Yes.
First of all, it's a contradiction in the section to have a provision that gives the chairman the ability to consider this fact situation and decide that the appropriate course of action is to suspend the hearing or process. Presumably, if the commissioner doesn't like the ruling, in other words, if the chairman of the commission decides it should proceed, the chairman could be overruled by a letter from the commissioner saying that it's going to interfere and therefore it shall stop. This significantly erodes the credibility and independence of that commission.
Certainly during the four-plus years that I was chair, cases of that nature came up. Bear in mind that indictable offences, which are serious offences, have no statutory limitation period. That's why you hear about the famous cold case files that will sit around forever, and in 15 or 20 years, they're opened up.
I had cases that came up with a complaint dealing with this kind of issue, dealing with the professionalism and so on of the investigation that was being conducted, which didn't terminate in the sense of finding anyone who was being charged, and so on, and yet the police were professing that it was an ongoing investigation. It was ongoing in the sense that, yes, technically you never closed it, but that doesn't mean that if you have it and you haven't found anyone, no one can look at your investigative activities.
As well, we had issues where something would be tangential to what we were looking at. We had a complaint dealing with particular activities. I think it dealt with a failure by the RCMP to warn the community that there was a chap in the halfway house who had a propensity to attack people and commit murder and mayhem. That was the issue. They came back to me and said they were still looking for the person who did this dastardly deed. Therefore, it was an ongoing investigation.
No, thank you.
The issues are how you behaved here and the failure to provide notice. It's a provision that can be subject to mischief in terms of its scope. I've clearly had cases where I have looked at it and said, no, that there's an ongoing coroner's inquest, criminal investigation, or criminal trial, for instance, and we'll suspend our proceedings until those activities are resolved, and we do it.
I'd like someone to point out where there has been inappropriate response by the commission. When I looked at the tasering of the Polish gentleman in B.C., clearly there was an investigation, part criminal and part coroner's inquest. It was hard to sort out. I held off until that was concluded. Prudent judgment had markedly not been exercised. If you want to have credibility, the provision whereby the commissioner gets to send his letter over and stop it should be deleted. Otherwise, you're going to have a commission that has zero credibility.
It's been undermined in terms of access to information, and undermined in that context as well.