Public Safety committee  That would be very, very time-consuming. We would have to go back through each and every agency over all the years. It would be difficult.

Public Safety committee  We do, and it's written into the protection agreement. But it's flexible and not set in stone. Some people take longer to find employment. Some people find it much harder to adapt. We could continue to work with people over an extended period of time.

Public Safety committee  There is an expectation in the protection agreement. We could issue a breach if we saw that the person was absolutely not making any effort to truly reintegrate and find a job and do the things we specified.

Public Safety committee  I think it probably would be closer to a year. I'll check with our coordinators to see if I can get you a better answer on that.

Public Safety committee  Yes, there's an expectation.

Public Safety committee  I'm not sure how to answer that. When the facts of the case out of British Columbia are examined, everybody will have a much better understanding of what happened at that point, and clearly in that investigation there were mistakes made. We'll lay that out and say here are the areas where we could have done a better job.

Public Safety committee  I see your point of view.

Public Safety committee  The act doesn't provide an exhaustive list of what some of the examples are, but in my personal interpretation—and I'm not a lawyer, I'm a police officer—it seems to me that the act is trying to guide the police that when you have to be proactive, when the investigation is ongoing, when you have to either capture somebody or do something to further that investigation, and you have to make a disclosure, then bring that information to the commissioner so that we can legally make that disclosure.

Public Safety committee  It would be case by case, but I suspect they do. There are times when we'll have multiple people under one file on a protection agreement. One or two individuals may not work out and we have to do a termination. In those cases we'll move those people one more time. They will have a secure identification, a name change, so they're not in danger of the person who has shown they're not going to abide by the rules of the program.

Public Safety committee  As far as a review of the act is concerned, I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea that you come together and you ask questions, because it's a complicated act, and it's not well understood because most people aren't exposed to it on a regular basis. I think it's good to look at the act and say we've run with the act for a five-year time period, let's get together, have a look to see how it's working and if we have to make some changes.

Public Safety committee  You raised a number of points. One thing I think we need to make clear is that when we run into a case in which we deal with a person who becomes an agent and we realize later that this agent didn't provide the best information, once we've exposed that agent to the criminal element, it's very clear that we absolutely have an obligation to protect that witness.

Public Safety committee  We're very close to the end of that process now.

Public Safety committee  No. Even once we're done with the termination process and everything is finalized, and even if we go through the Federal Court in an appeal process, the name won't be revealed.

Public Safety committee  But I'm guided by the act. I don't see any way I'd be allowed to draft something that would go outside the act and go against the act, because--

Public Safety committee  In this particular case, the subject's identity was revealed for the purpose of furthering this police investigation, but it wasn't released outside of law enforcement for the purpose of the public.