Let me begin by talking about the role of prosecutors in Canada. There are 11 prosecution services in Canada, and I think we all play the same role. We conduct prosecutions after an investigation has been conducted by the police. We provide pre-charge advice to the police. But in this country the principle is that the police are independent in the way they conduct their investigations. The pre-charge advice that prosecution services give the police is necessary, because the law is complicated and the police don't want to spend a lot of time investigating something if they've already run afoul of the law in gathering the evidence. But the point is, it is the police who decide who to investigate, how to investigate, and what charges to lay.
The role of the prosecutor comes to the fore after the charges have been laid. At this point, the prosecution service has a role in deciding whether the charges should proceed. This is seen as an important balance within the system. We allow the police to investigate, and they can lay charges if they have reasonable grounds to believe there has been a violation of the law. The prosecutor then comes in and conducts a detached and objective examination of the evidence. We look at the competence, the credibility, of the witnesses. We look to see whether there are any possible charter violations. We determine whether a prosecution should proceed, and this is seen as an important check in the system. The prosecutor bears a heavy responsibility. Police sometimes get accused of tunnel vision, and we tell our prosecutors to keep an open mind and evaluate all the evidence objectively.
In the United States, what we see on TV, and what we sometimes see associated with special prosecutors, is that the prosecutors have more of a role in the conduct of the investigation. This certainly wasn't the intent of the Director of Public Prosecutions Act, nor does it apply in other jurisdictions in Canada. British Columbia, in its statute, has a special prosecutor's provision that allows the Attorney General to appoint an agent, a private sector lawyer, to look into a case and to decide whether a prosecution should proceed. It is not an American-type example, in which the special prosecutor takes charge of the investigation as well.
I'll now move to what our role is to Canadians. Before we were established, there was within the Department of Justice a branch called the federal prosecution service. We took over their role. Our role varies from province to province and between territories. In the northern territories, we conduct all prosecutions of the Criminal Code and all federal laws. In the provinces, we conduct some Criminal Code prosecutions such as terrorism. We have concurrent jurisdictions with the provinces. We do some organized crime prosecutions, typically those linked with drugs. Our main line of business, if I can call it that, is the prosecution of offences under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act, and this would be familiar to most Canadians. Being Canada, we always have exceptions. In New Brunswick and Quebec, we conduct prosecutions only for those investigations carried out by the RCMP. Elsewhere in Canada, we conduct virtually all drug prosecutions.
We also conduct prosecutions of violations of all other federal laws. For example, if there's a charge from the Migratory Birds Convention Act, like the charge against Syncrude you might have read about in the papers a few days ago, it would be our lawyers who prosecute it. If there's a prosecution under the Fisheries Act or the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, it would be our lawyers. There are approximately 50 federal laws under which we conduct prosecutions. I forgot to mention the most prominent one, the Income Tax Act.
