Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I am pleased to be here today to speak to you about Bill C-6, the prohibiting cluster munitions act, which is an important and necessary step toward Canada's ratification of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Cluster munitions are a very serious humanita

Foreign Affairs committee  We cannot, of course, comment on the policy intention of other states. This is a prospective provision, and we're not in a position to make a prediction as to the speed of that narrowing at this time. Generally, the ambit of humanitarian law conventions is ratification by the max

Foreign Affairs committee  My colleague from the office of the judge advocate general will take that question.

Foreign Affairs committee  Concerning the position on investment, in Canadian law that would be subsumed in the aiding and abetting provision. I will let my colleague from the Department of Justice explain that a bit further.

Foreign Affairs committee  No.

Foreign Affairs committee  As I indicated in my statement, it bans the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions. That's what the convention does. Specifically, it bans cluster munitions themselves, it sets deadlines for the destruction of stockpiles and clearance of contaminated area

Foreign Affairs committee  It is important to note that the bill does not necessarily use the same words as the convention. That does not mean that Canada is not implementing the convention. We are implementing the objective and intent of the convention with language that is common to the Canadian Criminal

Foreign Affairs committee  That's correct.

Foreign Affairs committee  No. The exemptions are very specific to the offences created by the bill. Any other offence.... For example, as my colleagues have indicated, indiscriminate use of cluster munitions would fall under the provisions of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act concerning the

Foreign Affairs committee  No.

Foreign Affairs committee  I certainly can. Obviously I cannot comment in detail on the legislation provided for other states. I'm simply not an expert in Australian or British law. The intent to provide these exemptions is the same by all the states that have created legislation that provides for exempt

Foreign Affairs committee  Since that is a question that deals with operations of the Canadian Forces, I will defer to my colleagues from National Defence to answer that. As we evaluated the provisions of the convention and turned towards implementation, our assessment was that those exceptions would be

Foreign Affairs committee  The convention as a whole includes the interoperability clause. The convention was negotiated very much with states' requirements for security cooperation with non-state parties in mind. That was a starting point of the negotiations. Canada and a number of other states made t

Foreign Affairs committee  As my colleagues explained earlier, and I believe it was General Lamarre in his statement, the important point here is at which point in the decision-making process the decision is taken. If a state policy decision is to use cluster munitions then that is not the decision of the

Foreign Affairs committee  With regard to the first question, as I believe we have already indicated, without the interoperability clause, article 21, Canada would not have been in a position to sign or ratify the convention. The reason for that is simple. We have an extensive security cooperation with the