Not really. I'm intimately familiar with the Vancouver case. It was lawyers from our defence team in the Air India case who argued that case. It's a case that really doesn't have anything to do with what's proposed in this bill. It has to do with terrorism offences, and the investigative hearings, and the open court principle and freedom of the press. I looked at it after I saw the intervention last time, during the last hearing, and it's not particularly helpful.
There are cases from the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Alberta Court of Appeal that do talk about witnesses testifying under a pseudonym, the consideration of whether or not the accused...and it's usually in cases where the accused actually knows who the witness is. They may not know their actual formal name, but they're familiar with them. They've had interactions with them, so the accused basically knows who the person is. They have some information about the person, so it's not practically impossible to cross-examine in that situation.
Clause 17 contemplates at least the possibility that the accused and counsel for the accused and the crown might have to cross-examine or direct examine a witness when they have no idea who the witness is. I haven't found a single case that talks about that, and I can't imagine a scenario, short of life and death and someone essentially amounting to a confidential informer, where that kind of process would pass constitutional muster.