Justice committee  I want to say that I certainly hope these two young men apply to my law school—I'm going to be handing out my card here—because I think they're acquitting themselves so magnificently today. In terms of my feelings on a second alternative if the bill is going through, I would hav

Justice committee  First of all, on the question of the federal and provincial split on control over marriage, at least so far it's been fairly settled law—and there have been actual cases about this—that it is within the provinces' competence as a solemnization question to set the age limits for m

Justice committee  Yes, you would. You'd have a very significant problem, in that when the federal criminal law powers envisioned it, it was a power that uniformly applied to the entire country. I think you'd immediately get a challenge that this law is not in fact about criminal law, but it's ab

Justice committee  I promise I won't pass any news to the civil law section with respect to your grades. The constitutional question I think comes down to dealing with the province on what their reaction would be to the age of marriage issue that is raised. For me, the issue is looking at the plac

Justice committee  I don't think it's always preying, but I do think it's always unconventional. It's always something you'd want to take a second look at as a parent, but I'm not sure you'd want your criminal law to be dealing with the specific issue of capturing an extra two years of teenage girl

Justice committee  If I could just make one comment as well, this does come down to what Mr. Gratl was saying about the difference between what we find socially objectionable and legally objectionable. I think it is socially objectionable for a 40-year-old man to be preying on teenagers. I think it

Justice committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. I'm on faculty at the law school at the University of Ottawa, where I teach, research, and write in both constitutional and criminal law. I'm going to take a slightly different approach to my submissions from some of th