Mel Arnold on Criminal Code

Mr. Speaker, indeed, this question came up during the research on this bill. We were asked this by firefighters a couple of different times. What we have determined is that the definition of firefighting equipment would rely on the principles of statutory interpretation within Canadian law and that each case would likely have to be determined in the courts as to what constitutes firefighting equipment. The directive we received from legal counsel was that it would not be correct to try to identify every piece of firefighting equipment, simply because something could be identified or invented next week that may not be on the list and so would be excluded. It would be up to the courts to decide what constituted the definition of firefighting equipment.