Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank you, Mr. Burstein, and I want to welcome your daughter Courtney here as well. It's nice to have young interested people here. I assume she's here under her own volition--don't answer that.
It's nice to have you here. Obviously you have a breadth of experience in criminal matters and in writing reports. However, I want to drill down on a couple of things you said. They go to the listing.
You will know that we created such a list under the terms of the ATA, the Anti-terrorism Act; it's in amendments to the Criminal Code. It takes some 26 pages of the code. We've spent about four pages, I think, of the code with respect to organized crime and the designation thereof.
We've had what I would say is some pretty compelling evidence from, yes, policemen and municipal leaders that the designation of a criminal organization is sucking the life and the resources out of the court system and their court officers and disclosure clerks. One police department said quite categorically that they're having trouble getting experts designated--because it requires an expert designation with respect to what is a criminal organization.
So your characterization of reading the evidence differs from mine in hearing the evidence, and I guess that goes to the empathy you have for witnesses as opposed to reading it in black and white, for they say that Nixon actually won the Kennedy-Nixon debate, which is unbelievable if you saw it on tape. Maybe this goes to that.
Maybe, however, Mr. Burstein, you were looking for an answer that keeps alive the designation of criminal organization through expert testimony. It's truly a more advocacy-driven vehicle; there's no question about that. You'd agree with me. I just can't see how it wouldn't help to have one of two things: either the list, fine, or some way--people use the term “judicial notice”, but that's not really what it is--of having cases like Lindsay as precedent. It's very difficult if it's evidence-based.
That's where we sort of hit the road with the Department of Justice and say, well, look, these are fact-by-fact situations, so for the declaration of a group like the Hells Angels motorcycle club as a criminal organization, it's impossible to have it apply to the next case, even though it's the same organization. I wish there were a way to make that happen. Maybe with your opening remarks about your open-mindedness, you could help us in that way.
Do you think there is a way to shorten, if you were on Lindsay, the Lindsay result?