Justice Committee on Nov. 29th, 2011

[Brian J. Saunders]

I will start with giving a bit of history on the crimorg.ca site. It was a proposal that was raised at the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Heads of Prosecutions Committee, of which all prosecutors in Canada are members. It was Manitoba that came forth with the idea. They suggested we create this website that would be secure and available to all prosecutors involved in organized crime prosecutions across the country. It would enable them to keep up to date on the latest developments in the law, to have access to each other in the form of chat rooms, and also to make it available to internationally based experts in the area.

That was the goal. When it came to financing it they looked to the heads of prosecution who worked at the federal level. They looked to the federal government to see whether money could be made available to set up the website. Public Safety indicated that it had a program where money was available for this type of initiative, and it was agreed that it would make more sense that if they had the money, it would be run out of the Public Prosecution Service, so they provided us with the money to hire the people necessary to run the website.

That said, the website has been up and running for about the last year. There are close to 200 registered users, and they would be prosecutors from our federal prosecution services and from the prosecution services of the provinces.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Does your department now have full responsibility for running the website?

[Brian J. Saunders]

Yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

The other question I wanted to ask about also involves the director of public prosecutions, and it is in relation to the money that is going to go to the crown witness coordinators in the territories and to victim coordinators. Because it's a significant amount of money, about $823,000, could you give us an explanation of why this additional money is being directed to the territories at this time?

[Brian J. Saunders]

We have 13 crown witness coordinators on staff at present. We're in the process of hiring a 14th. They are all based in the three territories, and the reason for that is the nature of our practice differs in the territories from the provinces.

In the provinces, the majority of our prosecutions are either drug prosecutions or regulatory prosecutions, and typically the witnesses in those prosecutions are either police officers or investigators from government departments. In the north we do the Criminal Code prosecutions, and as a result, most of the witnesses in those prosecutions are citizens who have been the victim of a crime.

In order to assist those individuals...first of all, we locate those individuals, because you will recall that we're dealing with the three territories, with communities spread all across them. We explain the court process to them. Often, for example, in Nunavut they don't understand English, so our crown witness coordinators, who speak Inuktitut, and assist the prosecutors in communicating with the witnesses.

This goes back to a question that was asked earlier. They will also refer the victims, the witnesses, to appropriate territorial services for assistance, when such services exist.

We deal with the individuals as witnesses, not as victims, because our role is to prosecute the cases. That's why there are territorial services available to deal with them in terms of being victims. We turn it over to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Very good. Thank you very much.

Our time is up. Now we do need to have two votes.

Just before we do that, Minister, I would like to thank you and Mr. Saunders for being here today. But I would equally say, Minister, because your estimates originally were so good, there is not much in the supplementary estimates; it made it difficult for our members to access this.

So thank you very much. We appreciate it.

We do need to vote on the matter, so I will call that vote now.

Shall votes 30b and 35b under the Department of Justice carry?

JUSTICE

Courts Administration Service

Vote 30b—Program expenditures..........$2,481,139

Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions

Vote 35b—Program expenditures..........$4,738,905

(Votes 30b and 35b agreed to)

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Chairman, I would like the record to show that we voted in support of that, so when we hear on the other side that we don't support victims and we don't support core services and all of that, I don't want to hear anything about these estimates.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

I still have one more vote.

Shall the chair report votes number 30(b) and 35(b) under the Department of Justice to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

It was unanimous again. Thank you.

We'll adjourn.