Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the warm welcome. We are friends, but I do need to put on the record that I'm only here because the committee has made the process more difficult by adopting a motion that I'm sure you were asked to adopt by someone in some central authority of the Liberal Party. Every committee passed the identically worded motion, so it puts a bit of a test to the fiction that the committee really does control its own process.
Because of the motion you passed, my rights are infringed. I no longer have the right to present these amendments at report stage because I have been invited here. It's a very large increase to my workload and it happens at every committee. I am here for clause-by-clause, and I know you have a long process. I just want to remind you of why I'm here.
I'll be as brief as I can. This first amendment is to create a definition for the term “vulnerable population”, which is used in the legislation. You heard from a couple of witnesses, one of whom was the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, who suggested that there be a definition of “vulnerable population”. They set out some factors, such as a person's ethnicity, economic status, drug dependency, age, mental disability and overall health. Those are from the brief of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Also, Dr. Marie-Eve Sylvestre, of the University of Ottawa law school, suggested some other aspects of defining “vulnerable population”.
That's why we've crafted this definition, which includes, in more appropriate legislative statutory language, the essence of what was being recommended by witnesses who you've heard already. I won't read it to you, but it also draws on some of the language from Bill C-81 in terms of people with disability and will be a guidance to a police officer for an operational capacity, as suggested by the chiefs of police.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.