Thank you, Mr. Chair. My hand was up originally to make sure I understood exactly what Ms. Rood was contemplating. I do have it before me.
The only issue I see with this is that when you say “thing”, in “the animal or thing”, I think we change it to say “will or could result”.
What's the standard? If this goes before a judge, what are they choosing to use? Is it simply it “could have resulted” or it “will result”, or would it be “would have resulted”?
It creates two different standards in my mind, in terms of what we're trying to move on. I have problems with the two standards. Does a judge simply take the one that they feel is best? I think that would run into real complications.
A potential individual who is charged under this provision would say, “Well, I didn't do anything where it would have impacted”, but then, what if the judge says, “Well, no, you could have...just because you happened to be in there and anything under the sun could have happened”? I think that's the problem we run into.
I don't know if it's appropriate at this stage, but I have some other language that I'd like to propose at some point after we, as a committee, decide if this language is appropriate.
Is it appropriate to maybe put it on...?
When we look at trying to find a bridge between “could” and, of course, what Mr. MacGregor said, which is “would”, and I had in my language “will”, I think both “would” and “will” are stronger in terms of burden of proof of trying to establish on a prosecution that this did indeed happen.
What if we went somewhere in between and said “could reasonably”, which then starts to become the 51%? It becomes less of it “would” absolutely be, that it absolutely had to be tied to a particular disease transfer.
The word “could” is so wide open that I think it could be anything, anyone stepping on a farm, and “could reasonably” starts to.... The judge would use those words to look at whether it's 51% on the evidence: Was it more likely than not that this particular action would have actually resulted in biosecurity?
Maybe it's not my time to move that, but I put that on the record for my colleagues to consider.