What bothered us with the military security zones was the fact that the minister could at a whim extend a well delineated zone such as the one under the jurisdiction of the naval reserve, in Quebec City, as much and for as long as he wanted. Moreover, he did not need anyone's permission to do so.
I take the example of the naval reserve because this is a very political issue. Just imagine that a decision was made that all of Old Quebec, including the National Assembly buildings, was to come under the jurisdiction of the naval reserve. What would it look like if members of the Canadian Forces controlled access to the National Assembly? It could have gone that far. The same thing could have happened in the riding of Saint-Jean. The limits of the military base could have been extended to include part of the town of Saint-Jean, including city hall, and soldiers would have controlled the access of city councillors and residents to city hall.
That was going much too far. My colleague did give examples where the army was at fault. We know that it was at fault with respect to Lake Saint-Pierre, and that 300,000 rounds were indeed shot in the water, in the river, of which some 12,000 are likely to still be live. Instead of announcing that they will be helping residents clean up the lake, the departments of the environment and of national defence are passing the buck to each other.
So, the issue of military security zones is very important to us. Once again, we had to be suspicious. There had been abuse in the past; we are trying to remedy that. With a bill like this one, conditions must not be created whereby this abuse could start all over. I have no desire of leaving contaminated land or 300,000 rounds of ammunition in the bottom of the river as a legacy to future generations. This kind of abuse had already taken place.
That is why we are vigilant today. That is also why we, in the Bloc Quebecois, are staunch defenders of the rights and freedoms of individuals. This is very important to us because we have suffered because of that. Our rights and freedoms have been repeatedly trampled on. As a result, we can tell now when a bill contains dangerous provisions.
I think that we are doing our job in taking our responsibilities as parliamentarians. We did so at second reading. We did so for several months at the standing committee, the standing legislative committee which you used to chair, Mr. Speaker, and will continue to do so because we have had our rights interfered with by actions taken by the federal government for far too long, and we think that the bill before us also poses a threat.