Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Justice.

Justices, the Attorney General of British Columbia intervenes on the question of the relationship between the defense of honest but mistaken belief in consent and the mens rea for sexual assault.

And as we've seen this morning, the fundamental problem that this court has to grapple with is that if the defense of honest but mistaken belief in consent and the mens rea for sexual assault are analytically distinct, that is, if a separate knowledge inquiry is required in every case regardless of whether honest but mistaken belief is on the table, then the reasonable steps requirement and the other important restrictions on the defense of mistaken belief have no meaningful role to play in the analysis.

Various solutions to this problem have been suggested to the court, including what we say are confusing jury instructions, the little difficulty instruction, or an inference or presumption that in most cases the mens rea is proven where the defense is unavailable.

BC's position is that the simplest solution that is the most consistent with this Court's foundational jurisprudence and Parliament's intent is to recognize, as the BC Court of Appeal has done, that the defense of mistake of fact and the knowledge component are not analytically distinct.

There are two sides of the same coin, and what that means is that if there is no air of reality to the defense of mistaken belief, or where that defense is disproven, there is no separate inquiry into the accused's knowledge of non-consent.

Isn't it? That's what it comes down to.