Mr. Kevin McMeel:

As regards the first part of that, I probably dealt with some of it when I was speaking to Senator Ward. As regards the issue of protections for individuals, a court will not make a section 3 order if an injustice will be caused by the making of that order. That is the section 3 stage. There is provision for people to have legal representation, as I said before, pursuant to section 6 and under the ad hoc legal aid scheme. In the example of an individual who will be affected by the order, we are talking about somebody who may suffer from a disability or maybe a mental illness, who is living or residing in the property and who perhaps had nothing to do with the underlying criminality. The court would have to consider that under the injustice provision. One would assume that the person would be entitled to legal representation. The courts will always seek to find out who is residing in a property before making an order directing that possession of that property be handed over to a receiver. They will generally ensure that those individuals are on notice of the order. Their circumstances, certainly in my experience, would be put to the court, the court would be on notice of it and they would have an opportunity to vindicate their property rights, such as they are, in respect of the property. We have to focus on the overriding purpose of the Act, which is to deprive people of the proceeds of crime. We are talking about circumstances, perhaps difficult circumstances, where somebody is residing in a property that was, for example, purchased with profits from the drugs trade. In that circumstance, the court has determined that if the property is the proceeds of crime, nobody has a constitutionally protected property right to that. The determination of the court will flow from that, but that injustice provision is always there. In the very difficult circumstances the Senator has given by way of example, one would assume that the injustice provision may be invoked.