Evidence of meeting #48 for Justice and Human Rights in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was extradition.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
Yes, there's always reciprocity. There always is. That's the principle of extradition.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I will talk about the fourth condition during the next round of questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you, Monsieur Fortin.
We'll now go to Mr. Garrison for six minutes.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witnesses. I know it's an inconvenience to be dismissed for technical reasons and have to come back, so we thank you for that.
I want to ask about the reporting function.
What we hear, and what we've heard through testimony, is that there isn't reporting on the extradition process. Was it a conscious decision to not publicly report on the extradition process, or is it simply the practice?
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
There's a combination of things that go into that.
I'm not even sure what's meant by “reporting on the process”. Because it's a public process, it's reported on, in the sense that it's in the courts. When an extradition case goes forward, it's public and takes place in a courthouse. All the materials are open to the public. That makes it public.
We have statistics, some of which are placed on our website. There is no issue with that. We put forward statistics. We're asked by the media, on a regular basis, for statistics, which we provide. Statistics aren't really an issue.
Again, I'm not sure what you mean by “reporting”, but when it comes to whether we have an actual reason for reporting.... We get requests for extradition. At that point, they're confidential unless we move forward with them. We receive quite a few requests for extradition that never see the light of day, because we don't authorize them.
The problem with necessarily disclosing all of that is that we're identifying a case that is at an investigative stage, potentially, in the sense that it's still ongoing in the foreign state. If we say we received a request and refused it, we identify that for a person who's potentially still subject to a prosecution at some point in the future. There's a process, even in Canada, whereby you don't identify, for example, that you're investigating someone before you proceed to trial. However, once a person is charged, it becomes public knowledge.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Are you saying it would be easy for us to go to the website and discover how many extradition cases there were, and from which countries, and the rate of people being extradited?
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
No. It depends on the country.
NDP
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
It depends on the country. You would be able to find that, for example, for the United States.
The reason we don't disclose it for every country is that whole issue of identifying the existence of a request. There are a lot of countries with which we don't deal very often. We might have one request in five years from a particular country. If we identify that, we could potentially identify a request we didn't execute.
Honestly, we could do a better job at disclosing some of our statistics. However, there are some we simply can't, because it would reveal confidential information. We disclose it with the United States because the quantity of requests is so large that we're not going to identify a particular request by providing statistics.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Is it safe to say the bulk of requests for extradition, and the bulk of proceedings, involve the United States?
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
Yes, that's right.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
I guess I have a question about that.
We have an agreement with the United States, but there are wildly different criminal justice provisions state by state in the U.S. How do we deal with that question?
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
Yes, that is a good point.
The requests are coming to us centrally, so they all come through the federal Department of Justice and they have to regulate that they're consistent with the requirements of the treaty with Canada. In any particular case, there might be an issue that would arise because it's from one jurisdiction versus another, and those would be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
For example, some jurisdictions have the death penalty and some don't, so if there's a death penalty, we would be seeking an assurance about the death penalty from that particular jurisdiction.
There are other issues that come up that are specific to particular jurisdictions, and we go back and seek information in relation to the circumstances in that particular case so that we're able to address whether or not it would be fair in those circumstances to extradite.
I should say in response to something I heard earlier that there are cases the minister doesn't surrender, but we don't advertise those as much because the decisions of the minister are sent to the person sought, and they're personal. When the person is discharged, they don't advertise the fact that they were discharged, whereas when they go to court and it's overturned by the courts, of course it's public and everyone can see it.
I can tell you, for example, in the last five years or so.... We go by fiscal years. In 2021-22, the minister discharged on three occasions. The year before that, there were two occasions. The year before that, there were four. Before that, there were five, so he discharges.
Quite apart from that, there are quite a number of cases for which we receive requests, but we do not issue an authority to proceed, an ATP. Again, last year, we refused to issue an ATP on 18 requests that we received.
Usually we do not authorize about 25% of the requests that we receive. Most of those are not with the United States, because the United States has a system that's considerably similar to ours, so in most instances we would go forward, but not always. It depends on the evidence that they've provided.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
In the case when assurances are asked for, is there systematic monitoring of the performance on assurances by the IAG, or do you have the resources to do that?
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
We don't actually have the role to do that. Monitoring of assurances would be handled by Global Affairs, because once the person is outside of the country, we don't have any control over what goes on with them. Global Affairs is responsible for dealing with—
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Do they report back to the Minister of Justice? I have trouble seeing how that works, because the Minister of Justice is the one who's made decisions and asked for assurances. Where's the reporting on that performance?
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
If there was an issue, they would be responsible for following up with the foreign state to say, “You're not abiding by the condition in these instances”, so they're—
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
It's no longer the responsibility of the Minister of Justice once someone's extradited.
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
Only insofar as there's nothing the minister could do when the person is already in another country. The minister who has influence over things that happen in other countries would be the Minister of Foreign Affairs, so that's why—
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
We don't ever do assurances that are conditional, saying—
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
Assurances are conditional.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
If you're saying that a trial would proceed within a reasonable time period and it doesn't, we simply say, “Well, that's too bad. We didn't get what we asked for.”
Director General and Senior General Counsel, International Assistance Group, National Litigation Sector, Department of Justice
We wouldn't ask for something like that—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you, Mr. Garrison. We're out of time.
I'm going to go to Mr. Brock for the next round of questions for five minutes.