Thank you for the question, and thanks to all of you for the support.
There was only one article, so there was an advantage there in making the consultations more efficient.
It was also a known problem. There had been legal scholars who felt that this provision was unconstitutional from the time of the Daviault decision. The court gave us two options: We could create a new law that basically framed this kind of situation or we could take the old law and address the situation they were worried about, which was the person who innocently goes into that state without any ability to have known that this might happen—or shouldn't have known, on an objective standard.
We felt that the second option was easier, because it contained known standards, first of all, and for judges or Crown prosecutors or defence attorneys it had less potential for unforeseen consequences. When you create a new standard, when you create a new law, there will be periods of interpretation: What's the scope? How far will this go? What does this include?
In part, it was that. The other part was what the victims themselves said: “The person sexually assaulted me. I want the person to be charged with sexual assault. I don't want them to be charged with some form of criminal negligence. It doesn't carry the same stigma.” I think that was probably determinative.