Justice committee  Obviously, it would be impossible to do a comprehensive survey of all the different penalties in the Criminal Code and in other criminal-based legislation. One thing that does jump out is that even on a summary conviction, the proposed fine of, I think, $300,000 and potential imp

Justice committee  Thanks. Of course, we're not able to express an opinion on that particular topic. I would say that, within the realm of what the Canadian Human Rights Act regulates, which is employment within the federal public service and also within the federally regulated sector—banks, aviat

Justice committee  Within the human rights system that's generally how things work in terms of an actual individual complaints process. The Human Rights Act itself sets out norms that employers and service providers must be aware of, so it also has a role to play in regulating the conduct of busine

Justice committee  On that point, obviously Senator Cowan and others have reached out, and the responses received to date have not indicated any significant concerns on their part. Officials at the Department of Justice reached out in September to start discussions with them with respect to Bill

Justice committee  With respect to the Canadian Human Rights Act, the key piece will be that it's adding a new prohibited ground of discrimination to the CHRA: the ground of genetic characteristics. We were just been here on Bill C-16, which was also adding a new ground of gender identity and expre

Justice committee  I do my best.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. As you know, we're here to provide the technical views. From our perspective, we're not going to speak to the term “genetic characteristics” as it is used in relation to the genetic non-discrimination act. We're going to leave the statement to speak to that.

Justice committee  We'd have to review again more carefully, but my understanding is that it would be their role as attorney general, which of course we also fulfill in advising all the time consistently as to what the likelihood of an adverse outcome would be. But it's not a statutory obligation o

Justice committee  It's a military rank.