Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Rinella, I am going to ask you the same question you were asked earlier. Nine provinces and three territories use the double mandate system, that is, a person can be a notary and register mortgages, and also be a lawyer. But in Quebec, the profession was split in two categories: notaries and lawyers.
Title insurance is a unique practice that comes to us from the United States. When you buy a piece of land in that country, given that all land came from the US government and was then transferred to private owners, it can be difficult to know the true identity of the person who sold the land or who asked the bank for a mortgage. In actual fact, it is an identity problem.
I know that something like this could happen in common-law provinces or during the sale of crown land in the north or elsewhere. The Criminal Code also applies to Quebec. What you are asking us to do would hardly apply to Quebec at all.
In the legislation that we put forward and that addresses identity theft, would you be satisfied with simply making it an aggravating circumstance? There is a difference between making it an aggravating circumstance and making it a separate offence. If a judge was considering a case of real estate fraud in Quebec, and neither was the notary involved nor was there a series of identify of thefts, in terms of a conviction, would you be satisfied with the aggravating circumstance or would you need a specific offence?