Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senators, Mr. Deltell, thank you for being here.
I don't often do this in the presence of witnesses, but I'm going to take a moment to editorialize a bit, which may not be entirely inappropriate given what we were just talking about.
It was mentioned that we weren't able to get any witnesses from police organizations because of the short notice. That's an interesting point, because, for far too long in Canada, the balance of power has been all too often tipped in the police's favour when it comes to cases involving journalists. I think that's why we are seeing these abuses. Contrary to claims, those abuses are not limited to Montreal or Quebec police. There are cases involving the RCMP as well. Mr. Bellavance, of La Presse, among others, could speak to that.
The other thing that I think is worth pointing out is there was a piece just today where Canada has fallen another four places to number 22, after falling 10 places last year in the press freedom index, which is very edifying. Given that the U.S. and the U.K. have already had this type of journalistic shield law in place for many years, I certainly want to be on the record as saying we need to get this done as quickly as possible.
That said, I have some questions mainly for the senators, because they are the ones who heard from witnesses in the Senate on certain provisions in the bill.
Mr. Carignan, you talked a bit about a journalist being investigated in a case that does not necessarily involve a source being identified. Given what you heard from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, for example, do you think the current version of the bill provides enough flexibility? In fact, it's important to make sure that the bill doesn't create a loophole that police can take advantage of to claim that they are investigating a journalist for another reason entirely—be it fraud or what have you—when they are actually trying to discover the identity of a source through the back door, if you will.
Do the police organizations and other stakeholders you heard from see the current version of the bill as appropriate in that regard?