Now, now. I do not believe the hon. member has read my words correctly, but I continue.
The government has alleged that it is the opposition that is playing politics and is endangering national security by voting to sunset these clauses. However, it well knows that these clauses have not been used once in the entire time they have been on the statute books. The case that we are endangering public safety by our actions is fanciful.
Here we do come to material that I have considered in my previous work. Abridgments of civil liberties can be justified but only if public safety absolutely requires it and then only under strict conditions. If this is the test, the clauses should sunset because they have not proven absolutely necessary to the public safety. The government, in essence, has not proven its case, and, on these questions where our liberties are at stake, the government must prove the case of public necessity beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Sunset clauses are placed in legislation precisely to ensure that temporary and emergency provisions of the law enacted to cope with special circumstances do not anchor themselves permanently in our law and, by so doing, begin moving the equilibrium of the law away from where it should always be: balancing security and liberty, public order and individual freedom.
If we renew these clauses as the government proposes, we risk moving that plumb line of the law. Temporary measures will become permanent and what becomes permanent will become unbalanced. The law will begin to privilege security at the expense of freedom, to the eventual detriment of us all.
Let me go further. If we consider the ruling of the Supreme Court last Friday on the security certificate provisions of the Immigration Act and if we further consider the reports of the parliamentary committees, both in this House and in another place, it is clear that the entire anti-terrorist architecture on the statute books needs comprehensive revision.
That is the main challenge that this government, which has been in power now for 13 months, has refused to face. The Conservatives may say that they need more time, but they have had plenty of time. The parliamentary committee in charge of reviewing the sunset clauses submitted its report last October, five months ago. Has the government been asleep since then?
The foundations were well laid but the building needs revision, that is the point.
While the government was slumbering, the parliamentary committee made recommendations on the investigative hearing provisions to give authorities the powers they need to protect us against forthcoming threats. The government has thus far failed to take into account the conclusions of that committee.
For preventive detention, the other sunset clause at issue in this debate, members of the parliamentary committee pointed out that section 495 of the Criminal Code already gives the police the authority to arrest without warrant a person who, on reasonable grounds, he believes is about to commit an indictable offence. This power is already in the criminal law of Canada and the additional powers sought in preventive detention are, in our judgment, strictly unnecessary.
If such powers exist in the criminal law, the government will need to prove, and it has failed to do so, that the preventive arrest provisions of the ATA have the overriding necessity that it claims.
That is the issue here. A free society can contemplate limited abridgments of the civil liberties of citizens only if the government offers clear public justification in Parliament of its case. It has failed to do so. These clauses must sunset and then the government should come back with redrafted measures and a case to justify them to the House and to the people. Should the government bring back measures that meet the test of public necessity and demonstrate that it has listened to the considered opinions of the committee of the House and the Senate, the opposition will respond.
The government needs to do more than just repair these defective clauses. It needs to give serious consideration to the opinions expressed by the honourable members of the Senate in the recent report entitled “Fundamental Justice in Extraordinary Times”.
This report makes my point. The entire architecture of Canada's anti-terrorism laws require substantial amendment. The foundations laid by the Liberal government are sound but there is room for substantial change if Canadians are to remain safe and have their liberties secure.
The report in the Senate, for example, recommends removal of the motive requirement from the Criminal Code definition of terrorist activity. It also recommends removing the reference to political, religious or ideological objectives from the definition of threats to security to Canada. All this, if done by a careful government, would provide greater protection for the free expression of opinion in Canada and prevent religious or racial profiling in Canada's anti-terrorist policy.
Without committing itself in advance to any specific initiative in this area, the opposition urges the government to listen to these suggestions and come back to this House with legislative amendments that meet public safety objectives while providing greater protection for Canada's minorities against religious and racial profiling.
In this and other areas, the report of the other house makes a convincing case. It states that our laws and policies to prevent and combat terrorism should be reformed to better reflect the objective of ensuring the security of Canadians while protecting the civil liberties that are the basis of our democratic society.
Why will the government not react positively to the sober second thought offered by the other chamber to Canada's anti-terrorism laws? Why will it not come to the House with proposals that reflect in detail these sensible recommendations? Why is it presenting members with a false, up or down, black or white choice to sunset or not to sunset? Sunset or not to sunset is not the question. Why has the government waited six months to take action to fix Canada's legislative framework on anti-terrorism? Why has the government, and it is a minority government after all, failed to reach out to the opposition and work with them to amend the laws we need to protect our citizens? Why has it decided that it is in its interest to jam the opposition rather than to serve the people?
I leave it to the other side to answer those questions but I would suggest that the answers tell us much about the character of the government and the character of the hon. member who leads it. For the government, politics comes first and good public policy comes a very distant last. Canadians deserve better.
The government has had plenty of time to review and improve these clauses, but it has done nothing. As a result, the sunset clauses will expire, if that is the will of this House. Once that happens, the government, which could have avoided that situation at any point in the past six months, will have to repair the damage it will have done itself. If it comes back to this House with reasonable measures that meet the test of public necessity, that protect the public while protecting civil liberties, the official opposition will be ready to do its duty constructively.
