Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for appearing here today, gentlemen.
Certainly with close to 50 million international trips over the years and the challenges of intervening in some of the cases that have happened—it's always a challenge—it's good to have a discussion on what we can do to help the situation.
Mr. Neve, you suggested that we allow the courts of Canada to particularly address cases of suing foreign countries for people who are aggrieved or have problems in a country. With the number of people we do have in these circumstances, you could be into the thousands of people who might want to apprise themselves of that. What are the chances that foreign countries will ever respond to that kind of challenge?
Mr. Beaulac, you mentioned that the right for Canada to apply the charter in a foreign country is under subsection 6(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Subsection 6(1) does say that every citizen of Canada has the right to enter and to leave, but subsection 6(2) follows, saying that every citizen of Canada and every person has the right to move to any province. Then subsection 6(3) says the rights in (2) are subject to any laws or practices of general application in force in the province. Would that not also extend to any laws in foreign countries?
Is there not a question of how many other countries have laws that apply in Canada, superseding Canadian law? In other words, was the charter not meant to apply for the jurisdictions in Canada? Certainly it's highly questionable whether it applies internationally or not. Could you comment on that?