Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Referring to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary--which, they state, is the “world's most trusted” dictionary--the word “any” as a pronoun is defined thus: used to refer to one or some of a thing or number of things, no matter how much or many.
That's the first definition given. The second definition is this: whichever of a specified class might be chosen.
And then the adverb is defined this way: at all; in some degree.
Again, what we have here in this particular clause is loose language, language that doesn't get the job done. As we've seen with the Maritimes exclusion, and certainly as we've seen with the definition of “related persons”, the changing of one word can make an enormous difference in what the legal outcomes are. For this particular bill, the decision to not make the language as tight as it needs to be puts us in a situation whereby, again, we could be looking at provoking litigation. As Mr. Pearson said very clearly last Tuesday, the lack of clarity and the loose language is going to provoke litigation. And as he testified, the litigation would commence almost immediately.
Mr. Chair, we're in a situation whereby if we choose the wrong word, we are not helping our cause. We've done it now in a number of other clauses. In this particular case, I'm offering the subamendment “any” because of the definition offered by the Oxford dictionary--namely, “one or some of a thing or number of things”.
So when we're talking about conveyances here, I don't believe it's appropriate to refer to it as “the” conveyance or “a” conveyance. Rather, it should be “any” conveyance, since that better reflects the language that's needed--