Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for giving me the opportunity to carry on because I could not finish in the 20 minutes with the important parts, the items I wanted to talk about. There are things I do want to see in the bill, if I can answer the question that way. Once again I want to compliment the government on this particular amendment.
In general, for a warrant to be executed in another territorial division or province, authorization and endorsement must be obtained from a judge of that division. To expedite this proceeding, the bill enables the law enforcement organization, through any telecommunication, to endorse such a warrant.
At present, the original warrant has to be taken across the province in written form. I was shocked when I heard that. Why would we let criminals get away while we are doing that? This particular amendment allows us to use any method to transmit that electronically.
There are also amendments that allow for more logic regarding to whom individuals can appeal if they disagree with an order respecting seized property. It is just one of those technical amendments that make logical sense in the justice system.
Another one is related to private proceedings. Normally, a provincial crown attorney lays charges at the start of a case and brings forward the information. However, in theory, anyone who has reasonable grounds to believe a person has committed an indictable offence may lay the information before a judge.
Obviously, the judge will want to know that the attorney general of the province has been given all this information and is notified of the upcoming hearing. That is already accounted for in the Criminal Code, but what is not accounted for is where the bill provides that the person must also inform the federal attorney general if it is the latter's jurisdiction with respect to the alleged offence, such as cases of fraud.
The last amendment is related to gambling and betting. Currently, for a person to be convicted of the offence of providing information in connection with bookmaking, pool selling, betting or wagering, the person must use radio, telegraph, telephone, mail or express.
To reflect the current and future technological advances, the bill does not list the means of telecommunications. Consequently, the use of any means of telecommunication may result in charges under this offence.
In the same vein, clause 6 of the bill replaces the word “telephone” with “any means of telecommunication” to extend the legality of pari-mutuel wagering on horse races, regardless of the means of telecommunication used to transmit wages to a regulated race track betting theatre.
Once again, society's technology ability has increased. We do not want criminals to have the advantage. We want the advantage in order to prevent the criminal from finding new ways to get around the law.
Finally, to speed up the process, the bill also allows the provision, in the case of defendants with two different languages, to allow a bilingual judge to proceed with the case in both languages. That speeds up the system and helps remove the backlog that, as I mentioned earlier this afternoon, could be as long as up to eight months, and I referred to the child case in New Brunswick. It now allows the judge to proceed, instead of having two separate trials in the different languages of the accused, causing more backlogs in the system.