Anne Warner La Forest questioned why Canada even has judges involved in the process when so little is given to the judge to do. She was very prescient about how we were going off the rails with this act, and as I say, it's only gotten worse because the judges sit there....
There's a culture now, a judicial culture, that has grown up that extradition is inevitable. We will go through the charade of a hearing, but in the end, it will always happen. The judge, no matter.... We witnessed Justice Maranger wringing his hands about the nature of this material they were putting in front of him, but he couldn't do anything about it. He said, at one point, “You know what I would do, Mr. Bayne, if this was a trial in Canada.”
The judges are so overawed by the concept of international relations and the idea that they're not supposed to tread on damaging relations with France or somebody else if they refuse this request. They really have no role. They don't make legal decisions.