Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this extremely important bill. Like the members who spoke before me, I think I will say a few words on the procedure imposed on the Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
I know that it is following a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Feeney case that the government was required so to speak to amend the provisions if it wanted to correct the situation. The ruling was made on May 22, 1997, in the middle of the electoral campaign. However, as I openly said in committee—and there is no reason to hide this—officials wisely held consultations across Canada and Quebec.
My concern in all this is that there were no consultations before the political side of this issue was addressed, that it was only on Friday of last week that Bill C-16, which is in fact very important, was tabled in this House, which has been sitting for eight weeks. It may not be the fault of the Liberal members, but it is surely the fault of the federal government's cumbersome bureaucracy and procedures if we have to accelerate the review process as we are doing.
However, after consulting with people who have an interest in seeing this bill improve the Criminal Code, I believe that this bill is generally acceptable. We do not support it without reservations, but considering the time we have to review it, I believe that as a first step, it is something we can live with.
I will deal with the amendments in each group. I will speak very briefly on the first group, which includes Motion No. 1. I think that the wording of Section 529.5 in Bill C-16 reflects in fact what is found in other provisions, other laws. I don't think we should amend this section as proposed by the member of the Conservative Party. I think that the wording in the section on telewarrants meets requirements that have already been established in this area.
I want to read it to you because I think it clearly indicates that such warrants may only be issued in exceptional circumstances.
The rule is that the peace officer must appear personally before the judge to make an application for a warrant, but it can happen in exceptional circumstances that it would be impracticable, to use the words in the section, or impossible for the police officer to appear before a judge. It can also be an emergency situation—and there is a section that deals with these—, and the police officer cannot appear before a judge.
The section, which is very clear, says the following:
If a peace officer believes that it would be impracticable in the circumstances to appear personally before a judge or justice to make an application for a warrant under Section 529.1 or an authorization under Section 529 or 529.4, the warrant or authorization may be issued on an information submitted by telephone or other means of telecommunication and, for that purpose, Section 487.1 applies, with any modifications that the circumstances require, to the warrant or authorization.
I think that the wording reflects the purpose of this section, and to keep our laws in general as simple as possible, I believe that we should not amend this section because it is similar to all other sections dealing with telewarrants. That is why we will oppose Motion No. 1 as presented.