Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a couple of quick points. First of all, the Conservatives propose this change to the current law, to add the words “in the Minister's opinion”, so the change must mean something. They intend to do something by adding those words. Of course they're attempting to take, as Mr. Holland eloquently put it, an objective standard that can be reviewed on an objective basis so that a court would determine in the case of proposed paragraph 10(1)(a) whether the offender’s return to Canada “will constitute a threat to the security of Canada”. They want to inject into that a test of whether, “in the Minister's opinion”, that would be the case.
That leads me to my second point: that concentrates far too much power into the hands of one person, in my respectful submission. The decision then becomes whether the current sitting Minister of Public Safety thinks, and only if he or she thinks, an offender's return to Canada would constitute a threat to the security of Canada. Again, I'm concerned about the review standard being altered by a court on review, which no longer would be able to review whether or not there was some evidence upon which a reasonable person could find that the offender's return would constitute a threat to the security of Canada. It alters that test in some fashion because the Conservatives are injecting the words, so it has to make some difference. It can't be the same.
I also want to point out that in the evidence before this committee, it was my recollection—and Ms. Campbell or somebody else can correct me—that the jurisprudence on the reviews of the minister's decisions has not established a record that shows there's a serious problem of the courts overturning ministers in this country. I don't think that's the case. I think there has been a small number of cases that have gone to judicial review and a very small number of the ministers' decisions have been overturned. That is my recollection of the evidence.
I also just want to direct a few comments at the comments of Mr. Rathgeber. Herbert Spencer has a famous quote about the problems with contempt before investigation. I would amend that to say that there should be some contempt about voting before listening to debate, because he's already indicated that he's going to vote against every amendment before he's even heard them.
I can tell that's an uninformed decision because he said there are 12 or 13 factors for which this legislation would give discretion to the minister. If he actually read the amendments, he would see that the amendments seek to remove at least four of those criteria. So it's not 12 or 13; we seek to cut down the criteria. I would urge him to keep an open mind and listen to the debate and discussion on each amendment, as I think all of us should do. We should be respectfully listening to all the points being made and considering all the amendments.
I just want to say again, and finalize my comment about Mr. MacKenzie, that nothing in my comments suggests that I know or don't know what a judge is going to say or do. Now, I know that Mr. MacKenzie is not a lawyer, and I used the phrase “canons of construction”, so I'll tell him what that means.
In law, there are rules of statutory interpretation. This is what you learn when you go to law school, and you learn how judges will interpret legislation. There's a series of rules about that, and one of them is that they will give meaning to every word in legislation. All I'm pointing out is that when you put words into legislation that say “in the Minister's opinion”, you alter the way a judge will read that clause. They will compare old legislation to new legislation and notice that Parliament added those words.
It is as predictable as rain in Vancouver in February that they will determine from Parliament an expressed desire to alter the test from an objective one to one of the minister's subjective opinion. I argue that having one person in Canada, no less than the Minister of Public Safety—not the Minister of Justice but the Minister of Public Safety—make a determination upon where someone is incarcerated or whether a Canadian citizen has the right to come back and serve his or her sentence in a Canadian prison, whether that's desirable or not, is an unwelcome and ill-advised development in our law.