Justice committee  You're quite correct. We didn't recommend any wording. Our concern with it is, what is a dating relationship? If you went out on one date with someone, does that constitute a relationship? If you dated someone 10 years ago, is that a dating relationship? Our concern was that it doesn't necessarily establish the trust relationship that we feel is integral to a spouse or a common-law.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  There is certainly that concern, and there are certainly those cases where the victim has come forward and said that they found testifying twice had been stressful for them. In some cases some witnesses find it's almost a rehearsal for the trial and they find it useful. When a witness is testifying I think it's important for the Crown and for the court to make sure that witness is not abused during their testimony, that the questioning is not abusive, and that they stick to the relevant points.

Justice committee  In relation to the choking aspect, I would note—it's fairly dated now, from May 2006—that the Uniform Law Conference of Canada also looked at this issue in terms of making choking a distinct offence. They concluded, as we have now, that it's encompassed under section 266. They also noted that it can be encompassed under section 268, aggravated assault, in terms of endangering life, if the choking is extreme.

Justice committee  One of the things that we noted in our brief was that there isn't a large.... Although you've quoted the percentage of court time, I believe it was 75% of offences that were eligible for preliminary inquiries did not opt for preliminary inquiries. Certainly, it does sort of push the envelope back, but since the other provisions have been put in place in terms of streamlining preliminary inquiries, there has not been, in our experience, a major issue in terms of the timeline.

Justice committee  In some cases, yes, sir.

Justice committee  Yes, sir, exactly, and that saves a great deal of time. As we mentioned in our report, that evidence is now admitted often and regularly by way of admissions. For instance, if it's an officer who had minimal contact with an accused in terms of a statement, the defence will concede you don't have to call that witness, or if it's an officer who peripherally touched or handled an exhibit, you don't need to call that witness.

Justice committee  No, that certainly has been our experience. As I mentioned, the statistic that we could find said it was less than 2% of court time. I gave an example of a case where the witness was very strong and the case is now in resolution, but there have certainly been cases where the Crown has put a key witness on the stand and that witness has just been so vague and equivocal that it's quite apparent we have no realistic prospect of conviction.

Justice committee  Thank you. As my colleague mentioned, we've made 17 detailed recommendations. Some are suggestions to slightly improve existing proposals and others reflect our more serious concerns. I'd like to focus my comments on two areas: the curtailment of preliminaries as well as the admission of what is called “routine police evidence”.