Justice committee  I can only say, Mr. Dosanjh, that we've looked at it pretty carefully. We're satisfied that the lawful excuse defence in proposed subsections 353.1(1) and 353.1(3) operate independently and that subsection 353.1(3) will not restrict other lawful excuses that could be put forward.

Justice committee  The lawful excuse will remain for that 1%.

Justice committee  The offence is drawn fairly broadly because the only alternative to drawing it broadly and then providing for appropriate exemptions is to insert some sort of specific intent, which would make it very difficult to prove an intent to conceal the identity of the vehicle. That is th

Justice committee  No. The defence of lawful excuse will still be there. You apply subsection 353.1(3) to subsection 353.1(1) and say subsection 353.1(1) simply doesn't include this activity: “Despite subsection (1), it is not an offence to...”. Then “without lawful excuse” remains as a residual de

Justice committee  I think there are other mandatory minimum penalties that would have the same effect. This is a somewhat different way of approaching it in order to make the issue crystal clear in this case, but there are probably other mandatory minimum penalties that would apply regardless of h

Justice committee  Normally we would just say “by indictment or by way of”. We don't feel it's necessary to say “by way of indictment”; it's just “by indictment”.

Justice committee  To a large extent, it is an illustration of some particular lawful excuses that would apply, but it makes it crystal clear up front that this offence does not intend to bring within its scope the kind of ordinary legitimate repair and modification that could result in one or more

Justice committee  I'm sorry, do you mean the bill as it is now or as the amendment would have it?

Justice committee  Yes. The mandatory minimum penalty would apply on a third conviction regardless of whether the previous two were both indictable, one was indictable and one summary, or both were summary.

Justice committee  Mr. Comartin, when we looked at it again, it was just felt that it was simply a more appropriate place in the code in terms of the kinds of related offences. There are no substantive changes.

Justice committee  Mr. Ménard was asking about a brief. I don't have a brief, but I have some remarks I made up for myself. I could clean them up and have them translated. I got the invitation to appear just last Thursday. I didn't have time to prepare a brief.

Justice committee  I guess I'd have to say that it's not a simple question. I appreciate the difficulties of trying to explain these very complex questions to the guy at the Tim Hortons or wherever. The kinds of concerns I've discussed are concerns that we've heard from prosecutors who actually h

Justice committee  Well, if the suggestion is that the purpose of the list would be something other than simply standing as proof of the existence of a criminal organization for the purpose of a criminal organization offence, then I suggest that raises a whole further list of issues and challenges.

Justice committee  Well, I thought we were talking about a government designation of criminal organizations very much along the lines of the terrorist group process.

Justice committee  When I suggested that another option might be to look at some process whereby a judge could take notice of findings, a fact made in another case before a court, Mr. Ménard said he didn't really see the appropriateness of what we were calling judicial notice. If what you're sugge