I didn't have the opportunity to see all of the minister's testimony, but I do know, and we do agree, that this is an improvement in terms of narrowing the offence considerably. In our view, it's still arguably unnecessary, since counselling any offence that's already an offence under the Criminal Code is already an offence. So it's not exactly clear what this offence is doing. The fact that it references terrorism offences, which is not actually a defined term in the code, makes me think that there may be some interest in being able to prosecute someone for counselling without having to specify which terrorism offence in particular they were counselling, which is potentially problematic from a rule of law perspective, in terms of someone understanding what it is they're charged with and where the bounds of the law are. The list of terrorist activity in the code—and that's the language we think should be inserted into that provision—is quite long, and it does include a number of things that fall well beyond any acts of violence, that is, things that are participating in or that may be facilitating terrorist activity. So we think it could be sharpened and clarified by making that amendment.
On December 7th, 2017. See this statement in context.