Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to welcome a fellow British Columbian and colleague, and I thank her for her presence today.
Ms. Fry, the intent of your bill is certainly laudable, to ensure that existing offences apply to bullying conduct that is criminal in nature when it is communicated through the use of the Internet. However, its approaches, in my view, raise significant criminal policy concerns, and I'll just quickly go through those.
Offences generally apply to specific conduct, so even though the means used, such as the Internet, are not necessarily specified—for example, murder is murder regardless of a weapon or a means used to commit such a murder—amending some of the offences that could apply to bullying, and then excluding others, for example, section 264.1, uttering threats, could become problematic. An example of that would be that the inclusion of a reference to the use of a computer or the Internet in some offences could be interpreted to mean that its exclusion from others is intentional, such that other offences might not be interpreted to apply to conduct carried out with the use of a computer or the Internet.
Also, its proposed terminology, “computer or a group of interconnected or related computers, including the Internet, or any similar means of communication”, is inconsistent with the provisions throughout the Criminal Code, such as my colleague, Mr. Seeback, mentioned earlier.
I would say that having two terms relating to the same medium could cause issues or confusion.
In short, my view is that Bill C-273's proposed amendments to section 264 and section 298 do not enhance the Criminal Code's existing treatment of bullying that constitute criminal conduct and could even impede its current ability to effectively address such conduct.
How would you respond to these concerns?