Justice committee  It might be. If it was fresh evidence and wasn't available to anyone beforehand, wasn't discoverable, and they found out after the fact, then it would be grounds for appeal. Jaser is coming up in the Court of Appeal on the VIA Rail terrorist case. I think in the facts of that

Justice committee  That could be, but the other practical issue is that diagnosis is all over the place. If four doctors see someone, they can give four different diagnoses, so it would be hard to say what was missed.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes, for sure it would.

Justice committee  I don't know for sure. I think it is required, just through the Ontario Mental Health Act and through PIPEDA and the Privacy Act.

Justice committee  I agree with the first part, about the consent, but for the second part, about “at the time of the offence”, the Supreme Court has already ruled on it in the case of NCR. No one can bring up NCR other than the accused, unless the person is found guilty and they can raise reasonab

Justice committee  It can have a great deal of impact, in my experience, and even have impact before then. It's not uncommon that a crown will say, your client pleads guilty, and my position is x or y depending upon what's in the pre-sentencing report. It even goes back into what the crown will sug

Justice committee  With regard to your first question, concerning the access to the justice system, I was going to say that.... I don't know whether I'll ever come back here, so if I don't, let me say that if legal aid ever comes across your desks, you should up the legal aid budget, especially for

Justice committee  No, I don't think there is.

Justice committee  No, and unfortunately, I don't think the bill is savable. I think mental health intervention for people in the system who are mentally ill has to come in at some point, but this is the wrong point. The pre-sentence report is either too late or too early; it's just not where the i

Justice committee  I think there has to be a nexus between the mental disorder and the offence. If someone has a mental disorder that is difficult to deal with but has nothing to do with the offence, they shouldn't get a lower sentence. They should only get a lower sentence if the mental disorder t

Justice committee  It's such a difficult call. When coming up with examples, you say that if someone has an anxiety disorder and commits a fraud offence, it might be related. If someone has PTSD and is driving drunk, it might be related, because of their stress and their drinking. The line betwee

Justice committee  It would, if it were interpreted that way. Then there would have to be something during the interview about the probation officer's getting informed consent, saying, “You don't have to tell me anything about this.” The problem at that point is that you have people who, as Ms. La

Justice committee  I think it's true that there are too many people who have mental health issues who end up in custody, but the answer isn't to then extract this mental health information from them. The problem with people who sort of duck under the NCR system is that once they're in that system,

Justice committee  I don't think it would, because it's the probation officers who have to make that call when collecting it. How would they go about doing so? They know the person has been convicted of whatever offence they've been found guilty of, and they're going from there when collecting info