Sure.
I note that it's not 100% correct to say that religion is given special protection. Actually, section 2(a) of the charter guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, so as Mr. MacGregor points out, conscience is there just as much as religion.
I know the argument is that there are things captured by this that are not captured by other sections. As I understood the argument, it was only that there might be things that didn't meet the definition of “disturbance” in causing a disturbance, but meet the definition here. Again, this is an illustration of my point about the fact that our code just doesn't keep up to date. Actually, the Supreme Court of Canada, in 1985, in a case called Skoke-Graham v. the Queen, as I read it, seemed to say that you needed the same standard of behaviour for being a disturbance, whether it's causing a disturbance or disturbing a religious assembly. That one narrow gap that might have been there isn't there, in my reading, but it's not a topic I've devoted a lot of time to.
Even if that narrow gap were there, it strikes me that the question the committee ought to be asking itself is not if it can find some way not to remove this, but rather what must be there in a proper approach to a Criminal Code. What's serious enough that we can't do without it, that causes such harm that it ought to be in the Criminal Code, and that cannot be solved by any method other than criminalization?
I think that's actually the orientation to take—not just toward section 176, and not just toward the other provisions that are being removed by this bill, but to the entire thing. What things do you have to have? Those are the things you should keep. That's the way to ask the question.