Justice committee  Mr. Chair, I thank the members of the committee, not only for the time allotted but for the extension as well.

Justice committee  First of all, thank you very much to the members of the committee for indulging me on short notice. I am the president of the Association of Justice Counsel, which represents the working interests of some 2,700 federal lawyers and prosecutors who work at the Department of Justice and the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, as well as other federal agencies and tribunals across the country.

Justice committee  I think the answer is self-evident in the role that we perform.

Justice committee  I know. I've tried to put it on a couple of times, but it seems that whenever I do--

Justice committee  I'm sorry, but I need some assistance as far as the translation is concerned.

Justice committee  My grandparents would be very ashamed. I actually don't speak Italian. I can't communicate in my ancestor's mother tongue. My grandfather is rolling over in his grave right now, sadly. Let me see if I can get the channel right.

Justice committee  Please.

Justice committee  Yes, I think there is a risk. That's something your colleague Mr. Comartin asked me about. There is a tension between defining a practical threshold for relevance and arriving at a fair trial. That's something we continue to struggle with. If you start to restrict or narrow the threshold for relevance, you may lose certain aspects of information that an accused might otherwise wish to use to demonstrate innocence.

Justice committee  You said that judges weren't involved enough at the pre-trial phase, which is where some of these disclosure issues could be resolved. It's a theme that Michael Code and Justice LeSage recently picked up on in a report that I believe was published in Ontario several months ago. The idea of the report was to try to identify the problems in prosecuting major cases.

Justice committee  That's right. I think the answer to our question lies in how we define “relevance” and “clear irrelevance”. That is the operative standard we're working with. The police investigators go out and collect the evidence. There is a corollary obligation on them to turn over all the evidence to the prosecutor.

Justice committee  Speaking on behalf of myself, the number one priority would be to ensure a fair trial. The way to do that is to revisit disclosure protocols. That would be my recommendation to the committee.

Justice committee  Disclosure protocols.

Justice committee  I am sorry, I am not bilingual but I believe I understood the gist of your question.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. What I understood to be the essence of your question was that you got a sense, at least from my mouth, that I was favourable towards mandatory minimum sentences.

Justice committee  I will start again. Again, I apologize. I wish I could answer you in French. But I think I understood the import of your question, which is that you sensed from my presentation that I was favourable to or not predisposed against ruling out mandatory minimums. As we all know, a bill has been tabled by the government of the day, and all I would say to you is that there are many views about whether or not mandatory minimum sentences will be effective in the long run.