Justice committee  With respect to the litigation, we are aware of some thirty cases related to the application of the surcharge. The provision, or the proposed amendment, only deals with the aspect of payment within a reasonable time. The cases before the courts deal with not only this issue but

Justice committee  Thank you for your question. That is not how I understand the bill, but now that you've asked that question, I can see that there is some room for interpretation. For us, the intent of this provision is that anyone in the list may act on behalf of the victim if the victim is d

Justice committee  Yes, that's it. I can also assure the committee that Justice Canada always conducts a bijural and bilingual analysis of bills before introducing them.

Justice committee  As the minister indicated, I think the intention of the government is to create enforceable rights. The choice that the government made was that those rights would be enforceable through a complaint mechanism. The bill provides what that complaint mechanism must include: an abili

Justice committee  Yes. A victim of an offence under the transportation act or under an environmental protection act—

Justice committee  This bill is focusing on victims of crime. As I mentioned, it was our view that we were capturing the vast majority of offences that create victimization.

Justice committee  In the U.S., a limited number of states—my understanding is that it's eight of fifty—have some form of standing for victims of some offences at some opportunities. I'm sorry to be so vague.

Justice committee  I don't have that information with me.

Justice committee  If I can paraphrase, Madame Boivin was asking why the bill only applies to a listed number of federal statutes, and that if by implication a person was a victim of another federal statute, was this legislation creating different classes of victims, some victims with more rights t

Justice committee  The term “quasi-constitutional” means that, according to the government, this is a bill that incorporates values and principles that have some primacy in Canadian society. There are a few other laws that have this status, including the Privacy Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act a

Justice committee  I will use an example based on official languages. An offender requests that his trial be conducted in their official language, either English or French, while the victim prefers to submit his impact statement in the other official language. We are therefore faced with the vict

Justice committee  That's right.

Justice committee  Yes. I would like to clarify that we are talking about laws with quasi-constitutional status. When it comes to other federal legislatures, the law provides for the primacy of the bill of rights.

Justice committee  Okay.

Justice committee  Thank you for your question. I will deal with the application issue first. We chose the laws outlined in the bill because offences committed under these acts create by far the most victims in Canada. As the minister was saying, this is a first step for Canada. Based on our analy