I will not belabour this. I realize it's getting very late. I'll just make a fundamental point here.
When we are talking about bail and bail decisions, we have to acknowledge what's been spoken to by our witnesses and what we've all observed, which is that there is tremendous inconsistency, even sometimes in interpreting the same laws. One area where we see this is in requirements that non-Canadian citizens or non-permanent residents must surrender their passports. This is a fairly standard, one would assume, bail condition, but it is shockingly not all that standard or uniform in terms of application.
My amendment here is very simply that if someone who is not a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident within the meaning of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is released, the judge shall add to the order a condition that the accused deposit all their passports. This is to ensure that we do not have, as we've seen in several cases, in particular regarding extortion, people skipping out on bail and leaving the country and evading justice, because they are foreign nationals and have a place to go. This is ensuring that passport retention is a standard part when someone of that nature is released on bail.