I'd like to step back a bit and talk about the attitude in the body politic that this bill encourages. It's a template that hangs over the population. It encourages the police—and all police forces are influenced by it—to consider Canadian citizens as their enemies, especially those citizens who believe Canada could be a better place if changes were made toward equality, peacefulness, respect for civil liberties, open, diverse and free communication, healthy agriculture and food, etc.
We want real policies to stop global climate change, an economy not based on selling arms to Saudi Arabia...I could go on. I'm an 81-year-old citizen who has belonged to the Voice of Women since 1963.
I am a member of the group Les artistes pour la paix. I am an activist for social, economic and environmental justice.
I am a citizen, and I am afraid of laws that jeopardize our democracy.
When a government pits its police force against its citizens, it's on a slippery slope toward fascism. When a government allows its police services to break the law with impunity, anything from the way the cops drive in Montreal to some of the undercover stuff they do, and trap the naive, and consider a conscientious citizen the enemy, we have a problem. Therefore, I think a new set of glasses needs to be placed over Bill C-51. Does it pass the democracy test?
When our police behave as if they have seen too many TV shows, and start taking entertainment for reality, we're in trouble. Remember the G20 in Toronto. When there's no civilian citizen oversight over our policing system that has any degree of credibility, how close does that make us to a police state, a fascist state?
As a citizen, I want to be respected by government and by my police force, even if I hold different views from theirs. I'm not saying our government should not be concerned by security issues. If they stopped playing TV games, they might even be more efficient at that task.
So throw out Bill C-51 and start over.