You raised a number of points.
One thing I think we need to make clear is that when we run into a case in which we deal with a person who becomes an agent and we realize later that this agent didn't provide the best information, once we've exposed that agent to the criminal element, it's very clear that we absolutely have an obligation to protect that witness. I think most people would agree with that.
Second, there's been some talk that if the person doesn't provide the evidence we would expect in court, maybe we should walk away and terminate from that person. I don't agree with that position at all. It would mean we would basically extort that witness. We would tell them to go in; they'd know what they've got to say, and they'd have to make sure the court knows exactly our point of view, and if they don't do everything we expect--basically extorting them--then we'll terminate them from the program. I say that when we bring somebody in and it doesn't work out, we still have our obligation.
On the comparison to the U.S. system, the one thing I think is an advantage, a best practice in Canada, is that we're involved at the early stage. What I mean is that when an agency wants to bring somebody in as an agent and expose them to that threat, we go in with source witness protection coordinators. We interview and assess, and we advise the investigative team at that point as to whether we should continue with this or we shouldn't. If we don't do it that way, then we'd use the person all the way through, expose them to the risk, and then decide whether we should or should not take them on, and that's exactly what the U.S. model is.
In the U.S.model they will have people providing information and they'll expose them to that threat. They'll obviously house them in hotels and wait while they're in a temporary position, but they'll expose them to that threat. Then they'll go before the U.S. witness protection program system to say yea or nay to taking them in. At that point the witness is really left out in the cold. That witness is at the mercy of whatever agency decided to expose them to the criminal element and at the mercy of whatever type of side agreement they can negotiate--perhaps money to go somewhere else.
On your point about civilian oversight, I think that whatever system the government decides we should have, we should make sure that the process is done at a very early stage. I would hate to see a system in which we add more red tape and make it more complicated for agencies to be able to use the act. If we make it too complicated, a lot of police forces in Canada are just going to step away from it and say they'll risk-manage it and do it on their own. There's got to be a real balance there.
On the act side, I think we do a relatively good job, but from the point of view of Parliament, I can understand exactly why you would like to have a clear view of what really goes on behind that curtain. I'm not sure what mechanism could be put in place. Perhaps the act could be amended in such a manner that periodically people could be allowed to actually examine cases and follow them through.