I have worked closely with a number of police services as part of these collaborative response processes, as well as other programs. What was really striking was that the Criminal Code could be used to deal with a certain number of cases, but it was very rarely a case of criminal negligence. That led me to ask my colleagues some questions, and they told me that the evidence was very difficult to obtain in order to prepare these kinds of cases. As a result, very few formal complaints were filed, and they rarely made it to the courts. When that happened, criminal negligence was very difficult to prove and there were few convictions. Without going so far as to say that the police seemed to give up, it was clear that the evidence was very difficult to find in order to build a criminal negligence case.
If a new provision was added to the Criminal Code introducing the nuance of criminal negligence, I think objective criteria will also have to be established that will be used to prove it in order to ensure a certain degree of success. Otherwise, this new provision may end up being used very infrequently.