I'll just echo what my friend has said. Abusing the preliminary inquiry, has it ever happened? Of course it has—let's be honest—but is it used routinely to cause delay? No, because judges have the powers now, with the focus hearing, to require counsel to come before them and to ask them, “Well, what are you going to do with this court time I'm giving you? What witnesses are being called? How much time is each witness going to take? What are the issues at the preliminary inquiry?” They're very streamlined.
Most of the preliminary inquiries I've done have been on murder cases, and often they take no more than three or four days, even if the trial is going to take a month or two. We focus on issues for which the preliminary inquiry is going to provide sort of value for money in a very real sense.
You also have to be aware that preliminary inquiries are very helpful to the Crown. In fact—not to let too many secrets out here—I often waive a preliminary inquiry because I know it's going to be more helpful to the Crown than it is to me.
They are tremendously valuable, then, and until you get down there and look at a case and prepare it for court and know what trials are like, it's hard to appreciate how helpful they are, but they really are.