Health committee  It would do that, but then again, listening to the sponsor's explanation, there may be information available from people who did not seek the assistance but who may be able to provide assistance to the responders. I think you want to balance this between its being too restrictive

Health committee  I am not aware. Not only am I not aware of the impact of this legislation, but honestly, in Canada—I can't speak about other countries—I am unclear as to how often a policeman would charge someone in this kind of situation, where someone has called 911. I understand the fear of t

Health committee  It appears to me to be satisfactory, but I must tell you that perhaps my colleague who works at our legal services at Health might have additional views on that.

Health committee  The bill is drafted in a peculiar manner in the sense that it directs police not to charge, which is not something that we would typically do in terms of, certainly not in terms of criminal legislation. We would suggest rather, if we were drafting it—if this were a government b

Health committee  That's correct. We would have said along the lines of a person who—and set out the criteria—is not guilty of an offence as set out in section 4(1). That would be the typical approach that we would have taken.

Justice committee  We have actually looked into that matter. First, I should point out that this provision applies only to convictions for that specific offence. If an individual has already been convicted of a past offence under the Excise Act, 2001, the offence in question would not be punishabl

Justice committee  Conversely, it may not be.

Justice committee  That is what we think, Ms. Boivin.

Justice committee  I think you're right. It would have been useful to be able to consult broadly outside the government, but this was not the case. We were asked to do a particular job under particular circumstances, and that's what we were left with.

Justice committee  Well, I guess the risk is not getting as much information as one can. In that regard, we do try to anticipate the kinds of reactions and problems that may arise and try to tailor our legislation according to what we believe would be problems. That being the case, we put together

Justice committee  I'm not a hundred per cent convinced that this necessarily is working in contradiction to what's written in that document. You have to remember that under the Excise Act, 2001 there is a regulatory regime that allows for the obtaining of permits and authorizations to manufacture,

Justice committee  In the statement you read out, the suggestion was that the government develop a regulatory approach for dealing with this, but there already exists a regulatory approach. It's in the Excise Act.

Justice committee  It's certainly done in every case where an MMP is being contemplated. You may recall that Bill C-10 had, for instance, in the case of drug offences, a number of MMPs dealing with schedule 1 and schedule 2 substances for things like trafficking and so on. For all of those offences

Justice committee  I don't know. I'm not sure to what extent there is aboriginal involvement in the trafficking of tobacco. We know there is a lot of manufacturing activity, but manufacturing is not covered by this legislation. Then we're left with some of the prohibited activities such as the tran

Justice committee  Yes.