I apologize in advance. I didn't know I was going to be speaking. I'm enormously unprepared. I just have a few notes.
I know a lot of excellent work has been done already by various organizations, a lot of stuff that can be read on the Internet. A lot of organizations, business, journalists, are opposing this legislation. It affects a lot of people, regular people too, so I feel I still have a say in this. I'd like to focus on a few key parts that I disagree with.
You talked a lot about free speech, so I'll just touch on that a bit. I'm not convinced that further taking away people's freedom of speech is going to necessarily help prevent terrorism. We already have laws around a lot of what we were discussing, and that's fine. I think there is some sort of middle ground when it comes to free speech.
The problem with this new law is the vague terminology, how vague the term “terrorism” is. There's the fact that you don't need to have any intent of creating terrorism, no action on your own part. You could inadvertently say something, something can happen, and you could be connected to that. It's very vague and a lot of the terminology, such as “in the public interest” is very arbitrary. I don't think it's worth the marginal increase to public safety.
If you are a terrorist and you know these laws exist, you're not going to be talking about your plots over text messages. You're not going to be sharing this stuff on Facebook. So which kind of terrorists are we trying to catch here? The ones who are talking about this, the dumb ones? I don't see it helping, and it's certainly creating a chilling effect on all of us.
If you think about the word “terrorism”, not the definition and how it's described in legalese, but just the word “terror”, it means fear. Fear is a way to control people, and the chilling effect is creating fear. That in itself is a kind of terrorism, a terrorism inflicted on the entire population.
The sharing of intelligence. I understand CSIS wants information and that it makes sense to share with different agencies. The more that information is shared, the less secure it will be. There are always going to be governments and institutions and private people and hackers and so on who want information. If all these institutions have access to all the information, it's going to be harder to protect, and it's more likely to be breached, and if it is breached the breach will be vaster. There are a lot of privacy and security concerns with trying to increase security in the first place. It's a bit of a catch-22.
More powers for CSIS.... I like to remind people that CSIS was created in 1984 as a result of the RCMP gaining spy powers, abusing them, and people being very mad about it. The government created CSIS so there would be two separate bodies, one for information and one for enforcement. These proposed extra powers for CSIS are undoing a lesson we should have learned by now.
No public consultation.... No one consulted the public about giving up our privacy. No one polled people about whether it was worth trading our freedoms for the illusion of security or empowering spies against us or how we would want it all to be overseen. It was rammed through Parliament in an omnibus package, typical of shady government. Ironically, Harper himself once gave a speech against omnibus bills, but I digress, as plenty of you already know that politicians sometimes lack integrity and continuity.
I have a few more things.