provides subsection 25.3(2): that there's an obligation to disclose only where exceptional use of these provisions are used, namely damage to property and authorizing a non-police officer to make use of these provisions. Let's extend that to every use, and let's have the public officer outline why he or she thought the use of these provisions was justified as reasonable and proportional, according to the standards set out in the law. So that's point number two.
For point number three, I think there should be a way to increase the responsibilities of the civilian oversight body. Currently under subsection 25.1(3.1), it provides that a civilian oversight body “may review the public officer's conduct” prior to the minister designating that officer. I think your committee could consider extending the powers of the civilian body by obliging it to review—in other words, by making it imperative, rather than permissive, so it would read, “shall review the public officer's conduct” prior to the minister designating that officer.
Finally, I've already touched on my fourth suggestion in response to a question from one your colleagues, which would be to extend the obligations of disclosure under the annual report to all instances of the use of this act, whereas currently it's limited to important damage to property and to authorizing a non-police officer to use these provisions.
So these would be some of my suggestions for increasing protection against abuse.