I find that argument rather specious, Mr. Chairman, given the lack of consistency in its entirety of Bill C-217 with respect to mischief under section 430 of the Criminal Code.
In fact, one might argue that Mr. Tilson was more consistent by having a maximum of five years for his proposed new offence, because it doesn't require the level of motivation, prejudice, hatred, or bias that's required in the section that he wants to make it consistent with.
There is no motivating factor required. We're talking about equating now.... As was suggested in argument in the past, we have a mandatory minimum sentence for somebody urinating on a war memorial situation—which can happen, perhaps inadvertently—with someone putting a swastika on a synagogue or defacing a Jewish cemetery, as happened in Toulouse after the terrible events of last week.
I don't think that's consistent at all, in this case. We've been through the arguments where we accept the fact that, as the Canadian Legion's Dominion Command said.... When I say Dominion Command, I'm referring, of course, to the national organization—the entire structure of the Canadian Legion—and the president who wrote to us, insisting that there ought to be some flexibility here.
She recognized, on behalf of Dominion Command, the flexibility that's needed, and here we are saying, well, we have to be consistent with this other one where actual prejudice, actual bias, actual hatred based on religion or other forms of hatred is required.
So to suggest that in order to make this consistent we should make it ten years, when no such motivation is required in Mr. Tilson's bill—we can't support that.
