Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses. I appreciate the fact that we have such capable legal expertise in this situation, because we need some guidance.
I spoke with a number of you earlier—all three of you, briefly.
I'll get right into this. I'm going to bring it up on my laptop here to look at the text of the bill.
One of the main questions I have is this. Oftentimes, when we use terms in law, we'll define them, even if they're well known to the public or in the English language. For instance, everybody knows what a manager is, but when we're looking at putting criminal liability on somebody, that word might be something we define in the Criminal Code. To be clear, the word “manager” isn't defined, nor is “owner”. For instance, an owner of a long-term care facility could be somebody.... It's likely to be a corporation. The owner is going to be a corporation, not the shareholder of the corporation, who may themselves be running it.
Is everybody with me so far?
One of the questions I have.... This is the main one and it will probably take up the six minutes. To commit a crime, a person has to do the act. In this case, the act would be a failure to provide the necessities. That's the criminal act involving wrongdoing, but there also has to be an element of intent there. Sometimes, that element of intent might be negligence. That's how it's placed here.
The question I have is this: Is there an issue with the constitutionality of imputing or putting liability on an owner or manager who doesn't necessarily have the day-to-day care of the patient who suffers harm? Is that question clear?