Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm happy to support this amendment. As we all know, I was trying to accomplish the same thing, but my amendment as drafted inadvertently removed a couple of other sentences from the bill. That was a drafting error.
I want to go back to the testimony we heard, virtually universally, from witnesses, which was that those who are least likely to have the skills and resources to exhaust appeals are exactly those who need to be considered by this commission. If you're looking at people with low levels of education, low levels of economic resources and low levels of information about the justice system, saying they must have exhausted all of their appeals requires them to know more about the legal system than most of us do. I think, in fact, this is raising the standard way too high.
To respond to Mr. Moore's concern that there will be a flood of cases, this allows the commission to look at those applications. It doesn't require them to accept those applications.
I also want to go back to testimony we heard from victims, because the Conservatives often like to cite it. One thing we heard universally from victims was that they'd like the right person convicted and would not like the wrong person still at large in society. Part of the benefit to society of a miscarriage of justice commission is to make sure the right people pay the price for their crimes and that we don't let people “off the hook” because we convicted the wrong person. We've seen some very dramatic examples of that in the past.
I would say the importance of this amendment is to make sure that those who most need the benefit of this commission actually get considered by the commission.
Thank you.