Evidence of meeting #14 for Justice and Human Rights in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-9.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Chair, can we just have it done in French and English so that everybody can appreciate the amendment on the floor?
Conservative
Andrew Lawton Conservative Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON
I have a point of order.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe that Ms. Lattanzio heard Monsieur Fortin. He said that he agrees with it, so I believe he understands it.
Liberal
Conservative
Andrew Lawton Conservative Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON
I know. I just didn't believe she heard that, Chair. That was all.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Mr. Chair, could we just suspend for a couple of minutes?
Liberal
Conservative
Roman Baber Conservative York Centre, ON
Wait one second. I propose that we not suspend if there is a will on the part of the committee to stand my amendment down and come back to it. I have a technical problem, in that once we move past this clause, I'll be unable to move it, which is why the time is urgent, but I don't want to hold up the committee.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Why don't we suspend for a few minutes just to clarify this and then we'll come back to it?
Conservative
Roman Baber Conservative York Centre, ON
Could I please ask the clerk to read it? We had a further change to the initially proposed amendment. The amendment has been unofficially amended.
Could we please hear the new version, also in French?
The Clerk of the Committee Jacques Maziade
I will read proposed paragraph 319(2.2)(c):
(c) a symbol that so nearly resembles a symbol described in paragraph (a) or (b) that it is likely to be a symbol described in paragraph (a) or (b).
In French, this reads as follows:
c) un symbole à ce point semblable à un symbole visé aux alinéas a) ou b) qu'il est susceptible d'être un symbole visé aux alinéas a) ou b).
Conservative
Roman Baber Conservative York Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I appreciate an opportunity to weigh in on this, and I appreciate that the committee is entertaining this amendment at this time.
I am very concerned with the voting down of Mr. Brock's amendment and that proposed paragraph (c) will remain in its present form and will therefore criminalize, should this legislation pass, a symbol that so nearly resembles a criminal symbol that it is likely to be confused with that symbol.
What that will do is confuse law enforcement, confuse lawyers and also potentially involve someone who did not mean to display a symbol referred to in paragraph (a) or (b) but did so such that the depiction was confused with the symbol in (a) and (b). Then you have an otherwise innocent person charged with a criminal offence.
I am mindful of the fact that intent probably factors into this a bit, so there may be some grace, but, if I may.... I referred to a previous Liberal minister who taught me criminal law, and now I'm reminded of Professor Graham at Western University, one of the leading jurists in our country on statutory interpretation.
I remember that in the first week of school, the first week of statutory interpretation, he told us about the mushroom case. I apologize that I'm unable to cite the name of the case, but the proposition was simple. He asked, is a mushroom a vegetable? He said that he had a lot of experience ordering vegetarian pizza, and when he wanted a veggie pizza, he got mushrooms on it, so he would think mushrooms were a vegetable.
Well, the issue became prevalent vis-à-vis the question of whether mushroom growers ought to pay minimum wage. The case turned on the fact that if they were vegetable growers, employers would be exempt from paying minimum wage as prescribed for vegetable growers, and if they were not vegetable growers, there would be a mandate to pay minimum wage. Mr. Housefather seems to think he might recall what I'm referring to.
The statutory interpretation turned on the fact that, while we know mushrooms are not really vegetables—they're fungi—the mushrooms were grown inside greenhouses as opposed to outdoors, because they were commercial mushrooms. As a result, the court asked, what is the intention behind the legislation? It is that sometimes due to weather elements or the industrial carbon tax, the cost of mushrooms might be very prohibitive. When you have all sorts of weather events, you might lose your crop, so growers would be given some latitude not to pay minimum wage.
However, because mushrooms are grown in greenhouses, the grower doesn't have that problem. The mushrooms are not subject to the elements, and as a result, when the annual crop would come in, the grower would sell his mushrooms, so there would be no need to exempt the mushroom grower from the application of minimum wage.
The question is, are mushrooms vegetables? The answer was to look at the intent of the legislation. The intent of the legislation was to exempt those who risk losing their crops. The mushroom grower will not, because mushrooms are grown in a greenhouse, and as such, there is no need to exempt them from the application of minimum wage and no need to even answer the question of whether mushrooms are vegetables.
In that spirit, I appreciate the latitude and the accommodation. I think it's very important that the intent of this legislation is clear.
We Conservatives tend to err on the side of caution, not only when we talk about moving forward issues that might be transformational without thinking them through, but also in the application of criminal law. We want to be very conservative there, because we want to preserve charter values and preserve the presumption of innocence. We certainly don't want a law that would be overbroad.
As presently outlined, the law might criminalize conduct that it doesn't mean to criminalize. My proposal—that the symbol displayed needs to be so nearly resembling a symbol in paragraph (a) or (b) that it is likely to be the actual symbol referred to in paragraph (a) or (b)—eliminates that ambiguity and therefore accomplishes what the section intends to accomplish.
I'm grateful to everyone on this committee for entertaining this seemingly small change. I think it might actually save law enforcement a lot of time, but deny criminal lawyers an ability to argue the statutory interpretation of what this committee otherwise intended.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm sorry. Apparently there was a slight modification of the translation.
The Clerk
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will simply reread the French version we received from the legal translators:
c) Un symbole à ce point semblable à un symbole visé aux alinéas a) ou b) qu'il est susceptible d'en être un.
The English version doesn't change.
Liberal
Conservative
Andrew Lawton Conservative Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON
Yes.
I just want some context here, and I appreciate the lesson in statutory interpretation from my colleague Mr. Baber. I've learned a lot, and now I'm hungry.
The amendment doesn't go as far as the original amendment, but the committee decided to vote against Mr. Brock's approach, and that's the way the mushroom bounces.
I do want to ask our officials whether the further amendment put on the table ameliorates the concerns you raised with respect to the first attempt at this from Mr. Brock?
Conservative
