Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
With respect to my Conservative colleagues, I think they're missing a piece of this clause. It doesn't say that the standard is “that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred”. It says, “If the Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred”. I'm not certain that's not a narrower standard than what the Conservatives are proposing here. I don't think it's obvious that the language from Britain is narrower. I think it may be broader than what's already in this bill. This requires the commission to have “reasonable grounds to believe”, which is a well-established Canadian legal concept. We know in law what that means in Canada.
Again, with all due respect, I think you may be misjudging the impact of adopting the British standard. It may in fact be broader than what's adopted in the bill. The advantage of what's in the bill is that it's very clear, and it comes from Canadian legal traditions. We know what “reasonable grounds to believe” actually means. There is a lot of Canadian jurisprudence on that point.
I would urge us to leave this wording as it is. The intent of Parliament here.... The reason we're dealing with this is that grounds have been too narrow. Yes, we are trying to open the door a bit farther to those who have suffered miscarriages of justice. I don't think there's any question about what our intent is here, but I think there's some question about whether the British standard is a much broader standard than what's in the bill.