I absolutely promise that I will be doing that in each case, but it sometimes will take me just a few moments to get there.
I'm going to refer to the bill again, on page 27, at the risk of the chair's wrath, just because the other side has said that we're raising outlandish things that aren't in the bill. I'm trying to demonstrate that we're raising concerns here that we need to hear testimony about, which are about things actually in the bill.
On page 27, proposed section 83.223—I won't read this section to you—is about removing terrorist propaganda from the Internet. It was somehow implied that we had opposed this. We have not. The concern we have been raising about this is the definition of “terrorist propaganda”.
When you say “terrorist propaganda”, if you mean what is already illegal in Canada—promoting specific terrorist acts—you have absolute agreement from people on this side that this material needs to be removed, and needs to be removed expeditiously, but I would like to hear testimony from legal experts to hear if there is any legal precedent for this term “terrorist propaganda”. The definition given here appears very broad and very far-reaching, so I would like to hear testimony on that.
It's difficult to have testimony on these very detailed legal points if you have more than three witnesses in one panel. Given the way we share questioning here, by the time things go around, if you've heard some of the answers, you really don't have a chance to go back to them again with follow-ups.
Also, a further question which I think we really do need to hear testimony on is regarding disruptive activity. Does this bill allow CSIS to go onto someone's Facebook account and make a false posting? Is that strictly illegal? Does that require a warrant? I don't know the answer to that question. I don't believe it is. Would this bill allow CSIS to hack into someone's Twitter account and post false tweets? It appears, in my reading as a non-specialist, that this may allow CSIS to do these kinds of things because they're not clearly illegal.
I would like to hear from people who can tell us whether this is in fact possible under the disruptive powers of CSIS. Can they alter my Facebook account? Can they alter your Facebook account? Can they post a false tweet on my account? Can they post one on your account? I don't know the answer to that, but at first reading of this bill, it looks very likely that they might be able to do that.
There's one last section, which, fortunately, Mr. Chair, I don't have the page number for, so I won't be able to quote from it extensively. These are the consequential or coordinating amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act at the end of the bill.
I'm going to say some things here that may be more controversial for members on the other side, but what I'd like to hear is testimony in order to see what this actually means. The bill appears to say that we will be able to detain, without charge, kids: kids who might be sitting in their basement doing very stupid things, kids who haven't learned the boundaries, kids who may inadvertently or recklessly post things they don't really mean. They don't really mean to do any harm.
Are we going to waste precious resources in the fight against terrorism on going after 13-year-olds in the basement? I hope we're not going to do that. I hope instead that we're going to do better work in education to prevent radicalization, better work in the schools, and better work with community organizations.
But the bill, as written, appears to head us in that direction. I know that when the Prime Minister was asked at his campaign-style rally where he introduced this bill whether he intended to go after those kids in the basement, he answered yes. I have a grave concern about that, so I want to know from witnesses who understand both youth criminal justice and this bill whether this is indeed possible, and I want to know from those who are doing the enforcement work whether they think this would be any kind of good use of our limited resources.