Believe it or not, Madam Chair, I'm not going to belabour the point on this because I've had the opportunity to speak to CPC-1 in the context of some of the other bills.
I think it's important. Some mention has been made of other systems, and I would quickly like to talk about our own system. The current system deals with scenarios where the Minister of Justice evaluates applications and can move forward with remedies if he or she feels that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.
The United Kingdom has had a commission for some time now and, as I mentioned, experienced a flood of applications once the commission opened its doors. They have the threshold of a real possibility that a wrongful conviction or miscarriage of justice occurred.
In North Carolina, from where we heard testimony, factual innocence plays a part in the application and remedy. In this legislation, Bill C-40, factual innocence is not required. What is the threshold being proposed in Bill C-40? It's that a miscarriage of justice or wrongful conviction may have occurred. In my opinion, one, that threshold is too low, and two, it's a fact that it's lower than any other threshold in any jurisdiction we looked at, including our own.
CPC-1 would change the threshold in Bill C-40 at the investigative phase from “that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred” to “a real possibility that a miscarriage of justice has occurred”. We're replicating a peer country's wording, the United Kingdom's standard phrasing of “real possibility”.
Why do I suggest this? We want to have a system where a miscarriage of justice application would be exceptional. The process we have is strenuous. The accused can avail themselves of legal aid and all the charter rights to which they're afforded. I've mentioned before that I look at everything we do at this committee through the lens of the victims who have appeared before our committee. The victims and their families who have appeared at this committee have said that the judicial process itself revictimizes them. I remember one of them very clearly saying that we do not have a justice system in Canada; we have a legal system. That's how she felt coming out of the other end of the process.
In light of what we've recently heard from former minister Lametti about judicial vacancies, in light of what the chief justice of the Supreme Court has said about judicial vacancies, in light of the Jordan principle, in light of what all of us are hearing from our constituents about delays in the system and in light of the extreme stress that's put on victims and their families going through the process, the threshold whereby we say that someone is going to get another crack at the whole thing, they're going to get a new trial or they're going to go to the court of appeal has to be higher than a miscarriage of justice. That is why CPC-1 mirrors the U.K. standard that there's a real possibility that a miscarriage of justice occurred.
Thank you.