Good evening. I'm really glad this is happening. I'm very sorry that many more people, with this short notice, could not have been made aware that this is going on. I feel there's a problem with communication, that dispersion of information is not adequate. This refers to quite a lot of the public consultations that I've been involved in, helped to organize, and tried to get people out to. We really need to work on that. If this is to be really legitimate, and considered worthy of all the time and money you're spending, that part needs to be taken better care of, please.
I'm an ecologist. I'm retired now. I was a teacher for many years. I'm concerned by justice, whether it's social, economic, or environmental. I don't believe in a Canada run by multinationals or run for the one per cent.
I believe in a Canada working in the best interest of the majority of Canadians, but that doesn't mean destroying native land and ignoring their rights. I don't believe in a Canada where we protect our rights and freedoms by taking them away. That is what Bill C-51 does. It must be repealed. It must be removed.
Our rights and freedoms in some ways are removed already by the lack of media. The media are controlled. They don't tell the story. They don't report to the people what's going on, so we don't have information. We don't actually have the truth, only from one perspective.
I certainly don't want to be, as an ecologist, considered a terrorist, and that's one of the things that is part of this whole deal that is coming down. Let us just look at the surveillance oversights: checks and controls—you know the details better than I do—secret police powers, information sharing, Internet censorship, online privacy problems, having telecom providers and surveillance handing over information, and reducing our encryption possibilities to keep our personal information personal.
If we're looking at it, we need to start from scratch. It has to be canned. That pretty much summarizes it.