Okay.
In England, this issue was already discussed by the House of Lords in a case involving the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which is their equivalent of the security certificates. The House of Lords ruled that any information obtained under torture could not be admitted as evidence in any judicial proceeding, period.
The reasons for that are (a) the evidence is inherently unreliable and shouldn't be used because of its unreliability, and (b), because if you use evidence that you know is obtained under torture, you're basically becoming complicit in the torture itself.
So the position in England is consistent with the position we've taken in our submission, which is that evidence that is obtained under torture cannot be admitted under any circumstances, nor considered by the judge. Indeed, in Canada the Federal Court judges who have considered this already have taken a similar position in several cases.
In other words, where the counsel has alleged that some of the evidence might have been obtained under torture, and if the judge is satisfied there is evidence that that might be the case, they've refused to consider that evidence in the security certificate.
Therefore, what we're proposing is really consistent with what the House of Lords has said and is consistent with what the judges have been doing in practice.
I think there is an importance to this that goes beyond the process, because we can make the argument before the judge, “You can't accept this evidence because it was obtained under torture”. But by making a public statement in this bill that evidence obtained under torture is not admissible, we are also making a statement about the unacceptability of torture as a means of interrogating anyone anywhere in the world. This is another reason why we believe it should be included.