First of all, I want to thank my friend, Mr. Baber, for these amendments, because I share his desire for a Criminal Code clause that includes the wilful promotion of terrorist activities or the activities of a terrorist group. I share his view that this should be in the Criminal Code. I share his view that it should be a specific offence, and I appreciate his leadership in putting forward a private member's bill on this subject, but I think we all, on both sides of the aisle, who care about having this as an offence, want to put it in Bill C-9, a government bill, to ensure that it becomes law even more quickly. Then we can give Mr. Baber due credit and allow him to put forward a different private member's bill if needed.
The goal is to make this law. I think we should agree on that. I think we differ on just a couple of issues that I would consider the two major issues.
One is that we don't want any amendment that this committee may pass to be struck down by the Speaker as being outside the scope of the bill. Using clauses that are outside of what the bill originally intended to do makes the danger of that much greater. I totally understand why my colleague is rightly saying that this is a terrorist offence and it should go in the terrorist section of the bill, but there was no terrorist section of the bill. To me, adding this as a clause in that section creates a risk that, regardless of how this committee votes.... The Speaker today struck down amendments from a different committee. I would rather see it in the sections of the act that we're amending, to remove or mitigate that risk.
The other question we both have.... I'm sure we all agree that we want this to be upheld constitutionally. I think there are two differences in how we treated the issue. One is that “communicating statements” incorporates private conversations in CPC-2, and LIB-2 does not incorporate private conversations. I think incorporating private conversations creates a charter risk.
I don't know if you folks would want to opine on the potential charter risk of incorporating private statements, but at least in my view, it does. I'll let you come back and let me know if you have a position on it or not, if you're allowed to speak on it. I don't know if you are or not, because if that's legal advice, I understand you can't.