Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As you've accurately predicted, my amendments touch every single place where the quite novel definition of “activities that undermine the security of” is replaced with the definition more consistent to other acts within the Government of Canada: “threats to the security of”.
If I may, I've picked a very short excerpt from the testimony of Professor Roach, which is that if this goes ahead as written, this definition will remain, “the broadest definition of...national security in the law books”. He went on to say:
This distinguishes this approach from a similar approach to protest taken in the CSIS Act which is indexed not to the overbroad and relatively novel concept of “activities that undermine the security of Canada”, but the more limited and traditional definition of “threats to the security of Canada”, [as] in [section] 2 of the CSIS Act.
I would put to my friends the Liberals in this committee, as well as my friends the Conservatives and New Democrats—obviously Monsieur Dubé and I agree on this—that there's no policy rationale that's been put forward and there's no explanation for having this quasi-sedition section, with language that is so overbroad that it can't be found anywhere else in legislation that accomplishes the same purpose, in security legislation or anti-terrorism legislation.
I hope my amendments will meet with success here, Mr. Chair. Thank you.