Public Safety Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2022

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

In line with Ms. Dancho's comments, your statement in the document you've given on consideration for clause-by-clause study says the following:

In addition to having to be properly drafted in a legal sense, amendments must also be procedurally admissible. The Chair may be called upon to rule amendments inadmissible if they go against the principle of the bill or beyond the scope of the bill—both of which were adopted by the House when it agreed to the bill at second reading—or if they offend the financial prerogative of the Crown.

I would submit, Chair, that under the second reading of this particular bill, nothing in G-4 or the other one that was mentioned—it slips my mind at the moment—were ever talked about as being part of Bill C-21. As a result of that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm going to—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Let me finish. As a result of that, Chair, I would suggest that we need to then maybe hold up all of clause 1, if that's part of it, until we get a proper ruling on whether that's admissible moving forward and whether this is a different scope from what the bill actually laid out in Bill C-21 when it was presented to the House in the first place.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Right. We're not going to deal with G-4 until we get to G-4. We're going to take these amendments in order.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

But based on what the clerk just said, sir, we can't take G-4 out of clause 1 unless we hold and suspend all of clause 1.

Did I understand you correctly, sir?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We can stand the clause whether or not we deal with amendments in partiality.

Mr. MacGregor, you have a point of order.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

We're not at clause 1 yet. We're still dealing with a new clause 0.1, so that's not yet—

[An hon member]

Yes, that's what I wanted to clarify. Let's let that go through.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

As to process, then, it will be up to the chair to decide whether it's admissible or not. Of course, if the chair decides it's admissible and you disagree, you're able to challenge the chair, and then it goes to the committee for a vote.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I have one last question, just so I'm clear.

To your point, if we were to go into clause 1 and we don't vote on the final clause, and then we move on to clauses 2 and 3, can we not come back to clause 1? Can we not talk about clause 1 at all until we're ready to talk about all of the amendments—just so I'm clear?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Go ahead, Mr. Méla

[Philippe Méla]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Once the clause is adopted—all of the amendments have been dealt with and the clause is adopted, amended or not—the committee can always come back to that clause, but you would need unanimous consent to do that.

Now, if you want to stand a clause, which is to put the clause to a later time, you can also do that by unanimous consent or by moving a motion for that purpose.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Okay. Just to be clear, if we have any issue with any amendment of any clause that we don't want to deal with right now and are proposing that we deal with it later, we'd have to deal with the whole clause and all of its amendments later.

I understand. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Okay, shall we carry on?

We are at proposed new clause 0.1.

Under this clause, we have amendment G-1, which is in the name of Mr. Chiang.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to move amendment G-1.

This amendment shows our intention on this committee to further amend the Criminal Code. It will simply include the text “Amendments to the Act”, which was not included in the original text of the bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Is there any discussion on this amendment?

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'm not clear what this does. It seems fine, but is it a sort of semantics issue that it addresses?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Yes, I think it is just adds a heading to the bill.

Is there any further discussion?

(Amendment agreed to on division)

We will go to amendment G-2.

This, I believe, is Mr. Noormohamed.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is a new coordinating clause to be added before line 4, page 1. The amendment creates the proposed clause 0.1.

The amendment updates section 2.1 of the Criminal Code to amend the further definitions of a firearm to include a “firearm part”. These are coordinating amendments that are needed based on the new definition of “firearm part” that we are adding to subsection 84(1) of the code in amendment G-4.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Ms. Dancho.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I have a couple of concerns.

I guess I am asking for clarification first. The only thing differently....

The text is all underlined, so I'm assuming that the only new thing is “firearm part”. Is that the new singular part?

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

That's correct.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

There are a number of amendments that have been provided that add that singular thing. For some reason, everything has been underlined in most of those amendments.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I think it's that they're taking one section and putting the entire thing in, but—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

But “firearm part” is the only new part. Thank you for the clarification.

My question is this. I recognize that there's an amendment that defines what that means, but it has not been passed yet.