Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I'm not going to go through the preamble to this. I think everybody sitting around this table is quite aware of the situation that I'm referring to in my motion. What I do want to say as a preliminary note, though, is that I believe there is a role for the committee to play here in trying to provide some knowledge to the general community of how a situation like this can arise.
I also want to be very clear that I have really quite strong--I won't say absolute, because they're human beings and they make mistakes--faith in the quality of our prosecutors and our police in this country.
I think I've said this publicly, but I'll repeat it today. My observations over my many years of practice and again as an elected official are that I have not seen any place in the world where there is a better system of criminal justice than we have in Canada. There are certainly several countries I think I could point to and say they're on the same level as we are, that is, we have peers, but I don't think we have any superiors at all.
So my motion is not in any way intended to embarrass or undermine the integrity or credibility of the criminal justice system and in particular the role that our prosecutors and police play in that system. But, Mr. Chair, we all know how much notoriety this has gotten,and we've even seen I think two opinion polls on it now where there is a consensus in the country running in the range of 80% to 85% that if you know people, if you are connected, you get favourable treatment, and we can't let that stand.
I have sent letters to both the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada and to the Attorney General of Ontario asking them to come forward and give in detail an explanation as to what happened in this case. I've had no written response, but in both cases there have been statements in the media indicating they have given as much information as they're prepared to give, and I find that totally inadequate. I think the average Canadian finds that totally inadequate, because it really isn't any new information at all.
What I'm asking in the motion is pretty straightforward. I'm asking that we have two days of hearings on the issue and we bring before us, I would assume on separate days, the Director of Public Prosecutions... I know there have been a number of points in the media that there is no role; that's not accurate. The Director of Public Prosecutions is responsible for all drug prosecutions in this country, whether they're conducted by lawyers they've hired from private firms, which is a large part of the prosecutions, or the prosecutors within the federal service, or the prosecutors at the provincial level who are agents for the federal government and responsible to the Director of Public Prosecutions. So I want to hear from him, that's Mr. Saunders, and also to hear from the prosecutor, either directly or somebody from the Attorney General of Ontario, who could give us details as to what happened here, as well as the representative of the Ontario Provincial Police, who conducted the investigation.
Out of that investigation, then, I would want a brief report going to the House of Commons, which obviously would be public and I hope would have the effect of satisfying the public that there was nothing untoward done here, that there was not favourable treatment given to the individual, that there were valid legal reasons why the determination was made as it was made.