Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You speak English perfectly, much better than I do, but sometimes I can detect the trace of an accent. I therefore presume that your first language is French. In any event, I would have put my question to you in French, but we will not need interpretation.
You surprise me somewhat. In response to the last question to you, I seemed to understand that to your mind, the ideal solution is not necessarily to create a separate agency that would take care of the Witness Protection Program. However, in the report that you sent us I read this:
Serious consideration should be given to creating a national and autonomous Witness Protection Program in Canada and providing it with adequate resources. A program that would be kept secret from normal police functions would offer greater protections to witnesses and would hopefully be more credible than the current program in the eyes of witnesses and potential witnesses.
I would like you to clarify your position. After reading your report, I know that you certainly have a very broad knowledge of other programs that have existed worldwide. Personally, I am hesitating, because I do not know what the best solution is. When I started practising criminal law in 1966, at the crown attorneys' office in Montreal, this did not exist; I could not even imagine such a thing. In fact witnesses who were informers... There were no formalities.
And then much later, the report by judge Guy Guérin arrived. He stated they need to sign contracts with them. Thereafter, when I was Minister of Public Security, we received many complaints—as opposed to what you observed—from witnesses who claimed that the agreement we had with them had not been respected. Their credibility was undoubtedly dubious, because often these people had a criminal past. An independent organization would certainly have given the system as a whole greater credibility in such cases.
Your opinion is truly important to me. Do you believe that it would be preferable to have an independent organization or do you think that we should allow police to take care of protection of witnesses from whom they solicit testimony?