Justice committee  Good afternoon, committee members. Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today and for your flexibility in allowing me to appear remotely. My topic today is that of prosecutorial discretion and the Shawcross doctrine, and I would begin by saying that I was lucky enough to

Justice committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, I think one distinction we need to make is the one between partisan considerations and non-partisan considerations that might influence a discourse between cabinet colleagues and the Attorney General. As I mentioned, I think the better view is that t

Justice committee  I would be happy to start off with my reaction, which is really to go back to the sense I expressed in my remarks. If the responsibility on the Attorney General is to exercise this really very significant power in the public interest, there needs to be some ability to determine w

Justice committee  It's hard to answer that question definitively, I think. I guess my best answer would be that, in general terms, once a decision has been made to lay charges, all the rules of criminal procedure then come into play in terms of the requirement to disclose relevant evidence to the

Justice committee  I think that's a very interesting question, but I also think it's a novel question. Certainly, with respect to the offence of obstruction of justice in the Criminal Code, my understanding is that it is a little bit more restricted than the ability to apply it generally to discu

Justice committee  Again, there does need to be a process of fact-finding in order to determine all of the aspects of what occurred. In the British Aerospace case, in the context of the judicial review of the discontinuance of the prosecution, the witness statement that was provided by the Attorney

Justice committee  I do agree with the formulation. I think it's very consistent with Edwards' formulation of this in his book, The Attorney-General, Politics and the Public Interest. Advice is one thing; pressure is something else. I think he is clear in saying that the responsibilities of the Att

Justice committee  I think that I agree with them, to the extent that many of those formulations distinguish between the provision of advice, information and considerations of the public interest on the one hand and a sense of pressure on the other. There is something that I think is interesting,

Justice committee  My colleague wants to jump in.

Justice committee  Again, I think that certainly it is appropriate for individuals who are in a position to know what considerations or what the effect of various prosecutorial actions might be to bring those to the attention of the DPP. All I'm saying is that there is now a different framework i

Justice committee  Yes. I know it's an academic's prerogative to change his or her mind, but I still agree that there are a number of different considerations that could be legitimate to take into consideration. That's what makes it so difficult for someone in this role, such as an Attorney General

Justice committee  I think my colleague was certainly putting a great deal of emphasis on the issue of the Attorney General at the federal level in Canada being a member of cabinet, whereas in the U.K. this is not the case. That certainly is a puzzle because, as I think both Professor Edwards and

Justice committee  I do want to emphasize that the decision to resign is an extremely serious decision and should really only be taken, I think, by an Attorney General as a last resort. I don't think it's something that anybody would suggest be done lightly. I think it would only be done in a conte

Justice committee  I'm not sure I can speak to this general concept of all cabinet ministers being placed under pressure, but I guess the reason we're all interested in this question about the Attorney General is that the Attorney General has an extremely specific and critical role within the gover

Justice committee  I'll address the last aspect of your question first. I think this comes back to the question of parliamentary accountability, in the sense that one remedy for the Attorney General who finds himself or herself in that position is to seek to describe that circumstance in Parliament