I'm just curious. I'm just curious about his wording.
In any event, look, I think in a generalized sense that the point to be made here is that when you take a look at the wording without “in the Minister's opinion”, it's then left up to the courts to use a reasonable person.... The court defaults to an ordinary, average, reasonable person on whether or not they could come to a conclusion, with the facts in front of them, that the person represents a risk. The only reason you would insert “in the Minister's opinion” is to lower that threshold; it would lower it from being in the mind of a reasonable person to being in the mind of the minister.
Now, what you're asking the court to do is to determine whether the minister feels that there is a threat. To use an extreme example, if you have a minister who is particularly paranoid and legitimately afraid of everything—actually, we don't have to think too hard to think of that example—and who sees scary things all the time everywhere, all of a sudden, the courts could say well, yes, in his mind, pretty much anything is scary. Now obviously I'm joking to illustrate a point, but the point does remain that it significantly lowers the bar.
This gets me to the point more broadly that Mr. MacKenzie made earlier on about the admissibility of our amendments. I begin to wonder if the real purpose of the bill is not in fact its stated purpose but is to simply lower the bar, so that you don't have to worry about so many court challenges. I wonder if the real purpose of this bill is to in fact give the minister a much freer hand to do whatever the minister wants.
Because to go to the point that Mr. Kania was making earlier, with all due respect, if the minister has anything that really is in his or her mind, this bill allows the minister to feign concern in any particular area, provide some evidence that it is the concern, and make it almost impossible to challenge that decision. It builds a fortress, a wall, a castle, around the decision of the minister, with very little placed before it. It gives the minister the ability to put ironclad protection around what he or she decides is or is not important. That, in my opinion, is a very different objective than the stated objective of this. Maybe that's why we have a difference on whether the amendments are or are not admissible.
As a general comment going forward--and I won't make it again--I think it's extremely important for us to not lower that bar. Let's keep it at the bar the law keeps it at, which is “in the mind of a reasonable person”. Would a reasonable person ascertain these factors to be relevant to deny a transfer? That's an appropriate and intelligent bar to set. To lower it makes, in my opinion, no sense.