Madam Speaker, on September 11 the world changed, but after observing the actions of the government last month I am wondering whether Liberals have changed enough.
While I as a Canadian support an aggressive campaign to combat terrorism in Canada and abroad, as a parliamentarian I have grave concerns. I have grave concerns, first about what is in this bill, second about what is not in this bill, and third about the government's track record in violating the rights and freedoms of law abiding citizens. I will spend the rest of my time explaining these three points.
My first concern is that this terrorism bill shifts the public, the media and parliament's focus to increasing the government's legislative powers rather than to the more pressing problem of lack of resources committed to fighting terrorism and government's misplaced priorities.
On Monday on national television Mr. Reid Morden, the former head of CSIS, stated:
I think that CSIS has sufficient powers under the CSIS act to do its job now if it has the resources to do it. That's always been the problem with both CSIS and the RCMP. They have lots of powers. They certainly don't have enough trained bodies.
I know where they can get more resources and I know where they can get more people to help them do the job. I will explain.
While parliament is focused on the legality and the appropriateness of this anti-terrorism legislation, there is a real danger that we are missing the real priority, which is that the RCMP, CSIS and our Canadian forces need more staff, more training and more equipment.
There is evidence that the government still has not realized what the real public safety priorities are. Here are a couple of glaring examples which I will explain. These are examples of misplaced priorities. Last week the RCMP participated in a roadblock in Alberta, checking hunters for firearm licences. Duck hunters are not a threat to public safety; terrorists are. Also, three weeks ago six RCMP officers raided an office of the Responsible Firearms Owners Coalition of B.C. for putting up signs during last November's election, allegedly in contravention of the Elections Act.
The musical ride has been redeployed to security of the nation so surely these highly trained RCMP officers in Alberta and B.C. should be redeployed as well, from their fight against duck hunters to the fight against terrorism.
The most recent data available through access to information shows that the government has 1,800 staff, a lot of RCMP officers, working on a totally useless gun registry instead of fighting the war against terrorism. The government has already spent over half a billion dollars to register tens of millions of legally owned guns and to license millions of totally innocent firearms owners instead of redirecting these human and financial resources to the fight against a real threat, terrorism.
Why not secure our borders? Why not do the things that the people of this country want to be priorities? Let us put our money where we will get the most bang for our buck.
Yesterday the justice minister gave this assurance to the national media. She stated:
Our legislation is fair in that we are not unwittingly and unintentionally, perhaps, involving those who are completely innocent either as individuals or organizations.
The hunters in Alberta who had their property seized by RCMP officers last week were completely innocent individuals until this government failed to issue licences to tens of thousands of gun owners who had applied for them. They tried to comply with the law and could not.
The responsible firearms owners of B.C. association was also a completely innocent organization until the government passed a gag law prohibiting free speech during an election campaign. This is the same gag law that is now being challenged in the courts while we are spending RCMP resources going after these people.
We have to examine the government's public assurances as closely as we do its legislation. I have had a lot of experience here in the last eight years and I speak from that. We have to examine the government's track record on other pieces of legislation it has passed before we accept its public assurances as a legal commitment.
The Canadian Bar Association, the Criminal Lawyers' Association of Ontario and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have already raised concerns about what is in the bill.
The civil libertarians say the bill could erode democracy and cite the following provisions. First, it would permit the arrest of individuals without warrant if it is believed that would prevent terrorist activity; second, it would compel people to provide information related to terrorism to an investigating judge without charges being laid or a crime having been committed; third, it would reduce safeguards on obtaining and extending warrants for wiretaps; fourth, it would make it illegal to facilitate terrorist activity; and fifth, there would be the unprecedented creation of judicial investigatory hearings.
They even criticized the definition of terrorist activity itself. An article quoted Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who said that in the past Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress would have been terrorists under the definition, while today the Kurds of Iraq would likely qualify in their battle against Saddam Hussein's repression. He stated:
I am hard-pressed to appreciate why all this has been considered necessary because I'm very aware of the considerable power that already exists.
He added that some of the relaxed rules for police surveillance are simply “a gratuitous undermining of safeguards” that will do nothing to apprehend terrorists.
These are serious concerns because, as I said before, the government has established a track record of violating rights and freedoms of law abiding citizens while in the pursuit of political priorities rather than public safety priorities.
As an example, just six weeks ago the privacy commissioner of Canada issued a report entitled “Review of the Personal Information Handling Practices of the Canadian Firearms Program”. I made some startling discoveries in this 81 page report. On pages 4 and 7 he reported that the justice minister had ignored the privacy commissioner's suggestions for years. On pages 4 and 5 the privacy commissioner says that the firearms registry ranges from a significant intrusion on privacy to highly intrusive. On pages 5 and 20 he reports that the justice minister has not implemented a promise made to parliament way back in 1997. On page 7 he reports that the justice minister has ignored two recommendations made by parliamentary committee. On page 10 he reports that the justice minister cannot provide a single point of accountability, as she promised. On page 19 the privacy commissioner disagrees with the justice minister's claim that all private and personal information is protected. On pages 20 and 21 he goes on to say that citizens may have to file up to five requests to access their personal information.
On pages 23 to 29 the privacy commissioner found that: the RCMP keeps a firearms interest police database on 3.5 million Canadians a secret from them; the RCMP is violating the Privacy Act with operations of the police information retrieval system; the RCMP firearms interest police database exceeds authority granted in section 5 of the Firearms Act; and the firearms interest police database on 3.5 million Canadians is full of unsubstantiated, derogatory information, unproven charges or allegations and hearsay, and even contains information on witnesses and victims. We must remember that this is a database authorized in 1995 by parliament with the passage of Bill C-68. This was the database that was only supposed to contain information on potentially dangerous individuals.
I cite all these examples to highlight the fact that we need to examine the legislation before us today. The justice minister and the government clearly have not kept their promises to safeguard the privacy rights of law abiding citizens.
What is my point? Laws passed without enough thought by the House and laws poorly implemented by government bureaucrats can result in the violation of privacy rights of law abiding citizens. This is why we have every right to be skeptical of the assurances the minister is giving us today about this piece of legislation. We must remember that the previous piece of legislation I cited was rammed through parliament using time allocation, ending all debate.
In violation of our citizens' privacy rights, Bill C-68 also violated the rights of millions of law abiding citizens, trampling on fundamental property rights, placing in jeopardy our charter of rights to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, eliminating our right to remain silent, reversing the onus of proof and thereby eliminating our rights to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, infringing on the treaty rights of aboriginal people, and intruding unnecessarily into the exclusive constitutional jurisdiction of the provinces over property and civil rights.
I will conclude with what I said at the beginning of my speech. I have grave concerns about some of the things that are not in the bill. The government has not created a national sky marshal service for domestic passenger flights. That does not make sense. The government has not created a comprehensive national border protection service that would include ports police.
The government has not reinstated the death penalty for those convicted of causing death by acts of terrorism. The government has not provided for the extradition of criminals and terrorists using Canada as a safe haven, including extradition of any terrorist attempting to avoid the death penalty in other countries.
The government has not strengthened our deportation laws. The government has not provided safeguards in this legislation that would allow individuals and organizations unjustly caught by this legislation. It has not strengthened property rights. It has not included legislative commitments to provide the resources necessary to the RCMP, CSIS and defence. It has not included the legislation provision to make restitution to victims, and there is no--