Thank you very much. I appreciate everybody's testimony today.
I grew up in Morinville, Alberta, and at the time the Catholic church was the big dominant presence. I was an altar boy and I even played the organ up in the top of the church because the organ I had at home only had one pedal, one octave of pedals, not two. I had a distinguished member of the clergy come and see me about section 176 this summer. It started our doing some research. I don't come at this from a legal perspective. I come at this from the perspective of the task set before us, which is to clean up the Criminal Code.
My overarching question for all of you is, what is lost? How does this actually affect clergy women and men and all people practising faith, leading their congregation, if we remove section 176? From my reading of the code, this is covered. The acts in section 176 are covered not just by section 2(a) in the charter, which gives broad interpretation to justices about any issues it might bring forward. If we take a look at the code, we see that section 175, disturbances; all forms of assault, sections 265 to 268; uttering threats, section 264.1; and Canada's hate crimes further prohibit conduct that incites hatred against identifiable groups, including those distinguished by religion, which are sections 318 and 319. Then there's also mischief provisions which you alluded to earlier.
I'm a fan of the data. We asked the Library of Parliament to look at the data. They pulled all the available data on section 176 from 2001 to 2014-15. There were 30 court cases in the whole country involving section 176. In 25 of those cases, the charges were staid or withdrawn. Only three led to a conviction. The most recent one here in Ottawa will likely not go forward because the person who was to be charged had a mental illness, and the priest at Saint Patrick said, “That's not fair. We're not going to go there”.
What would put your people at risk if section 176 is removed, given all the broad protection you have in the Criminal Code and in the charter?