Canadian astronauts may now need to pay more attention to their behavior. Canadian penal code is being amended to ensure that astronauts who commit crimes on or on the Moon are prosecuted.
The amendment proposal runs deep into Canada’s 2022 federal budget implementation bill, which was presented to the House of Commons last week. With this change, any crime committed on the Moon or during spaceflight will be treated as if it were committed in Canada.
The measure in Bill C-19 states, “A Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission that would constitute an offense if committed in Canada, is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada. ” is said. It is stated that this includes crimes committed “on the surface of the Moon”.
The proposed change comes after Canada signed up with NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in the Lunar Gateway project, a planned small space station that will orbit the Moon in lunar orbit. .
First alleged space crime in history
The debate about the lawlessness of space is not entirely hypothetical. In 2019, US-born astronaut Anne McClain was charged with committing the first space crime in history for allegedly using her ISS computer to access her estranged husband’s online bank records.
The allegations were later found to be false, but this incident raised the issue of potential crimes in space. Professor Ram S. Jakhu, one of the world’s leading experts in international space law from McGill University in Canada, described the event as an “important and urgent wake-up call” to adopt new legal rules of extraterritorial law.
Professor Jakhu, in a letter to the Lawyer Monthly, said, “It would be logical and imperative that such rules be the same for all spacefaring people, regardless of their different Earth nationalities. This will require new and innovative thinking and approach to the making and enforcement of space laws, completely different from past and present practices based on the Earthly ‘State- or Nation-centered’ approach,” he wrote.
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