"It makes it very difficult to do good work," former chief coroner Barry McLellan testified.
Dr. McLellan said the system has a pressing need for 25 new regional coroners to join about 300 that it currently has. He said salaries should be raised at every level - from coroners and pathologists to those who remove bodies or prepare them for autopsy.
"Without these resources, your growth is severely limited," Dr. McLellan told Brian Gover, a lawyer representing the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner.
Dr. Smith seized his first opportunity to strike back yesterday when his lawyer - Niels Ortved - rose to question Dr. McLellan's experience in the forensic field. Mr. Ortved dwelt on a 2½-day training course in forensic pathology that new coroners are given, suggesting that it scarcely qualifies them to express sophisticated opinions in the field.
Dr. McLellan freely acknowledged that this lack of training is an impediment for coroners if they are expected to supervise the work of forensic pathologists. But he said that coroners learn quickly on the job, and that it would become even harder to recruit new coroners if they were expected to take weeks of training.
Mr. Ortved also probed several troubling aspects of the coroner's system that existed while Dr. Smith was active in it. They included a directive that pathologists "think dirty" (look for foul play) when they approach autopsies as well as procedures then in place that permitted them to mislead police inadvertently by expressing varying opinions at different stages in a case.
In other developments:
A document filed with the commission quoted from an anonymous note sent to police in Peterborough several years ago, asserting that Dr. Smith keeps souvenirs of the autopsies he performs.
"Earrings appear to be a favourite," the writer said, adding: "He is so arrogant he believes he can get away with anything. The ongoing investigation is simply 'amusing' to him."
The inquiry heard that a meeting of a high-level forensic committee degenerated into an angry free-for-all because one member had criticized Dr. Smith in the media.
The group - the Forensic Services Advisory Committee - was set up by the Office of the Chief Coroner, operated in secrecy and was privy to sensitive information.
Dr. McLellan said that, about three years ago, representatives of the Crown, police and coroner's office took umbrage at statements by defence counsel Cindy Wasser - a representative of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted - that indicated a "bias" against Dr. Smith.
A senior Toronto police officer, Robert Strathdee, "left the room and essentially resigned from the process at that point," Dr. McLellan testified. He said that Crown counsel Shawn Porter "was also extremely troubled by what happened. I think it would be fair to say that we were all troubled by it."
After a meeting with him, Ms. Wasser agreed that it would be better for her to drop out of the committee, Dr. McLellan said. She was replaced by lawyer James Lockyer.
