Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for inviting us.
I think we're all agreed that customs pre-clearance is a huge benefit to Canadians, and its expansion would make those benefits available to even more Canadians and, of course, to enterprises. Nevertheless, as the BC Civil Liberties Association, we have significant reservations about the bill. Governments have the authority to conclude international agreements, but it is up to Parliament to implement them into law and, in doing so, Parliament has a duty to ensure as best as possible the constitutionality of its enactments.
We know that every year millions of people move across the border with very little incident on the whole, but laws tend to be tested and rights infringed in the unusual cases, the few cases. That the system might work most of the time is not actually an answer to whether or not a law might have negative or even unconstitutional consequences.
The first overarching matter of concern for us is that while it's often been repeated that U.S. officers will exercise these new powers under the umbrella of Canadian law, including the charter and the Canadian Human Rights Act— and all of this is a good thing—the bill's protection, to us, is unacceptably weak. This is because, in most cases, it will be impossible to obtain a remedy against the United States for violations of these human rights guarantees.
Subclause 39(3) states that U.S. officers are not crown servants under the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act, which means that Canada can't be held civilly liable under the charter or under the Canadian Human Rights Act for the actions of pre-clearance officers, even though those officers are exercising powers delegated to them by this Parliament.