Public Safety committee  Especially when you have a committee that's going to be working in secret, it would be helpful to know what the committee is doing and what are the boundaries of what the committee is expected to be looking at. With respect to our recommendation of which definition to use, we made submissions at the time of the passage of Bill C-51 about why the definition in the information sharing act was problematic, in the sense that it's extremely broad.

Public Safety committee  I can say that this concern arose from both sides. As I said, many of the sections were involved in the drafting of this document. One of the concerns that was raised with this actually came from the military law section, and it had to do with whether or not you were going to get buy-in from the national security establishment itself.

Public Safety committee  I think we generally support the proposal of having a committee of parliamentarians. Where we see some danger is in creating something that's toothless and in which the public is not going to have any confidence. That's not necessarily going to make the situation any better; you're just going to have an additional layer.

Public Safety committee  The process within the committee for sharing information is through the report, so there are mechanisms for providing.... It's one thing for members of the committee—for example, opposition members—to be privy to the information. That's a trust question. The second question is in terms of their being able to share the information outside the committee, and the mechanism for that is through the reports.

Public Safety committee  The question is in terms of who has control over making the decision in the end, and whether it's Parliament or the executive. In terms of getting access to information and the reasons why, the executive needs to have that control. That ultimate decision should lie with the executive.

Public Safety committee  I agree very much with that statement in terms of saying that the very purpose of the committee is to provide confidence that there is oversight and that there is review. Because it happens in secret, the only thing we can see, from the perspective of the public, is what those structures are.

Public Safety committee  In regard to the concerns we have in terms of information sharing, I think a number of the concerns were raised by Mr. Fadden as well. The committee itself would presumably be trained and take quite seriously the practices of security clearances in terms of saying that they would only request or want information on a need-to-know basis.

Public Safety committee  I think clause 14 is of some concern. One of the things it had where there had been some discussions was whether or not the two parts.... Right now, the way clause 16 reads is that the two aspects of it are conjunctive. In other words, they both have to be in place for—

Public Safety committee  I can hear you.

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much. The Canadian Bar Association is a national association that represents 36,000 lawyers, notaries, law professors and law students across Canada. The association's main objectives are to improve the law and the administration of justice. The brief provided to the committee was prepared by the sections of immigration law, criminal law, consumption tax law, customs and trade law, military law, as well as the CBA national privacy and access law section.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Since that is related to the sections in the IRPA, I will ask my colleague to answer your questions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll refer back to the decision in the polygamy reference, where a number of definitions were put forward by different intervenors. At the one end, you had very limited definitions that specifically dealt with exploitation or the types of problems you see that are the target of much of the discussion about polygamist relationships around this table, for example, the ideas around the abusive nature of, the inequality, and the other problems that arise in certain polygamous relationships.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If this is a major problem, and this does need to be addressed, I would suggest that it should be defined more precisely to say that these are the types of relationships that we are targeting, and define them with reference to exploitation or whatever the situation might be, to more narrowly define what is the focus here.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's aggravated assault. There is no doubt about that and I don't think we could deny that it is already illegal in Canada. From what I can see, nothing in the bill amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in terms of mutilation. The only question that could be asked has to do with the genital mutilation practised abroad.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I see nothing that is helping or changing the current legislation.