Justice committee  As I said at the beginning in response to the first question, there is no gap in the law. If there is a gap, it is a public relations denunciatory gap, to say that we want to denounce another type of conduct, which is already covered legally by the law, but we want to give more d

Justice committee  Yes. As I said, call it grievous aggravated assault, or call it torturous assault, but don't call it torture, because we already have an offence of torture, which is understood and well defined in international law. We should not be creating any doubts that there is only one defi

Justice committee  As I said, there are existing offences that apply already. Aggravated assault applies, and aggravated sexual assault applies. If Parliament wants to create an offence of intentional infliction of mental pain or suffering or physical pain or suffering, Parliament is free to do so,

Justice committee  That's what France did, and they were criticized by the committee for having a general offence that applied to both situations. The committee said that if there's a conviction, they don't know whether the conviction was of a person who fits under the convention or does not fit un

Justice committee  That would help answer the concerns with respect to not confusing this with state torture, because there would only be one torture offence, and that would be in 269.1. If Parliament wishes to create another offence that is more serious in terms of its denunciation than aggravated

Justice committee  I would just be guessing. I can't say whether a more serious offence is going to make victims come forward. We have assault. We have sexual assault. We have aggravated sexual assault. I don't think the fact that we have three types of sexual assault makes victims more willing to

Justice committee  That would be a decision of the prosecutor. Clearly as a policy statement, if it involved officials, the Parliament of Canada has indicated in order to abide by our obligations, we'd prefer that the prosecutors would prosecute under section 269.1, but again, it really depends o

Justice committee  Yes, they could.

Justice committee  For aggravated assault, the prosecutor would have to prove that the assault was intentionally committed and that the consequences were simply reckless, that they were reckless that the person was wounded, maimed, or disfigured. That's what would have to be proven. Under the offe

Justice committee  That's true.

Justice committee  That's true. You could only register one conviction, not two convictions. You could be found guilty of both offences, but you could have a conviction only registered with respect to one of them.

Justice committee  No, the concern that is expressed in particular by officials at Global Affairs Canada is that if you have another offence called torture and you prosecute that as torture, then how are we abiding by our obligations to prosecute torture when we already have section 269.1 which say

Justice committee  The issue of extraterritoriality applies only to the state torture, because the convention is trying to create an international regime. If the state does not abide by its obligations, does not prosecute someone who committed torture in its territory, and that person comes to, say

Justice committee  You can always charge a number of counts on an indictment. It depends on the evidence and the seriousness of the charge. It is possible to charge more than one offence on an indictment.

Justice committee  Police and prosecutors are going to try to take what I would call the quickest direct route to a conviction, and the quickest direct route to a conviction is going to be a charge of aggravated assault. All you have to prove is that there was an intentional commission of assault a