Mr. Speaker, as I said, the fact that they had not been used does not mean that they may not yet be needed. In fact, it may demonstrate they were not abused. They may yet still need it.
In terms of the Supreme Court's contextual principle, we must appreciate the contextual environment in which the transnational terrorist threat operates.
I would remind the hon. member, and I suspect he knows, that if one takes a comparative perspective here, we have a situation where, in the United States, simply by designating a suspected terrorist an enemy combatant, he or she can be indefinitely detained. Detention in the United Kingdom has been extended from 6 days to 18 days. We are talking about a requirement to bring a person before judge within 24 hours. As I said, there is an inventory of safeguards at the executive level, at the legislative level, at the judicial level and through other commissioners, such as the Privacy Commissioner and the like.
While this is an imperfect approach, nonetheless it was something that was supported after there was review of these provisions by parliamentary committees in the House and in the Senate. It is not as if we did not have any review or appreciation of these principles as well.
I do agree that we need to do more on these matter. For example, members in the House need to have more information in the matter of intelligence gathering, which my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis recommended. Our government re-established a parliamentary committee to provide oversight with respect to intelligence gathering, and here, too, to invoke more principles of transparency in that regard.