I hear the Conservatives laughing, of course, when I mention the lack of fact, but that's a different story.
I want to comment on this fact: if there is no cause for concern in this bill, if we are not talking about any extraordinary powers here, why is there a sunset clause at all? Why doesn't the government have the courage of their convictions and pass the bill as a piece of permanent legislation? What gives them concern? Why are they concerned about these powers so much that after five years the powers will automatically disappear? It's because that's an acknowledgement and a recognition that these are extraordinary powers, that it changes the legal framework in this country, so that's what we're talking about here.
It was also mentioned by the Conservatives that we need this bill to protect Canadians. Now, I will acknowledge that there's a bit of a circular argument here. How does a bill that was used once...? The powers under this bill were used once in five years. We heard evidence that in the absence of the bill over the last five years there's been no negative impact on our ability to fight terrorism at all. How does that protect Canadians? I mean, I'm all ears on that. If there was some evidence before this committee that said we need these powers to protect Canadians because of some sort of argument or some sort of factual basis, I haven't heard it.
Mr. Norlock also said that the world has changed. Well, I'm not so sure about that. First of all, we heard no evidence of that. Terrorism is not new. The Stern gang was blowing up the King David Hotel in Palestine, as it then was, in the 1940s. There were acts of terrorism. Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated to start World War I. Acts of terrorism have been with us for a long time. This is not anything terribly new. States have had to operate to protect themselves, and to protect their citizens, from acts of belligerence by other countries and states and from acts of terror committed by people for a long time. I would dispute, with great respect, that there's anything different about that today.
The last point I'm going to make is about the Liberals. I hear Mr. Holland being “disappointed”. Well, I'm disappointed by the Liberals flip-flopping on this position. They voted against this bill in the House of Commons the last time it came up. I mean, Canadians don't expect consistency from the Liberal Party of Canada, we'll grant you that, but they brought it in during 2001; voted against the bill when it was brought into the House of Commons last time; spoke against the bill, it appeared, when we were in committee; will probably vote for the bill in committee; and then we'll see what they do tonight or when this bill is brought back for third reading.
I do want to correct something Mr. Holland said. He said this bill will come back for a third vote no matter what we do. But that's not the case. If this committee votes against this bill in this committee, then it may not be coming back for third reading.
We all want to fight terrorism. We all want to make sure that our police agents have the powers they need. But we also want to do that in a way that respects Canadians' inherent rights. I think we should not be making incursions on those rights except to the extent necessary and except where we can justify it.
I want to conclude by saying that it's not up to Canadians to justify why they have human rights and civil liberties in this country. They have those inherently. It's up to the state to justify when we want to take those rights away from them. In this case here, the record remains clear: the evidence before this committee was that there is no factual basis to justify us taking these extraordinary powers at this time.