Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my hon. colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona for her outstanding work in the House.
She is a lawyer as well, so she is highly conversant with many of these concepts. I wish more of our friends on the other side of the House were. Given their recent record before the Supreme Court of Canada, it would seem that nobody on that side of the House is aware of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or how the Constitution works in this country.
The contradictions are amazing. I heard a contradiction earlier today that really summarized the lack of coherence in the government. The government justified its removal of the long form census because it felt that it invaded Canadians' privacy by asking them how many bedrooms they had in their house. I heard Conservatives stand in the House and claim that this was a serious violation and justified the removal of what Canadians have relied on as data integral to planning all sorts of social programs and government policies in this country.
However, Conservative after Conservative has stood in the House and justified and defended and backtracked on information that their own agencies that they are supposed to be in charge of are sneaking behind Canadians' backs 1.2 million times and getting their private information from telcos without telling them and without putting that information before a judge for a warrant. The contradictions are stark right there.
As my hon. colleague just pointed out as well, police officers need and deserve to have the tools they need to interdict crime when it is happening. If evidence is in plain sight or if evidence is at risk of being destroyed imminently, there are all sorts of opportunities in our law that justify and allow a police officer to act quickly without having to get a warrant, including telewarrants, which I neglected to mention. There is a 24-hour opportunity to get telewarrants when it is impractical to get a warrant and wait that length of time.
It is up to police officers to justify why they need these extraordinary powers to violate Canadians' privacy. It is not up to Canadians to justify it.