Thank you.
In relation to clause 9 of the bill, in my mind there's some confusion about who a public officer is. The section refers back to the definition of public officer in section 25.1 of the Criminal Code, where the definition of public officer is “a peace officer, or a public officer who has the powers of a peace officer”, and who would have been designated. This issue around a public officer is important because a public officer, in clause 9, gets a pass. It says:
No public officer as defined in subsection 25.1(1) is guilty of an offence...if the acts alleged to constitute the offence were committed by the public officer for the sole purpose of establishing or maintaining a covert identity
As I read it, a public officer is going to have to be designated, and if they're designated, the exemption provisions here may--I'm only suggesting--conflict with and are going to have to be congruent with the other general exempting provisions of section 25.1, because we have placed in the law there certain exemptions for public officers.
I'm worried about a conflict here. I haven't had the chance to think it through. Has the department--line by line, word for word--walked through the exemptions in clause 9 of this bill and the exemptions in section 25.1 for public officers? I'm going to ask you point-blank: is a member of the military a public officer? Are you a public officer if you're a member of the military police and you're out doing military reconnaissance and you've got to ask somebody to use a false document somewhere to get by a checkpoint? God forbid that should ever have to happen in Canada, but this bill reaches transnationally, in any event. Is a member of the military a public officer if he or she is not designated?