Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.
As indicated, I am the director general and senior general counsel of the international assistance group, which is part of the litigation branch of the Department of Justice.
First of all, I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to comment on the recommendation made in the Auditor General's 2014 report on the mutual legal assistance process and the extradition process in Canada.
I can confirm that the Department of Justice, acting on behalf of the Minister of Justice, is responsible for the liaison and coordination of mutual legal assistance and extradition requests made to and from Canada and for the management of Canada's treaty relationships in these areas of international cooperation. We are pleased to note that the report found our processing of extradition and mutual legal assistance requests to be within expected timeframes. That said, we are aware of the need to ensure that extradition and mutual legal assistance requests are reviewed and processed in the most timely and efficient manner possible in order to provide the best possible service to domestic and international law enforcement and prosecutor partners. The Auditor General has noted that the work of Justice Canada accounts for only 15% of the overall time needed to process mutual legal assistance requests. Similarly, he points to the fact that we are only directly in control of roughly 30% of the overall processing time for extradition matters. Clearly, we need to continue to work closely with our domestic and foreign partners if measurable improvements in processing times are to be achieved.
To that end, we are taking the appropriate steps to identify and reduce any excessive delays that could undermine our efforts to make the process more efficient.
These steps include conducting a comprehensive review of our outstanding file inventory for the 2014-15 fiscal period, with a view to identifying cases that result in significant delays; examining the reasons for these delays; and implementing measures, where possible, to address substantive delay.
In addition, throughout the 2015-16 fiscal year, the Department of Justice will arrange meetings with significant treaty partners and Canadian investigators and prosecutors to discuss methods to mitigate lengthy delays that may reduce the effectiveness of international cooperation.
Those steps are included in our detailed action plan.
I can also inform you that as of this date we have almost completed a comprehensive review of our outstanding file inventory. We have also specifically reviewed the files of our two major partners—the United States and France—and have already begun discussions with these two partners through face-to-face bilateral meetings in order to assess whether delay has been a factor in mutual legal assistance and extradiction cases to and from these countries.
That concludes my opening remarks. I'd like to thank the committee for its time and attention. I'll be happy to answer your questions and to provide any additional information for the purposes of the committee's study.
Thank you very much.