Public Safety committee  First, I don't know really whether we have enough, but I have never heard that we do not. You are referring to the evaluation of the applicant, but the other very important part is the evaluation of the risk. The evaluation of the applicant really has something to do more with wh

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much.

Public Safety committee  Sometimes. That would be one way of putting it, yes.

Public Safety committee  I will not claim that I have worked it out in terms of our own constitution or anything, but the general principle is that one could be able to delay part of the information in disclosure. I don't mean until after the trial, but later on in the process--for instance, about the id

Public Safety committee  I don't know, because typically they don't broadcast the fact that they've been dumped, in your words—that they have been excluded from the program. Typically, most programs claim that they have a very high rate—sometimes 100%—of success in protecting their witnesses while they

Public Safety committee  I think a large number are there precisely for that reason. Law enforcement, for instance, detectives and other investigators, will look for individuals who have been compromised within their own organization. These are the people they can turn. In fact they are often looking for

Public Safety committee  I hope you get the chance to ask the same question of Madame Boisvert, because she's really looked into this issue for the province of Quebec. From my point of view, let me just say that first, yes, there are cases where there needs to be very a expeditious decision made, but t

Public Safety committee  There is a theoretical need, and that's why, in the paper I submitted, there was a line about this. Yes, I believe there is a need to look into this, but in practice, it is very rare that law enforcement or prosecutors will want to rely on a child witness, for all kinds of reaso

Public Safety committee  I will attempt it. A long time ago I used to work for the Department of Justice, and worked with cost-sharing programs in the area of justice just long enough to know that all of those cost-sharing agreements are incredibly complicated to arrive at. Something around the lines y

Public Safety committee  Let me start with a very positive one. I think we do very well in assessment of risk. The RCMP has acquired a competence there that is probably unique, or at least on par with the best. On decision-making, we could learn from other jurisdictions in terms of the transparency of

Public Safety committee  I think so, especially if it's an independent program that is accompanied by other measures for local police forces and communities. An independent program would always apply to the most stringent protection measures, but there's also a multitude of protection measures that can b

Public Safety committee  It could become a thorny issue, but if we brought together all the competent parties in the same room, I don't think it would be too difficult to come up with an agreed-upon protocol on the way to solve these differences of opinion. I'm supposing here that all such differences of

Public Safety committee  As you heard during the testimony of Mr. Kennedy, who is part of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, the current mechanism is insufficient and does not allow him to act in a very large number of cases. In other cases, there is very little information on which t

Public Safety committee  Yes, there are, and what you are referring to is what some people sometimes refer to as low-level, community-wide intimidation. This has not yet received a lot of attention from law enforcement agencies, but they are beginning to try to come to grips with that particular problem.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for this. Yes, I think it would be a major shift. Most countries are aligning themselves toward that major shift. Why today, why in 2008 as opposed to in 1998 or 1988, is because countries generally understand better what is required to fight large criminal conspiracie