Mr. Speaker, I was wondering what the hon. member would think about the following perspective, that lying behind this particular set of facts that gave rise to this amending legislation was a situation that involved common law defences and the statutorily written defences in the Criminal Code.
I always thought that the combination of the two was sufficient to deal with the actual case at hand. As it turned out, they were sufficient to deal with the case at hand because the charges against the individual involved were dropped or dismissed. In fact, they were not dropped but were proceeded with, which was the big problem, as they occasioned costs and all kinds of potential embarrassment to this citizen, this businessman.
However, I am just wondering if the hon. member would agree that the government is now going back and tinkering with the common law defences, because over half of this bill deals with the common law self-defence provisions. Will the tinkering not hurt the purpose of the bill, which was just to fix the one problem identified in the fact situation?