I think, Chair, you hit on some of the fundamental problems with the motion. It would have served this committee well if perhaps a little more time and thought were put into the motion instead of our having to engage in trying to make something work, but we have this issue of established by whom. We assume that in terms of serious crimes it would be Canadian courts, but it's not quite clear. Mr. Calandra has said he'd be willing to consider the IRB to be the adjudicator and decision-maker in these sorts of situations, especially in the case of war crimes. You can't possibly throw a more serious charge against someone than having engaged in war crimes, and we have to be very careful how we proceed. Only the courts are resourced enough and properly resourced to establish whether or not someone has been involved in war crimes, and we trust our judiciary here in this country.
I'll use the example of Rwanda. There are accusations against numerous Rwandan Canadians that they participated in one form or another in the genocide in Rwanda. And we have moved on some of those cases, but establishing the facts is very difficult, and we shouldn't leave that to the IRB. It should be quite clear that it's Canadian courts that would have to establish this.
Finally, there is that last point. There are ample precedents in Canada that we don't necessarily deport to countries whose justice systems we don't philosophically agree with. We don't deport to a number of countries around the world because we fundamentally believe their justice systems commit or have the potential to commit grave injustices. We had the case of a businessman who had potentially engaged in serious frauds in China, and we have to be very careful that an individual such as that, deported, could well face capital punishment. That whole issue of deportation to countries that don't subscribe to...not just in terms of nuancing how many years in prison, etc., but their justice systems are fundamentally different from ours. Sometimes it's in theory, sometimes it's both in theory and practice, and sometimes it's just in practice.
I think this committee would be served well on this particular point if a little bit of time were taken to properly word this. It probably can't be worded as succinctly, but if the intent that's evident in this motion is there, I'm sure Mr. Calandra would take the time to go about this in a proper way.