I've been listening to the debate today so far, and I'm getting a little concerned that we're looking at clause 11 as an area that empowers the Canadian military to contravene the convention.
What I see is that clause 11 is providing legal defence and definition to members of the Canadian Forces so that they can follow through with part 3 of article 21, to ensure that what they do in interoperability is fully defined and legally defensible in the event that they get pulled in front of a criminal court here in Canada, in front of the Judge Advocate General within National Defence, or even at the international level through either the international humanitarian court or the International Criminal Court.
Don't you also see that this is about providing some definition to what interoperability is?
I look at Canadian and Australian navies participating in a joint exercise with our American counterparts. Let's say we have an Australian frigate and a Canadian frigate providing protection to a U.S. aircraft carrier that's moving through the South China Sea and that may have cluster munitions on it. The way everybody has been talking here, everyone on a Canadian frigate or an Australian frigate would then be in violation of the convention and possibly up for charges under the Canadian Criminal Code if we don't define what is interoperability.