Thank you.
Members of the committee, as a guy who's been 51 years in the criminal justice system in this country, my perspective is that this is the most unfair process and law that I've encountered in that half century. I am also Hassan Diab's lawyer.
On the first day of Dr. Diab's extradition hearing, counsel for the Department of Justice from their international assistance group that represented France came up to me, introduced himself and said, “Hello. I am so-and-so. I have never lost a case.” I didn't say anything to that. There was nothing I could say to that. Good counsels lose cases. Sometimes the other side is better than you; sometimes they have a better case than you do. You don't always win if the system is fair. If you always win, something is seriously wrong in the process. He said it all proudly and unwittingly.
I've submitted to the committee two documents. The first is a May 31, 2018, letter sent to the Prime Minister, and the other is a memo on the French court of appeal decision.
The first document sets out key serious flaws in the Canadian act and extradition process. The second reveals the tragically—you could almost say comically, but it's tragic—unreasonable decision of the French court of appeal to order a trial of this man when their own professional investigative judges had already ruled that there was no evidence to justify putting this man on trial. Indeed, the evidence of innocence was so compelling that he shouldn't be subjected—he and his family—to further prosecution.
I'm happy to answer questions about these documents.
M views of the lack of balance and the critical shortcomings of this law and process aren't just my own. You may recall the former Justice La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada. His daughter, Anne Warner La Forest, when she wrote this in 2002 as dean of the law school at UNB, said this about this act. She was writing this in 2002, so she had 10 years of experience with the act. It's only gotten worse since then. She said, “My view is that this new approach gives undue weight to the law of the requesting state as against the liberty of the [person].” That's really the consistent message. What's happened here is out of bounds.
I'll continue with some of her other comments: “The reality is that Canada has gone further than virtually any other country in facilitating extradition.” We serve up our people. “It has done so in the absence of strong empirical support for the view that such an incursion on the liberty of the [individual] was needed and in circumstances where Canada extradites its nationals.” Canadians are subject to this. We don't protect our own citizens in the way that other countries do.
She goes on to conclude as follows: “The new Act adopts a 'record of the case' approach that allows for second and third hand hearsay evidence with no assurance of reliability.” That happened in spades in the Diab case.
Finally, “I submit that the provisions applicable to admissibility and sufficiency in the new Extradition Act are contrary to fundamental justice unless the courts interpret the evidentiary provisions of the new Act so as to re-establish an appropriate balance”—that word again—“that allows the extradition judge to protect the liberty of the fugitive by assessing the weight and reliability of the evidence”.
Members of the committee, under this act, the judge is not allowed to assess weight at all.
Justice Maranger, who heard the long extradition proceeding, said that this evidence was “suspect”, that it made no sense, but he was duty bound. He said that it was so “weak” that he was compelled to say there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction in a fair trial but was compelled by the law to extradite, and that led to three and a half years in France.
That's all I have to say.