Thank you. The final presenter of a very long day for everyone, I'm sure.
I want to thank you, first of all, for the invitation to be here. It is truly an honour to be before this committee.
I will just introduce myself a bit more, because I think I bring a different perspective, and I've been asked because of having that different perspective from many of the other witnesses you're hearing from.
I've been a professor of international relations and political science at Carleton for some decades, and I've lived and worked in a number of countries whose names might come before this committee, so I bring a broad comparative politics perspective, and I have been following security issues for a very long time.
Also, some of my comments really are not as much directed to this very knowledgeable committee, but to the fact that there has been a lot of public discourse, which I very much welcome, surrounding Bill C-51.
This committee has more detailed knowledge, more expertise, and more background than the general public, so I hope to bring a perspective, then, to the record which otherwise might tend to get lost.... I'm tempted to say, mixing horribly some metaphors and some sayings, while we very much welcome and need the kind of detail that we are receiving from a wide variety of perspectives, there is some danger of getting lost in the weeds.
Bill C-51 is the most important national security legislation since the 9/11 era. My central message is that whatever the issues with the bill—and this evening we've heard a number of them, and you've been hearing them for some days already, and you will further after today—we need to remember the context.
Bill C-51 is designed for the post-9/11 era. It's a new legislation for a new era in terms of security threats. While it's understandable that various provisions of the legislation attract attention, we need to keep our focus on the fundamental purpose and the fundamental challenge of combatting emerging types of terrorism.
The central test of any legislation is why we need it and what difference it would make if we didn't have it, and there have actually been suggestions that we shouldn't in this particular case.
The short answer is the legislation is needed because it's a modernization of our security infrastructure, and we would be less secure if we did not have a legal update to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
The bill provides strengthened legal techniques for combatting terrorism in light of an enhanced global threat. This is legislation to prepare us for what I'm calling the transnational terrorism in the digital age, a new era.
Broadly speaking, our existing security legislation was designed to meet the types of terrorist challenges of previous eras, such as the PLO, al Qaeda, and ethnic irredentism.
We should recall that the worst terrorism in Canadian history, and we've heard something of this tonight, remains the bombing of Air India Flight 182. Indeed, the roots of the information sharing and passenger protection parts of the act can be traced back to the inquiry after that disaster.
Also, today the challenges include lone wolf attacks, returning trained terrorists, and the role of the Internet. We have certainly felt in Canada the impact of lone wolf attacks, self-radicalized individuals acting or preparing to act. We are becoming familiar with the role of the Internet on radicalization, recruitment, and propaganda, propagation of terror.
Bill C-51 is sparking exactly the kind of debate Canada requires, and this committee is hearing. I'm a lifetime educator, and I'm sorry we've had to have incidents to lead to this debate, but all democratic societies struggle to find the correct balance between freedom and security. The attacks in Quebec and here on Parliament Hill force us to face what others have faced before. Where are we as a society going to strike the balance in the face of terrorist attacks? Indeed, we are very late to this debate. Our insulation and good fortunes, however, have run out.
People of good will, and I am including in this legislators and my fellow panellists, legitimately debate where that balance should be, how we maintain a sense of individual and collective freedom while being sheltered from threats to that freedom. We've already heard that this is a false dichotomy. It's a question of how we handle where that balance lies.
The debate in Canada, of course, is now in its culmination. There's a bill on the table; there's a vote to follow, and this bill will set the parameters of our security apparatus in the new security era.
I will conclude with a few reminders and a few suggestions.
Regarding reminders, first is that, as important as this bill is, it is intended to fill just one niche in our overall response to the changing global environment. There are other dimensions of cybersecurity, intelligence gathering, and military preparedness. Another is that this bill and related legislation began before the attacks in Quebec and on Parliament Hill. However, as bad as those attacks were, we all need to ponder, particularly when we sit here with parliamentarians before us, how much worse those attacks could have been. They were by amateurs, one using an automobile as a lethal weapon, and the other an old hunting rifle. It must haunt many of the people in this room, our elected members of all parties, that the results could have been much worse had the attack been by a small squad of trained professionals who had surveyed their target and attacked with modern weapons. I know that it haunts me.
In conclusion, I have a few suggestions about the present and the future of Canada's legal security framework.
About the present, critiques of this pending legislation have come from many sides and have included trenchant comments tonight on the two panels we've had. I'm sure this committee will proceed on this bill as on all others, by analyzing the evidence and attempting to achieve consensus before the bill becomes law. I have two suggestions. Where consensus can be achieved within this committee, the committee may recommend that, in regard to the bill, first, constitutional issues, and they've been raised, may be referred directly to the Supreme Court of Canada under section 53 of the Supreme Court Act. It would be better to clarify agreed-upon constitutional issues in advance of litigation being brought by citizens at a much later date, when redress, if any, would be complicated, while perhaps compromising our security while they're being litigated. Also, with regard to this bill, amendments that improve the bill to all parties' satisfaction, or at least with minimal consensus, would strengthen the bill as well as generate wider acceptance.
In regard to the future, this standing committee's task, of course, will not be over. With the passage of the bill, the committee may have an ongoing role in monitoring, first, the law of unintended consequences. Once the bill has passed, over time unexpected results are likely to emerge. This bill clearly does chart unexplored areas in a variety of ways. In terms of an ongoing role for the future, it may also be required to monitor the law of unforeseen circumstances. This act, and the entire security infrastructure, will need to be revisited as we enter deeper into the era of transnational terrorism in the digital age. Unfortunately, what we have seen around us is likely to be just the beginning of a long-term requirement for new policy responses to protect our freedoms and security. The conditions leading to emerging security challenges are part of a historic global transformation.
Thank you.