Justice committee  No, in fact I didn't. The easiest thing we do sometimes is open up our annotated Criminal Code, and we don't see any annotations there, which is a good indication that it's not an offence that's charged frequently. What I do know is that where you do see title fraud, real estate fraud, and mortgage fraud prosecuted, you see them prosecuted as fraud with forgery and associated general offences.

Justice committee  The difficulty with general offences is that when you gather the data, the data don't distinguish between different types of fraud. But one of the difficulties with very specific offences—which we frequently receive proposals for—is that they don't get prosecuted because they contain elements that the general offences don't.

Justice committee  This is why I do policy and I'm not a prosecutor. It would be an argument that a prosecutor might wish to make, or they might not consider it sufficiently injurious to the public to proceed with a criminal prosecution. But the offence is broadly and flexibly drafted to cover quite a range of conduct.

Justice committee  The right to drive a vehicle, a right that they have lost.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Ah.

Justice committee  It would be a decision for the police and the prosecutor to make, whether they want to—

Justice committee  Would they not have had the intent of gaining an advantage?

Justice committee  Usually with the notion of trafficking, for instance in relation to drugs, you traffic drugs. Another person can use them. If I traffic information, it's the person I traffic to who has the intention to commit a crime. There's a sequence of steps that may be different from the case of trafficking in firearms or trafficking in a physical object.

Justice committee  This is going to sound terrible, but there is no offence unless there is an offence. For instance, if he forges documents in support of his identity, then he may be committing forgery. Merely walking into a room and claiming to be a person you're not, if it's a fictitious person, and then proceeding to have a conversation based on a fictitious identity, is not a crime.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I think it's fair to say that the offence of personation is fairly broad in scope. Some of the conduct you've described may technically fall within the offence of personation. What we could say in response to that is simply that this offence is one that tends to be charged quite infrequently.

Justice committee  I wouldn't say that there's a recognized principle that proceeding by way of summary conviction.... It certainly doesn't make it easier to prove the offence, but if you proceed by indictment, it's a different set of procedures that apply, including the right to a jury trial, and it may go to a different level of court.

Justice committee  I'm sorry, but I didn't hear your question.