Thank you.
Colleagues, I spoke at length earlier, so I won't speak at length about what I call some of the vague language that I think concerns us all. In fact, some of the government amendments do deal with this. I will say that it's actually rare to see the NDP, Bloc, Green and Conservative MPs all raising the same issues. I take it that it came from the Privacy Commissioner.
One of the consistent themes that I think we can all agree with is that some of the language, based on what we heard from testimony, is vague. Here we're asking for the word “threat” to essentially go from “any threat” to “material threat”. I think “any threat” is too broad. Sometimes in law we talk about a de minimis standard. That could be just about anything. To me, a material threat is something important. Everybody around this table has spoken about the charter. We all know about its import. When you say “material threat”, that suggests that there has to be something worthy of intervention.
I believe this is a fairly reasonable amendment. It's just to say that if the government or a judge orders that somebody may intervene, they're intervening for a good reason. I think “any threat” can be quite subjective, while “material threat” is a much higher threshold.
That is my argument in favour of CPC-3.
Thank you.