Justice committee  With journalists, no. But many members of this committee may recall a private members bill, C-299, from a few years ago. It dealt with identity theft, but it was tabled prior to Bill C-27. What that bill did was it said anyone who pretends to be someone else essentially commits a

Justice committee  No, in fact I didn't. The easiest thing we do sometimes is open up our annotated Criminal Code, and we don't see any annotations there, which is a good indication that it's not an offence that's charged frequently. What I do know is that where you do see title fraud, real estat

Justice committee  Ah.

Justice committee  It would be a decision for the police and the prosecutor to make, whether they want to—

Justice committee  Would they not have had the intent of gaining an advantage?

Justice committee  The right to drive a vehicle, a right that they have lost.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  This is why I do policy and I'm not a prosecutor. It would be an argument that a prosecutor might wish to make, or they might not consider it sufficiently injurious to the public to proceed with a criminal prosecution. But the offence is broadly and flexibly drafted to cover quit

Justice committee  Usually with the notion of trafficking, for instance in relation to drugs, you traffic drugs. Another person can use them. If I traffic information, it's the person I traffic to who has the intention to commit a crime. There's a sequence of steps that may be different from the

Justice committee  This is going to sound terrible, but there is no offence unless there is an offence. For instance, if he forges documents in support of his identity, then he may be committing forgery. Merely walking into a room and claiming to be a person you're not, if it's a fictitious person,

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I think it's fair to say that the offence of personation is fairly broad in scope. Some of the conduct you've described may technically fall within the offence of personation. What we could say in response to that is simply that this offence is one that tends to be charged quite

Justice committee  I wouldn't say that there's a recognized principle that proceeding by way of summary conviction.... It certainly doesn't make it easier to prove the offence, but if you proceed by indictment, it's a different set of procedures that apply, including the right to a jury trial, and

Justice committee  I'm sorry, but I didn't hear your question.