Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I appreciate that.
This section is one that I have heard some concerns about. Just because there are a number of individuals connected in this space, there are going to be questions around anything that looks like it's suggesting or inviting warrantless access, anything that looks like it's referring to officers being able to—with no evidence, no probable cause and no reasonable grounds—scrutinize any space.
Just so there's an understanding of what we're talking about here, this section, the original section, which I think is germane to Madam DeBellefeuille's amendment, adds the following after section 97 in proposed section 97.01 and says:
Every person who transports or causes to be transported within Canada goods destined for export must, at an officer's request, give the officer free access to any premises or place under the person's control that is attached to or forms part of any place where any goods destined for export are reported, loaded, unloaded or stored and open any package or container of those goods or remove any packaging from those goods.
This is fairly broad in its wording in licensing officers' access to basically any room, any cabinet and any box, case or envelope. I think you have to look at this in the broader context of the original Bill C-2. One of the chief criticisms of Bill C-2 was that it was giving the government unfettered power to trample on due process, to trample on civil liberties, to allow warrantless searches of people's mail and to ban cash transactions. That's why there is a fairly substantive amount of mistrust about powers that government is giving itself under the auspices of border security.
When I look at some of these regulations around exportation, I understand why people have raised some concerns about this. I know there have also been a number of discussions regarding Bill C-2, and now Bill C-12, about access to electronic devices. Now, electronic devices and digital information are not specified here. It refers to access to “goods”, but given the expansive language we see in this proposed section, I actually don't see any reason that CBSA officers would not feel like they are empowered to not look just at any box, cabinet, or room in a warehouse, but also the contents of an iPhone or a computer that may be found in there.
Always, whenever we are talking about powers and authorities given to government, I think we have to look at what the worst possible outcomes would be of a government using such authority, and then work back from there to ensure civil liberties are never put in jeopardy.
I think this is something that's incredibly germane when we look at this government's track record on this and at the authorities and powers that this government has given itself and has abused. One notable example is the Emergencies Act. This is something that is still—right now, actually—going before the court. You have the Federal Court decision saying that the Liberal government broke the law and trampled on Canadians' rights and freedoms.
To look at this in the context of border security, there is not a single bit of objection from any member of the Conservative Party that we need to take border security very seriously. We are the ones who have been raising these alarms, talking about the inflows of fentanyl and talking about the lack of examination and the export of shipping containers. In fact, we support more scrutiny over things that are leaving Canada, over things that are being exported, but obviously this scrutiny has to be measured and it has to be restrained when we are talking about giving governments quite significant power.
We've heard, by the way, this criticism from the left and the right. I note that on this committee right now we have a member of the New Democratic Party. We're graced with the presence of the Green Party leader herself. We, on the Conservative benches, are raising some concerns about this as well. I believe that, looking at this particular section, there are always going to be concerns about what officers are empowered to do and what limitations there are on that, if any.
I'll go back to the precise wording here—“any premises or place under the person's control that is attached to or forms part of any place where any goods destined for export are reported, loaded, unloaded or stored, and open any package”—and so on. Are we talking about the bathroom at the warehouse where certain products are being prepared for export?
Are we talking about executive offices?
We go back to some of the concerns raised on digital materials. You go on to proposed section 97.02, and it goes beyond there, not simply the transportation aspects but also warehouses.
We know that warehousing is an incredibly diverse space. We have dropshipping, which has become a bit of an industry that has been becoming more and more popular. I think that was something over the COVID era in particular.
I suspect that the government may have been planning to add some clarity to the law, but you always have to acknowledge that, as they say, the devil is in the details. What may be done ostensibly to provide clarity actually opens up a new terrain for government.
The reason that Bill C-12 exists in the first place is that the government had such a reckless disregard for privacy rights in Bill C-2. We were told that Bill C-12 would be the answer to these problems, that Bill C-12 would be the way the government could strip out some of these concerning aspects of Bill C-2, have a bill that would have broad appeal and would reach across party lines. Instead, we have a bill that has some of the same core fundamental issues that we saw in the original legislation. I'm not getting a sense that the government has fully understood or realized that.
We have to look at these individually. I think the value of clause-by-clause analysis is that we go through this and we find things that you don't necessarily see in the summary, that you don't see in how the government has originally specified this.
If you look at part 1, it's very vague. It says that the first part of the legislation deals solely with the Customs Act. If you look at the summary of this, it simply talks about making sure that there are “facilities free of charge for carrying out any purpose related to the administration or enforcement of that Act”. It doesn't talk about the additional powers that the government is—