Let me preface this by saying that I am no lawyer and I am no law professor. There's a reason I decided to study political science instead.
The challenge right now is that between surveillance and arrest, we don't have a whole lot of in between, because for powers of detention and recognizance and peace bonds, in the way the legislation is currently written, the evidentiary threshold is very similar to that of powers of arrest, that is to say, it is a very high bar to cross.
What's being proposed is to do what our European allies have done, which is to provide a tool kit that, with a lower threshold of evidence, would allow us to impose conditions and limit people's mobility, limit the ability to go on the Internet and whatnot, limit the ability to communicate with others, without actually having to lay a charge and then hope to convict them.
There's another reason I think this is important. What this does is it gets us into the preventative realm. I think we need to do a lot more on prevention than simply charging people. There's another reason we need to do that. A national security investigation is very expensive and lengthy. Then we have an expensive and lengthy trial. If we lock people up, it costs us somewhere between $40,000 and $100,000 a year.
Wouldn't we all be better off if we were to save some of that taxpayer money and impose conditions on individuals who may be up to no good without actually having to charge them? Then once that recognizance or once that peace bond expires, allow them, provided they realize their actions may not have been particularly prudent, to go free, hopefully having learned from their mistakes.