Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and through you to the witnesses. Thank you for attending today.
My first line of questioning will go to the BC Civil Liberties Association. Your website, like you, describes Bill C-51 as unnecessary. It goes on to articulate that your group thinks it is unfair. One of the elements of the bill that is attacked is the issue of preventative arrest. This is an item that national security experts and law enforcement officials have stated will be of enormous value in a number of cases, so it has a high benefit in terms of preventative law and a low cost, as it applies to a limited number of individuals.
Furthermore, I understand that the preventative arrest provisions in some allied nations, also thriving democracies, go much further than what we have proposed in this bill.
That said, it is difficult to fathom a case in which preventative arrests are not useful tools for protecting the public. We have heard that radicalization happens faster than we have ever seen in the past. One just has to watch the evening news over the past, I'd say, month and a half to two months to see that happening, not only in Canada but in many other nations.
We have also heard that investigations are labour-intensive and that Canada and its allies are dealing with unprecedented numbers of citizens leaving their borders to commit terrorist acts abroad. Also, sadly, some of them, and many more, have expressed a desire to turn on their country of birth.
In that context, one says, “Could you really imagine a world in which a weekend in jail would prevent an act of terror and give the government precious extra days to make a criminal case and save Canadian lives?”
It's also curious to see the concerns of some civil libertarians with an angle like this. We say preventative arrest will be used only on terrorist subjects. Prior to preventative detention, the threshold will still be robust, because it will require reasonable grounds to believe that an attack may be carried out and that the detention is likely to prevent such an attack.
No innocent bystander would be caught up in this threshold. An officer must present hard evidence to demonstrate that this threshold is met and that the person in question is a threat to society. Then, the Attorney General must agree and consent to the preventative arrest. The arrestee must be taken before a provincial court judge then....