Thank you, Madam Chair.
What I would say is that when the Teachers' Federation was testifying and brought forward this suggestion that they would take away section 43 and put in amendments to the Criminal Code, they didn't understand that the private member's process didn't allow that. When Mr. Garrison and I pointed that out to them, I specifically asked those witnesses, if we can't amend the Criminal Code, then what about section 43? They said they would not be happy to not have that protection.
Again, I think it would be irresponsible to take a bill that, as Mr. Moore correctly pointed out, has been brought forward on a false premise. The examples that were presented were clearly abuse that's already criminal, and that is not what we're talking about in section 43. To then pull this bait and switch on truth and reconciliation to say, “Oh, we'll take out 43, but we'll put it in somewhere else,” is disingenuous at the minimum.
Not only that, but I have no confidence this government can bring a bill in the time remaining before the next election. Bills, even if they're not controversial, can take about 18 months to get through the whole process, and we haven't even seen a draft of this bill. I think there's no way we could responsibly say, “Oh, yeah, we'll pull out section 43,” on the off chance the government gets it right in the legislation that actually gets passed. I don't think we can do that. We have to stand up for parents, and we have to stand up for teachers and provide them protection until such time as the government actually brings legislation that could do it in an alternative method. That's my opinion.