Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want Mr. Ouellet to know that it wasn't me who raised the point of order, but I do appreciate your patience.
Thank you very much to our witnesses.
The tack I'm going to take on this is the administrative monetary penalties act.
I spent several years in conservation law enforcement. I was a national park warden. At the federal level, of course, if I found some person with an illegal fish--or whatever the case may have been--if he didn't have a licence I had no recourse but to issue a summons and start a court proceeding.
When I was a conservation officer for the Province of Alberta, I could issue a summons or a violation ticket, depending on what it was. If the person chose to pay it, court proceedings wouldn't be initiated, but if they chose to plead not guilty, that would then initiate the court proceedings. So we could deal with a lot of these things in a more administrative manner. The difference, though, is that it would start a court proceeding. It would get before a judge if the accused chose to challenge a violation ticket.
Can you outline for this committee what the difference would be in the creation of this proposed new act? What powers, for example, would this review person have? What would the judicial nature of the process be, and what options would somebody charged with an administrative monetary penalty have in making sure he was given due process of the law?