The Conference confirms that a rule-based system is the best guarantee for commitments to be enforced and for all Member States to be treated equally.

In fact, instead of eliminating all legal loopholes that justify the criminal possession of child pornography in Bill C-20, the minister simply combined these defences and hid them in the broadly interpreted defence of public good (1225) However, despite the minister's attempt to sell Bill C-20 on the basis that the artistic merit defence no longer applies, he admitted on September 25 in the justice committee that it was still included under the now broader public good defence.

What has really happened is there is not a substantive difference between this defence in this legislation and what was in the previous legislation on artistic merit (1025) The other defences have been rolled into something called the public good defence which now has several avenues in which the Supreme Court will have great difficulty unless the normal avenues of defence used by defence lawyers are addressed.

The ruling also confirmed that a rules-based system is the best guarantee for commitments to be enforced and for all Member States to be treated equally.

Allow me to identify these options: to abolish the defence of provocation, to reform the defence of provocation by removing the phrase in the heat of passion, to replace the term wrongful act with unlawful act, to remove the ordinary person test to reflect the mix subjective-objective test, to reform the defence of expanding the suddenness requirement, to reform the defence so that it is not available in a case of a spousal homicide, to reform the defence so that it is not available in a case where the victim asserts his or her charter rights, to reform the defence to limit it to situations where excessive force was used in self-defence, ...[+++] and to leave the Criminal Code provisions on the provocation defence exactly as they are.

I will list these nine options so they are on the record for Hansard: to abolish the defence of provocation; to reform the defence of provocation by removing the phrase “in the heat of passion”; to replace the term “wrongful act” with “unlawful act”; to remove the ordinary person test to reflect the mixed subjective-objective test; to reform the defence of expanding the “suddenness” requirement; to reform the defence so that it is not available in cases of spousal homicides; to reform the defence so that it is not available in cases where the victim asserts his or her charter protected rights; to reform the defence to limit it to ...[+++]situations where excessive force was used in self-defence; to leave the Criminal Code provisions on the provocation defence exactly as they are.