Mr. Speaker, I do expect a lot of this government, as do all Quebeckers in fact, and as does the Coffin family. We are right to expect a lot of this government. It is a government whose prime minister, ministers and parliamentary secretaries and all of whose members constantly tell us that they will stand up for justice and to fight crime. But the crime is sometimes committed by the state itself, as we have seen in the cases of David Milgaard, Guy-Paul Morin and Donald Marshall, and as I am convinced we have seen in the Coffin case. Unfortunately, the Coffin family will never be able to have the stain wiped away completely. Mr. Coffin's reputation may perhaps be restored, but he was executed, he paid the ultimate price for something that was a judicial error, a botched police investigation, as we are convinced.
On that point, I know what I am talking about; I was a member of the police commission in Quebec. I had to preside at public inquiries into allegations of police misconduct. The allegations are not always true, but still I have had to make that decision myself in the case of someone who was sentenced to life imprisonment; I had to assess the police investigation. This was not the police in the Gaspé or the Sûreté du Québec, it was a municipal police force in another region of Quebec. The police force, the prosecutor and I prepared a report that made it possible for the inmate to go to the Court of Appeal. That Court quashed the conviction and ordered a new trial, and with the evidence in the hands of the police commission, that man was found not guilty at his new trial. I know what I am talking about when I say that sometimes mistakes are made.
We believe that a mistake was made in this case. Unfortunately, Mr. Coffin paid with his life. Let this government at least offer the family some comfort by acting speedily. "Speedily" means setting up the review group immediately so that it can conduct its investigation. That group will then have to make recommendations to the Minister of Justice, who will have to decide whether to go to the Court of Appeal or whether there will be a new trial. We are waiting. This is a government that pats itself on the back and says it is always in action. Let us see the action this time. It would be the first time.