Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak to it, but I'd also like the committee to hear from the officials. Perhaps they have some comments.
My concern is that in a minority government, which we have been in for five years, I think everybody realizes the opportunity for these committees to study these things. Two years and three years: there are different ways to kill a bill. Putting in a two-year limit for sure kills the bill, because we would never get it back to committee to study it. That's just a backhanded way of killing the bill.
I think the other thing is that it sends a message to the community at large that we can talk about terrorism, and we can talk about the safety of Canadians, but all we're doing here is saying that we don't trust the officials who are empowered to protect Canadians in these situations. The world is not getting any safer. I think this is a foolish philosophical way of trying to kill a bill that is only in place to protect Canadians from those who would do harm to us.
Make no mistake: terrorists only function if they can cause terror and if they can cause fear among the population when we start to take away the tools that are necessary to at least give the authorities some semblance of power.
This is just ludicrous. I fear that it's the NDP's way of trying to kill a bill without saying right up front that they want to kill it.