Environment committee  The number of charges is completely discretionary. They chose 60 charges. They could have chosen 100 charges. They could have chosen 200 charges. They could have chosen 128,000 charges if they wanted to, but that's completely unreasonable. The figure is actually a bit of a chime

Environment committee  The federal government and the federal Crown's office is a completely separate organization from the provincial Crown. It is certainly conceivable that the provincial Crown and the police operating in Ontario could have laid criminal charges against Volkswagen. There is no commun

Environment committee  Certainly. I would also suggest that I'm not aware, but it may be possible, that there may be collaboration between the provincial and federal environmental organizations.

Environment committee  I do not. I can normally go by the court record that was made available to me. The Crown prosecution team should be asked what was going on and why they agreed to a penalty that was significantly less than the one meted out in the United States.

Environment committee  In my experience, it's extremely unusual that the disclosure would be given prior to the charges being laid. It implies that there were discussions taking place by not the accused or the investigators but the defence counsel as to next steps and how the matter was to be dealt wit

Environment committee  I'm not aware of any charges. In 32 years I've never seen anything like this.

Environment committee  I think so. I think that conspiracy to commit an indictable offence and fraud are two criminal charges that could well have been laid. The Crown could have taken that option. I didn't really see where the loss would be. You commence with criminal charges, and then at a later date

Environment committee  I just think, from my perspective, the Crown, in making the assessments as to how best to serve the public, should certainly consider criminal charges when this kind of flagrant violation has occurred. Every tool should be looked at, and every tool should be looked at carefully.

Environment committee  Yes, it would have been much easier. The Canada Evidence Act, section 23, allows for foreign judgments and foreign findings to be applied in Canadian courts, and it certainly would have streamlined and assisted any prosecution. The fact that it took almost another three years for

Environment committee  I haven't looked closely at the environmental legislation with this issue in mind, so I don't think I could properly advise the committee with respect to this question.

Environment committee  Good afternoon, honourable Chair and committee members. My name is David Wright. I'm a recently retired assistant Crown attorney employed by the Ministry of the Attorney General for 32 years. I am currently litigating for Ecojustice, an environmental organization based in Vancou