I think I've heard stronger things off the record from the chair in the past.
Under “Duty to inform victims”, I'm just reading the section one more time, and I should mention that the amendment may be in order, but there are no Justice officials here to explain to us the impact of the amendment. We don't even have the experts in the room this minute so that members of the opposition can at least ask them what they think. I don't see them here, and I don't see anybody coming up to speak to this. I am not a lawyer, so I would rely on them to explain to me the impact of the amendment.
After reading the original section, I actually don't fully understand the goal of the amendment to the budget bill. It reads to me like victims are already looked after under the duty to inform. It says, “as soon as practicable”, and it goes into it. We should be amending other sections.
Apart from the discussion that Mr. Albas already said that we need to have, this whole section should have been cut out of this budget bill. It doesn't belong in an omnibus budget bill. We should get a fulsome discussion on how this interacts with the Magnitsky Act, which was passed by the House unanimously. I think it was in this room that we were considering the amendments to the Magnitsky Act in a bipartisan fashion, and this whole section will have an impact on the implementation of that act and how companies interact with it.
In proposed subsection 715.36(3), the prosecution can elect not to inform a victim or third party. If we are looking to ensure that the rights of victims are looked after, that's the subsection we should be amending so that prosecutors are obliged to present the facts.
I'd just like to hear more from Mr. Fergus on the impact and purpose of this amendment. As it is right now, I don't see what this would do apart from deleting paragraphs (a) and (b) in that section. We don't even have the Justice officials here to explain to us the repercussions of doing so.