Bill C-36 (Historical)

Anti-terrorism Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Official Secrets Act, the Canada Evidence Act, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act and other Acts, and to enact measures respecting the registration of charities in order to combat terrorism

Anti-terrorism Act

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, scurrilous seems to be the word of the day and hopefully the hon. member will help us with the definition.

I agree with him that it has become emotional and politicized. I regret that very much. These are very serious issues and I regret very much that the Prime Minister chose to take that route. I regret that he chose to attack the hon. member and therefore put into play the validity of the investigative section of Bill C-36 and to raise the very fears that my hon. colleague from Scarborough Southwest and I were talking about just a moment ago, that these kinds of hearings can be used, frankly, as fishing expeditions and in the process, people's reputations and lives are compromised.

I find that very regrettable on the part of the Prime Minister.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased for the opportunity to speak to this issue. I wrote this speech a week and a half ago when the debate was first before the House and I needed an opportunity to speak.

As they say in politics, a week is a long time. We have had an extraordinary set of events over the course of that week. We heard the decision of the Supreme Court last Friday, a 9-0 decision, which is certainly a significant decision. We also had the attack on a member of Parliament by thePrime Minister of Canada in the House.

I know it came as a shock to the government members that the Liberal Party was prepared to embrace all of Bill C-36, not just the parts we wanted to tiptoe around. Unlike the Conservative Party, we voted for the entire bill. I sat on the justice committee five years ago when that bill was being considered. I was quite skeptical of those sections, the impugned sections that we are talking about today, and I was not very shy about saying so, both inside and outside of caucus.

In my view, on the evidence that was presented to us in the months following September 11, the evidence simply did not warrant the inclusion of these provisions in Bill C-36. There was quite an animated discussion both inside and outside of caucus on this and, indeed, on the Hill as well.

Hansard has me saying this on October 17, 2001, about a month after September 11:

Watching television last night I was struck by the eagerness of some Canadians to trade their rights and freedoms for security. It was both surprising and disheartening to me to hear caller after caller be prepared to give the government and parliament a blank cheque. It was also disheartening to hear Canadians make wild and outrageous links between immigrants, refugees and security. When people are afraid they say things that they would never otherwise say. They think things that they would never otherwise think, and they do things that they would never otherwise do.

It will be a test of our nation that has a reputation for stability and tolerance to deal with these fears. Otherwise the terrorists win. They win because neighbours turn on neighbours. Instead of reaching out we turn inward. We walk away from our rights for which previous generations have fought and died. The challenge is not to let terrorism win and to break this cycle of victimization where victims in turn victimize. I am hopeful that the justice committee will carefully scrutinize the bill.

We did in fact scrutinize the bill. Some of us argued long and hard that these sections were flawed and had the potential, and I emphasize potential, for abuse and would be used in ways, if they were to be used at all, that we would not otherwise have anticipated. Quite a number of caucus members spoke against these provisions and the prime minister and minister of justice of the day agreed to put a term limit on these sections of the bill.

After third reading, a reporter put a microphone underneath my nose and asked me how I could have voted for Bill C-36. I said it was very difficult. Again I quote myself from Hansard:

None of us will be enthusiastically voting tonight. Possibly after the work of the committee we are somewhat less unhappy, but no one would introduce this kind of bill unless the circumstances justify it.

There are three conditions which erode civil rights: unanimity of purpose, just cause and great uncertainty. We have unanimity of purpose. Canadians want something done. We have a just cause in the fight against terrorism. We have great uncertainty. The population is quite nervous. We have eroded civil liberties, but will our Faustian bargain give us greater security?

We now have five years of experience under our collective belts and with one notable exception, the provisions have never been used. The Air-India inquiry is the notable exception, but at the committee, in caucus and on the floor of the House, I cannot recall any member, any minister or any official ever saying that this could have a retrospective application. Therefore, in some respects, the Air-India inquiry comes to me as a surprise.

It was sold to us on the basis that it would have only a prospective application; that is, the police, or the RCMP or CSIS would have reason to believe that something bad was about to happen. Then they would use the provisions, which we are talking about, to prevent that bad thing from happening.

Using the section for an inquiry like Air-India was certainly something that did not cross my mind and possibly did not cross the minds of many of those who voted in favour of Bill C-36.

No legislation is proposed in an isolated environment. Laws are proclaimed and laws are withdrawn on the basis of experience. What is our experience thus far?

On the security side of the ledger, clearly we are much better prepared than ever. We have had arrests and incidents which have thus far been contained by good intelligence and good police work. On the funding side, we have built up the capability of our intelligence, police, security and military services over the past five years with very significant resources. I dare say that those budgets have possibly grown the most of any budget passed in the House in the last five years.

On the human rights side of the equation, however, the record is somewhat less clear and not nearly as sterling. We just had a Supreme Court of Canada decision, which was a unanimous decision, that detention certificates were unconstitutional. Taking away the liberty of the citizen and others without trial, without access to the evidence and without counsel is an anathema in a free and democratic society. I thought the court's comments were balanced, reasoned, fair and respectful to Parliament and the government's foremost obligation to protect its citizens.

Mr. Arar could have used some of that protection. I cannot recall a case of any Canadian citizen in all of our history where the rights of a citizen have been so abused. Supplying dubious intelligence, cooperating in the extraordinary rendition by a foreign country, knowing that he would be tortured or having reasonable apprehension that he might be tortured is about as bad as it gets. The result is the resignation of the RCMP commissioner, an apology from the Prime Minister and compensation in excess of $10 million.

Apparently, Justice O'Connor's inquiry is even having effects in European nations, where European nations are reconsidering their willingness to allow airplanes for the CIA to land on European soil in order to complete these renditions to other countries. In those countries there has been a great deal of soul-searching going on as to what laws and what cooperation they will offer in the future. Unfortunately, soul-searching does not appear to be the strong suit of the Prime Minister or the government.

What was the Prime Minister thinking about when he attacked the member for Mississauga—Brampton South? Did he really think that a scurrilous attack on a fellow member, who happens to be a Sikh, would somehow enhance the debate between security and rights? Did he really think that this was going to be a contribution to the two major tasks of government: the right of citizens to expect that their government provide security and the right of all citizens to live freely and face their accusers in an open trial with all the evidence? What was he thinking about?

Does he really believe that baseless allegations contribute to an atmosphere of reasoned debate or is this feeding some other agenda, that thePrime Minister really will do anything, absolutely anything, to get his majority? Does this not play into his pandering to fear in Canadians, much like I read out in my quote from Hansard of five years ago, playing to the fears in the population?

The respective merits of whether to sunset or not sunset are irrelevant to the tactics narrative, tough on crime, tough on terrorism. The reality is that security, citizen's rights, reasoned debate and just plain common decency give way to the tactics narrative in pursuit of a majority. Destroy a live, who cares? Destroy a family, who cares? Destroy a nation, who cares? “I have got my majority”.

The Prime Minister, and I do not know whether it is advertently or inadvertently, gave a classic display of the abuses that those of us who sat on the committee five years ago were most worried about. He took a newspaper article and tied it to a member's family and the Liberal position on these clauses.

Surely, it was fundamental to ask questions like these, after all he is the senior political officer in our country. How did the newspapers secure a secret list of potential witnesses? If someone handed him an article just before question period, is that not a fundamental question? It seems fundamental to me. How did that newspaper receive that secret list? Would it not be perfectly ordinary for any prime minister to ask, who would leak such a thing? Why would they leak such a thing? What is the motive?

If for no other reason but simply to protect his own government, would he not ask, “Could my government have been involved in such a leak?” Would he not ask that kind of a question? Is that not a straightforward question to ask before he would engage in a long term smear, knowing full well that these sections on sunsetting or not sunsetting were going to be implicated in some way?

If he is not worried about his own government and he wants to get in his tactical narratives, et cetera, surely to goodness he would have the victims of the Air-India inquiry in mind. These people have been seeking a form of justice for literally years now. Would this not be a fundamental question to ask? “Is my attack on the hon. member going to compromise the integrity of that inquiry?” Is that not a fundamental question?

I do not even know whether he does not care. I think he will do absolutely anything to get a majority and he really does not care how he gets there.

Are witness lists not to be held in the strictest confidence? What little association I have had with inquiries is that they are guarded like Fort Knox, so how does one get those kinds of witness lists?

Using his bully pulpit as the Prime Minister of Canada, the biggest bully pulpit there is in the country, using his bully pulpit to undermine the integrity of the commission of inquiry, what was he thinking about?

Finally, there are the victims of Air-India. As I say, these people have sought justice for years. Surely to goodness a scurrilous and baseless allegation such as this will only lead to the undermining of the quality of that inquiry.

As I look back on my time here and my time on the justice committee, I feel some justification for my skepticism. I do not think that we can deal with terrorism lightly. I do not think we can just join hands, sing Kumbaya and hope that terrorism will somehow or another go away. Terrorism is real. There are indeed those who wish to do us harm. Some even live among us. And threat assessment is not an exact science.

However, as legislators we must only create laws that are proportionate to the reality of the threat. In my view, these provisions are an overreach, disproportionate to the threat, and cannot be justified in a free and democratic state.

Part of Justice O'Connor's report dealt with the policy review of the RCMP's national security activities. He said at page 22:

The national security landscape in Canada is constantly evolving to keep abreast of threats to our national security. It is vital that review and accountability mechanisms keep pace with operational changes. A review in five years' time should assist in this respect.

We have now had five years with Bill C-36. The evidence of the need for these sections was sketchy at the time. The government of that day felt sufficient discomfort to build in an exit ramp. No evidence in these five years has come forward to justify the retention of these sections. This continues to be a significant intrusion into the rights of all Canadians. Therefore, it is my view that these provisions should sunset.

Mr. Speaker, I put it to you that actually the government had been offered a couple of other alternatives. I see the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest sitting down there, and I know that he and his colleagues have worked diligently on this particular section of Bill C-36. I am somewhat disappointed not to see the government coming forward with legislation that reflects the hard work of that committee. I am also disappointed that the government has not come forward with legislation that reflects the work of the Senate.

I have heard arguments in the House that the election intervened and things of that nature. What I have read of the reports is that there are certain decisions that could be taken, that could have been presented by the government, and which would have addressed a number of the significant human rights concerns that have been raised over the course of this period of time, while still addressing the security concerns, those twin responsibilities of government.

I know that our leader has offered cooperation to the government in the event that the government could present comprehensive legislation such as this, but, for whatever reason, the government has chosen a straight up, straight down vote. Unfortunately, I therefore find myself in a position where my skepticism over this period of time has been justified, and my view is that these impugned sections should be allowed to sunset.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on the motion to extend the provisions of Section 83 of the Criminal Code, which, if they are not extended by a vote of the House, will lapse and die. Arguably, if there is a need for these types of provisions, new legislation will need to be introduced, thereby creating a gap in our law, if it is the will of the House and the government to proceed in that way.

These particular sunset provisions were added to the Criminal Code by Bill C-36 after extensive justice committee study and public debate. I was very involved in the work of the justice committee and I do have some personal knowledge of those events at that time.

The sunset provisions were inserted at the insistence of a number of people, including members of the House, for two possible scenarios. The first was the possibility that the provisions, which were quite new to the Criminal Code, might be misused in some way. It turns out that the sections have not been used and therefore have not been misused.

The second reason was in the event that the sections were not needed. Over time it was felt that the perceived need for this type of procedure might not be there and if the conspiracy that gave rise to this legislation was to end, diminish or calm, it could be argued that these more robust procedural provisions might not be necessary and that our ordinary laws might prevail and be usable.

In my view, I do not think either of those circumstances have occurred. There has not been a misuse of the provisions and the conspiracy that gave rise to them has not ended or calmed. I will speak to that later in my remarks.

One could say that these provisions were certainly not enacted because they were not needed. If they were not needed, they would not have been enacted. In fact, the public servants and parliamentarians who generated the legislation could see the need at that time and that is why they were enacted. One could argue that circumstances have changed and that is part of the subject of debate here today.

Why were the sections needed five years ago? I think the reason relates to the fact that there was an acknowledged gap in our criminal law, our common law, that simply evolved through the passage of time. Prior to the last century, the subject of security of the state was in the hands of the king. In fact, it was listed among the king's prerogatives and the king actually did take care of that kind of business.

We have all read history books and seen the movies. The king and his forces would actually detain and arrest people who were conspirators against the state. I suppose they did not make fine distinctions in those days whether it involved a conspiracy, a sedition, a subversion or a treason. These were all components of the common law in those days. The king simply would detain the person, perhaps arrest the person and make use of the dungeon and eventually liquidate the conspiracy.

After we entered into the 20th century, with the growth of civil liberties and written constitutions, it became apparent that our citizens needed rule of law. Commonwealth jurisdictions then adopted what were then known as the war measures acts. When the state entered into a serious war conflict, it relied on special legislation called the war measures act. It was used during the first world war and the second world war.

Eventually, in the modern context, those pieces of legislation were seen to be a bit too draconian for peacetime and therefore were dropped. We no longer have a war measures act. As a result, the legislation we relied on through the Korean War and the two world wars up to about the 1960s is no longer there so that the state cannot rely on any special provisions. It must use the criminal law.

We then had the terrible events of 9/11. Roughly 300 or 400 miles from here as the crow flies, we witnessed the events in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania. Following that, other events occurred in Bali, Madrid, Philippines, London and an almost event in Los Angeles. These events have been ugly. They were terrorist attacks, killing and maiming many and creating the maximum in violence, disruption and disorder. That is the nature of the threat.

As I mentioned, we do not have the provisions that used to be contained in the war measures act, and not only do we not have those, but in years gone by the state could rely on conspiracy laws. However, with the evolution of modern evidentiary rules, it becomes very difficult to convict for a conspiracy. As a result, because the sections have fallen into disuse, not many police or crown prosecutors are good at using them and the courts are not comfortable with them.

I would also point out that we no longer have grand jury investigations. These were part of our criminal process. A grand jury would be invoked, put in place and would investigate allegations of a criminal act or a conspiracy before they actually occurred or just after they happened but before criminal charges were laid. Two or three decades ago our jurisdiction stopped using the grand jury procedure.

At the end of the day, our laws have given up on the war measures act, the law of conspiracy and grand juries. My point is that there has been, by happenstance, a gap in our law. In peacetime, our laws work quite well. We are always reforming them but our laws generally are up to the test, but when the state gets into a conflict or it is at risk, it would be my view that the state needs to rely on a different set of provisions. These sunsetted provisions in Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act, were intended to fill the gap.

It is also worth noting that all of our major allies had to do the same thing. This is not just a Canadian story. Our allies in the U.K., the United States of America and Australia all had to legislate to fill this gap in their laws as well. That is a notable thing and we in the House should take note of it. This is not a circumstances peculiar to Canada.

It is important to segregate things which are not politically, legally connected. I have read some of the debates and I have seen some of the media on this. We are not dealing with investigative warrants under the Security of Information Act. We are not dealing with investigative warrants taken out by CSIS to deal with threats to the security of Canada under the CSIS Act. We are not dealing with continued detention under the Immigration Act. We are not dealing with security certificates, which are removal procedures under the Immigration Act. All of those things are outside the envelope of what we are dealing with here.

We are dealing with two sections. The first one, the investigative hearings section, is both retrospective and prospective in its stance. It can look in the rear view mirror at threats and offences and terrorist activities that happened previously, or prospectively or pre-emptively into the future. The second one is the detention with recognizance section and that is pre-emptive in perspective. In other words, it does not look backward. It is there for the purpose of pre-empting an imminent terrorist attack.

I have tried in my own layman's way to conjure up a scenario when these sections would be used. This is one thing that is actually missing from the debate and I am not sure why. I am curious why security professionals or government officials have not offered a scenario which would explain a bit more clearly how and why these sections would be used. I realize that security professionals do not want to alarm the public. They do not want to reveal existing procedures. They are under oath to keep their information inside a security loop. These are probably some of the reasons we have not had that element of this debate.

It is also notable that this country's security apparatus is populated by officials who do not have the power of arrest. This is a very important distinction here. Most people think that CSIS officials can run around and scoop people off the street. The fact is they cannot legally or otherwise. CSIS officials are not even armed. They do not arrest people. The only people who arrest in this country are peace officers, that is, police officers. All the security professionals on the job are not able to make an arrest, whether it is at CSIS or CSE or in transport. They must be peace officers before they can arrest anyone.

As we develop our intelligence data, it is important to realize that if there is going to be any pre-emption of a terrorist attack by an arrest, it would be done by a policeman, not by our security apparatus. Most of the information we get involving security and intelligence comes from the broader security and intelligence apparatus. Some of it comes from police intelligence, but the bulk of it comes from our security and intelligence apparatus and our allies. That is a very important and indispensable function.

Because we do not have a scenario here, I am going to suggest the scenario of a border attack somewhere on the Canadian border. I do not think I am being right off the page here in suggesting there could be an attack. I do not have to go into any gory details; let me just say that an attack is possible and that the attack is imminent. Let me suggest that police and authorities may not have all the data needed to obtain a Criminal Code warrant for any of the existing provisions in the Criminal Code. They may have only one or two persons identified. They may have a possible target identified. They may have detected part of a cell and a likely target. They may not be able technically to connect all of the dots necessary to obtain a Criminal Code warrant. If they can, then they can take out a Criminal Code warrant and make an arrest.

Let me suggest as well that this data has not come from their own sources, but has come from an intelligence agency or an allied intelligence agency. I will assume for the sake of my scenario that the information is credible and real.

Given the potential for massive violence and disorder, pre-emption becomes the order of the day. It becomes a priority. If people are not sure what massive violence and disorder is, they should think about what happened in London, Madrid or New York City, just to get the flavour of what this is.

Under these sections a peace officer using credible data, probably packaged by an intelligence agency, either domestic or ally, would then present the information very quickly to the attorney general of a province. If some members think that is time consuming, some of our constituents have to wait sometimes to see an MP or to see a cabinet minister, but I can say that getting through to the attorney general of a province on a matter of priority happens very quickly. I have had the pleasure of dealing with an attorney general on a matter of that nature, and it was a very prompt and a very quick turnaround time. The information is then packaged for an attorney general, who must provide consent in writing. The information is then taken to a judge, who must also sign off and issue the warrants.

The procedure for the use of these sections is judicially supervised in the beginning. It is consented to by the attorney general representing the government. It is managed by a peace officer, police officer, subject to the Criminal Code. The entire process in both sections has been judicialized. It is totally judicially supervised. There is a warrant, a judge, an attorney general, and a totally judicialized procedure. It looks awfully charter compliant to me.

It has already been mentioned that our courts have agreed that these procedures are charter compliant. An argument that the charter is a reason that these sections should not be renewed, in my view, respectfully to all of those who feel that way, is not on; I do not accept that. There may be other issues involving civil liberties that concern them, but certainly not the charter, at least not in a way that I have heard in this House or in the courts up to now.

There are some side notes worth noting. Both the committee of this House and the committee of the Senate have reviewed these provisions and have reported back confirming their support for the provisions.

Also, there exists, as I pointed out earlier, an arguable symmetry between the provisions that we have enacted here and the provisions enacted by our major allies. They operate on the assumption, and I know there was collaboration back at the time these sections were enacted, that our legislation bears some analogy to their own, that when we deal with our allies, they will have the ability to act quickly, and when they deal with us, we will have a similar ability to act quickly.

If these two sections are to lapse, it is arguable that our legislation will not be so symmetric, will not coincide with the legislation of our allies. Since the threat of conspiracy persists, and I am informed that it does, they may be curious as to why we would allow these two sections to lapse.

I would attribute the argument that the sections have not been used to good intelligence work and good luck. Both of those have contributed to that. Regarding the suggestion that the sections are not needed, one only has to look at weekend reports from the United Kingdom, where public reports are that the threat level there is as high as it has ever been.

With all due respect to many in the House who are concerned about the civil liberties aspects of this, I hope the record will show that these sections are charter compliant and that they are there for the benefit of Canadians as a whole as a protection order. I hope colleagues will take all of that into consideration in the vote.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege for me to rise and speak to this motion. I must say that I feel rather ashamed. I was here in the House in 2001 when we had the debate. I remember very well all the questions raised by the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, who was the opposition leader at the time, as well as those of our justice critic, Michel Bellehumeur, the hon. member for Berthier—Montcalm.

We were worried about a number of things. The first was the very definition of terrorism and a terrorist act. I do not want to return to all that because the Supreme Court did not rule on it. The other extremely important questions that we raised had to do with procedural fairness, the right to a full and complete defence, and how best to achieve a laudable objective. We need to remember the situation in 2001 and how concerned we were, especially in view of what had happened in the United States. We know how close the historical bonds have been between Canada and the United States, bonds that led a former Canadian Prime Minister to say of our relationship that geography made us neighbours but history made us friends.

We could not remain unmoved by the collapse of the twin towers and all the information pouring forth about terrorist networks, real or potential. I would like to thank the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, by the way, for all the vigilance he has shown.

The speeches we heard this morning are pretty amazing in some respects. I should say, first, that for me the Liberals and the Conservatives are the same. We need to remember what the Liberals were saying. The Bloc was very clear. Not that we were great seers or prophets, but we did anticipate a few things. Some provisions of the bill that was being introduced, Bill C-36, were obviously incompatible with the basic principles on which our justice system is built.

I remember very well the questions and comments made by the justice minister at the time. They were even more unacceptable in that she was a former professor of constitutional law who had written articles on legal guarantees and procedural fairness, which I had had occasion to read.

The Liberals and Conservatives were animated by a common desire to move as quickly as possible and respond to the emergency because the situation was indeed very worrisome.

I read the Supreme Court ruling from beginning to end. What the Supreme Court told us is that in a democracy, and in a system where the rule of law means something, the end never justifies the means. As parliamentarians, we must respect that. The Conservatives and the Liberals were of one mind; we realize, with hindsight, that their position does not stand up to our most basic principles of justice.

It is demagogy, to some extent, to rise this morning in this House and to make it seem as though there are those who are concerned about the safety of citizens and those who are not. All parliamentarians in this House are concerned about the safety of citizens. However, it may be that, in our work as parliamentarians, we have to propose measures that push the boundaries when it comes to how we perceive the evidence or how we see the process unfolding.

I was in this House when Bill C-95, the first anti-gang bill, was adopted in 1997.

The definition of a criminal organization then was: five individuals who, in the past five years, committed offences punishable by more than five years' imprisonment.

At that time, there was also a sense of urgency. However, I would never have thought about rising in this House and voting for this bill, which was to be revised by Bill C-24, if the principal condition of the law had been to deny the accused access to all the evidence. That is the problem with this bill. I am surprised that no government members have noted this fact.

We will have an opportunity to mention this: the Criminal Code does contain mechanisms for preventive detention. First, common law recognizes this principle and the Supreme Court has recognized it several times. We need not go very far. Section 495 of the Criminal Code—if my memory serves me correctly—allows a police officer to arrest, on reasonable grounds, a person he believes has committed or is about to commit an offence.

Later, of course, the individual will have a trial and can be represented. All legal guarantees will be offered and justice will be served the way it should be in an adversarial system, in other words, the public prosecution lays charges and provides evidence and the accused can defend himself or herself. Getting to the truth is what this confrontation should be all about. That is not what is being proposed in the antiterrorist provisions.

We are not against the fact that measures are needed. I am sure that the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin never said anything of the sort. We acknowledge that some individuals may pose a threat to national security. It is true there are terrorist movements.

I remember attending lectures given by researchers from the Raoul Dandurand Chair in strategic and diplomatic studies. We know that terrorist movements have been at work and that they will be in the years to come. We are even told that the largest terrorist movements, which constitute the worst threat to the security of modern states, are those with religious motivations.

We know all that. We are not questioning the fact that in legislation, whether in the Immigration Act or in other legislation, a minister may be asked to review situations where individuals will have to be deemed threats to national security. We recognize that and we agree that in all modern countries, particularly in vast countries and countries where borders are porous, it is acceptable for these provisions to exist.

Nonetheless, there is something quite unbelievable in these provisions. The Supreme Court said that the way in which the antiterrorist provisions are set up, in their wording and the way the courts are called to interpret them, some procedural guarantees are being breached. I will come back to that.

This leads to the following question. Can these terrorist movements be dismantled by using the provisions in sections 83.27, 83.28, 83.29, and 83.3? Why have these provisions not been invoked? Logically speaking, just because they have not been invoked yet does not mean they will not be in the future, but this is nonetheless a measure of their immediate relevance.

Under the existing Criminal Code—as we were reminded—an individual can be arrested without a warrant. It even sets out that in individual can be brought before a judge, compelled to enter into a recognizance to keep the peace and prohibited from contacting certain individuals. This is set out in section 810 of the Criminal Code.

Section 465 even includes a provision that allows for the arrest of individuals on the basis of conspiracy alone and because there is a risk they will commit acts at a later date. It is not as though we are completely without any other legislative recourse, or as though there is nothing in our existing legislation.

Something is very troubling. While we may not agree on how our political system operates, we cannot deny that there is a recognized tradition of respect for human rights. This includes Diefenbaker's Canadian Bill of Rights, the Canadian Human Rights Act adopted in 1977 and, more recently, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In the National Assembly, in 1982, at the time the Canadian Charter was debated, we did not agree on the management of linguistic rights. Nor did we agree on section 27 pertaining to the enhancement of multicultural heritage. We nevertheless recognize the charter as a tool for the protection of human rights, particularly for judicial guarantees, which, moreover, already exist and were already set out in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. We recognize that it serves as a tool for the promotion and enhancement of human rights.

As legislators, how could we have let ourselves become distracted? The Bloc Québécois cannot be blamed because, based on the recommendation of the leader of the Bloc and our justice critic, we voted unanimously against BIll C-36.

Why did we vote against Bill C-36? Because we did not believe that an individual could receive a fair trial without access to the evidence, especially the most important pieces of evidence, the ones supporting the charges or leading to a guilty verdict. The Supreme Court spoke of “sensitive information”. That was the main problem with the proposed law.

I would like to quote what the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said on page 54. A unanimous ruling is significant, after all. In a decision written by Madam Justice McLachlin, the court said:

I therefore conclude that the IRPA's procedure for determining whether a certificate is reasonable does not conform to the principles of fundamental justice as embodied in s. 7 of the Charter.

This is serious. Legislators should be very concerned about this paragraph. I have difficulty understanding the government's obstinate refusal to recognize the proposed law. Of course, the Conservatives were not responsible for creating it; the Liberals were.

I hope that all Parliamentarians in this House will acknowledge that things have been taken too far, that due process is not happening and that even though we have a general duty to protect our fellow citizens, we must have safe communities. Specifically, we must protect our fellow citizens from possible terrorist attacks.

The court will explain what it means by the “principles of fundamental justice” embodied in section 7. This section is well known to us all. It concerns life, liberty and security of the person. The Supreme Court will say that those rights cannot be interfered with. First and foremost, we must ensure an impartial hearing.

The Supreme Court considered the question of the evidence being introduced ex parte, that is, the judge reviews the evidence, but not in the presence of both parties, specifically, defence lawyers for the person named in the certificate.

Is it not troubling to know that a person who does not appear before the judge—a judge who has reviewed the evidence, including the sensitive information—cannot refute that information, cannot correct the facts, cannot explain them, cannot respond to the quality of the information provided and the credibility of the informants?

Not only did the Supreme Court say that it was a miscarriage or denial of justice, as must exist for section 7 of the Charter to apply, but it also said that judges hearing the evidence ex parte are placed in a position where they cannot be impartial. Is this not tantamount to asking them to be investigators?

The court said that not allowing a person detained under a certificate to receive all of the evidence and be able to refute, explain and correct it, and to question the source of the evidence infringes section 7.

The court did not say that security certificates are unnecessary. Over the next year, the court invites the legislator to review the way in which certificates are issued. It is interesting to remember that the court gave the United Kingdom as an example. In committee, this was even brought to the attention of parliamentarians. The court even gives Canadian examples where the members of a House of Commons subcommittee, who were hearing from employees of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, were able to respect the security and confidentiality requirements and still carry out their parliamentary work.

The court also has the following observation, and again I will cite Justice McLachlin. Furthermore, no parliamentarian or minister has provided an explanation for this. I hope they will during our exchanges later. Justice McLachlin said, “—Why the drafters of the legislation did not provide for special counsel to objectively review the material with a view to protecting the named person's interest—as was formerly done for the review of security certificates by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and is presently done in the United Kingdom...has not been explained”.

The United Kingdom has also passed antiterrorist provisions. The court wonders why we did not take the same route. The court proposes a compromise between complete denial of access to sensitive information about the person named in the security certificate and the possible confidential nature of certain information in thwarting terrorist attacks, in other words a procedural fairness requirement, a requirement for respecting basic justice. The court says that if we want to maintain these balances, these powers that have to be balanced between national security, confidentiality of certain information, but also the rights of those who may be charged—who are in fact charged in some cases—then we need access to information. I hope the government will take this into account during the review it has been given one year to do.

In closing, I cannot believe that people were detained for five or six years. I am running out of time. However, we have to remember that different rules apply depending on whether the person is a permanent resident or a foreign national when it comes to a review of detention. A permanent resident gets this review within 48 hours and every six months. A foreign national can be imprisoned for 120 days without ever having their detention reviewed. As the Supreme Court pointed out, this does not make any sense.

I will stop here, but, once again, I believe there is no reason to be proud today of Bill C-36. In my opinion, this House would have been better advised to listen to the Bloc Québécois when it gave these warnings. Fortunately, the Supreme Court was able to take an informed look at this legislation that offends human dignity and the best we can do is to review it.

Opposition Motion--Government Policies

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Anti-terrorism Act was brought in for a reason by the Liberal government years ago. There is a sunset clause. I was the chair of the subcommittee on Bill C-36. At that time, the deputy prime minister, the minister of public safety and I had many conversations. They were not prepared to make any changes. They supported the act as it stands today.

I do not know why they have had a change of heart. Under the current circumstances I think it is important--

Citizenship and Immigration

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak to this motion, particularly in light of my own personal history on the issue. I have always been deeply concerned about the rights of Canadians and the freedoms that we have in our society.

Going back to Bill C-36 and what is presently under consideration by this House, the motion to give an additional three years to the anti-terrorism law, it turns out that I am going to have to confess to the House and to Canadians that I made a mistake. I made a mistake five years ago when I voted against this anti-terrorism bill. It was the position of my party to support the Liberal government on the anti-terrorism bill.

The bill was proposed immediately prior to the break week in October, and the debate proceeded to the break week around Remembrance Day. During that period of time and those two breaks, I went around my constituency. I went to classrooms and to coffee shops. I conducted town halls. I listened to the people in my constituency.

The major concern coming out of all of that was the fact that the anti-terrorism bill as such was so odious and so bad, and so crushed the individual freedoms and liberties for which hundreds of thousands of Canadians died, that nobody wanted the bill. Although there are the two provisions that are now before the House for debate in the bill, and there is a five year sunset clause, there are other provisions in the Anti-Terrorism Act that are virtually equally odious to the sense of freedom and the sense of fair play that we have in our society.

As a consequence of that, I chose to take a position contrary to the Canadian Alliance position at the time and contrary to that of my leader. I was one of two people in our party, I believe, who stood up and voted against that bill.

I am happy to say that I was wrong. I was wrong with my vote because, in the intervening period of time, we have seen that the police forces, the people who protect Canadian society, have not had occasion to enact any of those provisions, and that is good.

I was also wrong in taking a look at the potential for there to be a miscarriage of justice, for the potential for there to be excessive use, and for the potential for civil liberties of Canadians to be taken away.

Quite frankly, I feel somewhat qualified to speak to this particular motion because of the strong sense that I as an individual representing the people of Kootenay--Columbia have about the individual civil liberties of everybody in Canada.

Taking a look at this motion per se, and having listened to the presentation by the member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, I find his position, if indeed it is representative of where Liberal members are coming from, to be absolutely breathtaking in the scope of its hypocrisy.

His position is unsustainable when we look at the fact that my colleague from Abbotsford and I pointed out, which is that it was the Liberal justice minister who went before the press gallery, who spoke very well, very strongly and very purposefully about the Anti-Terrorism Act, and who actually saw the incarceration of these men. If it was not she, it was her predecessor, also a Liberal justice minister.

For him to be standing here and saying that just because we have changed government, just because the Conservatives are now in charge of the keys on the doors that we should be changing the system, if there is such a thing as logic in that argument, it absolutely eludes me. I do not comprehend other than for possible political posturing and advantage, why he would have chosen to have made that speech.

Although I disagree in the most fundamental way with the position the NDP members are taking on this issue and the position they take on a number of related issues, in my judgment, although I believe they are fundamentally wrong, they are nonetheless doing it because they believe it. There is a consistency to the NDP position.

There is a total inconsistency to the Liberals' position. We never know what it is going to be from day to day. The new leader of the Liberals I believe took a position on the anti-terrorism bill, or at least certainly his party did, which the Liberals have now completely overturned and flip-flopped on.

As a person who is deeply concerned about the personal freedoms and the rights that we have in Canada, I say to the Liberals to get their act together, to get some principles on the positions they are going to be taking on these issues. It is far too important.

I will argue and do everything I can within the law, within the legislative power of Parliament to defeat what the NDP members are talking about, but I do respect the fact that they are taking what they consider to be a principled position. It is a position that they have.

I find myself in despair over the fact that on issues that are so fundamental, so bedrock to who we are as Canadians and what our society represents, the Liberals wish and wash and flip and flop and we never know where they are going to end up.

I felt compelled to stand on this issue because it is one that has been immensely important to me as long as I have had the extreme privilege that I have had to represent the people of Kootenay--Columbia in this place.

Anti-terrorism Act

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me say to the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley that in the subcommittee we are looking at all other aspects of Bill C-36. It is a very comprehensive review. That report will be finished in the not too distant future. Really, I hope the government looks at that report seriously.

With respect to Mr. Arar, my argument would be that these provisions have not been used. If the provisions of investigative hearings and preventive arrests had been abused since 2001 until today, I would be the first one to say we should sunset them. In my judgment, and I think in the general consensus, they have not been abused because they have not been used.

Therefore, my argument would be that because they parallel many of the provisions currently available in the Criminal Code, although they are not precisely what is needed under Bill C-36 and that is why they were written in, my argument would be that they have not been abused, they are still needed, and they therefore should be extended.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, being the member for Etobicoke North, I will not be saying how I will be voting either on this matter.

I am pleased to enter the debate on this motion that has been brought before the House by the Conservative Party to extend for a period of three years the provisions related to preventive arrests and investigative hearings.

I serve on the subcommittee and in fact I served on the subcommittee in the previous Parliament as well. We agreed to revive the former testimony from the last Parliament so that we could get on with the recommendations. We are working still very feverishly on the main body of the report. Unfortunately we had to uncouple the provisions related to investigative hearings and preventive arrests because they have the sunset clauses. I believe they will sunset this week. Those provisions had to be uncoupled from the main body of the report and that is why they are on the floor of the House today.

I know that the committee is doing a lot of hard work on the Anti-terrorism Act generally. There will be a report at some point, hopefully in the not too distant future, which I think will respond to many of the concerns raised by many Canadians.

I am disappointed that the government has chosen to ignore the 10 recommendations of the subcommittee and has brought in only two of the recommendations. In fact, the two recommendations with respect to extending the provisions differ from the recommendations of the subcommittee. The subcommittee recommended that they be extended for five years. We did that because we know how long it takes to review these provisions. These are very complex matters. They require a lot of testimony and witnesses on both sides of the issue. If there was a three year review, I would suggest that some subcommittee would have to begin that review almost immediately.

Some of the other recommendations were more of a housekeeping nature, but there were a couple of recommendations that were important and the government has chosen to ignore them. I raise the same concern as my colleague from the Bloc. I am hoping that as we are putting in this effort at the subcommittee that the government will actually listen to what the subcommittee has to say.

On a general theme, it is very difficult to get balance in life. That could be at a personal level. How does one balance one's professional life and career with a family? How do we balance so many different competing demands on us as citizens? That is very true, in fact more profoundly true, for governments and parliaments when they have to find the right balance between protecting their citizens against threats to their security, whether those threats are internal or external, and balancing that against the legitimate rights of Canadians to have their civil liberties protected and respected, for their privacy rights to be respected, and for their rights and freedoms to be protected. It is never an easy task and it will never be an easy task. It was not an easy task in 2001 and it is not an easy task here today when we are presented with these issues.

It would be easy for me to hide behind the fact that I was on the subcommittee in both Parliaments. I heard all the testimony. In fact, I had the great honour to serve as parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness in the last parliament. I am not going to hide behind all that because I think all of us in this House know what the issues are.

There are questions around the fight against terrorism and the protection of civil liberties. That is what it is about. At the committee we heard from both sides. We heard from civil libertarians that these provisions were excessive and we heard from many other witnesses that the provisions were necessary or in fact did not go far enough.

This is what life is about. We have to wrestle with these issues and we have to make some decisions.

What I would like to do first of all is to come back to the recommendations that the government, at this point and perhaps forever, has chosen to ignore.

What the subcommittee recommended was that investigative hearings only be available when there is a reason to believe there is imminent peril that a terrorist offence will be committed. It surprised me to learn that right now an investigative hearing can be called into play when a terrorist act has already been committed. We challenged the government members at the time to bring forth evidence that would justify that provision, not just looking forward, but looking backward. We were not able to get that evidence, so we made that a recommendation.

With respect to preventive arrest, we said that a peace officer must have reasonable grounds to believe a terrorism offence will be committed. The government has chosen at this point not to deal with that one. It is difficult, when the government comes in with two out of ten recommendations and two of the recommendations are different from what the subcommittee recommended, to respond to that.

In a general theme, my view is that since 2001, nothing much has changed. We still face the threat of terrorism. I would agree with my colleague from Leeds—Grenville that perhaps a terrorist threat is more complicated, more intense, more sophisticated than ever before. I do not think much has changed since 2001. If anything, the terrorist threat could be worse.

It is no secret that our forces are fighting in Afghanistan. That has many people not very happy with us. We are on the al-Qaeda list, not necessarily because of Afghanistan, but perhaps for other reasons as well. I do not believe that the terrorist threat has diminished very much, if at all. In fact, I think it has probably increased.

I can certainly respect the judgment of my colleagues in the House on this side and the other side that 2001 was a grand compromise. Many in the House felt that preventive arrest and investigative hearings were instruments that were too severe and, as a compromise, the sunsetting provisions were written into Bill C-36. Today, five years later, the debate is if they have not been used, they are not needed, and therefore that is why we did sunset them. That was the purpose of it. Because we were not comfortable with them back in 2001, and therefore we should be sunsetting them.

I certainly respect that point of view. It is not a point of view I agree with, but that is what this place is all about, having debate. I do not agree with it because I believe that the other argument is equally or, in my judgment, more valid. If those provisions have not been used, then clearly the concerns of those in 2001 that maybe law enforcement or authorities would abuse these provisions has not been borne out. They have not been used. For me, that makes the case that we should extend them.

We know that with respect to investigative hearings there was a time during the Air-India inquiry when an investigative hearing was requested, but by the time the Supreme Court ruled, and the Supreme Court ruled that it was an appropriate instrument, it was too late because the Air-India work had been completed. That was a decision of the Supreme Court. The investigative hearings as a function have never been used, nor have preventive arrests.

Last summer 15 young people were arrested in the Toronto area. Some ask if the provisions of Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism legislation, were used. They were not used. Some argue that if they were not used, then why do we need them. It is a good debate.

What we are missing here is that there will be occasions when there is enough evidence to arrest people under the normal provisions of the Criminal Code, but we do know that with terrorism offences, sometimes all that the security people or the law enforcement people are seeing is maybe email messages, sometimes encoded, but they have a very strong feeling that some terrorist attack might be imminent. In a case like that, they might not have all the evidence they need to arrest people under the current provisions of the code and they may need the provisions under Bill C-36.

I recall the testimony of the ombudsman from the United Kingdom who came to our committee. He basically oversees the anti-terrorism regime within the United Kingdom. When pressed about why these provisions were necessary, he used the analogy of when the police believe that a bank robbery is imminent, but they do not have a lot of evidence and they just put two and two together. The police have been around and have seen it all and can figure things out sometimes that something is about to happen. With a bank robbery, if they thought that something might be happening, they could stake out the bank and just watch for signs of suspicious activity.

This witness from the United Kingdom said, and I think he is so right, that with a terrorist attack we cannot stake out the place. If someone comes in with a bomb and blows up a building, it is too late because the person, who probably would look like any of us, would walk in and might have bombs or other terrorist instruments and therefore we cannot stake out the joint. We have to deal with it.

That is why these provisions were put into Bill C-36 and that is why I believe that they are still required.

I think there is misinformation circulating with respect to these provisions. There are already provisions in Canada's law that are equivalent for example to investigative hearings. Investigative hearings are investigatory and not intended to determine criminal liability within the context of the law related to public inquiries, competition, income tax and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. There are already provisions for investigative hearings in those areas.

With respect to recognizances with conditions, that is preventive arrest, there are equivalents with respect to peace bonds that are issued to deal with anticipated violent offences, sexual offences and criminal organization offences.

Both these legislative measures, preventive arrest and investigative hearings, already have some grounding in the criminal law of Canada. Unfortunately, these provisions themselves do not apply to terrorism offences so they had to be written into the law to be applicable to terrorism offences.

The member for Leeds—Grenville chaired the subcommittee. I was surprised that he was not able to have all 10 recommendations dealt with by his government. That is a disappointing aspect for me.

With the reports coming out of the Maher Arar inquiry, we are anticipating increasing demands for oversight over the RCMP and over CSIS. In fact, it was our Liberal government in the last Parliament that tabled a bill to set up a committee of parliamentarians to oversee our national security policy and agenda. I am hoping the government proceeds with that legislation or something akin to it because I think it is appropriate to have these oversights.

The drafting of the bill was worked out with all the parties in the House in the last Parliament. Whether it would have the support of all parties in this Parliament I do not know, but I suspect many of the same people are around and that we could reach some agreement on what should be in a national security committee of parliamentarians. I think more oversight is needed and that would be an important step.

Also, the Maher Arar inquiry has recommended certain initiatives to increase the oversight of our agencies: CSIS, the RCMP and perhaps the Canada Border Services Agency.

We also need to deal with some concerns by Canadians about the sort of star chamber aspects of some of the provisions of Bill C-36 and also the security certificates. Even though security certificates are outside the realm of Bill C-36, the subcommittee, in its wisdom or lack thereof, decided to include security certificates. I know that these are of much concern to many Canadians. The government refers to them as a three-walled cell. People can be detained under security certificates if they pose a national security threat to Canada but they are free to leave at any point in time. There are star chamber elements about that and I would like to see those dealt with.

There are also questions from various charitable organizations, and I think rightfully so, that feel they could be delisted when something inadvertently happens even though they applied the due diligence that would normally be expected.

There are many things that we can do to deal with the balance between civil liberties and the need to protect society against threats. In fact, I think there is a lot of outreach that the government and all parliamentarians should be doing. Under the previous Liberal government, we started a major dialogue with the Muslim community in Canada. I attended a meeting with the then prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, when we met with 35 imams from across Canada. These imams were speaking out against the violence in the United Kingdom in which terrorists bombed buses and innocent people lost their lives.

These imams spoke out against that violence, so the then prime minister and my colleagues and I met with these imams, first to thank them and congratulate them for speaking out against violence and the injuries to and deaths of innocent bystanders, but also to begin a dialogue on how to reach and connect with the Muslim community in Canada. In my riding of Etobicoke North, I have the third largest Muslim community in Canada. These people are very much against violence and against injury to and the death of innocent bystanders. The imam there spoke out against that as well.

We need to do more. I think we need to do more at our border. We know what the policy is: no racial profiling. But we know about, and I have heard of, real life experiences of people coming across our border who have been treated unjustly, unfairly and with a discriminatory sort of bent. That is why our government launched the fairness initiative, which would have given everybody coming across our border an outlet to go to if they felt they were treated unjustly or discourteously at our border. They would have had an objective observer to complain to, where those matters would be dealt with and disciplinary action would be taken if that was what was uncovered. I hope the Conservative government introduces that.

We started a consultation process under the previous Liberal government, but I do not see anything coming forward to give people dignity and respect at our borders and to cut out racial profiling. Threat profiling? Absolutely. Racial profiling? Never. We should not allow that. We can take measures to start to deal with that.

We need to do more work. The government needs to orchestrate this with CSIS, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency to redo the outreach to these communities, because there is a lot of misinformation. There is a lot of miscommunication. I do not mean to single out the Muslim community, but the Muslim community is affected. We have to deal with that. Muslims are largely affected. There are some misunderstandings. There is some miscommunication going on. We need to deal with it.

I hope this government seizes upon those opportunities to dialogue with the Muslim community, because the vast majority of the Muslim community is made up of peace-loving people. They too want peace and security in Canada. They tell me, “We live in this country as well, and we want peace and security for ourselves and our children and our children's children”. We need to do more dialogue and outreach. As I said, our Liberal government started that process, but I think much more needs to be done.

Twenty or more years ago now, in Canada we witnessed the Air-India terrorist attack, so anyone who argues that Canada is immune from a terrorist attack just simply does not get it, in my judgment. We cannot be naive about these things. These terrorist organizations are very organized. They are prepared to do whatever it takes to make their point.

To wrap up, nothing much has changed since 2001, in my judgment. I think we still have terrorist threats. While we do not like to infringe on civil liberties, in my judgment the balance is still appropriate. It is not Draconian in my view. I think it is still necessary to ensure that we protect our citizens, give them peace and security and, at the same time, reach a good balance with their civil liberties.

Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite happy to join the debate on such an important subject as Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and the Income Tax Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.

This enactment amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to enhance the client identification, record keeping and reporting measures applicable to financial institutions and intermediaries.

It establishes a registration regime for money services businesses and foreign exchange dealers and creates a new offence for not registering.

It allows the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Centre of Canada to disclose additional information to law enforcement and intelligence agencies and to make disclosures to additional agencies.

The bill permits the centre to exchange compliance related information with its foreign counterparts. It also permits the Canada Border Services Agency to share information about the application of the cross-border currency reporting regime with its foreign counterparts. It also includes a consequential amendment to the Canada Border Services Agency Act.

The bill creates an administrative monetary penalty regime, something which certainly seems to be needed.

It also amends the Income Tax Act to allow the Canada Revenue Agency to disclose to the centre, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service information about charities suspected of being involved in terrorist financing activities.

Everyone in the House will likely agree that one of the best ways to fight organized crime and terrorism is to starve those involved of the funds that they need to operate. Stemming the flow of illegal money is of great importance, and it is equally important that we protect the privacy and the charter rights of individual Canadians.

Bill C-25 is a step in the right direction and contains much of what the previous Liberal government was in the process of developing. We will certainly support it in principle at this stage of debate.

The proposed amendments in the bill will make Canada's anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime more consistent with new financial action task force standards. They also follow some of the recommendations made in the 2004 Auditor General's report and in the 2004 Treasury Board evaluation of the regime. I will now turn to some of the key features in this bill.

There are enhanced client identification and record keeping measures for financial institutions and intermediaries. The proposed amendments include requirements for reporting entities to undertake enhanced monitoring of high risk situations, correspondent banking relationships and transactions by politically exposed persons. Banks, insurance companies, securities dealers and money service businesses would be required to take measures to identify and to monitor the transactions of foreign nationals and their immediate families who hold prominent public positions.

There is the reporting of attempted suspicious transactions. All reporting entities currently reporting suspicious transactions would be required to report suspicious attempted transactions to FINTRAC. This is the practice in other G-8 countries and is consistent with financial action task force recommendations.

Another feature in the bill is the registration regime for money service businesses and foreign exchange dealers. The proposed amendments would create a federal registration system for individuals and entities engaged in money service businesses or foreign exchange. FINTRAC would act as the registrar and would maintain a public list of registered money service businesses and foreign exchange dealers. These businesses are already covered by the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act; however, given that this is an unregulated sector, the registry will assist FINTRAC in ensuring compliance with the act.

The bill refers to enhancing the information contained in FINTRAC disclosures. As recommended in the 2004 Auditor General's report and at the behest of law enforcement, the proposed amendments enhance the information FINTRAC can disclose to law enforcement and security agencies on suspicions of money laundering or terrorist financing. This will increase the value of FINTRAC disclosures, ultimately leading to more investigations and eventual prosecutions.

The bill creates an administrative and monetary penalties regime. Currently the act only allows for serious criminal penalties if the act is contravened. FINTRAC requires the ability to levy fines to deal with lesser contraventions in order to take a more balanced and gradual approach to compliance. The amendments create an administrative and monetary penalty system whereby fines can be applied for non-compliance. This was a recommendation in the 2004 Auditor General's report.

The bill reintroduces requirements for legal counsel. The government is working with the legal profession, including notaries in Quebec, to finalize requirements for client identification, record keeping and internal compliance procedures for legal counsel when they act as financial intermediaries. The bill removes the obligation for legal counsel to file suspicious transaction reports or other prescribed transaction reports.

The bill expands information sharing between federal departments and agencies. The amendments in the bill would expand FINTRAC's ability to share information with the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canada Revenue Agency and the Communications Security Establishment. In addition, FINTRAC would be able to receive terrorist property reports under the United Nations act regulations.

Internationally, the enforcement of the anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing requirements would be strengthened by information sharing provisions on compliance related information between FINTRAC and its foreign counterparts on obligations applicable to the financial sector and between the Canada Border Services Agency and its foreign counterparts on the enforcement of the cross-border currency reporting regime.

This bill proposes to make some necessary changes to the previous government's Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001. Changes such as these will likely be required every few years as money launderers become more sophisticated and police need new powers to fight them. This is precisely what makes money laundering so difficult to combat. No matter how many safeguards and checks we as legislators put in place, the criminal element will always look for new ways to avoid or to counter them.

Canada's financial intelligence agency reported $5 billion worth of suspected money laundering and financing of terrorist activities last year alone. That total is more than double the one a year earlier. Of that, $256 million is tied to suspected terrorist financing. Of the 143 reports FINTRAC made to law enforcement agencies, there have been no convictions. The Auditor General in 2004 suggested that allowing more information to flow to law enforcement authorities would help in investigating these suspicious activities. This bill provides these powers.

This bill is largely derived from recommendations made by the Department of Finance under the previous Liberal government's tenure. Money laundering and terrorist financing have economic and social costs against which we must remain vigilant. In order to achieve this, we must continually re-evaluate how we monitor and disclose suspicious transactions as the nature of these activities changes and continually becomes much more sophisticated. The government must move to stem the tide of money laundering and terrorist financing and at the same time protect the privacy rights of law-abiding Canadians.

Given that both the Auditor General and the RCMP have expressed concern that exemptions for the legal profession leave serious gaps in this legislation, I am concerned with the government's decision to remove the obligation for legal counsel to file reports of suspicious transaction with FINTRAC.

Our colleagues in the other house recently tabled a report entitled “Stemming the Flow of Illicit Money” which made several recommendations, some of which are in the bill and some of which are not. I would also like to see the Senate Standing Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce recommendations for Parliament to have greater powers to also scrutinize FINTRAC.

One of the main concerns I have is that we are not bringing some of the businesses that currently do not fall under FINTRAC's guidelines into the bill. As the banking, trade and commerce committee reported, the RCMP believe that as stricter regulations are imposed on businesses in the financial services industry, criminals are seeking alternative methods of laundering the money accumulated from criminal activity.

Various characteristics of the precious metals, stones and jewellery industry make it highly vulnerable to criminal activity. The RCMP has identified these businesses as a likely place for criminals to launder money, yet this bill does not require them to report suspicious transactions as financial institutions must. I strongly recommend that all of us in all parties work together to make sure that we amend this law so that it reflects clearly what is needed.

Another weakness that has been identified by both the Auditor General and the RCMP is that lawyers are not required to disclose suspicious transactions to FINTRAC. This is, of course, another delicate balancing act. On the one hand, we need to give law enforcement the ability to track down those who launder money, using a lawyer as a financial intermediary. On the other hand, we have the issue of protecting solicitor-client privilege. This bill strikes a compromise between the two and I look forward to studying whether this compromise is appropriate under the circumstances.

Another major concern with the bill is that it does not adequately ensure that the privacy of Canadians is protected. The bill will allow FINTRAC to share greater amounts of information with law enforcement agencies. This is necessary in order for those agencies to fully investigate suspicious transactions and to eventually prosecute where appropriate.

Another part of the bill that does not work as effectively as we would like to see is to provide increased protection for the privacy of Canadians, such as by creating an independent review commission with the powers and authority to conduct random reviews of an agency's files and an agency's operations. The Auditor General has also recommended that some such commission be created. In her 2003 report, she wrote:

The government should assess the level of review and reporting requirements to Parliament for security and intelligence agencies to ensure that agencies exercising intrusive powers are subject to levels of external review and disclosure proportionate to the level of intrusion.

It is extremely important that be put in place as this legislation goes forward for the review. Essentially, if we are going to give FINTRAC the ability to share more of Canadians' personal information with bodies like the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency, then should we not also move to ensure there is sufficient oversight of FINTRAC to ensure that the information that it is disseminating is appropriate?

As I said before, this is by and large a good bill. It has certain omissions and weak points and I feel that we should all work to amend it at the committee stage, but overall it will provide the police and prosecutors with some of the tools they require to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party supports the principle underlying this bill. This is not surprising, since we essentially created this bill following the events of September 11, 2001.

I would like to emphasize that my colleague, the member for Willowdale, brought the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) into being. After a certain period of time, we have to amend it. Generally, the amendments proposed in this bill make sense.

I think everyone in the House would agree that while money is not everything, money is a lot, and one of the best ways to choke off terrorism and money launderers is to remove them from their source of money. Essentially, that is the purpose of FINTRAC. The purpose of the bill is to strengthen our ability to act in this area and to bring FINTRAC up to the international norms in terms of money laundering and terrorist financing. However, it is also important that we look at the other side of the coin, and that is privacy concerns and individual rights.

While the pursuit of choking off the sources of funds for money launderers and terrorists is extremely important, at the same time the bill has to safeguard the privacy rights of individuals and prevent a situation in which totally innocent people suffer as a consequence of this bill. I will come back to that point in a few minutes.

Overall, Liberals think the bill is a move in the right direction. We have a number of concerns that we will raise in committee and possibly propose amendments, but we will certainly support the bill for second reading.

The bill proposes to make some necessary changes to the previous government's bill in 2001, Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act. I think changes like this will likely be required every few years as money launderers become more sophisticated and police need new powers to combat them. This is essentially the nature of money laundering and why it is so difficult to combat.

Technological changes occur and money launderers make a few steps ahead. It is always important for the government to react to that so we can be ahead of them, rather than they ahead of us. In that general sense, we fully support the intentions and actions of the bill.

There are three concerns I would like to highlight today. Two of them have been raised by my colleague, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood.

The first of these is that money laundering does not necessarily involve just money. It might involve precious jewels, diamonds and even real estate, as the parliamentary secretary indicated. Therefore, if we are to be comprehensive and effective in our pursuit of terrorist financing and money laundering, then we have to broaden the scope of the act beyond pure cash.

Much of what I am saying, I should point out, has come from a very good report entitled “Stemming the Flow of Illicit Money”, which was presented by fine colleagues from the other place. As they reported, the RCMP believes:

--[a]s stricter regulations are imposed on businesses in the financial services industry, criminals are seeking alternative methods of laundering the money accumulated from criminal activity. Various characteristics of the (precious metals, stones and jewellery) industry make it highly vulnerable to criminal activity.

The RCMP has identified these businesses as likely places for criminals to launder their money. Therefore, there is a good case that the bill require members of this industry to report suspicious transactions in the same way that banks and other financial institutions are required to do. This point was reinforced by my colleague in his conversations with people in Russia.

I know the parliamentary secretary has suggested that in some respects the bill may respond to these concerns, but from my initial knowledge of the bill, it is not at all obvious to me that the bill provides an adequate response to these concerns. This will certainly be one of the areas that the Liberal Party will want to explore when the bill goes to committee.

This as well was mentioned by my colleague from Scarborough. It is the issue of solicitor-client privilege and the need to balance that principle with the need for the government and for Canadian society to get tough and serious with terrorist financing and money laundering.

I am not sure that the compromise that has been reached with the legal profession is the perfect compromise. There may be other means to tighten that up, so the government, the security agencies and FINTRAC can get better information from the legal profession.

I was chatting with my colleague, the member for Vancouver Quadra. He is a lawyer and he has some ideas in this regard. I am sure when the bill gets to committee, the question of solicitor-client privilege and how best to deal with it and whether the law adequately deals with will certainly be one of the areas where my party will want to ask questions and possibly propose amendments.

The third and final concern is that the bill may not adequately address privacy concerns. When the initial law was written, I believe a lot of work was done to create the appropriate balance between on the one hand the need for FINTRAC to share information with law enforcement agencies and on the other hand privacy concerns and the right to protect individuals.

The Auditor General in her 2003 report also commented on this. She said:

The government should assess the level of review and reporting to Parliament for security and intelligence agencies to ensure that agencies exercising intrusive powers are subject to levels of external review and disclosure proportionate to the level of intrusion.

The bill allows FINTRAC to share more information than had been the case before with law enforcement agencies. If we are to preserve the balance, then maybe, in going further in the direction of giving more information to law enforcement agencies, the bill should offer a greater measure of protection due to privacy concerns and a greater level of review, as suggested by the Auditor General, than was in the earlier law.

I know, for example, CSIS and it is also true for CSE, because I dealt with it when I was defence minister, have important civilian review functions. This is designed to monitor the agencies to ensure that nothing unfair or inappropriate is done and to safeguard the rights of individuals and their right to privacy. It may be that some further steps should be taken. I do not know yet what those might be. This will be another issue for the committee.

Of course, the Maher Arar case has brought home to Canadians the importance of this area. I think it could be important as well in the area of money laundering and terrorist financing.

We support the bill in principle, but we have significant concerns in those three areas that I have mentioned. We will want to consider further in committee whether amendments would best be provided to the law. Again, those areas are as follows.

The first is whether the scope of the bill should be broadened to include not only cash, but in a meaningful and strong way also jewels, diamonds and other forms of wealth that can be used as a substitute for cash in money laundering and terrorist financing.

Second, is the issue of solicitor-client privilege and whether the invocation of that privilege has not been so strong in the bill that we are not availing ourselves of information that the legal profession has and could help society track down terrorist financiers and money launderers.

Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, I have some concerns with the whole issue of the balance between, on the one hand, our need to get tough and track down terrorist finances and money launderers, and on the other hand, the need to protect the rights of the individual and privacy. I believe that balance has been undone by the bill and that the defence of privacy issues will need to be correspondingly strengthened.

Violence against Women

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let me try to put the question more directly then.

We have had from the government a string of anti-terrorism bills, Bill C-36, Bill C-42, Bill C-44 and Bill C-55. The government spends millions of dollars fighting terrorism yet women in this country live with violence every minute of their lives. The government refuses to make the issues pertaining to women in abusive relationships a priority.

My question is, where is the money to protect women and for public security for women in violent situations? Where is a national strategy on domestic violence against women?

Main Estimates, 2002-03

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak in the House of Commons especially in the evening. We are here tonight to talk about the Privy Council Office estimates for the coming year.

As the House knows, the Privy Council Office is one of the three central agencies of the federal government, along with the Prime Minister's Office and the Treasury Board Secretariat.

This debate comes at an important time, not only in the life of the country but in the life of this parliament. There is a growing unease among Canadians who since 1993 have been prepared to give the government and the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt in many areas. In light of the stories that we have been hearing and reading about for many weeks, there is a growing concern among the population about where is the beef, where is the vision that the government has for the future of the country.

We have seen in the past week two editorials in English language newspapers calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister. Gordon Robertson, one of the most respected public servants, was acknowledged earlier in the debates. He said that he believes the Prime Minister is about to join the ranks of other Liberal prime ministers who have outstayed their welcome in that important job and role as the prime minister of the nation.

The role of the Privy Council Office is to provide cabinet with non-partisan political advice to guide the decision making of the government. That is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's Office which is on the partisan side of the ledger.

There is some concern of late about whether or not the Privy Council Office itself is straying over the line and into the role of partisan political advice. I do not know Alex Himelfarb who three weeks ago was appointed the Clerk of the Privy Council but he has been criticized in public quarters for taking an active role in the recent highly publicized dispute between the Prime Minister and the former finance minister.

Public administration scholar Gilles Paquet has concluded that the Prime Minister had politicized the position by asking the current Clerk of the Privy Council to directly intervene in a partisan dispute. Before that dispute broke, columnist and author Jeffrey Simpson had written in a column just over a month ago that Mr. Himelfarb is a favourite of the Prime Minister. It is widely reported, according to the columnist, that he had helped write the last red book which the Liberals campaigned on in the 2000 election, a rumour that if true would represent a breach of public service neutrality.

Under the government the relationship between the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office has been the focus of a good deal of scrutiny. There was a hallmark study done by Donald Savoie who had spent considerable time at the centre of government in a previous administration. He concluded that the decision making authority had been highly concentrated in these two bodies to the detriment and possible obsolescence of others including parliament. Mr. Savoie wrote:

Cabinet has now joined Parliament as an institution being bypassed. Real political debate and decision making are increasingly elsewhere--in federal-provincial meetings of first ministers, on Team Canada flights...in the Prime Minister's Office, in the Privy Council Office, in the Department of Finance, and in international organizations and international summits. There is no indication that the one person who holds all the cards, the prime minister, and the central agencies that enable him to bring effective political authority to the centre are about to change things.

What I think Mr. Savoie was saying is that cabinet, like parliament, has become little more than a focus group that polling companies engage in from time to time to assess the temperature of the electorate on issues of the day.

Mr. Savoie is not alone in his concern in this area and neither is Mr. Simpson, because Mr. Paquet has said:

I'm surprised that the clerk of the privy council, who is serving the prime minister as his deputy minister, would be politicizing its position to such a degree that he would become involved in partisan debate with other ministers.

Mr. Paquet concluded that as an official of the Prime Minister's Office, it is Mr. Eddie Goldenberg in this case who is in the political job, while Mr. Himelfarb's role is to oversee the machinery of government.

What this points to is the public's right to know and a feeling that the right to know is under some siege and in some considerable difficulty. The information commissioner has just this day released a document which indicates that the federal government has taken advantage of the tragic events of September 11 by suppressing information and stopping independent inquiries that it deemed to be threatening to national security. Information Commissioner John Reid says that the government has given itself the power to remove classes of records deemed to be too sensitive from ever being accessed while halting all requests under review. He believes that the government has “quietly and firmly” shut the door on 19 years of public access to the records showing how ministers and staff are spending public funds.

Mr. Reid stated “The report emphasizes the fragility of the public's 'right to know' and” cautions “ that this right continues to be under siege” by parliament. Mr. Reid, I am pleased to note, takes issue with the much debated anti-terrorism law, which was known last year as Bill C-36. He refers to it as “a sweeping derogation from the right of access contained in the Access to Information Act”. I am pleased to hear that because it is confirmation of and one of the reasons why our party stood in opposition to Bill C-36 when it was being rushed through the House of Commons in the wake of September 11.

The report states:

Bill C-36 gives the Attorney-General the power to use a secrecy certificate to resist giving records to the Information Commissioner...The federal government has given itself the legal tools to stop in its tracks any independent review of denials of access under the Access to Information Act.

The commissioner said that we Canadians need to be wary of this government's continued attempts to prevent access to important information. He is critical of the intent of the government to reform the act by way of an insider review process. He stated:

The harsh attacks made this year by the government against the right to know heighten the concern that, no matter how well the task force does its work, no serious effort will be made by this government to modernize and strengthen the Act.

Those are very significant concerns. In addition to them, Mr. Reid is also saying that Canadians should ask themselves why the Prime Minister is so opposed to independent political auditing of his ethical standards and those of his fellow ministers. We find the answer in the report from the commissioner, who is an independent officer of this House and who has had to take the Prime Minister's Office to court. This is what he has to say in that report released today:

The fact remains, however, that there is a reluctance to write things down (for fear of access) and an oversensitivity to preserving the good “image” of a minister, the government or the department. It is a fact that the Clerk of the Privy Council insists on the broadest possible interpretation of the scope of cabinet secrecy. As well, the Prime Minister is personally committed to insulating his office and offices of ministers from the Act's coverage and from the Information Commissioner's investigative jurisdiction. These “hostilities” at the top stand in the way of the good-faith efforts, at more junior levels, to get on with a cultural change to open government.

Those are fairly important words from the Information Commissioner, who does report to the House of Commons and to parliament. It brings up the fact that the New Democratic Party, for three consecutive parliaments now, has been endeavouring to have the House pass ethics guidelines. We favour a range of legislative reforms that would introduce transparency and accountability into party and campaign financing and the conduct of legislators and members of the executive in their dealings with lobbyists.

I think this is a terribly significant time to be making these kinds of ethical guidelines, just because of what we have been reading and hearing about in the news media. I believe that the root of the problem is kickbacks or perhaps kick-forwards in terms of working with ad agencies and the like, either for past favours or for future favours.

One of the ways that this could be corrected very quickly would be to amend the Canada Elections Act to incorporate funding of party leadership campaigns under the disclosure requirement. A second way would be to develop and promote a system of state funded campaign financing, possibly modeled after the system in Quebec or Manitoba, which must be implemented to curb the influence that business and the wealthy have over the democratic electoral process.

I do not want to imply by referring twice in one speech to Jeffrey Simpson, the Globe and Mail columnist, that I am necessarily a big fan, but I did read with some interest a recent column that Mr. Simpson wrote in that newspaper regarding the changes to the election law that have occurred in Manitoba under the premiership of Gary Doer. In that column, Mr. Simpson indicated that Mr. Doer “first had to persuade his own party to abolish union and corporate contributions to political parties”. He managed to do that. He has brought that law into power. The provincial parties operating in the province of Manitoba must now rely only on contributions of up to $3,000 maximum from individuals, wrote Mr. Simpson, “a change that would be worthwhile for federal parties to adopt with modifications, instead of having their leaders fly around scooping up corporate (and union) cash” as the Prime Minister did recently in the province of Manitoba at a $400 a plate fundraising dinner.

I recall that René Lévesque, the first leader of the parti Quebecois in the province of Quebec, who governed for a number of years, was asked after he left office what the one piece of legislation was that he was most proud of. He responded very promptly that he was most proud of the guidelines his government brought in on spending for political parties and curbing and restricting donations from corporations and from trade unions. This is something that, as I have said before, but I do not think we can say it too often, would go a long way to restoring the faith of Canadians in what it is that governments are doing and what it is that political parties need to be doing.

Another area that could and should be looked at is the whole notion of whistleblower legislation. My colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, introduced a bill more than a year ago, an act to respect the protection of whistleblowers and to amend various acts. The bill proposes to protect members of the public service of Canada from retaliation for making in good faith allegations of wrongdoing and to provide a means for making such allegations in confidence so that it may be determined whether or not there is substance to the charges and to allow an opportunity to ferret out all of the facts. The legislation proposed by my colleague would have placed present practices under the House of Commons where they could be referred to a committee by the House.

Whistleblower laws are posited on the belief that employees should be able to disclose without reprisal to those in a position to investigate instances where there has been or there will likely be a criminal or a civil offence, a breach of legal obligation, miscarriage of justice, danger to public or individual health or safety, damage to the environment or a coverup of any of these matters.

The basic provisions would be protection of disclosures made in good faith to prescribed bodies. The bill would prohibit employers from discharging or otherwise discriminating against employees in retaliation to the disclosure to the employer, an independent body or government agency. It would protect employees and allow them to participate in formal government proceedings in connection with violations, including amnesty from any legal proceedings arising from their participation. Finally, it would establish an independent appeals procedure for any employee who believes that he or she has been discharged, demoted or otherwise discriminated against contrary to the provisions, and compensation could be awarded in cases where this has occurred.

This is not groundbreaking legislation. It would be in this country, but it certainly is not around the world. The British public interest disclosure act is considered by some to be the best example of comprehensive whistleblower legislation and makes provision for whistleblowers to be protected in the case of wider disclosures, which is mentioned in my colleague's bill.

My time is drawing to a close. I indicated that I was not here to be critical of Alex Himelfarb, the new Clerk of the Privy Council Office. Indeed, I noted with some interest that he addressed some 800 senior public servants yesterday in a speech here in Ottawa.

Among other things, Mr. Himelfarb said that the time was ripe for the bureaucracy to dish up new and exciting policy options like this government has “never seen before”. He is calling for an agenda in the fall that includes public service reform, health care reform, the long promised innovation agenda, a skills and learning blueprint, and something that will reach out to aboriginal, poor people and make certain that every child has a good start in life.

I think that if that were to happen it would be a good start, not only for Mr. Himelfarb, but for the House and mostly for the people of Canada.

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, you have my firm promise that I will be referring only to you in the course of my comments, tempted though I am.

I would like to refer back to the debate that occurred between the member for Toronto--Danforth and the Conservative House leader and to address one of the issues they had raised in their comments. The member for Toronto--Danforth suggested to the Conservative House leader that there is no distinction between a minister's position and that of an ordinary member and that ministers ought not to be restricted in how they represent their constituents and to what degree they work as ombudsmen on behalf of their constituents.

There is a fundamental distinction here. It used to be traditional for members of parliament to step down and seek re-election when they were becoming cabinet ministers on the understanding that they would be incapable of representing their constituents to the same degree as an ombudsman because they would have the power to represent the interests of their constituents over the interests of the people of Canada.

That was a practice which was abandoned in the early 20th century because we believed we had other protections that would ensure that ministers could no longer represent the interests of their constituents over the interests of the people of Canada who they were representing as ministers of the crown. I am afraid that we are seeing some of those protections being eroded.

More particularly and further to the point the hon. member was making, when the Prime Minister defended the solicitor general he was referring to the fact that the minister was representing the people of Prince Edward Island in his capacity as a regional minister. The solicitor general is a regional minister charged with the task of bringing home the goodies that are dispensed on a discretionary basis by the government to his part of the country in competition with various other regional ministers who have these non official but apparently extremely important portfolios. They are so important in the mind of the Prime Minister that they override their official functions. They override their duty to the crown and their duty to the people of Canada.

They bring home the pork and in consequence exercise discretion in such a way that they pay people in the area where regional ministers are official pork dispensers to hire members of their family to be in parts of their institution to ensure the pork will come to their institution when it is being delivered to the region. That is the fundamental problem and that is the distinction between ministers and ordinary members of parliament, be they on the government side or the opposition side, who are not in the position of power to disburse public funds.

Tonight we will be voting on well over $1 billion in government spending in the form of several votes on several different issues. Due to the vagaries in the way members of parliament submit their motions of objection, it turns out we will almost certainly spend the entire period of time debating the first motion. As it turned out the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough submitted first and therefore we will focus not only on his motion but also on the item which he selected to put in a motion. The result is we will talk about the privy council.

I would like to go through the various votes that will come up tonight and point out the number of dollars involved in each. Under Vote No. 1, which we are debating, $101 million; Vote No. 2 is $3,423,000; Vote No. 3 is $426 million; Vote No. 4 is $110 million; Vote No. 5 is $325 million; and Vote No. 6, grants and contributions from the justice department in the amount of $399 million.

The item we are debating is not the largest item on tonight's agenda and for that reason my remarks will stray a little into some of the other areas other than the privy council. We cannot therefore just focus, as the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister did, on a civics course essay on what the Privy Council Office does, informative as it is for those who are enrolled in civics courses.

To me what is happening tonight with these votes is symptomatic of a problem which affects so many votes in this place. We find ourselves debating whatever is first on the agenda and then we are simply unable to deal in detail with votes that come up later on the agenda, notwithstanding their importance.

I can give a couple of examples. When Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act, was up for debate, the House got hung up on a motion that I had put forward when time allocation and closure was put in place. The motion was not outstandingly important and the result was that it got debated far more than it deserved and we never got on to the other items, many of which were important. Something like that is happening tonight. With Bill C-5 something similar has occurred.

If I were to pick out the item that seems to me to deserve the greatest consideration among the various votes that are occurring tonight, I would probably say that it would be the grants and contributions, vote 6, in the order of just under $400 million in the justice department. I say that because there is a crisis in the country of confidence in the government, and as polls show, a crisis in the faith that Canadians have in their government not to be corrupt. It is based on the assumption, which is backed up by an outstandingly large amount of evidence, that when governments have the capacity to spend funds in a discretionary manner and when individual ministers have the capacity to allocate in a discretionary manner, and grants and contributions of course fall under this category, then we see the tendency for them not merely to bring the pork home to their region but the bring the pork home to those who might just happen to make contributions to their party or to their own campaigns or indeed in certain cases to their own leadership campaigns.

That is a serious problem. It is more than a serious problem. It is verging on a national crisis.

There are vast amounts of government grants and contributions in other departments, not just the ones we are voting on tonight. I want to give some examples tonight, taking the estimates for this year in three other departments: in the ministry of finance, $675 million in grants and contributions; in the human resources department, just shy of $1 billion in grants and contributions, $925 million to be precise; and in industry, $933 million in grants and contributions.

What this involves of course is money that is given out on a discretionary basis. I do not mean to suggest, and no doubt someone on the other side will insinuate that this is what I mean to suggest, that this is all in the form of grants and contributions to Liberal contributors. However, when we have this amount of money, we have a very large haystack in which more than one or two needles can be buried and of course huge opportunities for abuse.

We all know that these grants and contributions are recorded in the public accounts of Canada. How much does that actually mean? The Public Accounts of Canada list the various grants and contributions given out by the Government of Canada. To give an idea of what it means and how it is supposed to protect the public interest, let me quote from a recent article in the National Post , written by Andrew Coyne. He says:

An informed electorate, so the theory goes, should then be able to decide for itself [by reading the public accounts] whether politicians are too cozy with business or other interests, and punish them at the next election. It's perfectly simple, really. Voters have only to check the list of recipients of grants and subsidies in the public accounts, keep tabs on all untendered contracts issued by Public Works, sift through the files of the various federal lending agencies to see which companies have received government loans, scan the text of each piece of legislation or order-in-council, then cross-reference these with the list of donors maintained at Elections Canada, not only for the current year, but previous years as well.

Presumably we could do this through access to some kind of teleporting device into future political contributions as well. That is what we are up against.

To make things worse than that, we do not get access to all grants and contributions, only those over the amount of $100,000. Any grant or contribution up to $99,000 is completely off the public accounts.

That is a change, incidentally, which occurred during the lifetime of this government. It used to be any grant or contribution over $10,000 but then the rules changed. Why did they change? We were told that there was a problem with the size of the public accounts books being produced. They were getting too large so rules changed to save paper.

This change came through just about the time the Internet came into use and these things were being posted on the Internet. The argument was that too much paper was being used and it was expedient to make this change. It is expedient all right but not perhaps for the reasons suggested by the government at that time.

Is there an opportunity for needles to be hidden in these vast haystacks? There certainly is. The way these accounts are put together, there is not merely one big haystack out there. We have to go through elaborate cross-referencing and we have to have access to information requests to get this information which is not readily or quickly available. Having launched over a 100 access to information requests last year, I am well aware of the fact that they can be delayed, deferred or any number of tactics to deny information to the person seeking it, particularly when it is something worth seeking.

All these things are designed to ensure that there is a separate haystack for every needle out there. As a result, we only ever see what I would like to say is the tip of the iceberg, but actually 10% of the iceberg is actually shows. It is the tip of something much larger with much less showing. That is what is going on.

Here is the tip of the iceberg as it stands now. This is a partial list because I do have limited time. There is something fishy going on with the various Groupaction contracts. There is the new Groupe Everest contract. Media IDA Vision controlled 75% of government advertising contracts last year, when only 25% can be permitted to one company under the rules. There was the overspending on the promotion of the La FrancophonieGames, which has been raised so eloquently by our colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois.

There was a $101 million untendered contract for new jets for our ministers. The Cascade Data Services incipient scandal is emerging in which Cascade Data Services is receiving money when it has no website, no public telephone number and no address known to people who live in the immediate vicinity of its supposed location.

Faced with this situation and all this administrative convenience we have a serious problem. Even if it were the intention of MPs, and more particularly of ministers in the House, to try to be as clean as they possibly could be, the temptations and competitive pressure under such a system for a person to veer from the straight and narrow would be overwhelming, particularly anyone running for the leadership of the governing party when all their competitors are out there raising money with the potential to give favours.

I suggest the only solution is to raise the political costs to the actors who seek to become the leader of the Liberal Party to the point where it no longer pays to get involved in any kind of trading of favours. When this is done, there will be an elimination of any hint or threat of the misuse of public funds.

In my remaining time let me suggest one way in which this sort of thing could be done so that we could improve the public access to the information that would raise the political costs for getting involved in the kinds of conflict of interests that we see emerging. I would suggest we eliminate the $100,000 floor for reporting. I do not suggest taking it down to $10,000 but taking it down to zero.

If a grant or contribution is given out, I suggest it would be recorded in the public accounts, period. Moreover, I suggest it should be placed on the government's website. I would suggest one step further. Being on the website, it should be placed in the form of a manipulable database so individuals can do a few experiments and see, for example, if there are any commonalities in the names of the individuals who are recipients. It can be manipulated by name of recipient.

I would suggest that would make a huge difference. It would greatly reduce the potential for hiding money from the public view. Moreover it would make access instant. It would substantially reduce the costs to those who are looking for this kind of information.

If this were done, I think we would see a tremendous increase in transparency. I think we would see a great reduction in the temptations for people, who perhaps might otherwise be the most honest people in the world, to get ahead in politics and in their search for the leadership of their party without finding any need to put themselves in either a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Royal Assent Act

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill S-34, an act respecting royal assent to bills passed by the Houses of Parliament.

I will be speaking against the bill but, for the sake of clarification, I will be speaking against it on my own behalf and not on behalf of the Canadian Alliance as a whole.

I want to begin my comments by congratulating the government House leader for resuming his role. I know he has a deep appreciation for this place and its traditions. In our discussions prior to this debate, we reviewed together some of the provisions of the bill, which he supports and I do not, but I do know that he has a deep appreciation for the history and traditions of the House, and I can appreciate that.

I want to now turn to the three points I want to make about the bill. First, I will give a brief review of the contents of the bill. Second, I will talk a little bit about the role of tradition and of state ceremonial in our system and indeed in all systems. Third, I will talk to the broader question of the reform of this place and some of the dysfunctions that have crept into it.

Bill S-34 would provide an alternative to the formal royal assent procedure currently used in the Canadian parliament. It would provide that royal assent can be given by a written declaration similar to that which is used in Canadian provinces, in Australia and in the United Kingdom, and which has been used in some of those jurisdictions for a number of years.

The provisions of the bill allow for one traditional royal assent ceremony to be held per year. However, the bill carefully states that should such a traditional ceremony not take place there would be no consequences. I think that is definitely a mistake. If the bill had gone through committee and through report stage in this Chamber where amendments could have been made, I would have proposed an amendment to that effect.

Those procedures would take place during the parliamentary session in which both Houses passed the bill.

Those are the general outlines of the legislation. The formal ceremony for royal assent, of which many Canadians may not be aware, occurs, at most, once per session and perhaps not at all.

The way it works now is that when a bill is assented to, the Governor General, or the Queen if she is present in Canada, takes the throne in the Senate, members of the Senate are assembled, the Usher of the Black Rod comes down to the House of Commons and invites all members present to join in the ceremony of royal assent. A parade of members walk over to the Senate and the Governor General or the monarch, as the case may be, gives formal assent to the legislation in question.

I want to talk a bit about the value of this kind of tradition and indicate why this is a key part of my opposition to this bill. I oppose the bill because it represents one small part of the steady erosion in Canada, which has been going on for a number of decades, of the traditional state ceremonial that exists and the respect for the traditional forums in which we enact our laws, carry out our daily lives and carry out the functions that make us part of a body politic, a polity, a community that is not simply a state but something that has an organic existence of its own. Those organic relationships develop slowly. They maintain the value in bringing a solemnity to what we do.

The institution we see eroding bit by bit as these changes take place tends to be the monarchy which is the capstone of the Canadian constitution. Under our constitution and traditions, this is a central part of the parliamentary system. In fact, parliament is not composed under our system of two houses, the Commons and Senate, but rather of three parts: the Commons, the Senate and the Queen. That is why we refer to the Queen in our formal documents and pronouncements in parliament.

We are intended under our original constitution to be a republic in the classical sense. A republic is not in the trite modern sense a state without a monarch. Rather a republic is a mixed government which consists of elements of a monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. It seems to me that the erosion of the traditional monarchial element is a very dangerous process, particularly when the natural form, and this goes back to ancient philosophy, of all institutions is to develop elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. However when one is taken and shaken from its traditional foundations the danger is that it will shift to a caricature of itself. When we replace the traditional monarch with another institution, another person who starts to fill that role unofficially, the danger is that the person can become a kind of caricature of the monarch, filling that monarch's proper role.

All great and stable democracies have understood this and have been very careful to move and change those institutions with extreme care and caution, or perhaps not to change them at all but rather to put the necessary time and effort into ensuring that those institutions will be resuscitated, revived and made a part of the daily lives of citizens, particularly of our young citizens. We see that pattern we see in the United Kingdom of course which as long ago as the 1860s, was referred to by the great writer Walter Bagehot in his book, The English Constitution , as a republic, meaning a republic in the classical, traditional sense.

It is the tradition that was followed in the United States when it was founding its constitution. The Americans were very careful to give a role not only to the democratic element but to the aristocratic element which they embodied in their senate, and to the monarchy. They very much understood that their monarch, which they referred to as their executive, would have a power placed and formalized in the president and also limited in the president.

We have not done that. We left the form of the monarchy surrounding the monarch herself. We have steadily eroded the pomp and circumstance around that office and gradually moved it to the real executive, who of course is the Prime Minister, and we are gradually putting more and more pomp and ceremony around that individual.

I believe that leads to a corrosion of not only our respect for the monarchy itself but our respect for other institutions of our system of government and that includes this place. I have said on previous occasions, the House functions not as a legislative body but as a parliamentary body which considers all bills, debates them and proposes amendments and sends them to committee. We are not doing that on this bill.

In so eroding this institution we have turned into effectively an electoral college which sits in perpetual session and which is repeatedly called upon to renew its vote of confidence in the Prime Minister. That was not the original purpose of this House. I think that is a dangerous trend which has deprived us of the great wisdom that was read into our original constitution and that we inherited from our ancestors, our forebearers, in the parliament in Westminster.

This bill is a very tiny step in that direction but I think again any step in that direction ought to be avoided and we ought as much as possible to reverse that trend.

The value of ceremonial in a broader sense throughout our society is emphasized by any number of scholars. The one who comes to my mind most easily is Joseph Campbell, the great explorer of traditions and comparative sociologies. He made the observation that in each society the glue that holds it together is always the least tangible, the least touchable and the most formalized part of that society. When that is eroded and stripped away, it is formalized but formalized without law and formalized in the minds of the people.

When that is eroded, it always leads to deleterious effects for that culture. He looked at cultures that had largely been untouched by western society that were just, as he wrote in the mid 20th century, coming into contact with western society and western civilization and which saw a rapid erosion of their traditions and forms. He saw tremendous damage being caused to them. It seems to me that in a much lesser degree the same sort of thing can occur here.

In the third part of my remarks I want to address some of the objections that were raised in support of the bill by the government House leader and by others who have spoken in the other place about this bill.

First, the observation was made that many countries with a Westminster style government had abandoned the royal assent ceremony and that Canada was now unique among the parliamentary democracies on the Westminster model, or at least among the more populous ones, in retaining this ceremony in its tradition form. As long ago as 1958, it was observed that “the Canadian ceremony seems to be that which most closely resembles the original”.

This has been presented in the House as being something of a negative. I would say this is actually a very positive thing, that our retention of the ceremony in its original form is something we ought to rejoice in, in the very same way that we place a great deal of value in some of the other symbols in the House.

Of course the symbol of the mace and the power it represents is taken very seriously. We have a parade every day in which the Speaker, accompanied by the Sergeant-at-Arms, brings the mace into the House. The various officers of the House come in wearing either their three cornered or two cornered hats, as the case may be. These are ancient traditional robes of office. They do not serve any practical purpose in making the Speaker, the Clerk or other officers of the House more effective. They serve to remind us of the great and ancient traditions that we have established in this place.

They are the glue that holds us together. They are the glue that in our constitution holds us together. That is why we always have to read our constitution with the understanding that many of the most important aspects of the constitution are not written anywhere. They are understood and held in our hearts.

The very office of the Prime Minister or the institution of cabinet responsibility to parliament, neither of these things are in the constitution itself. They are understood. They are conventional in the same way that the form of the traditional royal assent ceremony is conventional. It is only now in this law being written down, changed and limited.

Without those conventional aspects to our constitution, we would not merely be a much inferior place. If we took our constitution seriously, we would be a virtual dictatorship written as it is without looking at any of the conventions that give it its depth, its breadth, its heterogeneity, its compassion and its flexibility which make it, when taken as a whole, one of the finest in the world, an example to so much of the world.

The preamble of the bill reads as follows:

And whereas it is desirable to facilitate the work of Parliament and the process of enactment by enabling royal assent to be signified by written declaration;

Then it goes on to state some other things. It talks about the need to facilitate the work of parliament by stripping away a bit of ceremony and by enabling royal assent to be given without this ceremonial. This bit of ceremonial, which is supposed to be an intrusion on the effectiveness of our operations here, is something which is no more elaborate than the ceremony that takes place here everyday, and it took place less than an hour ago. It seems to me that rather than stripping this away we ought to consider doing something which is very much the opposite.

Let me suggest that we could, for example, have the current ceremony and whenever a bill is assented to bring in Canadians to see it. We could announce in advance when the ceremony would take place. We could contact local schools and invite school groups to come to the Senate Chamber to see royal assent being given. I think that would be a valuable exercise.

As someone who grew up in this area and could have been brought to such a ceremony as a youngster, it is a great shame that this was never done and that we were not investing this traditional ceremony with the public attention it deserved.

To make this much clearer, I would like to point to another ceremony that occurred 20 years ago on the Hill when the Queen came to sign our constitution, our new charter of rights and amending formula into law.

I was then a high school student. I came down on my own with a friend that day. I took the bus to the Hill. Only a small crowd gathered to see the event. I still have those memories which are a very precious part to my personal attachment to our system and our constitution.

No effort was made to have school groups go to that event. We have all kinds of excuses when we talk about the lack of national feeling that exists in Canada and the lack of natural attachment Canadians have to their country. We are a federal state. We are a continent sized country. How can we expect it? There is the draw of the United States which is so much larger than us. There are two languages in this country. How can we expect Canadians to feel this kind of loyalty to their country?

I would argue that I can find counter examples for everyone of those excuses. We are the size of a continent and we have no sense of loyalty to our country. The Australians are the size of a continent and they have an intense sense of loyalty to their country, as do the Americans. We have more than one language. So do the Swiss and they have an intense sense of loyalty to their country. We are faced with a larger and culturally powerful neighbour which steals away the affections and emotions of our people which is a more exciting place. Look at Switzerland. It is surrounded by three of the most dynamic and exciting cultures in Europe: the Italians, the French and the Germans. Again, the Swiss feel a greater loyalty to their country than do probably any people in the world. I believe this is largely because of the tremendous respect that they show for the traditions and forms of their constitution and of their many cantonal constitutions of all the ceremonial of their state. Some of these ceremonies go back many centuries before the discovery of the continent but they are treated with tremendous respect even when they are slow moving and inconvenient. That is something we need to appreciate and respect.

I have only been to one traditional ceremony for royal assent. With regard to the question of whether this is an inconvenient matter, this ceremony was for Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism act, a law I voted against. However the ceremony was to take place and I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to attend. I was in my office, which is in this building. I saw that something was going on so I went in. There was no inconvenience involved. Parliament was not sitting at the time. It was after the House had risen for the Christmas recess. I, the acting Speaker and the member for Yukon were present.

There was no inconvenience involved at all. If the member for Yukon and I had not been there, the procedure and ceremony would have gone ahead. There was no inconvenience to the House. This ceremony does not slow down the business of the House if we do not want it to. It can be dealt with at a time that is convenient and it is a simple matter with which to deal.

Again, there was something fundamentally wrong with the idea that the putting into effect of this law, probably the most important piece of legislation on which members of the House in this parliament will get a chance to vote prior to the next election, would be done with very little notice on a day during the Christmas holidays when no attention was given to it. If it is as important as we say it is, we ought to treat it with the appropriate respect. We should have treated that law with the appropriate respect. We should have treated the ceremony by which it was enacted with the appropriate respect.

Her Majesty's loyal opposition supports parliamentary reform. We believe in reforming private members' business. We believe in allowing parliament to have greater freedom by giving greater powers to standing committees, greater powers to special committees, allowing an ethics commissioner to be appointed who would report to the House as opposed to reporting to the Prime Minister, having standards of ethical behaviour written down and available so that parliamentarians know what they are. We do not have to guess at what binds the cabinet.

We would like the Prime Minister to enact some of the rules that he promised to enact nine years ago when he was elected. It has been left to the opposition to push the government to bring forward the red book promises which it made almost a decade ago. That is very unfortunate.

We have seen promises recently that some kind of parliamentary reform will be forthcoming. This measure today is presented as an example of parliamentary reform and from one perspective perhaps it is. But it is not a parliamentary reform which empowers this House or which allows us to be more effective representatives of the people who voted for us and sent us here, or which allows us to resume our proper and constitutional role as the democratic arm of our country.

Our country deserves to have a legislature which is genuinely independent and in which genuine debate takes place. Our country deserves to have a legislature in which a variety of points of view are expressed and in which legislation changes as members present their points of view in order to reflect not only their own views but the views of the various communities they represent. None of that occurs because of this measure or because of the other watered down measures the government has been bringing forward.

Last June it was left to the official opposition to put forward a motion instructing a committee to come up with proposals to reform private members' business. On that occasion the government supported the motion, but at committee the government majority voted not to comply with the wishes of the House.

While Bill S-34 does represent parliamentary reform of a sort, watered down and a decade late, it is not enough. Canadians deserve better.

Public Safety Act, 2002

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from British Columbia for his remarks. He has given a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the shortcomings and the dangers associated with this legislation. He has pointed out the lack of the government's ability to justify the need for the bill, to bring forward logic behind cutting off these interim orders, and to remove some of the safeguards that exist under existing legislation.

A number of members who have spoken have highlighted the fact that we already have in place an Emergencies Act. Let us look at the chronology and the history of how that particular legislation came about. The government House leader and other members present who have more history in this place will be quick to acknowledge that the Emergencies Act replaced the War Measures Act. The War Measures Act, under the Liberal administration of the time, was invoked and led to perhaps one of the most egregious assaults on civil liberties that this country has experienced.

There were numerous detentions and arrests that aggravated and inflamed the passions of Quebecers in particular, but Canadians generally. In invoking this type of Draconian approach and the denial of civil liberties, Canadians bore witness to a sad and dark chapter of Canadian history.

When one goes back further an example comes to mind and that is the Steven Truscott case. An individual was sentenced to hang in a judicial process where disclosure was not mandatory and where there were many shortcomings that led to egregious errors in law and almost cost young Steven Truscott his life.

I do not point out that type of example to torque up or engage in rhetoric, but to exemplify the fundamental breaches that could occur when there are parameters of the law that are stretched and ignored, which is what could happen in instances if the bill were to pass in its present form. There could be instances where basic rights could be denied such as the rights to enjoy privacy, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, and the free use of a person's property. That is how fundamental these infringements may become.

Many members who have spoken have pointed very quickly and earnestly to the declaration of controlled military zones and the ramifications that could flow from such declarations. What we are talking about here, because of the nebulous language contained in the bill, is that by simply moving a single piece of military equipment into any region, province or property within our nation's boundaries a declaration could be made deeming that area, in the immediate vicinity of this military vehicle, a controlled military zone. Being deemed a controlled military zone would create certain ramifications that would have grave implications for human rights and liberties. That is of concern when one examines the context of what happened in APEC, Quebec City, and what might happen in Kananaskis.

There is some question as to the timing, the need and the necessity for bringing this legislation forward now. In the aftermath of September 11, as all members rightly have been quick to point out, we are living in a brave new world. We are living in a new environment that recognizes the grave consequences and the real tangible threat that is out there, yet we have seen legislation passed hastily through the House in Bill C-36.

There was great rush and trepidation on the part of the Liberal government to bring forward Bill C-42 which encompassed many of the same elements as the bill we see before us. One could say that to a large extent Bill C-55 is a stripped down version of Bill C-42. Bill C-42 was part of this crass rush to bring in legislation that was supposed to take advantage of the prevailing public attitude and fear that existed.

Thankfully calmer thoughts and introspection have prevailed. What we see with Bill C-55, though, is a very dangerous piece of legislation, particularly when we look at the new powers that would be placed in the hands of ministers. A single minister would have the ability to make these designations and judgments based on information that could be very nebulous, could in fact be secret and could be withheld from parliament or from an individual who might fall victim to the enactment of this type of arbitrary power.

What is perhaps most fundamentally offensive and disturbing about elements of this bill is that once again we see in this legislation a deliberate effort on the part of the drafters, and therefore on the part of the government, to circumvent the role of parliament for scrutiny and for responsible criticism and questioning of the government's actions in the state of an emergency. What this does is waters down what might be deemed an emergency.

Under the current legislation the government rightly has to justify itself. It has to come before parliament within a very short period of time and say that the existing circumstances are so grave that the legislation is necessary. In the aftermath of September 11 there was no such attempt by the government to bring forward a request to invoke the Emergencies Act.

Reflecting on the sentiment of this nation and our brothers and sisters in the United States, clearly there was panic afoot. Yet even in that atmosphere there was no attempt by the government to declare the Emergencies Act in effect in Canada.

What, pray tell, is behind the government's intent to bring in a piece of legislation that is a watered down, interim measure that falls somewhere between no emergency and no need to invoke that type of legislation and something where the government can make a decision to invoke very severe and arbitrary powers without coming before parliament and without bringing it to the House for a vote where the people's representatives are given an opportunity to ask relevant questions, to press the government to justify its actions, to do what parliament is supposed to do in its finest hour, which is to ensure that people's rights are protected, that we are invoking due process and that we are in fact following the democratic process?

There is much to be discussed. There is much answer that the government must provide to convince members present. The previous speaker referred to the fact that there is much opposition and not only in the ranks of assembled members of parliament. Clearly groups that we have heard from around the country share these concerns and are looking forward to the occasion in which they might come before a parliamentary committee to force the government to bring forward its justification for the bill in the very same manner which we are attempting to do through this debate.

By example, if we are not permitted to have a full and open debate and to press the government on this type of legislation, it demonstrates the dangers, should this bill pass, and the inability for members of parliament to invoke this process of questioning and criticism. That is the danger. This debate in and of itself demonstrates what is wrong with having the type of legislation that allows the government to hide, to cover up, to keep secret its justifications for making designations that are tantamount to an emergency or a military zone. People have to understand that this is what will take place, if the legislation were to pass.

Like previous speakers to the legislation, I am encouraged by the fact that members have brought forward thoughtful criticisms, pressed the government on issues that will be affected, issues that pertain to immigration, the Aeronautics Act, the criminal code and the effect that will have, the transportation and security bill and the passing of information between government agencies. All that has caused many, including independent parties who answer to parliament, to question the government's motive, intent and public trust, which is an important element in all of this.

I hope members will continue to question that not only in the House but before the committee, which is the true test as to whether this open, transparent and honourable legislation.