Public Safety committee  I'll go first. Obviously there will be lawyers who will challenge anything. I belong to the school that doesn't challenge. I don't do things unless I think I have a reasonable prospect of success. I suppose what I was saying was that my reading of the Supreme Court of Canada de

Public Safety committee  I understand completely.

Public Safety committee  Right, that's a Suresh exception.

Public Safety committee  I just want to add two things. One is that the reason they do that in SIRC is to protect the lawyer as well. If I've read the secret file, I'm not going to want to go into a room by myself and then have an allegation a year later that I said something I wasn't going to. You nee

Public Safety committee  If I could just add one recent example of how important that is, in the Arar case itself, the government withheld 1,500 words, and we went to court and got 500 more words. The 500 words we got were not words that anyone who looked at them after the fact thought were reasonably pr

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. I've been told that by counsel. The counsel who are representing the men on the security certificates now will definitely challenge it.

Public Safety committee  I can tell you, as a lawyer who may in the future end up on another security certificate case, that if you adopt the bill as is.... You see, what the Supreme Court of Canada said in Charkaoui was that the system was unfair as it was, because there was no person who was in the r

Public Safety committee  I'll start. One of the first changes that came into effect.... How long has that been in effect? Is it three years now?

Public Safety committee  The proceedings are analogous. Indeed, SIRC did do security certificates prior to 2002 for permanent residents, so they were doing them. They followed the same process in the permanent residents' cases that they followed in all the other cases, so there was no issue of any leaks

Public Safety committee  Two years. I think what happened in 2005 was that there was a parliamentary committee that studied...and at that point a lot of the special advocates—special advocates who had resigned—came forward and complained about the system. One of the key changes was the requirement that

Public Safety committee  I would like to add to that. I was counsel to Mr. Arar, and Mr. Cavalluzzo and his team of lawyers met, read all of the secret evidence, and then continued to meet with us. They would ask us questions, and of course we would say, why is he asking that question? We wouldn't know,

Public Safety committee  Okay. In England, this issue was already discussed by the House of Lords in a case involving the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which is their equivalent of the security certificates. The House of Lords ruled that any information obtained under torture could not be adm

Public Safety committee  The difference between any other person and people under security certificates is that when they come to trial, they get to see the evidence, they get to cross-examine the witnesses, they get to challenge the credibility of the witnesses, and in some cases they are acquitted. It'

Public Safety committee  I'll pass on that and let Professor Forcese.... I just want to comment on your comment. I know the case you're talking about is Ahani, because that was a well-publicized case. The difference between Ahani and virtually every other security certificate is that Mr. Ahani didn't d

Public Safety committee  Craig will fill in some of that. There are some key aspects. The first complaint the special advocates had was that they didn't have enough resources. Imagine, if you're a lawyer, that you're given boxes and boxes of material. You can't discuss it with anyone; you can't bring y