Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for her comments. I am pleased to take part in the debate today regarding the long anticipated anti-terrorism legislation. I am pleased to see the new found enthusiasm of members on the Liberal benches to fight terrorism. After years of inaction and denial the light finally went on over there, especially in view of the circumstances of September 11.
The bill being tabled today is an important step forward and reflects many of the issues the Canadian Alliance has been raising over the past years. The bill echoes many recommendations made by Canadian Alliance members of parliament, including the identification of terrorist organizations, the ratification of international obligations to suppress terrorist bombings, and banning fundraising activities that support terrorism.
As recently as September 18 our party introduced a supply motion putting forth a number of the same elements Bill C-36 introduces. The motion unfortunately was voted down as the government accused the Canadian Alliance of playing politics or trying to score political points.
It is disappointing that the government has chosen to disparage the opposition for raising legitimate security concerns, not only in the past month but over the past number of years. It is even more disappointing that the government has forced Canadians to wait so long before finally introducing the same measures it previously disparaged.
The United Kingdom has had strict laws banning terrorist fundraising and other terrorist activity for a year and a half, and the United States has had such laws in place for a number of years. However Canada has not taken any legislative action in this area until now. It appears that government members have finally acknowledged the gravity of the situation now that the tragedy of September 11 has forced them into action.
Although some positive and necessary measures are being announced in the proposed legislation, in the days and weeks to come members of the Canadian Alliance will be urging the minister to take further steps to improve the provisions of the bill.
One issue that needs to be raised and debated is the failure of the government to ban membership in organizations that are clearly identified as terrorist organizations. If the purpose of an organization is to engage in terrorist activities, what possible justification can there be for permitting individuals to continue to belong to the organization?
The Liberal government has argued in the past that such a provision might be considered unconstitutional. However, making it illegal to participate in a group proven to be a terrorist organization is a reasonable limit on freedom of association and other freedoms in the charter.
When the primary, if not the sole, purpose of such an association is to commit illegal terrorist acts, the safety and security of all citizens may reasonably supersede the individual rights of the persons participating in the organizations or conspiring to commit the acts. If the courts do not believe our citizens are deserving of this protection they should tell us so, but the government should have the courage to include that in the bill.
Contrary to the suggestions found in justice department publications, the provision would not make participation in a terrorist organization illegal unless it could be proven that a person had the intention to facilitate illegal actions for the organization. This is the same misleading characterization that was in the government's previous organized crime legislation. People need to understand that the provisions make clear the additional responsibilities a prosecutor would need to demonstrate in a court of law.
Another concern is that the bill does nothing to address Canada's new status as a haven for terrorists seeking to flee the consequences of their crimes in other countries. The Canadian Alliance has called on the government to put in place laws to ensure terrorists are extradited promptly and without reservation to countries that respect the rule of law. However the bill fails to address this serious concern.
The Supreme Court of Canada's United States v Burns decision of February 15, 2001, created a safe haven in Canada for violent criminals, including international terrorists, regardless of nationality, who come to Canada to escape lawful punishment in the United States or any other democratic country.
The anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act of 1996, passed by the United States congress, makes terrorism a federal crime punishable by death. Any suspected terrorist who travels from the United States to Canada to escape prosecution may therefore not be extradited unless assurances are given by the U.S. that the person would not face the death penalty.
It is troubling that if the criminals involved in the New York City or Washington attacks made their way to Canada to avoid prosecution the Canadian government would be prohibited from extraditing them pursuant to United States v Burns unless there were undefined exceptional circumstances. These circumstances are required by the court, so the law becomes the policy playground of unelected judges who define such circumstances on a case by case basis.
These are not simply the comments of members of Canadian Alliance or opposition members. In a related case last February, the day after I stood in the House and said the United States v Burns case was creating a safe haven for terrorists in Canada and the Minister of Justice stood and denied it, her own lawyers on behalf of herself and the Minister of Immigration expressed their concern to the supreme court in precisely the same words. They said its decision could create a safe haven for terrorists.
They cited the case of Suresh and Ahani, suspected terrorists from Sri Lanka and Iran respectively who have claimed refugee status in Canada and are using charter rights to appeal against deportation. Canadian Alliance members have asked the minister to reopen the Suresh arguments. The Supreme Court of Canada has not yet delivered its judgment but the minister is entitled in exceptional circumstances to request that the case be opened.
Given the events of September 11, these are clearly exceptional circumstances. The Minister of Justice has refused to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to reopen the Suresh case. Accordingly it is unlikely that she will be able to extradite foreign terrorists after the court makes its ruling.
In extradition and deportation cases Canadian laws must ensure that terrorists are expelled from Canada promptly and without reservation to face the consequences of their acts. I would ask the minister to reconsider adding such provisions to the legislation. Canadians require legal certainty, not vague assurances by the minister or unelected judges. The security of Canadians is too important to be the policy plaything of unelected judges.
Another worrisome issue is that the bill fails to deny parole to terrorists convicted of multiple murders. Under the anti-terrorism bill sentences would be served consecutively for a number of offences. However sentences of life imprisonment are excluded. In other words, if a terrorist commits murder he or she would be eligible for parole yet for lesser offences the sentences must be served consecutively.
In light of the fact that terrorists attempt to indiscriminately kill and take as many lives as possible, it is self-evident that those who kill in this fashion should never be released from custody. A second opportunity to participate in a mass murder should never be provided, and certainly not provided by the House.
Another concern I draw to the attention of the minister is the joint prosecutorial authority afforded by the legislation. It is clear that both the provincial attorney general and the federal attorney general may initiate prosecutions under the legislation. However I submit that in view of the international scope of terrorism prosecutions should remain in the hands of the federal attorney general.
I agree there should be co-operation with the provincial attorneys general, but the scope of these investigations and the involvement of CSIS and the RCMP require federal direction.
My real fear is that this provision was included simply to download financial responsibility to the provinces and to allow the federal minister of justice to escape political heat whenever she or he did not want to take authority for a prosecution.
We have seen before where the federal government downloads responsibilities after passing a law. The burden of the prosecution and the financial cost associated with those laws then remain on the province. This legislation is a matter of national security. It should be dealt with by the federal attorney general and resourced through parliament.
Many Canadians have serious and legitimate concerns that civil liberties may be sacrificed in the government's attempt to quash terrorist activity. Regardless of the gravity of the security threats facing our country all citizens must be assured of legal protection from the arbitrary exercise of state power. That is why it is so important that the legislation clearly spells out the rights of police and security agencies. We want to provide police and security agents with this authority but not on any terms. The terms must be carefully and clearly delineated in the legislation.
Canadians want to see evidence that the federal government is taking strong and effective legislative measures to improve national security. I do not think these measures need be at the expense of personal freedoms.
The legislation is raising and will continue to raise civil liberty concerns in the course of this debate and beyond. The preventive arrest and the investigative hearings provisions of the bill will surely come under charter scrutiny. The new power of preventive arrest would allow a peace officer to arrest a suspected terrorist if there were reasonable grounds to suspect that the person was about to commit a terrorist activity. The section on investigative hearings would compel material witnesses to disclose information relating to terrorism to a judge even without a formal trial.
It appears that both these measures are reasonable, especially in the context of the investigative hearings where there is protection from self-incrimination. However, the due process that is imported into the investigative hearings may in fact prevent the timely disclosure of information necessary for action against pending or imminent terror activity.
We have to balance those due process concerns with the ability of our authorities to get timely information. In view of the fact that there are no penal consequences as a result of the investigative hearing both processes could be sped up because there are no criminal consequences to that and we need to bear that in mind.
Some of the amendments to the criminal code regarding hate crimes are also of concern. For example, under the bill courts may order an Internet provider to delete an item from the computer system if it were deemed hate propaganda. The courts may also order the custodian of the computer system to provide any information relating to the whereabouts of the person who created the hate propaganda.
The increased abilities of our police and security agencies also need to be carefully considered. It is important to remember that our laws dealing with national security have not kept up with advances in technology in terms of proposed changes to laws governing wiretapping procedures. Criteria for obtaining warrants and electronic surveillance orders to monitor terrorist activity should have been streamlined and modernized years ago. Our frontline workers need to be able to respond to the virtually unlimited resources, funds and technology of terrorist organizations.
The analogy can be made in the context of organized crime. It seems that terrorist organizations and organized crime have unlimited funds. Our police and other security agencies do not. As my colleague pointed out yesterday in question period, the government seems to put its priority on registering the shotguns of duck hunters rather than providing our security services with those resources. Spending $100 million a year on registering the shotguns of duck hunters for no bona fide criminal activity is an absolute disgrace. If the government wants to find money to prevent crime, let it do so by abolishing this very ill conceived national long gun registry.
Another concern is the very close bureaucratic relationship between our federal police, the RCMP, and the solicitor general. If we are giving police this broad power and if it is justified under the charter in order to accomplish these security needs, then we have to take steps to divide that close relationship between the solicitor general and the commissioner of the RCMP.
The commissioner of the RCMP is a deputy minister in his own department. It is wrong for a national police force to have that kind of relationship with the minister. There needs to be protection so that the police work is separate from the political work or the possibility of political interference in that police work.
My colleagues in the NDP have raised the issue that the legislation may suppress bona fide political dissent. That too is a legitimate concern. One of the ways to address that issue is not by diluting the legislation, but by putting a proper reporting system in place so that the heads of the RCMP or other security agencies do not report to the solicitor general but to an independent committee of the House made up of non-partisan members of the House or members from both sides of the House. This is a very important step that we can take in order to ensure that police powers are properly used.
The unprecedented terrorist attacks of September 11 will certainly influence the courts' rulings on security matters. We must allow the courts to do their work after we have considered and passed this legislation.
As the Minister of Justice said, the courts read newspapers, so they know what is going on. It is too bad the minister could not have supplemented that knowledge by expanding the arguments against Suresh. The minister missed a golden opportunity in these exceptional circumstances to make a clear stand against terrorism by indicating very clearly the arguments that need to be made to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Over the course of the past month the Canadian Alliance has drawn attention to the fact that although Canada signed the international convention for the suppression of the financing of terrorism almost two years ago, it has not ratified the convention because the federal government failed to put into place the necessary legislation to stop terrorist fundraising.
Now that the legislation has been introduced, it appears that the justice minister was less than frank with the House and Canadians when she implied in the House in response to questioning that she could seize money under subsection 3(2) of the United Nations Act. This section has been amended by new legislation on goods, wares or merchandise; in the very section that she said would allow her to seize those assets, including money, those words have been deleted and replaced with the word property.
Although the minister implied that this section, as it was then, gave her the authority to seize assets, the Canadian Alliance consistently said that the government did not have the legislative authority to do so. It is now clear that this is in fact the case.
It is unfortunate that ministers of the crown would spend their time in question period being vague and less than frank in order to make up for legislative and policy failures, however, I welcome the new provisions that would allow the government to ratify the UN convention and to take this long needed action to suppress the essential financial resources needed by terrorist organizations.
There are a number of amendments to other acts in the bill, including the Official Secrets Act, the Canada Evidence Act, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act, the National Defence Act and many others. We must be diligent in ensuring that all amendments to these acts strike the appropriate balance between national security and the right of the public to be informed of government business. The leader of the PC/DR coalition has been especially vigilant in respect of this disclosure. He has mentioned it in various questions and other statements, as have other members of the House.
Some of the amendments to the Access to Information Act are troubling. For example, the bill would allow the attorney general to prohibit the disclosure of information for the purpose of protecting international relations, national security or defence. This sweeping provision could potentially restrict the information available to Canadians to a great extent. Information about the deficiencies of the Sea King helicopters may not have been revealed if the attorney general could have used the blanket prohibition of protecting national security to prevent such information from being released.
The bill should not be a cover to allow the government to continue to evade its security responsibilities as it has done over the last number of years. These types of amendments to the Access to Information Act need to be very carefully considered.
The government also claims that the bill clarifies the mandate of the Communications Security Establishment. Currently the CSE is a government agency that provides guidance in the area of information technology. However the mandate extended to the CSE in the bill gives considerable legal authority to the agency. For example clause 102 of the bill allows the Minister of National Defence to authorize the CSE to intercept private communications for the sole purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence. This amendment to the National Defence Act is a major shift of the responsibilities of the CSE and should not pass through the House without due consideration of its implications.
Along the same lines I also have concerns about amendments to the Official Secrets Act. Secrecy legislation is primarily designed to protect the security of the state from espionage. However, the broad wording of Canada's Official Secrets Act means that it may be used to sanction the unauthorized release of almost any information held by government.
We must be mindful of this when considering any amendments to the act. In view of the answers we have heard provided to the House by ministers of the crown, for example the solicitor general, matters that routinely are given to members of the press in the United States by the American government are denied access here in the House. The minister simply stands and says that it is a matter of national security and cannot be disclosed. If the minister is taking that position on the basis of the existing act, we can imagine what the minister would do with enhanced powers. We need to clarify the powers that the ministers may have in denying Canadians the right to information that does not undermine national security.
The last but perhaps most important concern I would like to raise today is the matter of resources. The legislation, as good as it is in its various aspects, will be of little value if the Liberal government does not provide adequate resources to our frontline forces in the fight against terrorism. The government consistently says it gives a certain amount of money over a number of years, but when we divide that money over those number of years and subtract the money that has been taken out of the security budget and look at what actual money is going to frontline police and security services, we realize that the money certainly is less than adequate. Again I only need make reference to the kinds of boondoggles into which the government has been willing to put money, like registering the shotguns of duck hunters.
The United States passed legislation in 1996 that requires the government to commit resources to support a wide range of security measures. The Canadian bill has no such requirement. It is the responsibility of the government to provide adequate resources to our frontline police and security agencies in the fight against terrorism. Without this support Canadian security cannot be assured.
The government has taken some important steps. Although we will be considering the provisions of the bill very carefully, it is imperative that the legislation move forward as quickly as possible. I therefore thank members of the House for the increase in the number of hours for debate to raise concerns and move the matter along.
All Canadians are entitled to live in peace and security. While the government has finally moved to respond in a meaningful way to the threat of worldwide terrorism, much remains to be done. Members of the Canadian Alliance, the opposition, are committed to working with the government to ensure that the steps necessary to achieve peace and security in Canada are accomplished.