It's a long statement. I'm not going to be very long, but this is the one clause left that is very serious for me, so I just want to wrap up a bit. Then, if each party could make a comment—because it's very serious for me—I'd be happy to go from there.
Basically, my understanding is that there is a problem in Ontario, for instance, with appeal judges and the machine data being thrown out. If the system is not working there, then my view is to try to fix that system, try to put something in that will prevent the two-beers defence, but without throwing out completely people's rights and the ability to bring other evidence and other defences. It's as though you have a king and a prosecutor and a defence person, but the defence lawyer is not allowed to present anything other than that the machine is broken. All the legal witnesses were outraged at that.
My last quote, which I didn't get to this morning, was from Mr. Rosenthal, from the Criminal Lawyers' Association, who said, “It's a very dangerous system where we're going to convict innocent people at the expense of not getting some people convicted”. So I'd just like to quickly make an appeal, first of all to our senators, that when the bill gets there to look at this very carefully, with more time. As Mr. Comartin said, we didn't get time to bring back witnesses on this particular topic. Secondly, I appeal to the judges in the court, when this will come forward to a charter appeal, to have confidence in us as a committee that we would put something through that would lead to so many charter appeals.
I would further appeal to the NDP and Bloc, who have always been champions of rights and fair trials. I would appeal to the Conservatives, who want, as we all do, to get more convictions for drug offences, even though the witnesses said this is going to tie up the courts immeasurably, going to slow them down, make it much harder, actually, to get the types of convictions and progress we want.
Just to members as a whole, I would say it is our job as parliamentarians to try to hold up both sides and make sure people have the right to at least present a defence. They can say “I didn't commit a murder”, and the judge doesn't have to believe them. They can say “I didn't drink alcohol”, and he doesn't have to believe them, but at least they should still have the ability to present that type of evidence.
I'd be happy to hear from the other parties. I will be asking for a roll-call vote just because I think we're making a decision as to whether or not to put innocent people in jail. I'd also like to hear from the Department of Justice, unless people from any of the parties can convince me otherwise.