Justice committee  I don't believe that would be necessary, in the sense that consent is a matter of fact in determination. It would only become an issue if there were a charge laid and if there were evidence that the consent was revoked. I think it would probably have to be in writing, and again t

Justice committee  Yes, I think you have to look at the context of the provision as a whole. Certainly, the rule of interpretation is what is plainly meant by the language in the provision. So if you read the provision within the clause as a whole, I think it is fairly obvious that it's not intende

Justice committee  Again, it's up to the courts to interpret what the intent is, and certainly they would look at proceedings of this committee, for example, and the discussion in Parliament if there were some ambiguity. But generally speaking, I think the “or” is interpreted quite liberally.

Justice committee  In the first place, if we look at how section 161 is currently structured, the court is required to consider all of those particular conditions in a case where the offender has been convicted of the prerequisite sexual offence against a child. I think it would be highly unusual—

Justice committee  Well, I have no knowledge of exactly what happened there. Again, I think mistakes are made in courts; that's why we have appeal provisions. I don't know if that's an appealable issue or not. Judges are human. But certainly, in my view and my experience.... Section 161 is design

Public Safety committee  In the first place, if it says it in one provision and not in another, it very clearly would be an intent of Parliament to express two different things, so to be consistent I think you would require it in both, if you want the same thing to happen in both. I have to confess, I a

Public Safety committee  We have some proposed wording on that, just to make sure the sections flow, because we're changing some of the subsections. It's hard to follow right now.

Public Safety committee  That might be of some assistance.

Public Safety committee  It would be unfortunate, for want of a conjunction at the end, that it wouldn't flow properly.

Public Safety committee  I appreciate that the department is your counsel. I'm not quite there yet. This is necessary to reflect in these other provisions that are applicable, for example, to the Department of National Defence. So it's to be consistent.

Public Safety committee  That's primarily the issue we'd be concerned with. Right now the provision states that the person entering the information shall register the information, so there is a mandatory requirement. We looked at section 17, the offence provision, to ensure that wouldn't apply. We're s

Public Safety committee  I just wanted to add that while Parliament is its own master and it may put into legislation whatever it chooses, ultimately this would be a precedent, in our view. And if you used Latin language in a Canadian statute it may have no force and effect in law. So you may want to be

Public Safety committee  One of the interesting things here is how far that goes. For example, you do have to report your weight. I don't know how often you'd have to change that. We anticipate that within 10 years there'll be a total of 50,000 offenders on the registry reporting on an annual basis. That

Public Safety committee  All I can suggest on that is that it was a matter of extended dialogue with provinces and internally. At the end of the day, the option of going fully automatic, similar to Ontario's, as opposed to not going to automatic was considered. There were certainly a number of different

Public Safety committee  I certainly can undertake to get back to the committee with a list and the numbers, but I'm fairly certain that the majority of sex offence convictions in Canada are in fact summary.