Thank you very much.
Ultimately, I don't feel the balance is there. I think the points that have been made by both of the other witnesses are good examples of that.
What I would add to the picture is this: There's another feature of the current practice of the CJC that feeds into this imbalance. Complainants are allowed only to send in their complaint. They are told, in a letter, that they can keep sending further information if they have it, but into a void. They have no idea what stage the process is at, etc.
At the end of the process I was involved in.... Something that follows from the current rules of the CJC, I think, is that complainants are not allowed to make submissions. That is, they are not allowed to connect facts to arguments in terms of what they see to be the standards in play. I tried it, just to see, and was told there was no duty to consider the submissions. The vice-chair who had carriage of the case at that stage, read them, but emphasized he had no duty to do so.
I sent them after the review panel had decided internally. I didn't know that, because I had no idea what stage the review panel was at. I'm guessing that the vice-chair, whose hands it was back in, realized there was a bit of an imbalance, because something else happened: A third party non-complainant submitted an argumentative brief to the Council, which was passed on to the review panel. Complainants are not allowed to do it. A third party who had nothing to do with the case was allowed to do so. I think he probably realized that, at minimum, he had to read it to say that it didn't make any difference to what he was going to do.