Indeed!
I began practising criminal law in 1966 and I have stayed pretty close to it all along, in the crown's office and in defence, and then as Minister of Public Safety, Minister of Justice and now my party's Justice critic.
I would like to say something about the disclosure of evidence. I practised criminal law at a time when there was no mandatory disclosure. I saw it come in with the Stinchcombe decision, but it began in England with the case of the Guildford Four, which was a huge scandal. In that case, the police had not revealed that they had questioned a witness who confirmed the accused's alibis. There was a commission of inquiry and recommendations were made.
Here we have a system in which part of the defence's work is to look at the investigative methods of the police. The system costs a fortune and has multiplied the cost of bigger cases by two or three times. I wonder what the solution really is. I have practised more as defence counsel than as a prosecutor, but I can see that we are reaching the limit. And yet, in the end, what we were aiming for was an ethical guideline that could be generally respected. When the evidence is in the defence's favour... In any case, I observed that every time a police officer had evidence of someone's innocence, it was disclosed. Some evidence was ambiguous.
Could we not replace that with professional ethical obligations: prosecutors have an ethical obligation to disclose evidence that might be favourable? It would be an obligation for the police as well. If the rules were not respected and that was discovered later, there would be sanctions. Perhaps that could replace the strict, formal rule that everything must be disclosed. That rule is costing a fortune and enabling organized crime to prepare its strategy for committing crimes in the future. What do you think?