Thank you, Chair.
Members of the committee will recall that I raised this question of the use of the wording “the act that constitutes the offence is committed for the purpose of”, etc., and the confusion there, at least in the mind of the ordinary person reading that. If you're saying that you are not guilty of the offence and then you talk about “the act that constitutes the offence”, then there's a little bit of a contradiction in terms.
I was somewhat reassured by Ms. Klineberg that the judges would understand. I'm not so worried about the judges, I have to say.
I think there has been a movement—not necessarily followed very well—to plain language in statutes, and it seems to me that at least the notion of plain language would be supported by adding the words “would otherwise” prior to “constitute”. It would be “the act that would otherwise constitute the offence”; in other words, in the absence of the defences that are set out there. It would read “the act that would otherwise constitute the offence is committed for the purpose of...”.
That's the proposal here. I don't think it interferes with any other aspects of it, but that same phrase is repeated a couple of other times, so there are, I think, four amendments that use the same suggestion.
Last time, there was a discussion about legislative drafting, but I think those of us who have practised law are certainly aware of the movement and the effort to try to make the law more understandable to ordinary folks. This seems to me to be a useful amendment along those lines.