Public Safety Committee on June 16th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

You may want to continue; otherwise, I'll turn to another MP and you can come back after.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Who else is on the list?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I have MP Housefather next.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Oh. Well, this should be good. I'll be fast.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

MP Housefather, go ahead.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much.

I particularly enjoyed Ms. Kronis's 56 minutes, although she, somehow, has not stayed for the vote on this, which is shocking.

First, I just want to understand this. Would you say that consistency is important when you're using standards related to whether you're going to use reasonable grounds to suspect or reasonable grounds to believe, if it's for exactly the same thing, such as seeking a production order?

[Kimberly Gibner]

I think you've heard from both Mr. Wong and me that a key we're looking for, when we're proposing legislation for your consideration, is consistency.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Let's say, for example, that you had the question of deciding whether or not a breathalyzer test were something to be sought, and there were a separate provision in the code that said, “If you smelled alcohol on somebody's breath, they had bloodshot eyes,” or other observational signals for how the signs of a driver look.... If you were to say that, you would use “reasonable grounds to suspect” to enable the officer to order a breathalyzer test at that point.

Then, if there were another, separate provision in the code, which talked about observational driving, and if you saw the car swerving from side to side, it would be important to use the same “reasonable grounds to suspect” in both cases, and not have one be “reasonable grounds to suspect” and the other one “reasonable grounds to believe” in order to order the breathalyzer test.

That may be a bit convoluted, but, essentially, you're coming to the same point. You have reason to suspect that the driver might be impaired, and you have different ways of assessing that. One would be, for example, the physical signs—such as they're slurring; their eyes are glassy, etc.—and one would be how you observe their driving. It would make no sense, in that case, for you to have determined that one would be “reasonable grounds to suspect” and one would be “reasonable grounds to believe”. Would you agree with me in that case?

You would never recommend to the Minister of Justice to put two different standards in the bill for essentially the same type of activity that causes an officer to want to order a breathalyzer test.

[Kimberly Gibner]

Consistency in the Criminal Code is key, so I would agree with your proposition.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

In this case, we have already determined—whether the committee agreed with it by majority or didn't agree with it by majority—what standard we were going with to ask for a production order to be, at least within the domestic scope. Is that not correct? The committee voted by majority to go with “reasonable grounds to suspect”. You were there when that happened.

[Kimberly Gibner]

Yes. I echoed something similar earlier, which is that it would be pretty nonsensical to me that we would have a production order for Canadians and then do something different—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Then you'd need a higher standard to have a production order in a foreign country, which makes no logical sense to me either. Regardless of whether people agreed or didn't agree with the original decision, you can't have inconsistencies across the law.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I'm sorry, MP Housefather. Your interventions are somewhat dense and fast. Given that the interpreters have had a long night up until now, you may want to just go slightly slower.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Okay. I'll slow down.

Basically, given that we've already made a decision on the domestic “reason to suspect”, it would seem strange to use a higher standard for an order that we're seeking in a foreign country. It would create a very, I think, unusual law in which we're imposing a higher standard in a foreign country than in our own country.

I think you've echoed that already.

[Kimberly Gibner]

I think I've said the same thing.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Essentially, Mr. Chair, my point to colleagues is that, whether they agreed with the original decision or not, the decision is there. The law is written that way already. We don't go back in committee; we only go forward.

Now we have spent about two hours, so far, on this one amendment, to somehow argue that we should have an anomalous higher standard for a production request in a foreign country than we should have domestically. To me, that makes no sense whatsoever. This has been two hours of an absolute waste of time on this debate, because, essentially, the decision was made.

There were ample hours of discussion a couple of days ago about what standard to use, when we decided what standard would be used domestically. Nobody, no good lawyer, would advise that you'd create different standards for the same thing in the same law.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

We're not talking about good lawyers. We're talking about you guys.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I'm sorry—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

We're talking about you guys. You voted wrong.

Carry on.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you for allowing me to carry on and not fall into this very strange type of situation where we're pretending that it's okay to disregard what the committee decided a few days ago with respect to the standard to seek a production order.

Mr. Chair—

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

—my point of view is that I don't need to go into....

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Yes, go ahead, please.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

No one is disregarding what was said. I think we were very clear that we think the committee got it wrong.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Not only is that not a point of order, but you also specifically said in your own remarks that you were disregarding the previous decision, assuming that this was in isolation and going forward with your arguments.