Madam Speaker, as I was not present during the debate on this bill at committee, I only have the summary available to me, but it is true. The hon. member is correct. The NDP did attempt to more clearly define the meaning of the phrase, “no consent obtained”, in one of the sections relating to sexual assault, such that, “the complainant is unconscious”, would not be kept as the threshold for incapacity to consent. We tried to make changes to the process for introducing private records of the complainant at trial as well, and the government members defeated us on those amendments.
In raising this concern, I think we were buoyed by Professor Benedict from the UBC law school, who said in regard to the need for ongoing consent that it had to be a yes that was not extorted through any kind of pressure. The fact that someone is blackmailed into providing consent is also something that we need to make sure of. Therefore, by raising the word “unconscious”, we wanted to make sure that there was no effort elsewhere to somehow limit the requirement of the consent that must be ongoing in every case. We thought we had a better way of doing it. That was not accepted, but in general we have come to a place that the NDP can support.