Justice committee  It's the superior courts of criminal jurisdiction.

Justice committee  I don't think it's a fair assumption, in the sense that in terms of volumes it's not a large number of cases, comparatively or relatively speaking.

Justice committee  It was a recommendation that was made in the consultation report. There was a lot of interest in adopting that recommendation, among all interested stakeholders.

Justice committee  This application is being considered by the minister. Currently, the superior courts of criminal jurisdiction have been hearing those applications for release, pending the review. Bill C-40 proposes that it should be the court of appeal that does this. The test would be the same.

Justice committee  That's what I meant by forum, the court.

Justice committee  Well, the applications would be before the court of appeal of whichever province in which the trial was held. It's not as though one court would be seized with the volume of applications. One thing that was raised during the consultations is that sometimes the delay, the notice that the Crown receives before a hearing is held, can be quite challenging if the particular case is very, very old—decades old, for example.

Justice committee  It's an adjournment. I don't have a sense that it's something like months, for example, because there's still a requirement for people to have a hearing within a reasonable period of time.

Justice committee  There are, actually, quite a few cases in which fresh evidence comes to light after a person has been convicted and they can apply to the court of appeal to have an extension of the time within which to file an appeal. When there is such compelling fresh evidence, the courts of appeal do grant that extension and an appeal.

Justice committee  There is nothing that I can convey off the top of my head. We'd have to look at what the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics has on that in terms of the percentage that are appealed. As the minister was explaining, the commission can't usurp the rule of the courts or become like an alternative to the courts so that people can pick and choose where they want to advance their claim.

Justice committee  I would like to hear the question again, please.

Justice committee  First of all, I think that kind of study would be the responsibility of Public Safety Canada, which is also responsible for Corrections Canada. During the consultations...

Justice committee  When it's the Attorney General of Canada who would have prosecuted the offence for which someone is applying for a review, it would be the Public Prosecution Service of Canada that would be interacting with the commission, not the minister personally. The function of reviewing applications that the Minister of Justice is currently empowered to do is completely being replaced with the commission.

Justice committee  Well, the way it's written in Bill C-40 is that it's the attorney general who was responsible for the prosecution or the jurisdiction in which the prosecution occurred. Something along those lines is how it's spelled out in Bill C-40 for the amendments to the code.

Justice committee  The legislation includes a very exhaustive list of information that has to be provided in the annual reports to Parliament. That will help to evaluate the commission's performance in terms of volumes, timelines and programs.

Justice committee  There's the number of applications made, the number of investigations conducted and the number of matters referred to the courts. There's also an obligation for the commission to track the outcomes of those cases after they're referred back to the courts, the number of applications dismissed, the average length of time between the receipt of an application and the commission's final decision, the number of applicants in need who receive supports and the amounts paid to the service providers of those supports, and GBA+ type of data—