Thank you.
My colleague has made all the points quite succinctly. If I could, I would like to add another nuance. I take it that the spirit of this motion is self-evident, and the member is looking to address serious issues, but that is all the more reason to approach carefully and meticulously the structure and wording of a motion, aside from the jeopardy into which it puts the committee's reputation and the chair's reputation.
There are fundamental principles upon which our judicial systems are based. The presumption of innocence is one of those. We know that deportation to a country such as Sri Lanka would entail significant hardship and punishment. To have punishment meted out just on an assumption that someone may have, whether it's criminality.... Once criminality is established, we have a court system that does that. We also have a penal system that metes out punishment, but it is even more so in the case of war crimes.
We know that in a war situation it is very difficult to establish facts. Typically there are two sides. You often have people who have gone through wars who will have their own particular agendas, so the justice system has always been very careful in establishing the facts in cases of war crimes. They are probably the best-resourced cases in terms of court proceedings. If we look back in history, we've always been extremely careful. If we were to just sloppily say that someone may have participated in something, well, what is the standard? Someone may have seen or may have heard, and it's truly unfortunate, because this is an incredibly serious issue.
The final point is that Canada is always very careful not to inadvertently do things against the will of society here in Canada. For one thing, we're very careful not to deport people to countries where there is capital punishment and where court systems aren't as careful and as clearly evidence-based as our court systems are. I would like to underline all those very important issues that are raised procedurally here in the House in terms of establishing criminality in the case of war crimes and also in terms of deportation to countries to which Canada would normally not deport because of the situation of their justice system.
Thank you.