Evidence of meeting #26 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was privacy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
On a point of order, I just need to understand this. I would like to ask Mr. Gilhooly, if there's no judicial oversight, is that—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
That's not a point of order. Nice try, though.
Mr. Dechert, the time is yours.
Thank you for showing up for this meeting. We look forward to your not coming back again.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
All right. Where would the Canadian Bar Association come down on it's a good thing to destroy the evidence versus preserve it if it could provide evidence of a crime that needs to be investigated and prosecuted?
Executive Member, Criminal Justice Section, Canadian Bar Association
We're not taking a position on whether a private individual makes the choice of retaining or deleting data. What we take positions on is the authority of law enforcement to control that data in a sense of requiring that it be preserved. The standard of reasonable suspicion appears appropriate to us for obtaining a preservation demand.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
So you think that there's a situation where it would be okay to let the evidence be destroyed. I'm trying to understand this in layman's terms. Help me out. I'm not a criminal lawyer here. I can't imagine why you would want to allow somebody to destroy evidence of a crime if it would help to prosecute and bring the person responsible for that crime to justice. I don't understand.
Executive Member, Criminal Justice Section, Canadian Bar Association
I'm not sure that I understand your question.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
I'm having trouble understanding the Canadian Bar Association position here.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Okay, Mr. Gilhooly, you mentioned that you were a corporate counsel. I've done that as well. If your client received a request from the police to turn over information and they came to you and said, “Can we, or should we disclose this”, does the immunity provision help you in advising your client?
As an Individual
Absolutely. Absent the immunity, my first answer is going to be no, because the easy lawyer answer is no. Show me your warrant. Absent a warrant, I don't have to do it. I'm not doing it. It makes it very difficult for me to do the right thing. That's the issue that you were raising I think in one of the hypotheticals with David Fraser earlier.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Thank you very much.
Thank you panel for coming. We've had some very good panels for Bill C-13 and today's testimony was excellent. I want to thank each and every one of you.
Just as a reminder, we're meeting on Thursday morning at Queen Street. We have Thursday and then next week to meet on this, and then we'll do clause by clause the week after that.
Thank you very much.
The meeting is adjourned.