Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to the committee today. I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights, and in particular Kerry Liu, a law student at the University of Toronto faculty of law, who assisted with research for this presentation.
I want to start with an acknowledgment that organized crime is a serious problem. As you've heard today, there have been serious obstacles with many organized crime trials in many parts of Canada. It is imperative that the criminal justice system be able to prosecute and punish organized crime.
That said, I do not believe that the listing of organized crime groups will be an effective, practical, or constitutional means of shortening organized crime trials. It could start a process in which novel concepts that were adopted in the terrorism context will start to seep in and arguably infect other areas of the criminal law.
First, let's start with some background. The processes for listing terrorist groups are provided in section 83.05—