Evidence of meeting #17 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Amendment CPC-28.2 is withdrawn.
Amendment CPC-28.3 is withdrawn.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Amendments CPC-28.2 and CPC-28.3 are withdrawn. This means that clause 6, then, has no amendments for us to consider, and we can move to debate on clause 6 itself in the original form.
Mr. Rankin.
5:40 p.m.
NDP
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
I'm in favour of it. I just want to ask the officials whether there's any problem with the fact that in some places we're using the word “individual” and in other places we're using, as we do in proposed paragraph 245(2)(b) of the exemption, “a person”. Does that cause any difficulty from a drafting perspective?
We used “individual”, you will recall, a moment ago in the greater certainty clause, as an example.
May 10th, 2016 / 5:40 p.m.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
It creates a funny situation. Sometimes “person” in the Criminal Code means both an individual and a corporate entity or other type of organization. In other circumstances, because of the context, it's likely to be restricted to something a human being is actually physically able to do.
The standard formulation for offences and exemptions is always framed in terms of any person, so this is absolutely consistent with the way the criminal law is drafted.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
On that point—I think it is an excellent point—I want to be consistent in the wording. I would imagine that this, obviously, means an individual as well. It would be identical.
Would there be any problem with amending the wording, so that it's consistent, to “an individual” throughout?
5:40 p.m.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
Yes. There would be a problem of coherence with the entirety of the Criminal Code with that. We just don't use “individual” unless there's a very specific context in which we're absolutely certain we mean only to catch human beings, as distinct from corporate entities.
Otherwise, corporate bodies and organizations are able to commit criminal offences and be prosecuted for criminal offences. It very much depends on the context whether it's an offence that an entity is able to commit. But there's no problem with drafting using the term “a person”.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Do you know of other examples of sections within the Criminal Code that would interchange between “an individual” and “a person”?
5:40 p.m.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
I can't think of any, off the top of my head, in which we use “individual”.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
I'd like to ask the officials.... I'm not quite clear on the context that this exists in. Could you clarify it for me?
5:40 p.m.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
Section 245 is the offence of administering a noxious substance to a person. In the Carter ruling, the Supreme Court did not identify this offence as being core to the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide. This offence has not been struck down.
It is an offence that is extremely unlikely to ever be charged in the context of medical assistance in dying. Nonetheless, we consider that out of an abundance of caution, because technically it might be an offence that could be legally applicable in the context of medical assistance in dying, a basic set of exemptions were put in to give certainty that also this offence should not be charged when a person has engaged in medical assistance in dying in conformity with the rules.
But it's extremely unlikely that this is an offence that would ever be a live issue in such a case.
5:45 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
I have a question for the officials.
What you're saying is that the clause 6 we're looking at right now, with its proposed new subsection 245(2), is actually outside of the Carter ruling.
5:45 p.m.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
Yes. The offence has not been found to be unconstitutional, but nonetheless, the offence of administering a noxious substance to a person is in law potentially an offence that could be charged, where a physician or nurse practitioner administers a substance to a person within the meaning of medical assistance in dying.
Because it's an offence that could technically be committed in law when a physician engages in medical assistance in dying, the exemptions were put into this offence as well, just to ensure that there was not some.... We went through the Criminal Code to ensure there weren't other offences that might be committed for which the exemptions also had to be made available. This is the one that we identified.
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
I would just add, Mr. Chair, that it would seem to me this provision makes sense. It would have to be there, because that offence would be necessarily incidental in carrying out medical assistance in dying; therefore, I think this is a good measure, obviously, to have in here.
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Understood; is there any further debate?
Not hearing any, we're going to move to a vote on clause 6 as drafted in the legislation.
Mr. Nicholson, did you vote in favour, or are you abstaining?
5:45 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
I abstain.
(Clause 6 agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Next we move to clause 7.
(On clause 7)
My ruling on CPC-29 is that it's incidental to CPC-1 and CPC-4 that were ruled unreceivable. As a result, CPC-29 cannot go forward, because it would have presumed that we have done something that we have not done in the other two amendments.
The bells are going for the vote. Could I suggest that we do CPC-29.1 and then go to the vote, and then we'll come back?
I need unanimous consent to carry on once the bells start ringing. Do I have unanimous consent of the committee members to do that?
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
We're going to continue our clause-by-clause review.
We have agreement among the different parties that we will go through to clause 11. We will finish with clause 11 and then we'll break and come back at four o'clock tomorrow to do the preamble. We will be working collaboratively on different parts of the preamble that we all want to make sure are properly reflected in hopefully unanimous agreement for tomorrow.
My guess is that we'll be finished in about an hour tomorrow, provided people present things that are receivable or collaboratively agreed.
We'll move now to where we were, clause 7. Amendment CPC-29.1 is an amendment from Mr. Genuis.
Mr. Falk, will you move it to put it on the floor for Mr. Genuis?
5:45 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
This amendment makes what I think is a language consistency fix. The clause presently refers to assistance that a person was “entitled to receive”. Now, that is not language that is used elsewhere in the bill, so I've changed it to “for which they were determined to be able to receive that assistance”. It doesn't use language that is not consistent with language used elsewhere. I changed “illness, disease or disability” to “illness or disease”, because I don't think disability is reasonably covered in the language used in other parts of the bill.
Of course, If people like the second part of the change and don't like the removal of “disability”, then, of course, you're welcome to move a subamendment, which would change the one point, but not the other.
