NDP-10.1 is on the issue of citizen's arrest.
We had a fair amount of discussion from the witnesses. I know some of it has been discussed with the officials already. We are mindful of the suggestions made by the three panellists last week.
I move that clause 3 be amended by replacing line 38 with the following:
(b) they make the arrest at the first reasonable opportunity within a reasonable
This is to try to put a framework of time and place around an open-ended “reasonable time”. I think we've been persuaded by the arguments and the views proposed by the officials. What if 50 hours turned out to be reasonable, instead of 48? What if somebody showed up at the 47th hour with three buddies when there was nobody around? I'm not able to make the arrest, but I might be in 52 hours. That's an undue constraint.
We thought that we'd change that to this proposal, which is that the arrest will be made at the “first reasonable opportunity within a reasonable time”. We had three or four scenarios put forth at our committee. We are mindful of trying not to empower unintentionally the activities of third parties or private security groups or others who might want to turn themselves into special investigators and go beyond what this is intended to do.
The “first reasonable opportunity” seemed to be the best way to constrain the time so that it's not open-ended. You can't just wait around. You can't spend two weeks doing a big investigation and then show up at somebody's door and arrest him. It has to be as soon as it's reasonable, and the “first reasonable opportunity” is a good wording. That would be a further constraint on the “reasonable time” factor. That's the rationale.
I'd be interested in any other comments that you or the officials may have on this proposed wording.