Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Garrison took a little shot my way by saying that there are two parties supporting the bill, and I would say this about our position as the Liberal Party. We're the only party in the House of Commons that isn't taking a rigid position on this bill and we are trying to find the balance.
I'd certainly thank the two Justice officials for being here tonight. I think they did give us a number of clarifications, not that we agree with them all. We certainly appreciate the information that they provided to the committee. Certainly, on behalf of my party, I want to thank all the witnesses who have appeared before us.
I had hoped the government might accept more amendments than the ones that they did, and was hopeful that we would get somewhere on oversight; I know it's been ruled out of order, Mr. Chair.
Similar to that of our Five Eyes partners, we had an all-party committee at the House of Commons in 2004 to make such a recommendation. Mr. Norlock sat on a committee in 2009 that agreed with that recommendation and others, and I would have liked to see some progress on sunsets and overall statutory review.
Having said that, let me close with this, in terms of our position. Although we're not comfortable with some of the issues—some of the amendments not being carried on the civil liberties and freedom of expression side—the way I look at this, we can always fix a bad bill in the future. We cannot fix an incident that would damage infrastructure and maybe take Canadian lives.
There are security measures in this bill—given what both police authorities and national security agencies have indicated, and based on my previous experience in government—that I think we have to recognize and take seriously.
There is no question in my mind that there is an increased threat. In order to prevent as best we can—and we can only prevent as best we can—that threat from doing damage to Canadians, it's for that reason that we are supporting this bill, recognizing that there are some amendments that should have been made on the civil liberty side but were not accepted by the government's side.
There we sit, Mr. Chair. Thank you.