Mr. Speaker, I wish to commend the member for Hochelaga for introducing this motion at the Standing Committee on Justice, which has resulted in the report before us this afternoon.
I want to say to the member for Hochelaga, because I have heard this before and I say this as a practising lawyer who followed the Coffin case from the time I was very young, that much like the Truscott case in Ontario, which was seven or eight years after the Coffin case, I believe Canadians right across the country were concerned about the adequacy of our criminal justice system in the Truscott case and similarly in the Coffin case.
There is no question that a great number of issues have been raised. It is important to point out that, as recently as September of last year, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted took up the Coffin case. In addition, in the last few months the federal government has finally recognized the need to investigate this, and the Criminal Conviction Review Group is now investigating it.
In terms of some of the specifics, much like other members, I cannot help but juxtapose the Truscott case with the Coffin case. If the Coffin case had gone through the criminal justice system in the early to mid-1960s, I cannot help but wonder if his conviction would have been overturned or, at the very least, if the order for the death penalty imposed at the time of the trial would have been dispensed with and he would have been given a sentence of life in prison, like Mr. Truscott received, therefore preserving his life.
I want to make a significant point: for the first time, a case of wrongful conviction is being considered after the person is deceased. I think it is important that this occur given the discrepancies. There are all sorts of very clear and strong allegations of overt partisan political interference in the province of Quebec at that time, by as high an office as that of the premier and certainly of the attorney general. The conduct of the prosecutor in the case is certainly suspect, from what we are getting from the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. Also suspect is the role the defence counsel played and how he came to be involved in the trial.
We can look back at it and say that if we had not had the death penalty Mr. Coffin would probably still be alive, and perhaps his wrongful conviction, if in fact that is what ultimately comes to the fore, would have been dealt with a long time ago. Similarly, when we look at some of the facts of what occurred in the defence in that period of time, if we had had a legal aid plan at that time perhaps the results would have been significantly different.
There is no question that as a Parliament we could simply sit back and say that we are going to allow the Criminal Conviction Review Group to do its work. The problem is that the parameters within which this group works and its mandate under the code are much more restrictive than the mandate the government could assign to a judicial inquiry.
For instance, the issue of how much interference there was at the political level could be raised much more extensively, if in fact it was there and it had some significant consequence in the way this trial was handled. The review group has a much more limited mandate in terms of investigating that. I could point out several more issues that could be more properly dealt with under the Inquiries Act than would be dealt with by the review group.
What can happen is that the review group can recommend that this matter be dealt with in the form of an inquiry by our courts. What I am really suggesting, and I believe this is to some degree the theory behind the member for Hochelaga moving this motion in committee and doing so now before the House in the form of this concurrence motion, is that we try to speed up the process so that the inquiry could be appointed now by the government. It could get under way immediately, have a broader mandate to get at the truth, and hopefully overturn what most of us believe is an injustice.
There is obviously no way of adequately compensating Mr. Coffin post-death. The very minimum we can do is rehabilitate his reputation and in effect say to the family, his son and his wife, that yes, the criminal justice system in Canada failed them, we are acknowledging that, we are apologizing for that, and we are rehabilitating the reputation of their husband and father.
It seems to me that adopting this motion would be a way for the House to say that we want this process speeded up and this is a better way of doing it. I would urge all members of the House to support the motion.