Evidence of meeting #28 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 clause.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Marilyn Gladu Liberal Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON
—trying to get to the finish of this very important bill, which is critical for women in this country.
Thank you.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
That's the pot calling the kettle black.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Do you know what, Mr. Brock? I think people will agree that I'm pretty flexible and pretty generous in terms of letting us stray afield from relevance on particular topics, but—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I know, but let's....
I'm saying this to everybody in the room. Making comments about other members, Mr. Brock, or insinuating things about other people around this table or not around this table is not only unproductive but unparliamentary. I'm asking everybody again to please refrain from doing that. Stick to the discussion at hand and we can get out of here at a reasonable time.
Thank you.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
I commented on this point last Wednesday. When I took a look at the number of amendments, I noted that the Liberals' actually almost doubled the number of amendments from the Conservative Party. I believe it was the parliamentary secretary, Ms. Lattanzio, who pointed out correctly that they weren't necessarily substantive. They were editing issues or translation issues.
There have been some substantive amendments, and there's been a high degree of collaboration throughout the last two days in clause-by-clause consideration, leaving aside what transpired about an hour ago with the chair reversing himself, but I'm not going to comment any further on that, so—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Okay, I'm going to interject now.
I did not reverse myself, Mr. Brock. To state that I did is not only inaccurate; it's just wrong. I was entitled to make the ruling that I did. If you want to make political hay out of this thing, you're free to do so outside this room, but you're not going to do it here.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I did not, Mr. Brock. I made a ruling. I allowed you to proceed earlier, and then I made a ruling that it was out of scope. That's the end of the discussion.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
You and I will agree to disagree on that particular issue. I'll leave it at that.
The whole point here is to improve on legislation. What this committee has heard from Conservative members today and last Wednesday were reasonable amendments to improve the legislation. We all should be striving for clarity when we're drafting legislation and when we have legislation that passes. Where you don't have clarity, that opens up litigation.
I've heard nothing but intervention after intervention from my Liberal colleagues about avoiding the increase in litigation, which brings me, again, to highlight the importance of Mr. Baber's amendment to ensure that there is clarity, to ensure that this respects the spirit of this section of Bill C-16 and to forever close out that concept of the use of reasonable hypotheticals during the sentencing aspect of Bill C-16.
I believe what I've heard so far from my Liberal colleagues in their interventions is support for that, but I suspect that, once this particular amendment reaches its conclusion in terms of interventions, the Liberal Party will not be prepared to vote in favour of this amendment. In my view, they are voting contrary to the stated intentions that they have already telegraphed throughout the day and this past Wednesday. In my view, that runs contrary to our stated purpose of improving legislation with clarity.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.