Bill S-7 (Historical)

Combating Terrorism Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act

This enactment replaces sections 83.28 to 83.3 of the Criminal Code to provide for an investigative hearing for the purpose of gathering information for an investigation of a terrorism offence and to allow for the imposition of a recognizance with conditions on a person to prevent them from carrying out a terrorist activity. In addition, the enactment provides for those sections to cease to have effect or for the possible extension of their operation. The enactment also provides that the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness include in their respective annual reports their opinion on whether those sections should be extended. It also amends the Criminal Code to create offences of leaving or attempting to leave Canada to commit certain terrorism offences.
The enactment also amends the Canada Evidence Act to allow the Federal Court to order that applications to it with respect to the disclosure of sensitive or potentially injurious information be made public and to allow it to order that hearings related to those applications be heard in private. In addition, the enactment provides for the annual reporting on the operation of the provisions of that Act that relate to the issuance of certificates and fiats.
The enactment also amends the Security of Information Act to increase, in certain cases, the maximum penalty for harbouring a person who committed an offence under that Act.
Lastly, it makes technical amendments in response to a parliamentary review of these Acts.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

There's one part of the bill that I didn't understand when I looked at it a while ago. Maybe you could tell me what it means.

Clause 2 of Bill S-7 proposes to amend subsection 7(2) of the Criminal Code, which describes acts or omissions committed in relation to aircraft, airport, and air navigation facilities, in circumstances where these acts take place outside of Canada. Why are wording changes to section 7(2) of the Criminal Code required?

Also, what does “...act or omission committed...” mean? What would an act or omission be in relation to aircraft, airport, or air navigation facilities?

[Glenn Gilmour]

It was also, as I mentioned, our effort to fulfill a recommendation made by the House of Commons committee that originally reviewed these two powers. They were concerned that the law was unclear as to how long a period of detention there would be for someone who was arrested pursuant to a warrant to attend that investigative hearing. Now the law, under Bill S-7, will be very clear that the maximum period of detention can't be any more than 90 days, and I stress “maximum” period of detention. Under section 707, if I recall correctly, every 30 days the judge has to determine whether the witness should continue to be detained.

[Glenn Gilmour, Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice]

With regard to the recognizance with conditions, it was the special Senate committee that recommended that the annual report for both the investigative hearing and the recognizance with conditions be an expanded annual report and that the Minister of Justice, or in this case the Attorney General of Canada, should be required to provide a statement along with reasons as to why he considers these two powers need to be renewed. We've taken that recommendation, and it's now in Bill S-7.

The House of Commons report recommended that the powers be extended for five years, and that recommendation is found in Bill S-7. As a result of the initial first attempt to bring back these provisions as they expired, when it was in the former iteration of Bill S-7, the Senate amended the legislation to make sure that there was a mandatory parliamentary review of these two powers before the powers expired. That amendment was made to Bill S-7 when it passed through the Senate, and that amendment continues to be part of this bill as well.

With regard to the investigative hearing, as you know, substantial safeguards were already in existence when the original legislation was passed in 2001, including the very robust use and derivative use immunity provision that the minister talked about earlier.

In addition, in order to respond to the recommendations of the House of Commons committee, which issued its own special report on these two powers in 2005 or 2006, I believe, we made a couple of extra changes.

The first was in relation to the requirement that had previously been existing in relation to using the investigative hearing to obtain information about a future terrorism offence. The condition was that you had to use reasonable attempts to get the information by other means; we decided to expand that not only to future terrorism offences but also to past terrorism offences, so for every case in which you want to use the investigative hearing, whether for a past or future terrorism offence, there would have to be an effort made by the police to obtain that information by other means. Reasonable attempts must have been made to obtain that information by other means.

Another change we made was because of the concern that was expressed before the House of Commons committee that was examining these two powers in the Anti-Terrorism Act in particular. There was a concern in relation to the investigative hearing. There is a power to arrest with warrant someone who is about to abscond, for example, before attending the investigative hearing. The question was raised that if you arrest that person by means of a warrant, how long can you detain that person under that warrant before the person can be released?

We wanted to make absolutely certain that the limit on detention was very clear in the code, so we put in the same time limit for detention for witnesses before a criminal trial. We plugged that into the investigative hearing provision, and that's the section 707 of the Criminal Code under which a witness can be detained. For example, if a witness is served with a summons to testify at a criminal trial and there is evidence that the person is about to leave without testifying, the person can be arrested by means of a warrant or arrest. The maximum period of time, though, that the witness can be detained is for a total of 90 days--30 days basically, and subject to judicial review, up to a total of 90 days. There is now that additional protection.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am an ardent supporter of human rights and freedoms, including the freedom of movement within the country and the freedom to exit and enter the country. As a Canadian, I have the right to leave and enter the country as I please, and I would like to know whether the new offences added to the Criminal Code through Bill S-7 violate that right I have, as a Canadian, under subsection 6(1) of the charter.

Could you clarify that for us, please?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank the minister for joining us today. The comments are most interesting.

The bill had been considered by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in the past. However, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security is studying it as well, and we can benefit from that and from your comments.

I would like to briefly discuss the prohibition to leave or attempt to leave Canada to commit terrorism offences. As you mentioned in your opening remarks, clauses 6 to 8 of Bill S-7 would add four new offences to the Criminal Code. From now on, it would be prohibited to leave or attempt to leave Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, facilitate terrorist activity, commit an offence for a terrorist group or commit an offence that constitutes terrorist activity.

Given that there are currently no exit interviews for individuals who leave Canada, how will law enforcement officers be able to determine that a person is leaving or attempting to leave Canada in order to commit acts of terrorism?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Minister of Justice]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

You're right: I'm not often before this committee. In fact, I don't remember ever appearing before this committee, but the honour is certainly mine to do so.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about the Combating Terrorism Act, Bill S-7. It proposes to amend the Criminal Code to ensure that Canada has the tools it needs to combat terrorism and to protect its citizens.

The legislation proposes to re-enact the investigative hearing and the recognizance with conditions clauses. In addition, it will create a new offence of leaving or attempting to leave Canada for the purpose of committing certain terrorism offences.

These tools were first created as part of the Anti-terrorism Act. The investigative hearing was intended to help in the investigation of past or future terrorism offences, while recognizance with conditions was intended to disrupt those who were in the planning stages of an attack.

The proposed investigative hearing provision would allow the courts to compel a person who has information regarding a past or future terrorism offence to appear in court and to provide the information under questioning.

The proposed recognizance with conditions provisions would require a person to enter into an agreement, before a judge, to abide by reasonable conditions imposed by the judge in order to prevent the carrying out of a terrorist activity.

The investigative hearing and recognizance with conditions, when enacted, would contain new safeguards in addition to the numerous safeguards originally enacted in 2001. Let me list some of them.

First, for the investigative hearing, the consent of the relevant attorney general would be required. Second, the person compelled to appear in court would have the ability to retain and instruct counsel at any stage of the proceedings.

In all cases, reasonable attempts would first need to be made to obtain the information by other means. The information provided by the person or anything derived from that information would be generally inadmissible against him or her in any criminal proceeding.

If a person were arrested with a warrant to attend the investigative hearing, there would be clear limits, set out in the bill, as to how long the period of detention could be.

The federal and provincial attorneys general would be required to report annually on any use of the investigative hearing provision, and the annual reports of the Attorney General of Canada would include an additional requirement that he or she provide an opinion, supported by reasons, on whether the provision should remain in force.

Now I'll go to recognizance with conditions. Again the consent of the relevant attorney general would be required.

A warrantless arrest of a person could only be made in very limited circumstances, such as where the laying of information before a judge has been rendered impractical by reason of exigent circumstances and the peace officer suspects, on reasonable grounds, that the detention of the person is necessary to prevent a terrorist activity.

If the person were arrested without warrant, the officer would either have to lay information before the judge, generally within 24 hours, or release the person, and before laying the information, the peace officer would have to obtain the consent of the attorney general.

A person detained in custody would have to be brought before a provincial court judge without unreasonable delay, and in any event within 24 hours of arrest, unless a judge was not available within that period of time, in which case a person would have to be taken before a judge as soon as was feasible. The hearing would then have to be held within 48 hours.

The Minister of Public Safety and the minister responsible for policing in each province would be required to report annually on the arrest without warrant power, while federal and provincial attorneys general would be required to report annually on any use of the other elements of this regime.

The annual reports of the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Public Safety would include an additional requirement that they provide an opinion, supported by reasons, on whether the provisions should remain in force.

As well, Bill S-7 proposes the creation of new offences for leaving or attempting to leave Canada, or going or attempting to go on board a conveyance with the intent to leave Canada for the purpose of knowingly participating in or contributing to any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to commit a terrorist activity, knowingly facilitating a terrorist activity, committing an indictable offence on behalf of a terrorist group, or committing an indictable offence that constitutes a terrorist activity.

These new offences are intended to strengthen the ability of law enforcement to arrest, and the crown to prosecute, a person who has left Canada or is attempting to leave Canada for the purpose of committing these terrorism offences.

Finally, Bill S-7 also responds to the parliamentary review of the Anti-terrorism Act that was conducted by committees of the House of Commons and the Senate from 2004 to 2007 and proposes some changes to section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act to ensure that it accords with recent jurisprudence in that area.

I would like to address some of the criticisms made regarding investigative hearings and recognizance with conditions.

One criticism has been that the tools are unnecessary because to date the current criminal law provisions designed to combat terrorism have proven to be sufficient.

If we were to approach life based on the assumption that because no harm has actually befallen us there would be no need to prepare for the possibility that harm might arise, ours would be a far different world. That is not the case. That is not the world in which we live. We know that we have to take steps to reduce the possibility of harm that can suddenly arise, and it's only prudent to take steps to try to prevent such a risk from arising. The fact that no harm has yet arisen or that the proposed amendments have not been utilized is insufficient reason to conclude that these measures are not needed.

Some have claimed that investigative hearing offends the right to remain silent. This argument was expressly made in the 2004 constitutional challenge to the investigative hearing and was rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada. The court noted that certain elements of the protections against self-incrimination in the investigative hearing legislation even go—and I quote—“beyond the requirements in the jurisprudence, and provide...absolute derivative use of immunity, such that evidence derived from the evidence provided at the judicial investigative hearing may not be presented against the witness in another prosecution.”

Let me address another criticism made of Bill S-7. The bill proposes to create four new terrorism offences of leaving and attempting to leave Canada for the purpose of committing terrorism offences outside the country. There are those who have expressed the concern that the creation of these offences could violate Canada's international obligations in the event that someone who is charged with any of these crimes is a young person—that is, someone who is under 18 years of age—but, as you know, there is a specific piece of legislation that applies to young persons charged with crimes, and that is, of course, the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Bill S-7 does not change that in any way. In fact, the Youth Criminal Justice Act specifically states that despite any other act of Parliament, other than the Contraventions Act and National Defence Act, it has exclusive jurisdiction in respect of any offence alleged to have been committed by a person while he or she was a young person.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act recognizes that the youth justice system must be separate from the adult system and be based on the principle of diminished moral blameworthiness of youth. It emphasizes rehabilitation and reintegration, just and proportionate responses to offending, and enhanced procedural protections for youth. It contains a number of significant legal safeguards to ensure that young people are treated fairly and their rights are protected. It also sets out specific youth sentencing principles and options.

Thank you very much. I look forward to any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon everyone. This is meeting number 59 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, on Monday, November 19, 2012.

Today our committee is commencing our study of Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act.

Our first witness is the Hon. Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice. He is accompanied by Mr. Donald Piragoff, senior assistant deputy minister of the policy sector at the Department of Justice. I see Mr. Glenn Gilmour of the criminal law policy section will also be with us.

We want to thank the minister for coming to the public safety and national security committee. It's an honour. We are frequented by the Minister of Public Safety here, but a special welcome to you today, sir. We thank you for assisting us with our study of this bill and providing us with the appropriate officials from your department to help us understand it better.

I also understand you will be with us for one hour. You have an introductory statement on Bill S-7 and then you will take some questions.

Welcome. We look forward to your comments.

Nuclear Terrorism Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to stand in support of the bill and to start today's discussion of Bill S-9.

I will be splitting my time with the fantastic member of Parliament from Nanaimo—Cowichan. Notwithstanding the fact that I was instructed to use those precise terms, I happily stand by them.

We are back to amending the Criminal Code but this time for a good cause. Bill S-9, the nuclear terrorism act, would amend the Criminal Code in order to implement the criminal law requirements of two international counterterrorism treaties, the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, as amended in 2005, and the 2005 International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.

The nuclear terrorism act introduces four new indictable offences into part 2 of the Criminal Code, making it illegal to possess, use or dispose of nuclear or radioactive material or a nuclear or radioactive device, or commit an act against a nuclear facility or its operations, with the intent to cause death, serious bodily harm or substantial damage to property or the environment; to use or alter nuclear or radioactive material or a nuclear or radioactive device, or commit an act against a nuclear facility or its operation, with the intent to compel a person, government or international organization to do or refrain from doing anything; to commit an indictable offence under federal law for the purpose of obtaining nuclear or radioactive material, a nuclear or radioactive device, or access or control of a nuclear facility; and to threaten or commit to do any of the above.

In addition, the bill introduces into the code other amendments that are incidental to these four offences but are nonetheless important. It introduces a new section into the code to ensure individuals who, when outside of Canada, commit or attempt to commit these offences may be prosecuted in Canada. It amends the wiretap provisions found in the code to ensure that they apply to the new offences. It also amends the code to make four new offences primary designated offences for the purposes of DNA warrants and collection orders.

Finally, it amends the double jeopardy rule in Canada such that, notwithstanding the fact that a person may have been previously tried and convicted for these new offences outside Canada, the rule against double jeopardy would not apply when the foreign trial did not meet certain basic Canadian legal standards. In that case, a Canadian court may try the person again for the same offence of which he or she was convicted by a foreign court.

For a long time now, but particularly in the post-cold war era, it has been well understood that with the proliferation of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power generation around the world, a new and heightened regime of nuclear safety and security must be developed. A scenario in which nuclear weapons or materials fall into the hands of terrorists has prompted many to focus on the development of such a regime or framework. It is clearly understood that such a regime must be international in scope and must be grounded in the deep and good faith co-operation of states around the world. That regime needs to be put in place with considerable urgency.

This understanding forms the basis of the two aforementioned conventions that await Canada's ratification. The first of these, the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, dates back to 1980. Its importance is signified by the fact that it stands, still, as the only internationally legally binding undertaking in the protection of nuclear material.

In July of 2005, a diplomatic conference was convened to strengthen the provisions of the convention by doing a number of things, including expanding international co-operation between and among states with respect to rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences, such as sabotage, and prevent and combat related offences.

With respect to the other convention, in 1996 an ad hoc committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations was mandated by the General Assembly to develop an international convention for the suppression of terrorist bombings, and subsequent to that, the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. This later convention was adopted by the General Assembly in April 2005. This convention on nuclear terrorism imposes an obligation on state parties to render the offences set out in the convention as criminal offences under national laws and to establish jurisdiction, both territorial and extraterritorial, over the offences set out in the convention.

Both of these conventions await ratification by Canada, which is first dependent on the codification of the offence provisions of these conventions into Canadian criminal law.

We on this side of the House recognize the need and urgency to put in place a regime to counter nuclear terrorism. Moreover, New Democrats are committed to multilateral diplomacy and international co-operation, especially in areas of great common concern such as nuclear terrorism. Thus, we need to work with other leading countries that are moving forward toward ratifying these conventions.

We also believe that since Canada has agreed to be legally bound by these conventions, it is important to fulfill our international obligations. For these reasons we will vote in favour of the bill at second reading in order to further study it at committee. However, a few concerns need to be set out first.

The first has to do with the origin of the bill. I would urge those who embrace the anachronistic and undemocratic institution of the Senate on the grounds of tradition to employ the Senate in the traditional way, that being as the chamber of sober second thought and not as the place of origin of legislation. It is for those of us in the chamber who, for better or worse, were sent here by Canadians to do that work.

Second, as with so much legislation that the government puts forward through whichever chamber, we must be careful that we do not overreach in the name of anti-terrorism. On this point, our experiences with the Liberals' Anti-terrorism Act and the government's recent Bill S-7 are instructive. The provisions of that act and that bill run contrary to the fundamental principles, rights and liberties enshrined in Canadian law.

Moreover, perhaps more importantly, we have found that without such extreme provisions, without changing the legal landscape of Canada, without breaching the rights and civil liberties of Canadian citizens, we have successfully protected the safety and security of Canada and Canadians from terrorist attack and that the offending provisions have proven over the course of time to constitute an unnecessary, ineffective infringement.

I would note that this issue arose in the course of the bill's study in the Senate. No doubt the intention of the drafters at the Department of Justice was to adhere as closely as possible to the terms of the convention. However, it has been suggested that some of the new Criminal Code offences are broader in scope than the offences found in the individual international agreements. We must be sure that the overreach of these new sections will not result in undue criminalization or go against the Canadian Charter of Rights.

I anticipate that the justice committee will play a very valuable role in ensuring that the lessons of previous anti-terrorism legislation are applied to Bill S-9.

Last, I come to what I believe is a very important point in this discussion, that being the matter of delay. The implementation of the bill or some amended version thereof is a prerequisite for the ratification of both international conventions. Both of these conventions set out in their respective preambles the urgency with which the international community must act to implement a regime to control nuclear weapons and materials and to ensure they are not accessible for terrorist purposes.

For example, the preamble to the convention on nuclear terrorism talks about the deep concern of the parties to this convention of the worldwide escalation of acts of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and that acts of nuclear terrorism may result in the gravest consequences and may pose a threat to international peace and security. It also notes that existing multilateral legal provisions do not adequately address those attacks and that the “urgent need to enhance international cooperation between States” for these purposes needs to be moved forward.

Therefore, the question sitting out there is this. Why has it taken the legislation so long to get to the House for debate when both conventions have been open for ratification since 2005?

While there are other laggards in the international community, it is our expectation that Canada show leadership on issues such as these.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

It sounds as though there is consensus to proceed with this, so I'm not going to call a vote on it. I will do that, but I also want to remind all sides....

I thank you for that, by the way, Ms. Bergen. I think it's a very good gesture on your part. Your party was also instructed that amendments that were late would not be accepted.

Anyway, we can proceed this way. But let me say that we will be seeing Bill S-7 very soon. The same deal is going. We will be going through Bill S-7 and we will....

When I looked at the amendments that came in, none of them, at least from what I could see, were from the witness we heard on Monday. I may be wrong on that—I stand to be corrected—but I didn't see the amendments that could have been from the Monday meeting.

That being said, we will proceed, and I thank you. We will move right into clause-by-clause.

There are some newer members here. We will work our way through. If you have your papers, you may want to follow along with them. On clause 2, there are no amendments that have been brought forward. We'll move through these clauses very quickly, but when we come to the amendments, you will have ample opportunity to debate the amendment that has been brought forward.

The first two that you see, the preamble and the short title, we will postpone. We will come back to those at the end.

(Clause 2 agreed to)

(On clause 3)

We have one NDP amendment. Its reference number is 5792296.

Mr. Garrison, do you want to speak to that amendment?

Combating Terrorism Act

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading of Bill S-7.

The House resumed from October 22 consideration of the motion that Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Gatineau for her leadership and wisdom on this particular issue.

What is interesting is that if it were only so complicated, what we would need to do here would be to find a balance between national security and our rights and freedoms and the protection of civil liberties. However, what history has shown us over the last decade, which is a long time to have a look at this question, is that these provisions that were brought forward in Bill C-36, and now are being reprised in Bill S-7, were fundamentally ineffective and unnecessary. Therefore, it is not really a matter of finding the balance here.

What we have found is that our current laws, criminal justice system and security arrangements have been sufficient to protect Canadians from acts of terrorism in this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand today in the House to speak against Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act. The genealogy of Bill S-7 takes us back to Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act, which was tabled by the Liberal government in 2001. The original intent of the Anti-terrorism Act was to provide the Canadian legislative response to the events of September 11, 2001, 9/11 as we now know it.

There is no question that day should not and indeed cannot be forgotten. The images of passenger planes flying into those iconic towers repeat themselves over and over again in news, television and film, and undoubtedly in the mind as the memories of the many who were personally impacted by that act of terror.

I note with sadness that my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and his partner have such memories to bear.

As these images repeat themselves, we witness the deaths of nearly 3,000 innocents, including 24 Canadians over and over again. That day we awoke to a new kind of threat and a new level of threat. Most importantly, we awoke to a new and profound sense of vulnerability, so we responded.

Several provisions of Bill C-36 became permanently enshrined in other legislation such as the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act, the Criminal Code and the Access to Information Act. However, several parts of the Anti-terrorism Act had sunset clauses expiring in February 2007. These provisions concerned investigative hearings and recognizance with conditions or preventive arrest provisions.

These measures were largely without precedence in Canadian law and for good reason. We believe that these provisions run contrary to fundamental principles, rights and liberties enshrined in Canadian law. The rights and liberties violated include the right to remain silent and the right not to be imprisoned without first having a fair trial. We believe that these are important restrictions on the authority of the state because in their absence there is not sufficient protection of an individual's freedom.

As per the terms of the Anti-terrorism Act, these provisions, in order to be extended, had to be adopted by way of resolution by both Houses of Parliament. However, the resolution was defeated soundly, 159:124 in this House, and these controversial provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act sunsetted.

We know that the efforts did not end there. Similar bills were proposed in 2008, 2009 and 2010 in the forms of Bill S-3, Bill C-19 and Bill C-17 respectively. It seems this is an annual, or almost annual rite. Now they are back.

Time has passed in the interim, a decade roughly since Bill C-36 was brought before the House, and time has been instructive. Since the passage of the Anti-terrorism Act, the recognizance with conditions or preventive arrest provision has never been used. The investigative hearing provision has been used once in the Air India case. Many consider that exercise to have had no positive effect, in fact quite the opposite.

Paul Copeland, a highly experienced and respected lawyer representing the Law Union of Ontario, speaking about this sole experience with the investigative hearing provision, said to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in 2010 that the Law Union characterized this episode “as a fiasco, and I think that's an appropriate description”. He went on to say about all the provisions examined:

The provisions you are looking at here, in my submission, change the Canadian legal landscape.... They should not be passed, and in my view they are not needed. There are other provisions of the code that allow for various ways of dealing with these people.

This seems to be the nub of the issue. Without such extreme provisions, without changing the legal landscape of Canada, without breaching the rights and civil liberties of Canadian citizens, we have successfully protected the safety and security of Canada and Canadians from terrorist attack. These provisions have proven over the course of time to constitute an unnecessary and ineffective infringement.

As the former NDP justice critic said in the House in 2010:

When facing a crisis, we as political leaders feel that we have to do something even when all the evidence shows that the structures we have, the strength of our society, the strength of our laws, are enough to deal with it. We passed legislation in early 2002 to deal with terrorism when we panicked. We have learned in the last eight years that there was no need for that legislation.

The only thing to add to that summation is that in the past decade we have learned that we did not need this act.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. As Denis Barrette, spokesperson for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, noted before the standing committee on Bill C-17 in 2011:

Since 2007, police investigations have succeeded in dismantling terrorist conspiracies using neither one of the provisions we are talking about today.

He concluded:

We believe that Canadians will be better served and better protected under the usual provisions of the Criminal Code, rather than others that are completely unnecessary. Reliance on arbitrary powers and a lower standard of evidence can never replace good, effective police work. On the contrary, these powers open the door to a denial of justice and a greater probability that the reputation of innocent individuals...will be tarnished.

We have borne witness to that in this country.

While these provisions have proven to have no effect on the fight against terror, they have had a profound social impact on Canada and many Canadians. On the eve of 9/11 this year, I showed a film at my local review theatre, the Fox in the Beach. The film is called Change Your Name Ousama. It was produced and directed by local filmmaker Fuad Chowdhury and focuses on a community in my riding of Beaches—East York called Crescent Town. Crescent Town is a very densely populated and diverse community, which is largely made up of Bangladeshi Canadians, most of whom are Muslim.

The film is not a point of view film. It was made for television and screened at the Montreal film festival. It includes significant interview footage, for example, of the assistant director of CSIS. It also includes footage of our Prime Minister in a fairly recent CBC interview telling Canadians that the major threat to Canada is still Islamicism. The film also tells the story of what it feels like to be one of about a million Muslim Canadians living in a political climate where their religion has been held to be a threat to the security of their country.

It is noted in the film by a University of Toronto academic that governments, through their actions, have the power to create stigmas and to marginalize communities. Of this we need, in this place, to be very mindful and sensitive. This is where the film gets its title. It was the advice, amidst the political fallout of 9/11, of a Muslim leader of Crescent Town to members of his community, “Change your name Ousama. Shave your beard. Do not wear your kufi”. In essence, “change or disguise your identity”.

Motivated as they have been, bills such as that introduced in 2001 by the Liberals and its partial reprisal today in the form of Bill S-7 have had that impact. They have left so many across this country and in my riding feeling like they have something to apologize for, as if the onus rests on them to demonstrate somehow that they are not terrorists.

Herein lies a great tragedy. In Bill S-7, as with Bill C-36 before it, we have before us a bill that contradicts not just the legal heritage of this country but a fundamental social and political heritage that takes us back decades at least, a heritage of which we should be proud and protective. The heritage I speak of is the opportunity to maintain and exercise one's culture and religion in Canada freely and still be and feel fully Canadian. This social and political heritage is one that has made us a great place, a place where so many around the world long to come to live.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, our public safety critic, who is doing a great job on Bill S-7. The Conservative government is describing this bill as extremely important to public safety, with an angle related to terrorism.

I would like to ask my colleague a question that I like to ask almost everyone, since I have yet to receive a satisfactory response, before this bill is sent to committee. It has to do with how long it took this government to introduce a bill—and not even in this House, but as I said in my speech, in the Senate—a bill that, according to the government, is fundamental to the safety and security of Canadians. Yet this government took years to bring it before this House.

Does my colleague believe that the exisiting provisions in the Criminal Code are adequate?

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act be read the second time and referred to a committee.