Justice committee  They're slightly different concepts.

Justice committee  Absolutely. When you think about fraud in a criminal law sense, it's a deliberate attempt to mislead for a particular purpose. It has a legal meaning. Deception is slightly different from that. I think it provides a bit more latitude as well.

Justice committee  If I understood the question correctly, in terms of the existing language, when I look at it—and obviously this is something Mrs. Smith has developed—I get the sense that what she is trying to capture is exactly as you have described, the different types of practices that traffickers employ, whether it be the explicit violence, threats of bodily harm, physical assaults, sexual assaults, or the conduct that perhaps falls lower on the scale, so psychological violence.

Justice committee  It is a good question. I would respond in two ways. The first way is to have regard to the wording of the offence itself, 279.03. As you said, these are practices that are used by traffickers to compel their victims to provide labour services, to exploit them. It's a control tactic, and the offence as drafted links that conduct to the exploitative purpose.

Justice committee  Good morning. I'm not Amir Attaran.

Justice committee  I'm Matthew Taylor, Department of Justice, criminal law policy.

Justice committee  I have to admit I'm a bit lost. Perhaps you could just point to....

Justice committee  I understood the question as relating to a reference to section 727 of the Criminal Code. You are referring to previous convictions. Section 727 of the Criminal Code requires a prosecutor to give notice if they intend to seek a higher mandatory minimum penalty by virtue of a previous conviction.

Justice committee  The amendment is relatively straightforward. It proposes to remove the mandatory minimum penalty scheme. How that would fit more broadly in the Criminal Code is that it would create somewhat of a disconnect with what currently exists. As Monsieur Lemay already pointed out, there are a number of offences involving the use of firearms where mandatory minimums apply; for example, attempted murder, sexual assault with a weapon, etc.

Justice committee  Clause 2 is only a drafting formality to modernize language in the code.

Justice committee  Clause 1 is really a drafting formality to bring consistency to the use of certain specified terms throughout the code and to ensure that there's no ambiguity in how these terms are interpreted in the code.

Justice committee  Clause 4 adds one existing offence and a proposed new offence to section 183 to authorize wiretaps for the investigation of these offences. Section 244 on discharging a firearm with intent, which exists in the code currently, was not included in that list. So we're adding it to that list now, as well as the new proposed offence of discharging a firearm while being reckless.

Justice committee  Clause 5 is complicated. It contains a number of amendments to certain subsections. By and large, we're trying to specify that murder in specific instances will automatically be first degree. The two instances are where the murder is committed for the criminal organization, and where another indictable offence is committed for the criminal organization and a murder occurs.

Justice committee  Certainly we do have information on reported decisions. I'm sure we could make that available, as organized by different issues—for example, what constitutes a material benefit, who is a criminal organization, etc.

Justice committee  What we have in the Criminal Code right now is, I guess, what one could call a partial scheme with respect to police officers and protection afforded to police officers. We have section 270, which is a simple assault of a peace officer acting in the course of their duties, and at the far end or the more serious end of the spectrum, we have an automatic first degree murder, where a police officer is killed while acting in the course of their duties.