I, too, must underscore some of what my colleague has just said, but maybe from a slightly different angle. In regard to the statements that the NDP member across the table has made, it almost strikes you, when you listen to them, like law enforcement and policing are the bad guys. They're the guys we shouldn't give the tools to that they need to do their job, because they're going to abuse them and they're going to stamp on the rights of Canadians.
Nothing can be further from the truth. He invokes a time in the late fifties and early sixties, through the Diefenbaker years, as being somewhat a justification of a carry forward of rights. The member doesn't recognize that we live in times that are totally different from the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Diefenbaker and his peers could never have imagined a world that looked like this and could never have imagined the terrorism that is being faced around the world. Just to repeat what my colleague has said, which we heard over and over again as witnesses came before us, it is that Canada is so fortunate and should count its blessings that we haven't experienced a terrorist act, as many countries have.
In comparison to the laws of other western democracies that face the same situation but have been attacked, the laws such as this one that we're contemplating here today are far more rigorous and far more what I'd call all-encompassing in terms of giving law enforcement the tools they need and the time they need to ferret out who the real bad guys are--the terrorists--and to be able to give a sense to the general public, most of the people who are out there, that if we're going to err, we're going to err on the side of public safety. That's what we're here to do. We're here to draw that balance between what is good for this country in terms of laws to protect public safety, and not to protect, frankly, the rights of potential terrorists.
As well, he draws an ethnic group into the discussion. That is totally unnecessary to draw into this discussion, because this is not what it's about. Yet he tries to underscore his ideological view with doing that, to draw that political argument in.
I find the member from the NDP absolutely lacking the common sense to know that this is where we should be heading, to err on the side of public safety. And there's the fact that it has been used only once. But if it was used once and saved a terrorist attack, then that's all we needed it to be in existence for, to be used once. Perhaps it will be used once more only, but that's no justification for not having it and not giving law enforcement the tools they need.
This amendment.... Obviously, the bill is written. It's written by people who have looked at other countries and their laws, and I think it's totally reasonable and gives law enforcement the tools they need. I believe it strikes the balance that this committee should be leaning toward at any time, and that's to protect all public safety and err on that side, when there are the world threats that there are today.