Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Like Mr. Rathgeber, I am very concerned with the issue of evidence and of course proving what is “deeply felt”, which would probably be very much subjective. On the other hand, in his amendment, I guess we're talking about an “inherent feeling”, which may be far more objective.
Of course, any one tribunal will want to base itself on some standard so that it could offer some consistency in rendering decisions. I don't know if any one of the two definitions, quite frankly, could provide some sort of a consistent standard. For that reason, I wonder if we're not muddying the waters when we have the Montreuil case, in which the Canadian Forces refused Montreuil's application for enrolment into the forces. It was determined he was suffering from gender identity. Following the precedent set, the federal and provincial tribunals and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal stated there is no longer any doubt that the discrimination based on transsexuality is discrimination based on sex or gender as well as discrimination based on disability.
Mr. Rathgeber asked the chairman or the president of the commission if this case had been overturned and whether or not it was good law. The answer was yes, it was in fact good law. It hadn't been overturned, so are we in fact muddying the waters here?
If we go to the completely objective criteria, is a tribunal going to be called upon to have expert witnesses testify exactly what “inherent” means? Does it become a battle of experts upon experts? Are there inherent costs associated with it? Would the tribunal want to have some sort of expertise to determine exactly what would be an inherent feeling?
We all know from going to court that you can have as many experts as you can have complainants, and of course the cost and time go up. The tribunal may become confounded by evidence. Do we completely muddy the waters with regard to what is otherwise a consistent ruling that there is no longer any doubt that in the issue of transgender, it's discrimination based on sex and disability?
Why would we want to go down this road? Could you provide us your advice as to whether or not the tribunal might call upon expert testimony in such a case? Is this something that there would be a cost associated with? Would it be a power that the tribunal could compel, having some sort of expert system?