Mr. Speaker, on the member's first example, of a Canadian being sentenced to death in a foreign state, as it stands now, if Canada has a treaty with that particular foreign state, which was negotiated under the International Transfer of Offenders Act, then it is the offender who must request the application of the transfer of offender. It is completely voluntary.
Obviously many Canadians who are incarcerated abroad have an interest in returning to Canada. The member pointed out that we do not have the death sentence. The member is quite correct. If the foreign state agreed to transfer the Canadian to Canada, the Canadian would not be put to death. Canadians would serve out their sentence under our legislation, and if it was first degree murder they would probably serve a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. However it is clear that we would not execute because we do not have the death penalty.
The point the member raised is very important. Since we do not have the death penalty, if a foreign national were convicted of an offence which, in our country, requires life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 25 years, and that individual applied to be transferred to his or her country of origin that does have the death penalty, there would assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out.
As for the other example that was raised by the hon. member, the foreign jurisdictions that are not recognized foreign states, like Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Canadians who are currently or may be in the future sentenced and incarcerated to serve out a sentence in those jurisdictions, if they wish to serve out their sentence in Canada, Canada, under the proposed legislation, would be able to negotiate an administrative arrangement with those jurisdictions that would allow for that kind of transfer.
Under the current International Transfer of Offenders Act, we do not have the legal authority to negotiate anything with Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macao. Therefore, Canadians who find themselves in those jurisdictions that are not recognized as foreign states are basically up a creek unless the government of that particular jurisdiction decides to deport them and send them back to Canada, in which case we have a problem. Since they were not convicted in Canada we could not incarcerate them.
Under an administrative agreement, those individuals would be transferred under the administrative agreement and would serve out their sentence in Canada. They would be subject to our laws in terms of parole, rehabilitation programs, et cetera.