Thank you.
Mr. LeSage, if you insist—or Justice LeSage--as a lawyer for some 20 years and a member of the Ontario and New Brunswick bars for all those years, it's my great pleasure to welcome you here too. We've had other retired judges before committees—two in my four years here: the former chief justice in Alberta, Mr. Wachowich, and the late Antonio Lamer. It's invaluable. So I want to compliment you and thank you for taking the time to do this.
I have two rather precise questions. One deals with disclosure and the other with representation, and they relate to criminal trials, because those two aspects have an effect on large or mega-trials and organized crime trials.
First, on disclosure, is it your opinion that we need to relax the requirements? We're looking here for a way maybe not of codifying it in the Criminal Code, but at least of recommending that it be a best practice or a policy or a protocol that disclosure be made—perhaps beyond election or plea, and somewhere along the way—so that we don't arrive at the courtroom steps and have the inevitable plea for an adjournment when everything is geared up, with costs, delays, etc. That's the first question.
The second question deals with representation. Many times lawyers arrive, either by accident or deliberately, not prepared or else not capable frankly of handling the cases they've either been chosen to do or have chosen to do. This comes from the idea that perhaps in some cases some lawyers are beyond their abilities. We know this is in Parliament, being swamped by things beyond our abilities quite often, and every day it's on the news.
In such a case, do you think a judge would have the right or should intervene to say, as in an amicus curiae type of situation, thaty he thinks this litigating lawyer with two years' experience should not be handling a triple homicide case with three tons of disclosure documentation? Would that be out of place for a judge to say?