Let's start with the police station. If the police officer at a station, the officer in charge, has the power to release and there's no information in CPIC or wherever about this person's background, that person will probably be released from the station if the officer can do it, because there's no reason to hold them. If it's subsequently found out that there was a mistake—and it probably would be pretty quickly—the person could probably be rearrested.
If you get into a bail hearing in front of a justice as an accused person who has now been in custody for at least a day or two and there's no information before the court, it is the obligation of the court, then, to ask the crown whether he's showing cause here. If the crown has no evidence, that person will be released. There is no question about it.
There's another side: that person could be detained wrongfully. That person could be detained by a lack of “credible evidence”, I'll call it. There are a lot of people in jail for whom a different result might occur if we had that extra five or 10 minutes to find out something about their background—not this man's background, but their background—such as a history of mental illness, addiction, or whatever. What that different result might be is a bail program, a bail supervision.
We can't legislate to prevent human error, but what's happened here is.... In the last few days, I've been overwhelmed by all of the steps and studies that have been done in response to this case, especially in Alberta. You learn from the mistakes. It's even to the point where there's a reference taken and Chief Justice Wittmann says no, police officers can't do bail hearings other than for summary convictions. The system has responded to this human mistake. I think you can benefit from how the system has reacted and is trying to address this terrible tragedy.
I would say again that it's not a legislative issue here, and that's a problem.