Thank you, Mr. Lacasse.
Whenever we are dealing with organized crime, that automatically means there will be a mega-case. The ultimate objective of the more and more frequent investigations into organized crime is to dismantle the organizations and, more importantly, to neutralize the leaders. Over the last few years, experience has shown that the leaders generally operate by surrounding themselves with a buffer zone, such that detection and evidence-gathering involving them are very difficult.
It is thus that the gathering of sufficient evidence generally, and more often than not, requires very lengthy investigations involving the use of a whole gamut of tools, that go all the way from simple shadowing to electronic surveillance, including work by undercover agents. The use of these investigation methods, given their nature and the duration of the investigations themselves, will necessarily generate a tremendous volume of evidence that must be collated, classified and disclosed in accordance with the principles Mr. Lacasse has just outlined.
The challenge therefore is to respect the principles set out in the Stinchcombe decision in a context in which the volume of evidence is, in every case, absolutely gigantic. I am the prosecutor responsible for the Project Colisée that you have probably heard talk of and the aim of which is to deal with the Montreal mafia. The Colisée case in my view very well illustrates the volume of evidence that can be gathered during the course of an investigation.
Between 2002 and 2006, the RCMP and other police forces led an investigation targeting the Montreal mafia. During this period, close to 1.2 million conversations were intercepted by the police. More than 50% of these 1.2 million conversations took place in a language other than French or English, such that we had to call upon translators during the entire duration of the investigation. We used the services of more than 30 translators. Approximately 8,000 conversations were chosen and transcribed in order to be included in the disclosure and, in fact, in the evidence adduced in the proceeding. A large number of these conversations, often some of the most incriminating with regard to the leaders, were of poor sound quality, for having been picked up by microphones placed in very noisy places, which only added to the complexity of the whole affair.
On top of electronic eavesdropping, approximately 120,000 videotape hours were filmed surreptitiously and had to be disclosed. At the height of the investigation, more than 100 investigators were involved in one way or another, several of them in the preparation of the disclosure. Three public prosecutors were assigned full time as legal advisors during the investigation. Towards the end of the investigation, the number of prosecutors assigned to the Project Colisée had climbed to 10, in preparation of the legal phase.
As you are aware, in November 2006, following all of this investigative activity, the police proceeded simultaneously to the arrest of 101 persons. We disclosed to some of the accused most heavily implicated the equivalent of more than a million pages of documents in the days following the arrests.
In the case of investigations of this level, the objective looms large. The challenge is considerable. Indeed, the challenge consists in disclosing a very large volume of evidence in as complete a fashion as possible and in the least possible amount of time. Given the volume, you will not be surprised to learn that we made use of the electronic format, that offers several advantages and, more particularly, that is now recognized by the courts as being a method we are free to use for the disclosure of evidence. Here are some of the advantages: costs are considerably reduced, because disclosure is done electronically; the research capability both for the defence and for the Crown and the police, are much greater; the volume is obviously smaller and electronic documents lend themselves much better to disclosure in the case of phone-tapping and electronic surveillance.
We have the tool, in other words electronic disclosure. During the disclosure, we followed what I call three guiding principles, with a view to disclosing the evidence as efficiently as possible. These principles are foresight, focus and management.
We talk of foresight in the sense that disclosure must be planned for as soon as the investigation begins. It is not at the end of the investigation that we should be asking ourselves how to proceed with regard to those elements to be disclosed. If we do not plan, the quantity of information is such that it will be impossible to disclose in an opportune and readable way. As you are perhaps aware, we now assign prosecutors in order for them to help the investigators plan the disclosure of evidence as pieces of evidence are gathered. The policies of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada recommend this practice.
The second guiding principle is focus. What we tell investigators and what Crown prosecutors attempt to do is to restrict the breadth of investigations and to avoid what I call a scattered approach. It is inappropriate for the police to carry out an investigation that generates a useless volume of evidence and that does not allow for the attainment of the set goals.
The third principle is management. In order to fulfil the requirements, disclosure must be understandable and readable. One must be able to sort it out. Therefore, we classify and categorize the pieces of evidence according to their usefulness, and we do so from the very start.
In conclusion, I would say that the healthy management of the disclosure of evidence pertaining to organized crime requires the use of electronic media. It also requires the respect of the guidelines that I have just outlined. Our experience, with the Colisée case and others, has shown us that this is in the realm of possibilities. It is however evident that this requires important resources and that these resources must be used very judiciously.