Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for their helpful testimony.
Mr. Star, you made reference to the limitation on preliminary inquiries and stated that, with limiting the scope of preliminary inquiries, there is a risk that individuals who are charged may end up being wrongfully convicted. Would you similarly agree that limiting preliminary inquiries may, in fact, make it more difficult to successfully prosecute guilty individuals? In other words, it's more difficult to achieve justice all around.
I say that because when our committee was in Edmonton, we heard from a Crown prosecutor who prosecuted one of the few successfully prosecuted human trafficking cases in Canada. She told the committee that without a preliminary inquiry, it would have been very doubtful that she would have achieved a conviction in an egregious case involving gross violations of workers, because witnesses were disappearing, etc. However, she was able to get them in and use that evidence, ultimately, in securing a conviction.