Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, as I told the parliamentary secretary a moment ago, I'm not in the habit of introducing amendments at the last minute, and I apologize. It's important to understand, however, the context in which we study certain bills here, in committee. In light of that, this shouldn't be that surprising. Much of the time, we are asked to submit any amendments we may have by such and such a date and time, even though we still have witnesses to hear from. It troubles me every time that happens.
I think it's important to make that point clear to the committee. It complicates things. Seriously, sometimes I have amendment ideas, but they aren't enough to mobilize a number of people to draw them up and so forth. They may be just ideas, and I may have more questions once I've heard the other witnesses.
Sometimes, we have to suffer through an amendment such as this one, a bit on the fly, as you will say. You all have the amendment in front of you. The amendment had actually been drafted initially. I held it back, however, for the simple reason that we had come to the conclusion that subparagraph 718.2(a)(ii.1) of the Criminal Code already provided for an additional penalty or an aggravating element when a crime was committed against a minor. So, then, we could assume it would involve the type of file we have before us, specifically Bill C-394.
That said, I think Minister Swan's comments were quite clear. His brief contains many other elements he would like to see implemented. We will study that carefully and, then, see whether the government decides to introduce other bills or whether other members decide to introduce private member's bills in response to some of his recommendations. Time will tell.
There is an amendment we can definitely make as we speak. We must send a clear message about the arena in which recruitment takes place. The minister put it quite well, for that matter. One of his recommendations was to make recruitment near a school or community centre an aggravating circumstance. He didn't propose making it a separate offence but, rather, an aggravating circumstance that the court would have to consider with respect to sentencing.
I think that fits very nicely into what our colleague Parm Gill was trying to achieve by introducing Bill C-394. It sends an additional message to the courts, which must examine the circumstances and establish the length of the sentence somewhere between six months and five years.
If the evidence shows that the person was indeed caught recruiting near a school or community centre, this sends a clear message that doing so is categorically unacceptable and represents the worst case scenario. As I see it, recruitment of any kind is despicable, but doing it in vulnerable areas where kids hang out, schools and community centres, is even worse.
So that's the gist of the amendment proposed. To my mind, it fits into Bill C-394 quite nicely.