Justice Committee on Feb. 13th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to call this meeting to order. We'll use the BlackBerry time instead of the clock in the back. I know there will likely be bells at 5:30 for votes at 6:00, so I want to make sure we get this meeting completed by 5:30.

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, meeting number 59. Pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, November 30, 2012, we're dealing today with Bill S-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code.

For the first hour we have scheduled two sets of witnesses. I will introduce them in a moment. Then we are going to go to clause-by-clause on this bill. If we don't last the full hour with the witnesses we have, we'll move right to clause-by-clause. Then after that, I anticipate the motion that was deferred to this meeting from Monday's meeting will be reintroduced and we'll deal with it then. That's the schedule for today.

First, let me thank our witnesses for coming.

We have from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Mr. Shawn Barber, the acting director general for the global partnership program. I'll allow him to introduce the guests with him.

Via video conference from Cambridge, Massachusetts, I want to welcome Professor Matthew Bunn, who's from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Welcome, Professor.

We will have opening statements. We'll start with the Department of Foreign Affairs, and then we'll move to Professor Bunn, and then we'll have questions.

The floor is yours, Mr. Barber.

[Shawn Barber, Acting Director General, Global Partnership Program, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Shawn Barber, acting director general of the Non-Proliferation and Security Threat Reduction Bureau at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

I am pleased to be here today to discuss with you what we are doing internationally to help reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Joining me are two of my colleagues, Mr. Graeme Hamilton, who's the deputy director of the global partnership program, and Mr. Terry Wood, who's a senior coordinator for international nuclear cooperation, both of whom work with me in the Non-proliferation and Security Threat Reduction Bureau.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, and related materials remains an ongoing security threat to Canada and the broader international community. Some terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, have openly acknowledged they're interested in obtaining weapons-usable nuclear materials.

The illicit trafficking of nuclear and/or radiological materials, including by criminal organizations, was recently identified by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, as a growing concern. The IAEA has reported nearly 2,000 incidents of unauthorized use, transport, and possession of nuclear and other radioactive material between 1993 and 2011.

Responding to the threat of nuclear terrorism requires us to act across a number of fronts.

First, we must work with our like-minded partners to ensure better protection of nuclear facilities and stocks of nuclear materials around the world.

Second, where possible, Canada and its international partners must reduce domestic stocks of highly enriched uranium and weapons-usable radiological materials, so that there is simply less available supply that can find its way into the wrong hands.

I would add that in this regard the decision yesterday by North Korea to test a nuclear device and the ongoing efforts by Iran to increase its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium run precisely counter to this objective, and as such, represent a grave threat to international peace and security.

Third, we must work with others to enhance the ability of source countries to detect the cross-border movements of highly enriched uranium and dangerous radiological isotopes so we can disrupt the illicit flows of these materials.

Fourth, we need to ensure our domestic legislation and criminal sanctions are up to date and in compliance with our international treaty obligations in this area. That is what Bill S-9 intends to accomplish. It will allow Canada to ratify the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials and the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.

Finally, the threat of nuclear terrorism must remain a focus of the international security agenda. That is what the recent Nuclear Security Summit process has been about.

There have been two nuclear security summits to date: in 2010 in Washington D.C. and in 2012 in Seoul, South Korea.

At last year's summit, Prime Minister Harper, along with 53 other world leaders, renewed the following commitments: strengthening the legal framework against the threat of nuclear terrorism and for the protection of nuclear materials; securing vulnerable nuclear materials globally; minimizing the civilian use of weapons-usable nuclear materials; enhancing transportation security; and preventing illicit trafficking.

The next nuclear security summit will be hosted by the Netherlands in The Hague in March 2014.

Canada is also a member of the global initiative to combat nuclear terrorism, GICNT, an international partnership of 83 nations working to improve capacity on a national and international level for prevention, detection, and response to a nuclear terrorist incident. As a GICNT partner, early last year Canada hosted an international tabletop exercise in Toronto, simulating a combined federal, provincial, and municipal response to a nuclear terrorist incident. The meeting was attended by more than 150 delegates from 45 countries and was an opportunity to share best practices in coordinating a response to these types of threats.

At the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, Prime Minister Harper announced Canada's intention to repatriate additional stockpiles of highly enriched materials from Chalk River Laboratories to the United States prior to 2018, and a new $5 million Canadian voluntary contribution to the IAEA's nuclear security fund to secure nuclear facilities in regions where urgent needs have been identified. Canada is the third largest donor to the IAEA's nuclear security fund, after the U.S. and U.K., with donations totalling $17 million since 2004.

The Prime Minister has also announced the renewal and continued funding of DFAIT's global partnership program, which I am honoured to lead, for an additional five years with $367 million in funding. That translates into an annual budget of $73.4 million from 2013 to 2018. The global partnership program has a mandate to secure and, where possible, destroy weapons of mass destruction and related materials and to keep them from being acquired by terrorists and states of proliferation concern.

Through the program, which supports the 25-member global partnership against the spread of weapons of mass destruction, Canada is actively implementing concrete nuclear security projects globally, and has spent more than $485 million toward nuclear and radiological security to date. This includes $209 million toward nuclear submarine dismantlement in Russia, $194 million on physical security projects in the former Soviet Union, and $13 million to prevent illicit trafficking of nuclear and radiological materials. We have also made major contributions to the elimination of WMD-related material including a $9 million investment to shut down the last plutonium-producing reactor in Russia.

The program has since refocused its efforts to target new and emerging threats in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and the Americas.

For example, the global partnership program has recently contributed $8 million to remove highly enriched uranium and to convert research reactors to run on non-weapons usable nuclear material—low-enriched uranium—in Mexico and Vietnam. A $1.5-million contribution was also made to secure radiological sources in Libya, in co-operation with the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Numerous projects elsewhere in the world have also received contributions.

A significant portion of the program's budget over the next five years is also expected to be spent on nuclear and radiological security projects.

In conclusion, Bill S-9 is an integral part of a comprehensive Canadian strategy to combat nuclear terrorism, and a key component of Canada's promotion of nuclear security abroad. We have made progress in addressing this threat, but much remains to be done.

My colleagues and I would be pleased to respond to your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Mr. Barber.

I extend a special welcome to Professor Bunn, who is joining us via video conference. Thank you, sir. I'm assuming you have an opening statement, and we would be very happy to hear it.

[Prof. Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University]

Thank you very much. It's an honour to be here to talk about a topic that I think is extraordinarily important to the security of Canada, the United States, and the world.

I agree with a great deal, essentially all, of what Mr. Barber had to say on these points. The potential consequences if terrorists did manage to detonate a nuclear bomb are so horrifying, both for the country attacked and for the world, that even a small probability is enough to demand urgent action to reduce that probability further. Canada and the United States have been leaders in that effort to secure nuclear material and prevent nuclear terror zones, as Mr. Barber described.

Since the September 11 attacks in the United States, both countries have improved security for their own nuclear materials, helped others to do the same, helped to strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts, and worked to strengthen other elements of the global response. But if the United States and Canada are to succeed in convincing other countries to take a responsible approach to reducing the risks of nuclear theft and terrorism at the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in 2014 and beyond, then our two countries have to take the lead in taking responsible action ourselves.

Hence, it is important for both of our countries to ratify the main conventions in this area: the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, the amendment to that convention, and the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. This is what the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit called on countries to do. As you know, the leaders at the Seoul summit set a target of gaining enough ratifications to bring the amendment to the physical protection convention into force by the 2014 summit. The legislation before you would make it possible for Canada to ratify both of these conventions, and I urge you to approve that legislation.

Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, my own country, the United States, has not yet approved the comparable legislation. I regarded it as an embarrassment that we failed to do that before the 2010 summit, and it's a worse embarrassment that we failed to do it again before the 2012 summit. The process is still under way. I am at least somewhat optimistic that we will succeed in getting it done, if not this year, then before the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit. But I think we've got a good chance of doing it this year.

The danger of nuclear terrorism remains very real. Government studies in the United States and in other countries have concluded that if terrorists manage to get enough highly enriched uranium or plutonium, they might very well be able to make a crude nuclear bomb capable of incinerating the heart of a major city. In the case of highly enriched uranium, making such a bomb is basically a matter of slamming two pieces together at high speed. The amounts required are small, and smuggling them is frighteningly easy.

The core of al Qaeda is, as President Obama mentioned the other night, a shadow of its former self, but regional affiliates are metastasizing and some of the key nuclear operatives of al Qaeda remain free today. With at least two terrorist groups having pursued nuclear weapons seriously in the last 20 years, we cannot expect that they will be the last. Moreover, some terrorists have seriously considered sabotaging nuclear power plants, perhaps causing something like what we saw at Fukushima in Japan, or dispersing highly radioactive materials in a so-called “dirty bomb”.

Should terrorists succeed in detonating a nuclear bomb in a major city, the political, economic, and social effects would reverberate throughout the world. Kofi Annan, when he was secretary-general of the United Nations, warned that the economic effects would drive millions of people into poverty and create a second death toll in the developing world. Fears that terrorists might have another bomb that they might set off somewhere else would be acute. The world would be transformed, and not for the better.

Hence, insecure nuclear material anywhere is really a threat to everyone, everywhere. This is not just an American judgment. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of our time. Mohamed ElBaradei, while he was head of the IAEA, called it the greatest threat to the world.

Russia's counterterrorism czar, Anatoly Safonov, has warned that they have “firm knowledge” that terrorists have been given specific tasks to acquire nuclear weapons and their components.

A little while ago my colleagues at the Belfer Center and I, working with Russian colleagues, produced a joint U.S.-Russian assessment of the threat of nuclear terrorism, which was then endorsed by a group of retired senior military and intelligence officers from both countries, which I would be happy to provide for the record.

Fortunately, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've made tremendous progress around the world in improving security for both nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them. No longer are there sites where the essential ingredients of a nuclear bomb are sitting in what you and I would consider the equivalent of a high school gym locker with a padlock that could be snapped with a bolt cutter from any hardware store.

At scores of sites around the world, dramatically improved nuclear security has been put in place. At scores of other sites the weapons-usable nuclear material has been removed entirely, reducing the threat of nuclear theft from those sites to zero. More than 20 countries have eliminated all the weapons-usable nuclear material on their soil, and the nuclear security summits have provided new high-level political impetus, which has accelerated this progress.

Nonetheless, as Mr. Barber pointed out, there's a great deal still to be done. My colleagues and I at the Belfer Center, prior to last year's summit, produced a summary report that outlines what has been done and what remains to be done, and I would be happy to provide that for the record as well.

Let me mention a few of the more dangerous areas that still exist.

In Pakistan, a small but rapidly growing nuclear stockpile, which is under heavy security, I believe, faces more extreme threats than any other nuclear stockpile in the world, both from heavily armed extremists who might attack from outside and from potential insiders who might help them.

In Russia, which has the world's largest stockpiles of both nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material dispersed in the largest number of buildings and bunkers, the nuclear security measures have dramatically improved, but there are still important weaknesses that a sophisticated theft conspiracy might exploit. And sustainability remains a major concern, as Russia still has neither the strong nuclear security rules effectively enforced nor sufficient funds allocated from the federal government to sustain security for the long haul.

At more than a hundred research reactors around the world, you still have highly enriched uranium used as fuel or as targets for the production of medical isotopes, and in many of these reactors, security is very minimal. Some of them are on university campuses.

At the moment, unfortunately, the mechanisms for global governance of nuclear security remain weak. No global rules specify how secure a nuclear weapon or a chunk of plutonium or highly enriched uranium ought to be. There are no mechanisms in place to verify that every country that has these materials is securing them responsibly.

Fukushima made clear that action is needed to strengthen both the global safety regime and the global security regime, because some day terrorists might seek to do what a tsunami did in Fukushima.

A central goal leading up to the 2014 nuclear security summit must be to find ways to work together to strengthen this global framework and continue the high-level attention on this topic after nuclear security summits stop taking place.

Ratifying the conventions now is important, but it should be seen, as Mr. Barber said, as one part of an integrated strategy and really as the beginning of building and strengthening this global framework. I think there are very important roles Canada can play in that effort.

I am thrilled that Canada has taken action to begin reducing the highly enriched uranium left over from past medical isotope production and past research reactor operations in Canada. I think that's a major step forward. An even more important step forward is the efforts Mr. Barber described to help other countries. Also, there are the really dramatic steps, I think very effective and impressive steps, that Canada has taken to strengthen security for its own nuclear material within Canada.

One of the things that happened at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit was a goal of each country making a statement about what it would do to minimize highly enriched uranium by the end of this year, by December 2013. It is my hope that at that time Canada will join with European and South African producers of medical isotopes in a firm commitment to eliminate the use of HEU in medical isotopes by a date certain, and that Canada will set a target for eliminating the civil HEU on its soil, which is no longer needed.

The passage of this legislation, both in your country and in my country, will be an important and useful step, and I hope that Canada's passage will help kick my own Senate and House of Representatives into action.

Thank you very much. I look forward to the opportunity to answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Professor. I appreciate your taking the time to join us by video link.

We are going to move to questions now. Our first questioner is Mr. Mai, from the New Democratic Party.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Professor Bunn. Thank you, Mr. Barber and all the officers, for very insightful presentations. It's really important for us to hear your expertise. Thank you very much for that.

My question is for Mr. Barber, and it has to do with the bill's extraterritorial aspect.

Clause 3 of Bill S-9 talks about extraterritorial jurisdiction that could apply in the case of certain actions.

The following offences are not covered: an offence committed abroad against a Canadian citizen; an offence committed against a state or a government facility of that state abroad, including an embassy or diplomatic or consular premises; an offence committed abroad by a permanent resident or a stateless person who habitually resides in that state. Can you explain to us why that is and tell us what consequences it could have?

[Shawn Barber]

I appreciate the question. It is an important one.

I'm not a lawyer, and the question perhaps is more properly addressed to my Justice colleagues, who I believe will be appearing in the second hour. That might be an appropriate time to ask that particular question.

Again, it's an important one, but I think it's more properly addressed to them.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

When the Minister of Justice appeared before this committee, the bill's implementation was discussed. It was also said that it would be desirable for the bill to move along quickly. At that time, I made a comparison with Bill C-7, An Act to amend certain Acts of Canada, and to enact measures for implementing the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, in order to enhance public safety.

Did you know that this piece of legislation has still not come into force? Can you tell us what is behind that delay and whether we will see a similar delay in this case?

[Shawn Barber]

Will Bill S-9 be delayed as Bill C-7—

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Maybe it will for Bill C-7, so that we understand what happens in that case.

[Shawn Barber]

There are some legal technicalities with respect to Bill C-7, as it has been explained to me by my legal bureau. I'd prefer to undertake to provide you with their response on this. It's more of a legal technical nature, but I'm assured by them that Canada has in place all of the legislative provisions necessary to implement the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention as it currently exists.

My understanding is that at the time Bill C-7 was being brought forward and passed, it contained provisions that foreshadowed the passage or amendment of the BTWC, which in fact never happened. There has been a long-standing attempt to implement within the BTWC a verification mechanism similar to what you have within the Chemical Weapons Convention. Of course, verifying the presence of chemicals is quite easy. Verifying the presence of dangerous biological pathogens is much more difficult. So it's related to the failure to amend the BTWC, which Bill C-7 foreshadowed, and therefore that's the reason it has not been enacted. But that's a layman's non-legal interpretation, and I will undertake to ask my legal bureau to provide you with a more technical legal interpretation of that.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you for the information.

Maybe I'll move over to Professor Bunn.

Are you familiar with the provisions of Bill S-9, and can you compare it to what the U.S. will eventually put in place in terms of legislation?

[Prof. Matthew Bunn]

Both pieces of legislation are intended to make sure that this nation's laws are consistent with the obligations in the convention to prohibit certain acts related to nuclear terrorism, and to impose penalties that are consistent with the magnitude of those crimes.

Given the number of people who might be killed in the event of an act of nuclear terrorism, my view is that acts like nuclear smuggling should be considered as being like conspiracy to commit murder or something of that level of gravity.

In Bill S-9, for example, the penalties are up to life in prison for many of the acts enumerated.

In the United States, part of what has delayed our passage of the relevant legislation is an attempt both in the Bush administration and in the Obama administration to include death penalty provisions for some of these acts. Some of the people in Congress were resisting that.

A bipartisan compromise in the United States was negotiated in the house—practically the only bipartisan compromise I can think of that's been negotiated in the house in recent years—but a small number of senators managed to hold it up, wanting to go back to the original death penalty provision. That's part of politics in the United States.

I would say the biggest difference is that difference between life imprisonment and death as the potential penalty.

But the particular acts included in Bill S-9 and included in the U.S. legislation are the acts specified in the conventions, so they would allow each country to ratify the conventions.

My own view is that if you take a broad reading of U.S. law, the relevant acts are already prohibited and the United States should have ratified these conventions long ago without bothering to pass any implementing legislation. But the Department of Justice took the view that we needed to dot every i and cross every t by passing this legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mai.

Our next questioner is from the Conservative Party, Ms. Findlay.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here; and to you, Professor Bunn, thank you so much.

Professor Bunn, I note that you are an associate professor of public policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which I think is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and that your research interests include nuclear theft and terrorism, nuclear proliferation and measures to control it, the future of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle, and policies to promote innovation in energy technology. I feel we're well placed having you here today to give us the value of your opinion, so I thank you very much.

Professor, you referred in your opening remarks to the Belfer Center's 2011 report, entitled “The U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment of Nuclear Terrorism”. Your report states, “Of all varieties of terrorism, nuclear terrorism poses the gravest threat to the world.”

When you testified before the Senate special committee on this bill in June of last year, you said:

In Pakistan, a small but rapidly growing nuclear stockpile that is under heavy security faces more extreme threats than any other nuclear stockpile in the world, both from heavily armed extremists and potential insiders who might help them.

You also stated:

In Russia, which has the world's largest stockpiles of both nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials disbursed in the largest number of buildings and bunkers of any country in the world, the nuclear security measures have dramatically improved.

That is good news. You went on to say:

However, some weaknesses remain....

Your colleague, Simon Saradzhyan, drew particular attention to the actions and intent of the terrorist groups based in Russia's North Caucasus. During his testimony before the Senate committee the professor pointed out that these groups have already “acquired radioactive materials. They have threatened to attack Russian nuclear facilities. They have plotted to hijack a nuclear submarine using expertise acquired by a former naval officer who was part of these networks.”

In your testimony here today you talked about the concern of terrorism doing what the tsunami did—or could even have done worse, I suppose—in Japan recently.

In taking all of this together, I would like to hear a little more from you on how significant this threat of nuclear terrorism is in our world, and how vigilant you feel we need to be in terms of addressing it as best we can.

[Prof. Matthew Bunn]

I believe it's a major threat to international security, which is why I've devoted a good chunk of my career over the last 20 years to working on this problem.

I do think, however, that the probability is lower than it was, say, at the time of the September 11 attacks. Since then the capabilities of the core of al Qaeda, the part of al Qaeda that had the greatest nuclear ambitions, have been greatly reduced since the death of Bin Laden and the capture and killing of many others. There's a large quantity of nuclear material that is now much more secure than it used to be.

What is the probability? No one can really know, but I would argue that given the huge consequences, even a very small probability is enough to say the risk is too high and we need to take action to reduce it.

One analogy I often use is that no one in their right mind would operate a nuclear power plant upwind of a major city if it had one chance in a hundred every year of blowing sky-high. Everybody would understand that it was too big a risk. My view is that we may be taking a bigger risk than that in the way that the world manages nuclear materials around the world today.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Those quotes I had from you mention Pakistan and Russia. Of course, we're always hearing threats of potential concerns coming out of the Middle East, particularly Iran. What is the degree of cooperation we're seeing?

I suppose what I'm trying to say is if we can't necessarily be confident of international cooperation, do you feel we're doing the right thing by at least taking these domestic steps?

[Prof. Matthew Bunn]

I think the domestic steps, such as passing this legislation, are crucial to being able to build this global framework. The reality is that we won't get everybody participating in this global framework. You're not going to see North Korea ratifying these treaties any time soon.

On the other hand, I think that through the international cooperation that we have managed to achieve, through initiatives such as Mr. Barber mentioned, global initiatives to combat nuclear terrorism and global partnership against the spread of weapons and materials of mass destruction, we've managed to get many countries where radioactive materials or even nuclear materials were quite vulnerable to take action by improving the security of those items or by getting rid of them entirely from particular places. I think that has reduced the risk to all of us.

I think that even though international cooperation will never be perfect and we won't ever accomplish everything we would like to accomplish, we're accomplishing a lot. Part of accomplishing that is putting in place in our own countries, in the United States and in Canada, the legislation and the ratification of the relevant conventions that will help us lean on other countries to take those same actions themselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Ms. Findlay, for the questions.

The next questioner is from the Liberal Party. It's Mr. Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to start by asking you about extraterritorial jurisdiction.

The actors that are involved in these types of crimes.... The world is a small place. One of the considerations or one of the possibilities in terms of prosecution is if a person is found to be in Canada after the commission of the offence, regardless of where the offence was committed.

My question relates to a situation in which you're in a tug-of-war with another jurisdiction. Is there any insight you can provide with respect to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion as to whether to prosecute or to extradite when you find yourself in that situation? Can you shed some light on that?

[Shawn Barber]

Mr. Casey, that's a very important question, but as I indicated earlier, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not qualified to comment in that regard.

My colleagues from Justice Canada are here behind me. I think you'll have an opportunity to ask them those specific questions when you go through clause-by-clause consideration later in the committee meeting.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Let me come back to something that took place in the course of the Senate deliberations on this. It was suggested at the Senate committee that Canada's regulatory framework has been in place for years and is already sufficient to implement physical protection under a couple of treaties: ICSANT, the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, and the amendment to CPPNM, the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.

Is it correct that what we have in place now is sufficient to satisfy our obligations under these treaties, or is this bill actually necessary for us to be in a position to ratify either one?

[Shawn Barber]

My colleague, Terry Wood, was at the centre of negotiations on the amendment to that convention, so I'll let him answer that question.

[Terry Wood, Senior Co-ordinator, International Nuclear Cooperation, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

Thank you very much.

That's a very good question, Mr. Casey. Both conventions contain a number of binding obligations. We are able to implement virtually all of those obligations under existing law in Canada. However, both conventions put forward criminal offences. Those are detailed in a specific article in both conventions. I can give you the references if you wish.

Fortunately, for us at least, in those conventions the wording is relatively plain language. We are able to implement all of the obligations without implementing legislation, except for the provisions requiring criminalization. So to answer your question, yes, implementing legislation is needed, but it's of a fairly narrow scope with regard to the new criminal provisions that are introduced in both conventions. Fortunately, in these two conventions, those additional criminal provisions are sufficiently similar in each convention that we can address them through one piece of legislation.

In the Minister of Justice's news release and the backgrounder that was issued when the legislation was introduced, there's a very concise four-point summary as to the changes that are needed in this regard. But if you wish, I can draw your attention to the specific articles of each convention on which legislative action is required by Canada.

Thank you.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I wasn't at the last meeting, but the note that had been provided by Mr. Cotler indicated that one of the things the minister said was that S-9 just particularizes offences that are already generally criminalized. I'm not asking you to get into a debate with the minister, of course, but I take it that that's exactly the point you're making, that it's....

Okay, thank you.