Exactly. I share that. I share that concern from my colleagues here.
I think what we need to be looking at in all of this is a holistic picture that reflects the concerns that have been raised about the lack of trust that Canadians have in this government to respect civil liberties and respect privacy rights. I still get, at my constituency office and my Parliament Hill office, a number of calls and emails on a regular basis from people alarmed that Bill C-2 was proposed in the first place; from people alarmed by Bill C-8; and from people who simply do not trust the government on Bill C-12, because all these other things happened along the way that led here.
If this truly is a new government, which is the line we hear often in question period, then it should be responsive to these concerns. That, I think, is the real problem we're seeing right now. This is not a government that seems to have learned any lessons. This is not a government that wants to play ball with Canadians, or certainly with those alarmed by incursions into privacy. This is not a government that has really shown any real self-awareness on this.
That's dissatisfying to me, and it's disheartening to a lot of Canadians. This is a minority Parliament. It has always been the case that in a minority Parliament, the onus is on the government to find support from opposition parties to enact its agenda, whether it's a budget or other bills, especially ones that are so crucial to the fabric of a country as border security is. This is where I go back to the fact that governments are supposed to unify. Leaders are supposed to unify. The only thing this government has managed to do is unify the NDP, the Green Party, the Bloc and the Conservatives, who have all seen the shortcomings of what this government is trying to do. I guess there is a slight participation medal that can be awarded for that type of unity.
Where we are headed with this, if the government does not honestly take heed of these concerns, is a government that will not get anything done, will point fingers everywhere else, and will blame every other party for that without being able to point to a single thing it has done to truly acknowledge where these frustrations are coming from and where, frankly, the distrust is coming from. All of this comes from an institutional distrust that has ballooned over the last five years in particular. We saw during the COVID period the distrust in institutions. We saw where people stopped believing that the government had their best interests at heart. A lot of these frustrations were the reasons I decided to run for office. I thought Canada desperately needed a change. Despite the proclamations that this is a new government, we have not seen that change really advanced here. I look at where we are on this particular legislation....
I realize, Chair, that we are heading toward question period. I'm happy to continue my thoughts here, now that I've wound down my preamble, after QP, if you so desire.
This is, I think, something that fundamentally can be framed through the lens of when someone shows you who they are, believe them.
This is a Liberal government that has shown us who they are time and time again. It's a Liberal government that has not tried to earn the trust of Canadians, has certainly not tried to earn the trust and confidence of this House and has not listened to the fundamental concerns that have been raised—concerns that I'm certain my colleagues, Ms. May and Ms. Kwan, will speak to in due course. It's a government that cannot truly get anything done without showing that it's willing to engage with critics and willing to fundamentally have some introspection here to look, right down to the granular, at what powers it wants to give itself and how Canadians can trust that it will not abuse those powers.
This has been a question that you can ask in so many ways. It's a question that has become core to the discussion that MPs are having about Bill C-8. It's the discussion in the committee that I sit on regularly, on Bill C-9, which is coming fundamentally from a place where Canadians do not view this government as having engaged with civil liberties issues in good faith.
I know we're going to be getting to other clauses after this. I will admit that some of these arguments will apply there as well, but you saw it in the discussion of section 97 of the act, which is why it's so relevant to what we have at hand here. It really did bring shades of Bill C-2 in the section dealing with mail search. It brought that back because that was the issue that really alarmed a lot of Canadians. That and the ban on cash transactions over $10,000 remain among the top issues that I've had correspondence to my office about because Canadians are so alarmed about that. I'd say it might be in competition with ostriches. I'm sure all members here have received a number of emails about that as well. Before that issue came up, it was exclusively about Bill C-2.
The government, it sounded like, was prepared to take a step back to listen to these concerns. Instead, we have in Bill C-12 some other similar dimensions, where government is giving itself a power without spelling out necessarily—certainly not in these clauses—exactly what is going to be the check on that power, what is going to be the mechanism by which we can assure that power and that authority are not abused, and what is going to be the way that we can be guaranteed, as Canadians, that C-12 will not be a way to shoehorn in provisions that were so resoundingly unpopular when first proposed in C-2, which was the very first substantive bill this government put forward. That was how high on its agenda and its priority list that bill and those authorities were. I think this is why we have to be very skeptical of all of this.
In the previous clause, we have shown our willingness to work across the aisle on this. We voted for the previous clauses. This is about trying to enhance legislation. It's not trying to obstruct. This is actually—