Mr. Speaker, I would be very happy to answer the question to the best of my ability. I am not an expert but I think experts would tell us that freedom of association is a charter right. As such, if we just take pure membership we would then be making this law unconstitutional. I have heard it said by the hon. member's leader and by many other people that it is one of the basic principles, which is what we are talking about when we talk about balancing rights and freedoms.
If I were a parent and my children were misbehaving I would not tell them that they were wrong or that they were bad children. I would tell them that what they did was wrong and that they should change their activity. It goes to what we are saying here. I like the way the bill has crafted definitions of terrorism. We are taking it away from the concept of groups of people and putting onto people doing wrong activities, terrorist activities.
I like how we have gone to the 12 international conventions. I certainly applaud that we are now able to accede to the last two conventions and that we are the fourth in the world on one of them.
The understanding of where the balancing act should be is important because otherwise we would have a sledgehammer coming down and the tools we were searching for would be lost. The balancing act has been done for very good reason.
I am actually concerned about a lot of the tools we are now giving to the police. I am concerned that the knowledge and safeguards we might have on some levels may not get down to the operational level. However I believe people are well intentioned, including the police and enforcement services.
We need to go forward with a little faith in the system but if I had my druthers I would rather go forward with the protection under the charter of rights and freedoms.