Where was I? Should I start over?
It says that if the offence has been varied between the time of commission and the time of sentencing, the benefit of the lesser punishment should be given to the person found guilty.
Once again, we're talking about the niceties, I guess.
Really, we should be very cognizant that the charter and the Constitution that we have here in Canada are probably world-respected as being a great charter and a great Constitution. But in terms of many countries of the world, could they enact the same? I think many countries of the western world do have their own constitutions and charters. My understanding is that certainly Commonwealth countries have similar constitutions, from Australia to other countries.
I'm not sure whether they have charters of rights. I believe our Charter of Rights was designed, drafted, and brought together in a Canadian fashion. It is Canadian-made, if you like. Paragraphs like 11(i) I would expect to be distinctly Canadian. I would certainly not expect to find that in developing countries of the world. As I touched on before, many of the developing countries of the world have difficulties feeding the people, let alone drawing up the niceties of charters of rights and freedoms. That in itself is very problematic.
For some of the developing countries of the world, to have a charter of rights and freedoms such as this would just not be workable. They don't have the wherewithal to do it. You have to be able to feed your people. You have to be able to afford to pay a judiciary system. You have to be able to afford to pay a good policing system. You have to be able to afford to pay a good legal system to be able to enjoy the luxury of a charter of rights and freedoms. If you don't have this judiciary system built, if you do not have the fair legal system built, if you don't have fair and reasonable lawyers available to a person, this charter is meaningless. It goes nowhere. But here in Canada we do have it.
Once again, I have difficulty with this motion because it rather implies that countries around the world will have their own charters such as this. Probably more difficult is that this motion states that the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs would enforce Canada's charter around the world in places where, I would have to guess--I really don't know, but maybe my colleagues do--that two-thirds of the world do not have charters of their own. They probably don't have them for very good reasons. If they had them they wouldn't be able to enforce them.
So we're going to enforce the nicety of one of the leading countries in the world, Canada, enforce our charter into another country of the world that is struggling with its democracy, struggling to feed its people, and struggling to exist from day to day. But we're going to enter into that country and order our foreign affairs minister to go in there and give protection under Canada's charter to those people. We're going to tell those people that they should have this charter of Canada, and if they do not have it they should abide by it. They must do as our Canadian foreign affairs minister says, because he's been ordered to go there and say this. So once again, we have this difficulty all the way through on this.
Now I'm on article 12.