Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just very briefly, because my colleague from Foreign Affairs in particular has covered most of what I would have said. Translating what was said by the other two witnesses here down into the practical realities of legislative drafting, our task in this

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, just very briefly, Mr. Chairman. In general, if you put an obligation, and this applies more to some of the amendments, I think, that have been stood, but it applies here as well.... If you put a positive obligation into a statute and you don't provide otherwise in the stat

Foreign Affairs committee  Forgive me, Mr. Chairman, I have to go from memory here and I don't have the anti-personnel mines legislation in front of me. We did start with that as the template for some of the provisions in this bill. The offences and things like that are based on it. When we looked at the

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have one final comment on the honourable member's comment on conditions the minister considers appropriate. The intention there is to allow for the possibility. Again, we considered that these things would be extremely rare. The object of the exercise was

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reason is quite simple. The only function for which ministers can be designated under this bill is in clauses 7 and 8, which is a ministerial order allowing someone to possess a cluster munition or submunition for research or training purposes and th

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It reflects the judgments of the Supreme Court in two cases. One of them is called R. v. Covin and the other one is called R. v. Hasselwander. I can provide the clerk with the citations if you want them after the session. Basically this provision is based

Foreign Affairs committee  This is an exclusion again to the prohibitions in clause 6 and the offences in clause 17. So it applies to whoever is found in possession of one of these things. It doesn't deal with Canada's deactivation; it just allows for the technical deactivation of something that is a keeps

Foreign Affairs committee  I will just note that under both section 2 of the Criminal Code and the provisions of this bill, liability extends to persons or organizations. Some years ago, Parliament amended the Criminal Code to make sure that organizations cover a wide variety of strange creatures out there

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll just be very brief because it follows up on something I've already said. Bearing in mind that this is a criminal law bill, it's very helpful to ask as you look at amendments who would be the accused. The effect of an amendment putting a provision in

Foreign Affairs committee  Very quickly, Mr. Chairman. It will save time, perhaps, because this is a recurring issue obviously with both the bill and the convention. The legislation was specifically drafted with what lawyers would call a class closing rule in it. If you look at the way clause 11, in parti

Foreign Affairs committee  I didn't want to get too far into policy, but there are also other scenarios where possession of a stockpile might take place in Canada outside the eight-year period. We've made provision in the bill, for example, if a Canadian company wants to go into the business of destroyin

Foreign Affairs committee  Just a note that it's covered by clause 8, Mr. Chairman.

Foreign Affairs committee  Just in criminal law terms here, Mr. Chairman, I only had a short time to look at the amendment but, as I understand the policy of the amendment, it fits within the scope of the bill and certainly fits within the scope of the convention, not that I'm an expert on the convention,

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Far be it for me to become involved in the debate; it's not my role. But just in terms of the mechanics of how this sort of thing is done, it would depend on the nature of the amendment. The legislative services branch of the justice department normally

Foreign Affairs committee  Sorry, was there a question?