I am not going to say much that Bruce hasn't already said.
I want to start by saying that the great advantage of the criminal law is that it can apply right across the country. On the problem with leaving the provinces and territories to enact prohibitions on genetic discrimination on their own, I agree with Professor Ryder that they would certainly have the power to do that. I'm sure that no province wants to permit genetic discrimination.
However, each province has its own legislative priorities, and a prohibition of genetic discrimination may not make the cut. If we did leave this to the provinces, I think we could be absolutely certain that there would not be a nationwide rule. The beauty of exercising the criminal law power is that it does provide a nationwide rule.
If I could talk a little again about assisted human reproduction, I appeared in the Supreme Court case for the federal government, and I was extremely disappointed when the whole scheme was not upheld. They did uphold certain prohibitions, but they struck down the regulatory scheme that had been established, I thought, under the criminal law power. However, the majority of the court disagreed. It was interesting that the provinces said it was something that was within their bailiwick. The majority of the court—although it is a very confusing judgment and the judges were all over the place—essentially agreed.
Do we expect the provinces to step up and deal with assisted human reproduction? If we did, we would be very disappointed. The provinces thought that was too controversial, too complicated, and the result of the Supreme Court's decision is that apart from the bits that were upheld, assisted human reproduction remains unregulated in most of the country. I think that's a really unfortunate situation.
I'm simply arguing for the great advantage once the federal Parliament makes some choices of enacting it through the criminal law, and where it will have a national effect.
A valid criminal law involves three elements. Professor Ryder has talked about them. There has to be a prohibition, there has to be a penalty, and there has to be a typically criminal purpose.
Limiting myself to the proposed genetic non-discrimination act—that piece of the bill—there is a prohibition of genetic discrimination. There is a penalty for breach of the prohibition. The only conceivable purpose of that is to prohibit and prevent what Parliament would regard as the evil of genetic discrimination. I agree completely with Professor Ryder's conclusion that the proposed law would be a valid exercise of Parliament's criminal law power.
I should add that I've read the Torys' opinion, which you have, which says that it's really about insurance, employment, etc. I don't agree with that. It seems to me that the act says nothing about those topics. I gather the topic of insurance was explicitly in the bill at an earlier stage. Professor Thibault took the view that the bill was unconstitutional for that reason. That's been eliminated, so this is not a prohibition that just applies to.... It's not singling out the insurance industry. It's not singling out employers. It's a perfectly general application.
So I do not agree with the Torys opinion, which was rendered on behalf of the insurance industry, that it's in pith and substance a matter of property and civil rights—i.e., insurance. Torys also said, and I disagree with them here as well, that we know there's a prohibition and a penalty, but it lacks a typically criminal purpose. In my opinion, the prohibition and prevention of the evil of genetic discrimination would clearly be accepted by the courts as a criminal law purpose.
Mr. Chair, let me stop there and await your questions.