Hon. Jerahmiel S. Grafstein:

Honourable senators, this bill has been on the Order Paper for four years. The bill, then numbered Bill S-43, was first placed on the Order Paper in October 2005. I will not go through all the iterations, but it was reintroduced as Bill S-210 on October 27, 2007. It was finally given second reading and then fully considered by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. It was passed in the committee without amendment and given third reading here on May 24, 2008. It then went to the other place, only to die on the Order Paper upon prorogation.

Here we are back at it again. For the purpose of the record, I will reiterate some of the arguments, as we now have new senators who have not had the benefit of previous debates.

This legislation started as Bill S-43. It then became Bill S-206, then Bill S-210, and it is now Bill S-205. The simple amendment encapsulated in this bill clarifies the explicit gap in the language of section 83.01 of the Criminal Code. The proposal is to amend that section of the Criminal Code by adding the following after subsection (1.1):

(1.2) For greater certainty, a suicide bombing comes within paragraphs (a) and (b) of the definition "terrorist activity" in subsection (1).

This amendment, honourable senators, is a definitional clause to include suicide bombing explicitly in the Criminal Code. It will establish suicide bombing per se, the very words, as a criminal offence. This bill, honourable senators, goes to the very nature and purpose of the criminal law.

Law and Canada are inseparable. This bill goes to the very purpose of criminal law, and the major purpose of this chamber, as we all know, is to create laws. That is the heart and essence of our business as senators.

Only last week in The New York Times there was a story of an imprisoned grandmother in Iraq who specialized in enlisting her children, her grandchildren, her family and other children to become suicide bombers. How obscene that is, yet how timely.

Canada, unlike other countries, is a country created by laws, not by violence. In 1908, the great English author Rudyard Kipling, on a visit to Canada, wrote to his family his impressions of Canada and Canadians. Here is a quotation from that letter:

. . . the law in Canada exists and is administered, not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe . . . but as an integral part of the national character — no more to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers.

Earlier, in 1861, John Anderson, a fugitive slave being discharged for murder by the Court of Common Pleas in Upper Canada said:

I have never known that there was so much law in the world as I find in Canada.

The late Robertson Davies, in his 1954 masterpiece, Leaven of Malice, wrote these words:

. . . never go to law for simple vengeance; that's not what law is for. Redress, yes; vengeance, no.

In 1960, the Right Honourable Lester Bowles Pearson, a mentor of this senator and others in this chamber, spoke these words in House of Commons debates:

Incorruptible and respected courts, enforcing laws made by free men in Parliament assembled and dealing with specific matters and, with specific sanctions to enforce their observance; these are the best guarantees of our rights and liberties. This is the tried and tested British way, and is the better course to follow than the mere pious affirmation of general principles to which some political societies are addicted.

The paramount purpose of our work in Parliament is no more and no less than to make laws. That is what we do; that is what Parliament does.

Parliament transforms experience into principles, and these principles are then expressed in explicit laws. We make laws and we administer the execution of those laws, especially criminal laws. Parliament has an exclusive oversight of criminal law power, and this power is tied to the question of freedom, liberty and security, which are the organizing principles at the heart of federal governance. Criminal laws are Parliament's definition of our civilization's standards of conduct and care.

To fall below these standards of care by unwanted conduct is to invite penalties, prompting state action and, more important, to provide a clear, unequivocal warning against conflict, a prophylactic against uncivilized conduct that is actual, apparent, intentional or unintentional.

Ultimately, criminal law seeks to prevent and ostracize egregious conduct and, in the process, to transform the attitude and intentions of those who practise such conduct. It is to transform public opinion, public conduct and private conduct.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. All citizens are presumed to know the law. A fortiori, there is a clear and present obligation of Parliament to ensure that the criminal laws are clear and lucid, especially because of their criminal consequences. To deprive a person of his liberty because of precipitous or unwanted conduct requires lucidity of the highest order. That is why the common jargon, phrases and parlance have been picked up specifically in our Criminal Code and in other criminal law, for example, as in England, with terms like "kidnapping," "murder" and "theft." We took common parlance and moved it explicitly into the code so the public would not be confused and would clearly understand the law.

The Criminal Code is bound up in the protection and security of people and properties. Two of the Tablets of the Covenant, Moses' Ten Commandments, are clear and simple: "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal." Words are as important as the laws themselves. Laws rest on practice, moral principles and clarity. Natural laws float above the normative laws. Natural laws encapsulate our moral principles. The normative laws draw upon the natural laws and specify the enforcement of moral offences with particularity and precision; hence, the high onus of proof and the high presumption of innocence when offensive conduct results in the loss of liberty.

Therefore, at the core of the debate on this bill lies the core of our culture, our civilization, namely, the reverence for life and the sanctity of life rather than the promotion of a cult of death. Put another way, criminal law purpose is to unify normative principles and social standards. As the great judge Oliver Wendell Holmes once put it, "no grand principle is worth a damn unless it is applied to specific cases."

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