Thank you, Madam Chair.
On this amendment, overall, the concern I have is that the drafters, in their wisdom, had a requirement that the decision be appealed. The reason is that to avail oneself of this process, it should be fairly extraordinary. These are wrongful conviction cases. While they happen, they are rare. Eliminating the requirement as drafted to have them appealed further lowers the threshold, and we'll get to that when we deal with CPC-1.
As to the threshold in this process, we heard that North Carolina, the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions that have a commission on wrongful convictions have a much higher threshold than what's proposed here. Eliminating the requirement that one appeals their decision makes the bill's floor, which is too low, even lower.
Without speaking too much to it in advance, CPC-1 is going to change the threshold from “may have occurred”, which is in the current draft, to “a real possibility that a miscarriage of justice has occurred”. I think it would be Canadians' expectation that a miscarriage of justice or wrongful conviction.... While Canada has an enviable system, it has its challenges.
We had a debate at the last meeting around resources for judges and judicial vacancies. There's no doubt there could be changes to the law. My concern in this.... We had a study on the federal government's obligation to victims of crime, and we heard over and over that the process revictimizes. They're already victims and then they go through the process. Whether it's the judicial process or the parole hearing process, victims told us at this committee that the process revictimizes them.
With this process, there is no doubt there will be claims that result in new trials. A new trial means that victims will have to relive a very painful process that they've already been through. That is why I think, in light of the fact that this is new to our country....
There are contemporaries that have dealt with this. In the case of the United Kingdom, even with their much higher threshold—“a real possibility that a miscarriage of justice has occurred”—we heard testimony that there was a literal flood of applications when going from the pre-existing rules to the new commission. We can expect the same here. That is why I do not think it's in the interests of victims or our system as a whole to have a threshold that is so low.
This amendment would probably make a possibly bad situation worse, so I'm unable to support it.
Thank you.