Justice committee  I can. I can tell you that this problem is most frequently occurring in more remote communities, so practising in Vancouver in the Lower Mainland—

Justice committee  Yes, exactly. Prince George is a place that does regularly experience judicial vacancies—

Justice committee  —and there are places like that throughout northern British Columbia. There are places like Fort McMurray, for instance—

Justice committee  —my hometown. I practise there as well. There are two judges there, so if one judge is sick and the other one catches a cold—

Justice committee  Yes, there are all kinds of problems, so it's important for us to have all of these resources available. I do think it's important to make the point that funding legal aid is just as important as filling judicial vacancies as well, but we do have to approach it from a multi-facet

Justice committee  Yes, I can tell you—

Justice committee  Thank you. I will say just very quickly that I made those recommendations based on my experience in the courtroom as a criminal defence lawyer. These things would have a great impact on reducing delay.

Justice committee  My understanding is they're preliminary inquiries that are proceeded with. However, I would have to refer to the primary resource material in order to give any certainty on that point.

Justice committee  Yes. Of course, it's something we can't control. The instruction of our client sometimes changes over time because of different life circumstances and so on. Somebody who may have wanted to proceed with the preliminary inquiry or trial at the outset may change their mind six mon

Justice committee  Absolutely, yes, it would, in my view. I know that the vast majority of my clients who are facing mandatory minimums are more likely to want to proceed to trial than to enter an early plea, because it deters them from doing so. Yes, getting rid of mandatory minimums or significan

Justice committee  I would like to elaborate on that. I actually do have significant concerns about how this is going to impact people accused of sexual offences in this country. My concerns about that are exacerbated by Bill C-51, which I came and spoke to the committee about—it seems like a ver

Justice committee  I'm actually in favour of the provisions in Bill C-75 for bail. When it comes to reverse onus provisions for domestic allegations, which is what you're referring to, as a criminal defence lawyer, of course, I'm not in favour of reverse onus. It should be up to the Crown to show g

Justice committee  It's very interesting that you point out that the preliminary inquiry process will remain available for those who are charged with the peril of a maximum penalty, which is life imprisonment. In that way, we're tacitly endorsing the value of preliminary inquiries. We're saying tha

Justice committee  Absolutely. It does create really illogical situations. For example, somebody who does an attempted break-and-enter is not entitled to a preliminary inquiry, but somebody who completes the break-and-enter is. Somebody charged with impaired driving causing bodily harm, which can c

Justice committee  Thank you. Thank you to all the members of the committee for having me here again. It's always a pleasure and an honour to appear before you. I'm going to be limiting my submissions this evening to the issue of preliminary inquiries. We know that Bill C-75 endeavours to make a