Bill C-55 (Historical)

Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in R. v. Tse, safeguards related to the authority to intercept private communications without prior judicial authorization under section 184.4 of that Act. Notably, the enactment
(a) requires the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Attorney General of each province to report on the interceptions of private communications made under section 184.4;
(b) provides that a person who has been the object of such an interception must be notified of the interception within a specified period;
(c) narrows the class of individuals who can make such an interception; and
(d) limits those interceptions to offences listed in section 183 of the Criminal Code.

Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. In fairness, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of laws that have been passed by this place that will be turned back for this or future parliaments to look at. The way the government rams these laws through is sure to create problems down the road, and we will likely see that in future years.

In this particular case, the court has ruled on a flaw in the law. This is just one example, but I believe that there will be many more.

I outlined in my remarks earlier that the government's agenda and the way this regime operates is to limit debate, limit discussion and limit analysis. That is being done in several ways. It is being done through, first, not testing legislation against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as we said earlier. That should have been done. We assumed that it was.

The point of privilege of the member for Winnipeg Centre should tell us more when the Speaker rules. That is a grave concern, because we, as members of Parliament, believed that the Department of Justice did that as a natural course of practice, and it obviously has not been happening.

Omnibus bills, which are bills that are all over the map, covering many subjects, probably never get to the committee with the expertise on them. Therefore, they are not debated or discussed properly.

The use of closure in the House is another measure that rams bills through without proper debate and discussion and a look at the safeguards.

As my colleague indicated a moment ago, even in committees we cannot even debate a simple motion on whether the minister should come before our committee in public. Conservative members drive the committee into what is called in camera, which is in secret. What is secret about having a minister before a committee?

This is the way the Conservatives operate, and it is prone to problems down the road. We will be responsible for the passage of bad legislation because of the way this regime operates.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today in support of Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Criminal Code. I will be splitting my time with the member for Terrebonne—Blainville.

Finally, we have a helpful, useful intervention by the government, a crime bill we can support, not one laced with poison pills. That owes to the circumstances under which the bill comes before the House. It is really the force of circumstances in the form of a Supreme Court imposed deadline operating here, serving in a sense to take the matter out of the government's control.

It is the Supreme Court that has forced this amendment by way of its ruling in R. v. Tse, a case that dates back to April 2012. The case involved the issue of unauthorized wiretapping and, in response to the constitutional challenges raised, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that such a practice could be considered constitutional if the matter were authorized properly by way of legislation. Therefore, the Supreme Court gave the government some time to figure this out, a year in fact, and Bill C-55 is the response. It represents the government's effort to ensure such unauthorized interceptions of private communications be done constitutionally, and it succeeds.

This bill would amend the Criminal Code to provide required clarity, oversight and accountability to the rules with respect to wiretapping in circumstances alleged to be too urgent for prior judicial authorization. Oversight and accountability do not come easily to the government, so it is encouraging to see the bill in Parliament. In fact, it is something just short of a miracle perhaps in light of the progenitor to this bill, Bill C-30.

The history of Bill C-55 is interesting and worthy of comment. Indeed, it explains why the bill is before us at the 11th hour, and indeed the last minute thereof, to boot.

The Supreme Court decision that we are discussing today was rendered a year ago, and yet here we are rushing this through before the April 13 deadline, which is looming. I will not be too critical of that because the timing of the bill is very much linked to the content of it and, frankly, what would make it succeed and be worthy of our support. It is the urgency of the circumstances that seem to have rendered the bill uncharacteristically brief and straightforward. It is in a twisted and counterintuitive way that we perhaps owe the Minister of Public Safety some thanks for his tendency to a debating style that is reductionist in the extreme and that very often ends up posing distorted binary options. It is usually some framing of the issue that places sympathy for victims in opposition to a respect for civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. The case in point today was the minister's claim that people were either with the government or with the child pornographers.

That was the framing for the now dead Bill C-30, the so-called “lawful access bill”. I call it the case in point because Bill C-30 was really the government's first crack at responding to the Supreme Court's invitation to put in place a legislative framework that would render constitutional the unauthorized interception of private communications. However, it was both and alarming and cynical overreach that attempted to exploit all of our disgust and abhorrence for terrible crimes against children in an effort to bully Canadians into giving up their right to privacy in online communications.

It was dubbed the “protecting children from Internet predators act”. That bill would have allowed law enforcement agencies to access Canadians' personal information without a warrant at virtually any time for virtually any reason. It would have given the minister and the government unprecedented powers to access information and to force telecom, Internet, telephone and wireless providers to allow the government to spy on customers. Bill C-30 would have effectively criminalized all Canadians.

That is the legislation the Minister of Public Safety brought to Parliament a little over a year ago when he thought he had a bit of time to play games with the legislation. That is what the Conservative government thought was reasonable: unlimited and unaccountable access to private communication. Luckily, Canadians, Canadian privacy commissioners and civil society organizations were watching, and they did not like what was being proposed. Also lucky was the minister exceeded even himself with offensive hyperbole and sabotaged his own bill in the process. Yes, it is for that and that alone in a strange way that we owe the minister some thanks.

The lesson of Bill C-30, of course, is not lost on anyone. It is that with time to play and left to its own devices, the government will gladly snatch from Canadians their right to privacy. Therefore, we can be sure that Canadians are watching and guarding that right very closely, as are we. Thankfully, this bill is a far cry from Bill C-30. It stands in contrast and, in fact, is short, simple, direct and straightforward.

The task to be accomplished by way of the bill is to amend the Criminal Code to comply with the Supreme Court's 2012 order to change section 184.4 of the code to comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or to lose it. Section 184.4, as it is currently written, allows peace officers to intercept private communications in emergency situations where the officer or officers have reasonable grounds to believe the situation is one of imminent harm to life or property. The urgency of such situations necessitates actions before the proper judicial authorization can be obtained. There are times when this is an appropriate action that can prevent crime and protect Canadians and for this reason section 184.4 exists.

Where it has fallen short up to now is in the area of accountability, largely. Two things have been missing: first, a system of oversight to inform Canadians of when and how this legislation is used; and, second, a requirement to notify individuals whose communications have been intercepted within a period of time defined within the bill. The court found in the R. v. Tse decision that this gap in the legislation constituted a violation of the charter.

Bill C-55 would close this gap, perhaps not perfectly but through the use of four mechanisms. First, the bill would require that the Minister of Public Safety and provincial Attorneys General to make public a report on the use of section 184.4 to intercept private communications on an annual basis. Second, the bill would require that persons whose communications had been intercepted must be notified of the interception within a given period of time. Third, the bill would narrow the definition of who could conduct this surveillance and would change it from “peace officers” to “police officers”. Finally, the bill would specify the list of offences for which section 184.4 could be invoked to those offences listed in section 183 of the Criminal Code.

These four will result in an improvement to the section of the code that serves to both limit the use of warrantless wiretapping to certain individuals, circumstances and offences and to increase the accountability in cases where it is invoked. The Supreme Court of Canada has spoken on the issue and Bill C-55 is Parliament's answer and, in the our view, the right one. Enhanced accountability and transparency is something the NDP will always support.

We know from experience where a lack of oversight and accountability takes us. We get massive omnibus bills, tax bills and omnibus crime bills passed at the last minute, with no time for parliamentarians to vet legislation, as our constituents rightly expect us to do. We get bills like Bill C-30, which outraged the public, and the minister managed to shame himself in that process.

Bill C-55 would revive at least a bit of what the government had run over and left for dead, which is accountability, by requiring the Minister of Public Safety to report annually to Parliament on the use of section 184.4 and the frequency of warrantless wiretaps in emergency situations. It would also require provincial Attorneys General to make this information public as well.

This is the kind of legislation we need, not the kind that gives cabinet ministers or other officials unprecedented powers but one that upholds Canadian law and increases accountability of police to the public. This why my colleagues and I in the NDP will support the bill.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Beaches—East York's presentation was, as always, thorough and helpful.

I am taking us back to the day that Bill C-30 was tabled in the House. It has become convenient to have revisionist history that the Minister of Public Safety was somehow off message when he attacked all of us in the opposition as either standing with child pornographers or with him. It is worth remembering that at first reading no one could find a copy of Bill C-30 in the opposition lobby that did not call it a bill for warrantless access. The use of the term “a bill for the protection of children from Internet predators act” was such a last-minute change that it was not even possible to find a single copy, other than the one that had been tabled for first reading.

My theory on those facts is that it was a PMO-approved bit of spin-doctoring and the mistake the Minister of Public Safety made was delivering the line with too much zeal.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's hypothesis on this. She may very well be correct. I do not want to be interpreted today as suggesting that the minister was off message. It is a message that is too frequently given. As I said in my speech, it is this juxtaposition of sympathy for the victims and civil liberties and constitutional freedoms, but somehow we cannot be for both.

In this case, the binary option was expressed with the government or with the child pornographers. It was perhaps a little overzealous. It has been described as being hurtful and offensive. It is certainly all that, but it is also extremely juvenile and it brings shame upon the minister himself and, frankly, upon this institution to have that level of debate and discourse in the House.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's excellent discourse on this issue. I have a number of questions that I will try to get to in the limited time I have.

I am concerned because what we saw with Bill C-30 was an attempt to use the spectre of crime, the very debate of the accusation of an ordinary citizen supporting child pornography because we dared question the wisdom of the minister.

Bill C-30 would have used the cover of crime to allow all manner of attacks against basic privacy rights, including the fact that the minister could designate persons, and it was not clear who those persons were, to go in and demand warrantless access to information from telecom service providers on undisclosed persons. Who knows, it could be a political staffer who would be able to go in to telecoms to demand ISP information. That was under clause 35 of Bill C-30.

We still have a bill in the House, Bill C-12, which is supposed to be protecting personal privacy data, but we see that is creating all manner of loopholes. Bill C-12 would allow telecommunications companies to disclose personal information to government institutions, and it is unclear exactly who in the government, without the knowledge and consent of individuals for the purpose of "policing services". This is under clause 6(6) of the proposed Bill C-12. The language is in there again to undermine the rights of ordinary citizens to know that there will be due process and oversight.

Why does my hon. colleague think the government is so fixated on undermining the basic legal private rights of Canadian citizens?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Timmins—James Bay for his struggle on behalf of Canadians and their interest in their privacy rights, in particular with respect to the bills he mentioned, Bill C-12 and Bill C-30.

I cannot speculate on why the government has such callous and obvious disregard for the privacy rights of Canadians. I cannot account for the zealotry of the minister himself and, perhaps as my colleague suggested, the PMO, nor the disregard for the charter, the Canadian Bill of Rights and the other legislation that, frankly, obligates the government to bring forward legislation to the House only after it has been vetted for conformity with the charter.

There is obviously a trend here. I reflect on past speeches I have given and all of these issues ultimately go to accountability. Bill C-42 had the opportunity to provide the House with oversight of the RCMP, and the Conservatives ignored that. They go to Senate omnibus bills and so on and so forth.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know this government has very little respect for privacy. We have seen this in the speeches made by my colleagues here, and in the bills this government has introduced. We also see that it has little respect for the provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to Canadians. From time to time, it introduces bills that are at odds with the Constitution.

I am very happy that this time, it decided to comply with the provisions of the charter and amend the Criminal Code so that section 184.4 protects individuals’ privacy, as guaranteed by the charter.

We know that section 184.4 applies to the interception of private communications, and the Supreme Court recently ruled on this subject. Bill C-55 adds measures that would require persons whose private communications have been intercepted to be so informed at least 90 days after the interception, and reports to be produced annually.

These measures are essential. The fact is that when you take away the need to obtain a warrant in order to intercept private communications in extreme situations where a life is in danger, it is important that there be oversight, with a system in place so that we know what happened and why someone found it so important to intercept those private communications without a warrant.

The NDP understands how important it is for the police to have the tools to respond appropriately in dangerous situations, but at the same time, we cannot neglect the rights entrenched in the charter. Even in cases involving criminals, even in extreme cases, we have to respect the law as it stands. We have to respect the principles of Canadian law, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution. It is essential.

While I am happy that this government is finally respecting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in adopting these measures, I should emphasize that this government, given the espionage agenda we saw with Bill C-30 and with Bill C-12, amended this bill to make it consistent with the charter only after being compelled to do so by a Supreme Court justice. So this was not something it decided to do on its own; it was an obligation flowing from the Supreme Court decision. If this government truly had the interests of Canadians at heart, it would have done this itself, instead of waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the matter.

It should also be noted that this bill was introduced as the government was announcing the death of Bill C-30, which enabled designated persons, who were none too clearly defined, to gain access to personal information without a warrant and without judicial oversight.

Once again, this government tried to go after personal information, and to treat all law-abiding Canadians as criminals, with no warrant or judicial oversight. If this government wanted to, it would have said that it is important, when looking for information without a warrant, to have a reporting mechanism or something of the kind, so that people are accountable, that personal information is sought only in extreme cases, and that law-abiding people are not treated as criminals, in contrast to what Bill C-30 proposed.

While Bill C-55, following the Supreme Court decision, ensures respect for section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when private communications are intercepted, Bill C-30 introduced measures that were inconsistent with the right we are guaranteed under section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to be protected against unreasonable search or seizure.

There were two bills. The first was withdrawn, and I am very happy about that. Canadians are also very happy that the government decided not to continue with Bill C-30. The second bill says that Bill C-30 was inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I hope the government will realize to what extent its own bill, its espionage agenda—I am going to call it that because this is not the first time we have seen attempts of this kind—seriously affected the protections Canadians are guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The people of Canada were opposed to the measures contained in Bill C-30. The government accused its opponents of siding with pedophiles. I was myself accused of being a friend to pedophiles because I opposed that bill, like millions of Canadians right across the country. It has nothing to do with being friends to pedophiles, and everything to do with believing in the protection of Charter rights and in the content of our Constitution. It is absolutely essential to protect the provision set out in section 8 of the charter. We cannot go against it, and the Supreme Court judgment demonstrates that.

If Bill C-30 had been passed, it would have empowered designated persons, again not specified, and selected by the minister, to require Internet service providers to supply names, IP addresses and email addresses without a warrant and without judicial oversight. The Supreme Court decision demonstrates the necessity at all costs of protecting the privacy of Canadians, and shows that the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the charter are not negotiable, contrary to what this government thinks. I trust it has learned its lesson.

I mentioned this already, and I would like to say it again. It seems that a little more reflection is needed on this. The government introduced Bill C-12, which still has not been debated, but which also contains measures regarding surveillance without a warrant. Instead of explicitly saying that it would allow the collection of personal information without a warrant, this bill expands the definition of people who have access to that information and who can consult Internet service providers, based on a vague, sketchy definition. The Privacy Commissioner even raised some concerns about that clause, which was included in the bill.

The mandate for online spying that the government has given itself is not finished. I hope the government has learned its lesson and that, in light of the Supreme Court decision regarding the proposal in Bill C-55, it will drop any attempts to spy on Canadians online, when they are obeying the law.

I want to emphasize that the government cannot cast such a wide net and treat all Canadians like criminals when they are online. Of course, there are criminals and people who disobey the law, and it is important that police officers have the tools they need to intervene. That said, the government cannot contravene the charter. It must respect all rights and liberties guaranteed in the charter.

Once again, I really hope the government has learned its lesson and that it will scrap its plan to spy on people online.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on that. The hon. member for Terrebonne—Blainville is hoping that the government has learned its lesson. I would like her to take that a bit further.

Is that hope realistic? Is the government making amends because Easter is just weeks away? The government is not truly making amends. It is not being sincere; this is just a matter of circumstance.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raises an excellent point. This ruling was made last summer, if I remember correctly. The government waited nearly a year before introducing this bill. Section 184.4 has been in the Criminal Code for years, but the government did not do anything until the Supreme Court said that the section violates the charter. The government is not doing this by choice; it has an obligation.

I hope that in the future, it will take this ruling into consideration and will understand that it cannot violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These rights and freedoms are guaranteed for all Canadians, no matter what the circumstances. That must be respected.

I hope that it has learned its lesson. I do not know if it has really learned anything because it was forced to introduce this bill, but I am optimistic.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her speech.

I would like to ask her a broader question about the fact that police authorities can access Canadians' personal, private communications.

Why is it so important that this does not violate the Constitution? Why is it so important that we properly examine this power before we move forward? What are the consequences of giving the authorities these powers? Why is it so important to provide a proper framework for them so that Canadians' rights are not violated?

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, these are important measures, and it is vital that police officers have the tools and measures they need to take action in situations where they could save a life. At the same time, when the need to obtain a warrant is removed, it is truly important to have a system of accountability in place to ensure that those powers are not abused.

Bill C-55 also requires that within 90 days, people be informed that their messages or private communications have been intercepted.

Personally, I would not like my messages to be intercepted without my knowledge. I think this is a serious problem. We need these measures to ensure that section 184.4 is consistent with what is in the charter.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her response.

I would like to know her thoughts on the comments made by the Minister of Public Safety, who lumped together everyone who was against his bill. Finally, he is realizing today that he, himself, was perhaps in the same boat, because the Conservatives decided to reject that bill.

Can she give her thoughts on the minister's comments? Does she think he realized the import of his actions later and that he is now in exactly the same position as the opposition, in other words, against the bill?

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this proves that the government's strategy is simply to divide people. In this example, it is basically like saying, “You are either with us or you are with pedophiles.”

In this situation, the Minister of Public Safety openly insulted anyone who opposed the bill for privacy reasons. It was clear that the minister did not want to listen to Canadians. It took him a year to withdraw his comments. In the end, he did not even apologize to Canadians.

Such comments really demonstrate how little confidence this government has in Canadians and how it would rather divide people instead of listening to them, even though they might be right.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi. I know the member well because I serve on two committees with him.

I am very pleased to speak again in the House on the NDP's views on this piece of legislation, Bill C-55. It would amend the Criminal Code in response to the Supreme Court ruling referenced several times here this morning in previous speeches.

The point that has to be reiterated is that this is all coming about with a very few days remaining to meet the deadline that was provided to the House by the Supreme Court. It stayed a decision for a year to give the government the opportunity to bring forward an improvement to legislation that is much needed. We have supported this legislation throughout the process, although we found the process daunting because of the delay that took place in getting it here. We supported the government because it is an important tool for our police services in this country.

However, on the counter side of that, it is very important for the official opposition to look cautiously at any legislation that authorizes people to look into people's lives in the manner that this would. This enactment seeks to amend Canada's Criminal Code, and the Supreme Court ruling talked about the need for safeguards for Canadians, because this allows for authorized, and I want to stress the word “authorized”, interception of private communications, done prior to judicial authorization as foreseen in section 184.4 of the act.

It is worth noting that the enactment states that it:

requires the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Attorney General of each province to report on the interceptions of private communications made under section 184.4;

and

provides that a person who has been the object of such interception must be notified...within a specified period;...

The assumption is that those persons have not been found to be taking part in any criminal activity, and thus they have every right to be informed; and if they were involved with criminal activity and are part of an ongoing investigation, there could be an extension.

It narrowed the class of individuals who could actually make such interceptions, and those limited interceptions to particular offences are listed.

I was speaking a few moments ago about the fact that we are within three weeks of a deadline supplied to us by the Supreme Court. There was the benefit of a year from the Supreme Court to act on this, and the government has not done so until the very last minute. I have to question what the delay is. Why did it take close to a year for the government to respond to this? This was not a great difficulty, from the standpoint that the Supreme Court identified the areas in which the government had to make changes.

I would go so far as to say that when any government or any party in government looks to put forward legislation, a significant part of the process is debate in this place. Another significant part is the opportunity for all parties to come together, which we did in the instance of Bill C-55 at committee, to look at it, to hear witness testimony, to do those things necessary to offer any piece of legislation the due diligence necessary to make it as good as we possibly could. That is the concern over the timeframe, the concern over the fact that we had a couple of days to try to do things that could have well extended beyond, had we brought in more witnesses. It is troubling because that impedes the due diligence we have to administer on behalf of those people who sent us to this place.

I tend to repeat myself in my remarks, because that troubled me to the degree that I felt it was worth repeating.

There have been other times in this place that the opportunity to debate and to consider various bills has been impeded. I would ask how many times the Conservative government has moved time allocation on bills. It is not the delay just in this particular bill, but in other bills. We must be closing in on 30 times that it has occurred in this Parliament. It has to be close to that by now. I hear other members agreeing.

We have seen budget bills and other legislation affecting services, which Canadians rely on, shut down or extremely limited by the Conservatives, at what appears to be almost every opportunity. It stifles the opportunity for us to make those bills better. It stifles the opportunity we have as members to point out what they have done well and what they have done not up to the standards Canadians expect. We get to do that in this public forum. That has been curtailed too many times.

Once again, that is part of my concern with this bill, Bill C-55, and how it got to committee after such a delay. It has the potential of impacting ordinary Canadians in a very negative way if the protections of which the Supreme Court has spoken to us were not put into place.

Bill C-55 is simply an updated version of wiretapping provisions the Supreme Court previously deemed unconstitutional. That is quite a statement when we think about it. Fortunately again for the House, the Supreme Court set the parameters of what it saw as the need to protect Canadians' rights.

I have to say that Canadians have good reason to be concerned about privacy legislation that comes out of the government. To date the government has not had what I see as a good record in that area. It is not encouraging at all.

There is an obligation on the official opposition to work for the public good in upholding the rule of law, our Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was in February 2012 that the Conservative government tabled Bill C-30. Members will recall that gave authorities the power to access personal information in a way to which the Supreme Court responded.

It raised very serious concerns across the country, as I recall, about personal privacy and fundamental rights. That was due to the manner in which it was constructed and the powers it was seeking to give out. I will add that it was kind of a compilation of previous bills that have been before this House, Bill C-50, Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 from a previous parliamentary session. The Conservatives were attempting to build on the original legislation from 1999 to provide public safety authorities with extensive surveillance powers over digital information. As I said a moment ago, there was a significant backlash from the people of Canada in regard to this.

Now we have the government with these much-needed changes, I will commend the government. It reached across to us in the committee. We did work better on that bill than we did on some others in the past. If we did not meet the deadline or the provisions required by the Supreme Court, then these emergency powers would be thrown out.

I began my remarks talking about the need for police officials of our country to apply these. In this particular case, these provisions are intended to happen at the worst possible time, when somebody is under physical threat of injury or harm. It was important for us to go a little deeper into it.

I am looking for what really needs to be summarized here, and that is the fact that our role is to ensure that the privacy rights of Canadians are balanced with the police officials' needs to investigate, particularly in a time where someone is under the threat of physical harm. I have to say that, working together, I believe we accomplished that. Thus, we will be supporting this bill.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek for his very good overview of this bill, Bill C-55, particularly the context in which this bill came forward.

I guess the comment and the question I have is that it is really shocking to me that the original bill, Bill C-30, which was brought forward in the House, finally had to be withdrawn because of the massive opposition, both in the House from us, the NDP, and also out in the broader community. People across the country rallied against that bill. It was commonly known as “spying on the Internet”. It was a bill that was way over the top and, of course, we all recall the remarks from the Minister of Public Safety at that time.

To me, the bill that is before us today serves as a very good example of why an opposition, and Parliament itself, is so important. If we had not been here, that original bill would have been rammed through by the government. It did everything it could to try to put pressure to put the bill forward. However, because of the massive public reaction, the government had to finally stand down.

I wonder if the member would comment on that. To me, it serves as an example of what the role of this Parliament, and the opposition, is all about.