Madam Speaker, absolutely. As I was mentioning, in our discussions at committee, we wanted to clarify consent. Therefore, rather than using the words the Senate has used, which we believe go far beyond what the J.A. decision codified, we clarified the provisions by saying that consent must be present at the time the sexual activity in question takes place, making it clear that it has to be ongoing consent and not implicit consent from a previous act that applies to the current act.
We wanted to clarify that only a question of law was being removed from the defence not mistakes as to facts. Therefore, we clarified that by saying that “The question of whether no consent is obtained under subsection (3) or (4) or 265(3) is a question of law.”
The committee carefully considered all of those issues, in addition to the issues brought forward by the Senate, and actually rejected the issues brought forward by the Senate.