This is, I think, why we had to question so much the earlier amendment from Madame DeBellefeuille. Again, I think it's regrettable that the Liberals did not pass it, because now we have the Liberals saying that because we didn't vote for that, we shouldn't vote for this. I'd say, as I was told growing up, that it's never too late to correct a mistake.
I think one of the reasons it's so important is that there is some disagreement among legal scholars in Canada. If you look at case law, there's some disagreement among judges on what the evidentiary standards actually mean.
There was an essay to this effect. I forget where it was published, but it was by Terry Skolnik, who's quite renowned. I think it was in the Ottawa Law Review. He talked about what he feels are some of the shortcomings of the existing system and the distinction between “reasonable suspicion” and “reasonable grounds to believe”. What the author put forward as a novel way to reconsider or reimagine this I thought was quite interesting.
I won't get too much into the academics of it, but there was a crucial point that's germane to the amendment put forward by Madame DeBellefeuille here, which is that “in identifying new police powers”—this is quoting directly from the law review article and this is what Bill C-22 does—“courts should avoid imposing the standard of reasonable grounds to believe where the police power is minimally intrusive, briefly executed, highly accurate, and undertaken for sufficiently important law enforcement objectives.”
The inverse is then true that when a situation is not like that, when we have police powers that are not minimally intrusive, that are not briefly executed and that are not highly accurate, then we should not allow that different evidentiary standard to hold. I think that's important because one of the things we've been seeing in all of this is that this is not limited, this is not minimally impairing and it's not minimally intrusive.
The powers in here are incredibly broad, so we have to err on the side of privacy. We have to err on the side of protecting the fundamental rights of Canadians: the right to be free from search and seizure, especially keeping in mind the nature that these applications are all done ex parte. These are all done without the opportunity for the person who's being targeted by one of these orders to make submissions to defend their case.
To go to the previous amendment, to assert that maybe they have solicitor-client privilege that would be at issue, all of this is being done after the fact, after a potential breach has already taken place and after someone's rights have already been violated.
These are incredibly reasonable common-sense proposals. I say this having had some spirited discussions with my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois. We disagree on a range of issues, but when we are in alignment and we have our colleague from the Green Party and our colleague from the NDP, when members representing all the parties in the House but one—from all sides of the political spectrum and no sides of the conventional political spectrum—are all saying the same thing, I think it would be incumbent on the Liberal government to listen to this incredibly reasonable approach.
I have yet to hear from one single member of the government what would necessitate having the lower standard. What is the one case that they fear would not be captured by the lower standard that would be captured by the higher standard? So far, they've not been able to do that. I don't see any hands shooting up, but I welcome any hands shooting up here. I think the government is defaulting to its standard position of wanting maximum authority and maximum latitude and to heck with the consequences.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
