But the second and more important point is that if that statement is admitted, it puts before the triers of fact a scenario that would otherwise be inadmissible because it was hearsay and that is, Wade Horsfall told me, Detective Proulx says, that you and a guy named Al Edwards and a guy named Cam did the break and enter with you. In a normal course of events that's inadmissible. It's clearly hearsay. A conversation with Mr. Horsfall under these circumstances is clearly inadmissible against my client. That's clear law, starting with Schmidt in the Supreme Court of Canada and going to McFall in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Nothing can be clearer than that point of law.
So the Crown is faced with a situation where in the normal course of events that would be inadmissible evidence, and rightly so. So the admissibility of the statement or the eventual admission of the statement is doing indirectly what the Crown would not in the normal course of events have done directly. Of course the denial would have been the same denial. It would have been of no interest to the Crown. They have little interest in introducing a self-serving exculpatory statement.