Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. MacGregor, for putting forward the amendment.
I do not support the amendment, although I know it's well intentioned. My worry would be that, in opening it up to public places more generally than what I'm contemplating, it would make it overly broad. I really think that the provisions here for hate mischief are designed to meet certain specificity requirements in order to meet the high threshold for something's being considered a hate crime, mischief.
It doesn't mean that, of course, other types of mischief would not attract criminal sanctions. In fact, if they were motivated by hate, that could be considered an aggravating factor in sentencing. We're just talking about the degree of penalty here, and I believe that we're better served in this bill by being more cautious with regard to the broad nature or specificity of the buildings or structures that we're talking about, and “public place”, in my view, would go beyond that.
For that reason, I don't support the amendment.