Well, this is part of the problem, I suppose, and part of our general concern. The power of citizen's arrest requires a regular Canadian citizen to hopefully have some knowledge of the law, but if they don't, then they're on their own in determining certain things in this provision. Has in fact a criminal offence been committed? Is it a serious enough offence that they're allowed to intervene? Is it indictable? What is reasonable time? If they saw someone stealing from their store the day before, is it reasonable to arrest them the next day?
These are all very difficult judgment calls that lawyers and judges are unable to answer today as we discuss this legislation. In my submission, it's completely unrealistic to think that an average member of the public will be very confident in trying to interpret some of these concepts.
What this means is that we will have some examples of people intervening and arresting people where they're not justified in acting, where the end result will be, at best, that they're criminally charged, and at worst, that they're very seriously injured themselves.