Thank you very much, Mr. Weston.
With regard to the issue of the guidelines, I believe there would be an added benefit if the minister were to decide along with parliamentarians to include specific guidelines described as well as possible in the legislation. There would be an advantage for one thing because, if we look at the way they are written right now, public policy can be extremely broad, but it could also be regarded as vague in the way in which it's implemented. I could see someone going to court and basically saying that it's too vague. There is also a concept of “void for vagueness” that one might try to apply because of its element of vagueness.
There's also the added benefit that with this clarity, you're not going to ultimately have.... While I have enormous respect for the judiciary and our courts, I could see a judge not really understanding what the government might want to do in a particular instance and limiting it. Usually, cases of this kind happen very quickly. For example, there's a speaker coming to a university or an individual coming to a community centre, and within two days you must try to decide whether someone will get the permit to come. As we've seen in some of those circumstances with individuals, they clearly did not respect our values.
I would probably say that with the inclusion of that, there is a guarantee that we would be able to at least know with clarity what the issues are and what the government's intentions are. I think there would be a benefit for Canadians from this.