VOL

TIME – 4 p.m.

LOCATION – Winnipeg, Manitoba

CHAIRPERSON – Mr. Daryl Reid (Transcona)

VICE-CHAIRPERSON – Mr. Tom Nevakshonoff (Interlake)

ATTENDANCE – 11 QUORUM – 6

Members of the Committee present:

Hon. Mr. Smith

Mr. Cummings, Mrs. Driedger, Mr. Jennissen, Ms. Korzeniowski, Messrs. Nevakshonoff, Reid, Sale, Schellenberg, Schuler, Mrs. Taillieu

MATTERS UNDER CONSIDERATION:

Bill 215–The Liquor Control Amendment Act (Helping to Prevent Date Rape)

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Mr. Chairperson: Will the Standing Committee on Legislative Affairs please come to order.

This meeting has been called to consider Bill 215, The Liquor Control Amendment Act (Helping to Prevent Date Rape).

It is my understanding that there are no presenters registered to speak to this bill, and, of course, I have to make the question to the audience that's here with us this afternoon on whether or not anyone is interested in making a presentation to this committee. Seeing none, of course, we'll then proceed with this bill.

Does the sponsor for the bill have an opening statement?

Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): I have a few brief comments to make, and I guess I'm going to start out because one of the significant comments has to be thank-you to a lot of people that helped to allow this bill to go through. I would like to thank the Government House Leader (Mr. Chomiak) for his co-operation throughout the day and yesterday to try to find a way to make this work, to the Minister charged with the administration of The Liquor Control Act (Mr. Smith) for seconding the bill, to all members of the House, all parties in the House who agreed.

I realize that this is a bill that's coming in, first of all, at the end of session, so it's late, and we are ensuring that it is reaching this point of debate. I appreciate that everybody was willing to look at fast-tracking this. I also realize that it's unprecedented, in many instances, for an opposition member's bill to pass.

I want to say a big thank-you to Leg Counsel because it is this group of people that has been working very, very diligently to try to find a way to make this legislation work. We want to have legislation that is going to meet any challenges. We want to have legislation that is going to not have to face a lot of stumbling along the way, and Leg Counsel has just done a superb job in terms of getting us this far with this legislation. I want to thank them because I know that they were doing a lot of things right to the last minute today. So, to everybody, I guess, that is here, I appreciate the efforts that have gone into this.

I just want to say that this has been something that I have wanted to do for some time now, never really knew there was a mechanism that we had in place. I have followed a little bit recently with what was happening in Ontario, and it gave me the impetus to be able to find a way to bring this forward in Manitoba.

I am aware of six people, and in fact today I just heard about two more, and I am sure that the more we talk about it, the more you're going to hear that it has happened to somebody. I know of five that were at a bar, had a drug slipped into their drink, and then were raped. I have spent some time speaking to one of them. I'm also aware of a sixth person who ended up having a drug slipped into her drink, but she became ill, went to the washroom and passed out in the washroom of the bar, and it did not end up in an assault. That last person happens to be somebody I know and worked with in the past. I heard about it yesterday at the sunrise memorial. In my wildest dreams I never thought that I would ever know of anybody who had been date raped. I'm not even sure you could call it date rape, because it's not necessarily that you're on a date. You could be at the bar with a lot of friends. In many of these instances, it is an acquaintance and somebody that you know who has committed this horrendous crime.

In the one situation that I'm very well aware of, it was a soccer coach who was a coach of small kids playing soccer who actually was one of the rapists. You don’t know who it might be. You might think it's somebody you trust. I think that this, in some ways, takes a lot of faith in humanity away from us in some ways when you consider who might do this.

So I think if there is a way that we can stop this in any way, I think it is important that we at least try. As I said earlier, I’m glad to see that after the message of yesterday at the sunrise memorial, we've got to do all we can to stop this violence against women. Unfortunately, too, this is not just against women. It does happen to men because of the five people that I am aware of who were date raped, one was a man. So it crosses genders and it is something that we have an opportunity now to address.

I think there is maybe an opportunity for a public health component to this in terms of education and awareness that needs to go hand in hand with this. I hope that perhaps down the road that that could follow once this legislation is moving forward. I had spent some time doing research on this and finding out what other jurisdictions have done. A year ago I was in Toronto and I was in a washroom in a bar and actually they had a poster there. I thought that was interesting at the time, and maybe there's an opportunity for us here to look at a poster that could go up in nightclub washrooms or bar washrooms or pub washrooms that would at least be part of a public education program that might go hand in hand with this. That is probably for another day, but, certainly, I hope that this legislation will kick-start some of this, so that we can, in fact, get to a time where we can say violence against women, violence against men, is absolutely unacceptable in our society.

So I want to thank everybody again for their efforts in all of this. I really am sincerely appreciative.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the honourable member for her statement. Is there any other member of the committee who wished to make a statement at this time? None? Then we'll proceed with consideration of the bill.

Of course, during the consideration of the bill the enacting clause and the title are postponed until all other clauses have been considered in their proper order.

We'll now proceed with clause-by-clause consid-eration.

Clause 1–pass; clause 2–pass; clause 3–pass; enacting clause–pass; title–pass. Bill be reported.

The hour being 4:04 p.m., what's the will of the committee?

Some Honourable Members: Rise.

Mr. Chairperson: Committee rise. Thank you to members of the committee.

COMMITTEE ROSE AT: 4:04 p.m.