Senator Cotter: I wasn’t intending to enter the debate, but particularly Senator Jaffer and Senator Ataullahjan’s observations about the risks of stereotyping and particularly vulnerable, marginalized or racialized communities invite me to pose this question of you. This is the only part of the bill that has given me concern.

You have spoken to the three words that we have been debating and that have been amended out of the bill. The word I’m most interested in your viewpoints on is the word “general.” I accept your observations about “reasonable” requiring an objective articulation, but the fact of the matter is that people who do get stopped at the border are stopped as individuals. For the life of me, I don’t understand why the choice of a word like “general” as opposed to “specific,” even with the word “concern” was adopted. It seems to me the word “general” invites a border guard to use criteria that are not specific to the individual. As a result, it invites the very kind of concerns that our last two questioners posed. Could you speak to that?

Senator Gold: Thank you, Senator Jaffer. Look, the government looked carefully at that issue and many others and came to the conclusion that it would address those offences which represent a significant majority — I think I mentioned 75% — of cases where people are actually incarcerated. And not only simply that but the types of offences — drug offences, notably, but also offences committed with long guns — that have a serious disproportionate impact on Indigenous individuals and racialized Canadians. It is clearly a major step that the government is taking to address a significant chunk of the problem.

These questions we will study, and I look forward to the study in committee. The government and the officials will have a chance to hear your questions and respond to them, but I think the short answer is that this is a major step and an overdue step in the right direction, a promise that was made during the campaign, as you know. The committee will do its job, as we always do, to make sure that the law is properly understood, and all questions are answered. The government is satisfied that the step that it’s taking now is a major step forward. It doesn’t preclude further steps in the future, but this is an important bill that deserves to be studied seriously, as we will, with your support, at second reading.

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. The government’s position is that the research and the testimony do, in fact, support the proposition that if and when Bill C-5 is passed in this form, it will have a real impact on the overrepresentation of racialized Canadians and Indigenous Canadians who are subject to it.

It’s true that where circumstances are such that a serious prison term — that is to say, two years or more — is thought appropriate by a judge, it’s the federal system that receives the inmates. But it’s equally true, as I said in my speech, that it’s important to do things to break that all too familiar pattern of beginning in the provincial system and then, regrettably, escalating to the federal system.

We’ll study this in committee. I hope we will send it to committee for proper study, and all of these questions will, of course, be addressed. I have every confidence in the committee to address them as diligently as we do all of our work. Thank you for your question.