Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Gatineau for her kind words. As I said in our last gathering, I was delighted that she was appointed justice critic and I felt that she would do an excellent job on behalf of our party and the country, so I commend her to that role.
We were worried enough about the state of the bill that we moved the amendment. One was to seek to ensure that the perception of the person was key, that the subjective interpretation was important. That amendment failed. Sometimes we make amendments for greater certainty, and that was the case here: we wanted to make the amendments for greater certainty. We were given some assurance by the justice department officials that they were unnecessary; however, in our judgment, it was for greater certainty that we moved them.
It is a balance. Sometimes we have our own opinion, but when the majority passes something and we have some legal advice from the experts, then we have to decide whether we do not support the bill or whether we support it hoping that they were right and that our judgment was unnecessary in this particular case. This is an example of that situation.
I do not think it puts at risk the situation of the battered wives syndrome as an aspect of self-defence in those types of cases. I do not think it puts those people at risk. We wanted to have greater certainty and we did not get it; we hope it does not cause problems in the course of events, but that remains to be seen.