I'm a proud Canadian lawyer. I'm very proud of our justice system.
However, the vigilance required to prevent wrongful conviction should never subside. It's institutional resistance to the acceptance of the idea of wrongful conviction that breeds wrongful convictions. For many years, we thought microscopy was a very valid science that could give us those same kinds of assurances. It turned out that we were wrong. Today, even DNA is being questioned in some circumstances, depending on the sensitivity of the technology and the kind of match being developed. That vigilance is extremely important.
Though I am proud to be a Canadian lawyer in our system, we have to be ever-vigilant that our processes don't suffer from—I don't want to call it “arrogance”—overconfidence.