Justice committee  We will have to defer an answer to that question. This is a question outside of the section 25.1 regime. It's not a question that I'd want to give an off-the-cuff answer to right now. I understand the question now, and we can undertake to provide you with something in writing on that issue.

Justice committee  There hasn't been, actually. There has been essentially minimal judicial interpretation of this specific provision. Really this case has not been extensively considered, in any judgment, so far. It simply may be too early. Some of these complex investigations involving such techniques take years to complete, and further court proceedings sometimes take years to proceed.

Justice committee  With respect, I think there was more than one question there.

Justice committee  I think the first question was maybe a concern about reading the annual report and seeing it referring only to RCMP officers, and that's true. That is the report that was issued by the Minister of Public Safety in respect of the RCMP. That is the minister responsible. I would like to clarify that the law enforcement justification is available to other law enforcement officers across Canada, not just the RCMP.

Justice committee  We can ensure that you have copies of the annual reports filed.

Justice committee  In response to that, the normal rules of disclosure would apply, and the rules of disclosure under Canadian law, pursuant to the decision, especially of the Supreme Court in Stinchcombe, are extremely broad. The standard, essentially, is one of relevance. There are limited exceptions.

Justice committee  There are privileges attached to disclosure, informer privilege, for example, that could relate to certain aspects of this, but there is no exception under our laws of disclosure for activities taken pursuant to section 25.1.

Justice committee  They have been filed in Parliament, at least the federal annual reports. The annual reports relate to each competent authority, so there have also been annual reports filed by provinces as well. The federal ones have been tabled in Parliament. Though there's not a direct requirement for tabling, the ones filed so far have been tabled.

Justice committee  Certainly. They are available on the website, but we can ensure that you get them.

Justice committee  Who would qualify, yes, but I can't tell you whether there have been any designations.

Justice committee  That's true. That is because Parliament--and further regulations pursuant to what Parliament had done--had already provided for exemptions under the CDSA, specific exemptions that predated the law enforcement justification. It was felt that we shouldn't get into an either-or situation with respect to those.

Justice committee  It's subject to the interpretation of “as soon as is feasible”.

Justice committee  When we have provided this training to police officers—and we have done it across the country; Erin, Michael, and I, and others went across the country for months to provide the training—it was a two-day training course. The opening part of it was two hours. We went through questions and answers on individual aspects of it for the remaining part of the day.

Justice committee  That was an aspect addressed in the training. In our training, even for the two days, we only presented it as an overview really of operating in this section. I'll just go into the second day. The second day was taken up with the police forces themselves undergoing operational scenarios under that, but a point we emphasized during training was that even after training was finished, that didn't mean that when questions came up about the law enforcement justification they should just proceed and say they think they knew it.

Justice committee  We have both, actually.