Thank you, Mr. Brock.
I'm now going to give my ruling.
When I was a young lawyer, I once appeared before a judge. She dismissed my motion. I said, “Your Honour, I usually like to argue my case before I lose it.” That's why I wanted to hear from you, which I think is fair. Now I'm going to explain why I'm ruling this out of scope. This will help, because it's not the last time we'll encounter this issue today.
Bill C-16 amends the Criminal Code to create new offences and expand existing ones, most notably to criminalize coercive and controlling conduct, strengthen sexual and child protection offences, reclassify certain killings as first-degree murder, broaden evidentiary and victim protection rules for those offences, and reform sentencing, delay and restorative justice frameworks. The amendment seeks to amend subsection 85(3) of the Criminal Code.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, states in section 16.75:
an amendment is generally inadmissible if it proposes to amend a statute that is not before the committee or a section of the parent act, unless the latter is specifically amended by a clause of the bill.
Subsection 85(3) of the act is not being amended by Bill C-16. Furthermore, the amendment seeks to create a new offence for offences that are not directly connected to the scope of this bill. It is therefore my opinion that the amendment is inadmissible.
That is my ruling.