Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his question.
The first issue is the application of American laws, which is problematic. I would like to quote Craig Forcese on the subject of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
Craig Forcese said:
Consent of the foreign state to the application of the law is an obvious exception. But so too is what the Court called “some other basis under international law”.... The difficulty in deciding what those other bases are stems from the Supreme Court’s rather unpersuasive approach to prescriptive and enforcement jurisdiction in international law.
The problem is that we are opening this door to a situation where, even though the bill says one thing, we are looking at the application of it, and that is what concerns us.
The other issue is the one I raised, where we enumerate specific instances where American agents would be subject to Canadian courts and we say murder, terrorism, and sexual assault. There is no mention of assault. There is another glaring example.
Our issue is that pre-clearance happens already, and we want to understand why the American agents need these powers, and if there are so many charter protections, why include them at all?