Madam Speaker, our complaint with this bill is similar to that with previous pieces of legislation, that it has not fully matured yet. It has not gestated into a finished product. It is like a cake in the oven that is not yet baked. It still needs work and we are not doing anyone a service by going ahead with incomplete legislation that we would be stuck with for a long time. It is unlikely that these clauses of the Criminal Code will be reopened again in our generation. So it is incumbent on us to get it right.
I point out that sections 34 and 35 of the Criminal Code, which deal with the right to self-defence, have inherent ambiguities that have caused difficulty in the jurisprudence since 1892 and it is only now that we are addressing them in the Parliament of the latter days of 2011.
What we do today has a lasting impact. We want to get it right because it does a great disservice to ordinary Canadians like Mr. David Chen if we do not get it right. Imagine the confusion of a new Canadian, proud to be a small businessman in his chosen country, when this kind of crazy thing happens to him and he winds up being the one accused of wrongdoing when all he is trying to do is protect himself.
We do not want that to ever happen again. We want to ensure that the language we incorporate in the context of this bill precludes that from ever happening again to any Canadian.