I think what we have seen here now is an example of areas in which I'm confused and have concerns.
What we are talking about is removing “gender expression”. Mr. Garrison talked about it when he first made his presentation, saying that he had told a number of people that he would remove gender expression because that's the area in which some people thought there was a problem—maybe I'm paraphrasing—with the bill. To make it a little more palatable for some people, he said he was going to take that out.
I'm certainly appreciative of that. I contrast it with what I heard at committee. I heard the representative from Egale say, and again I am paraphrasing, they have a solid legal opinion that gender identity will include—clearly, in a subset—gender expression. As much as he wanted it to stay in, he was content with its actually coming out because he thought it was still in.
Now I'm hearing from Mr. Casey—and again, Mr. Casey, I am paraphrasing—that they really want it in, and I hope that by virtue of taking it out that it's not gone.
I sit here and am quite confused, as a member of the committee. We certainly haven't heard from anybody from the Department of Justice who could shed some light on whether this would be included in the legislation as it is drafted or whether it needs to be there separately.
That, of course, raises the question in my mind: if it's in there anyway, regardless of its being taken out, should this committee not look at defining gender expression? I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with some of the testimony we heard from the witness today, but we certainly heard that when something is put into a piece of legislation and is not defined, other people are then free to define that phrase.
If we're looking at amending the Canadian Human Rights Act, we as parliamentarians have a responsibility to make sure we're not sending something out that could end up being defined in a way that we had explicitly said we aren't going to define because it is being removed.
These are my concerns with the way we're drafting this legislation. I don't know whether or not Mr. Garrison is going to comment and alleviate my concerns at all, but this to me creates a problem.
Quite frankly, I think this committee should be hearing from other witnesses to decide whether or not this is unequivocally going to be the case.
If it is the case, then I think we have to look at coming up with a definition. I don't think we should be passing legislation whose effects we don't foresee. I think it's our job as this committee to make sure we understand the implications of our legislation.
As far as I'm concerned, at this point that has not happened—certainly not to my satisfaction; I don't know whether anybody else feels that it has been answered satisfactorily. At this point, Mr. Chair, I have to say that unless I have some clarification, I don't want to accept this amendment.
I also think we have to look at further study on this and come up with a definition we can all agree on, to make sure we're not going down the road of unintended consequences.