If I speak in French, it will be very slow.
I appreciate that, and I am happy to slow down because I know every member here is eager to hear all of the thoughts I have on this.
I thank my honourable colleague. I was a bit excited because this is such an important bill. I may have been speaking so quickly and trying to pack as much as I could into question period, but I will happily slow down. I thank my colleague for that.
We all need to take some lessons from that, especially in the holiday season, and slow down from time to time and smell the roses, as they say. It's a very good reminder of something that applies outside this committee as well.
Returning to the bill—my colleague can feel free to add any points of order she'd like to if she feels I am speaking too quickly again as I get excited about this—the summary really dilutes what we see in the details of the section in part 1 of the bill and, specifically, where we are now, which is clause four and the amendment from Madame DeBellefeuille.
The government has not been forthright about where it would limit these authorities. We saw this in Bill C‑2, when a warrantless search of letter mail was proposed. There was this default position taken any time these concerns were raised that we should just trust the government. We should trust the government that broke the law by freezing Canadians' bank accounts. We should trust the government that wanted to ban cash transactions. I think a lot of Canadians don't trust it, which is why we are very concerned about this.
I regularly sit on the justice committee, so my view is that we need to be very serious about law and order, but we can never let that come at the expense of due process and privacy rights. That's why I've raised these concerns with this section and the changes this bill proposes in adding sections 97.01 and 97.02.
I realize this is the debate on the amendment. When we get to the opportunity to ask some of the officials questions about this, I will ask what, precisely, will limit that power. Is there going to be a line drawn for where officers cannot search? If not, does one need to be drawn? Has there been an appropriate charter analysis done of this section and this authority, and of what, if any, limitations are required to ensure that it does not violate the constitutional rights of Canadians?
I live an hour from the Canada-U.S. border. This is very important to the economic vitality of my region. When you work in cross-border trade, you have to deal with other countries. It's not as simple as saying, “I'm a Canadian and I have rights as a Canadian citizen,” because you are subject to the laws of the United States and the laws of other countries to which you may export. We still have to ensure that we are not compromising privacy rights or disadvantaging companies that are engaging in cross-border trade by putting them through the wringer and forcing them to engage in all of these different things that make it more complicated and more convoluted, and prevent them from being able to do what they're doing, which I hope all members here can understand is crucial to the economy.
This leaves us forced to question exactly what the implications of this will be for Canadians and Canadian businesses. It leaves us forced to question precisely why the Liberal government did not, in Bill C‑12, take in good faith the criticisms that were being made not just by legislators, but by civil society groups and Canadians from the left and the right, and produce in Bill C‑12 a bill that deals with the border issues that are very real and we've been seeing for many years.
I remember when the government couldn't even point to Roxham Road on the map. It was the fault point in the flow of illegal immigration into Canada. The government wouldn't even acknowledge it and call it illegal immigration.
This is not a new issue to Conservative members of Parliament, but it is an issue that needs very real solutions. We had in our platform a very real border security proposal that would have beefed up the border. It would have responded to the issues that have been identified by border officials, people living in border communities and people in other countries that have been forced to deal with the repercussions and consequences of the Canadian government's failure over the last decade to deal with these issues. That proposal, which very much resonated with a lot of Canadians, is not the one the government has chosen to go with.
What we're left with is now Bill C-2, which is still a live bill, and Bill C-12, which has not responded to these issues. That's exactly why we're having the discussions on this that we are. Where in the demands that have been coming from Canadians to get serious on the border have the calls been that border guards need to be able to open every matchbox in every room in every warehouse? Precisely what limitations, if any, will there be on the power of those officers?
This is, I think, a very legitimate question. It's one that, for the sake of those members here who have been engaging in this debate, I would love to hear an answer to. Instead, whenever we've been trying to raise issues that are germane to this committee's work and to what Canadians are going through, we've found roadblock after roadblock and certain Liberal members who want to obstruct discussion and debate on issues that are incredibly important to Canadians.