Justice committee  Well, I can say that the police reports are the first point of contact. Nova Scotia is a police charge jurisdiction, but I know that in other jurisdictions, such as B.C., the crowns handle it. New Brunswick is the same. But no matter what, the police are the first point of conta

Justice committee  Thank you for having me here. I'm Rick Woodburn. I'm the president of the Canadian Association of Crown Counsel. The interesting part about this is that we're meeting here in Ottawa right now—I left my meeting to come here. I hijacked the agenda this morning to specifically put

Justice committee  Of course it removes crown discretion. You're not going to see other parts of the Criminal Code where it tells us to call certain evidence. Cases like Boucher, Krieger, Miazga all entrench as sacrosanct the idea of crown discretion, and we need to have that to operate freely and

Justice committee  On which part?

Justice committee  I've read studies. I've been in court when individuals who, under domestic violence, have threatened and beaten their partner repeatedly and have said they were going to be killed. We ran a full bail hearing, putting all the information that's mandated here before the court. They

Justice committee  —I don't want to say catastrophic change, but fairly big change, and a change whose ramifications I'm not sure everybody understands, the ramifications of putting these words.... They're not just words; in law they mean something. We have cases that go to the Supreme Court of Ca

Justice committee  I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. I don't know whether it's the room or some background, but could you repeat?

Justice committee  I thought that was for listening to my iPad or something. Could you repeat the question while I'm trying to untangle this?

Justice committee  It wouldn't, because we don't present any facts on release on consent. On average, we get somewhere between 10 and 20 people in bail court every day, and then some are carried over, so we have a large number of people. We and the defence lawyers go through the files. We'll consen

Justice committee  Not being a legislative drafter, I can't see my way through fixing it per se. I like the idea that the language can change, but once again, if you change a comma you start running into problems. The bail provisions as they stand work the best way they can. Changing them is not g

Justice committee  Are you giving me a blank cheque, or do I have to be—?

Justice committee  I will say—and this is something that was unanimous, really, around our table and among other people we have talked to—that CPIC is an issue for us. Having a national database for records is really what we should be working on here. We need to get a good, solid database. Our cri

Justice committee  Down the rabbit hole, as they would say?

Justice committee  Every time you do something like that, I have to put it back in the mix, churn it around a while, and see what happens. It's probably not a question that I could answer right away. It would be different, but then again, you're changing established wording in the code, so once a

Justice committee  I probably would have to say that in my view that would be the case: that it actually does not help. Now, I'm exponentially glad that the conversation has been had, and that the bill was brought forward, because we're having a conversation. It's dramatically changed things in Alb