Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in this important debate on the motions in Group No. 1.
The events of September 11 have, as has been said many times, created an exceptional situation requiring an exceptional response. That exceptional response is the legislation we are looking at today.
In this House, only the NDP had not realized, or at least not officially as their party position, that international geopolitics had changed.
As the result of numerous questions on our part, particularly by the hon. member for Berthier--Montcalm, whose exceptional efforts in connection with Bill C-36 I must commend, the Minister of Justice kept repeating “We are open to changes in the bill. We are going to hear the witnesses in committee. Our minds are not closed. We shall see how things develop”.
The Bloc Quebecois said “OK, we will play along”. We heard the witnesses, we questioned them, we spoke with them. The outcome of all this feverish exchange of ideas was our tabling of 66 amendments in committee. Still believing that we were playing along, and that the Liberal government was too, we proposed these amendments in good faith.
But the minister rejected them all, except for one. This should have been an indication—but we are getting used to this—of the Liberals' idea of the work of parliamentarians, which is “Do not worry. We the Liberal government are the embodiment of truth. We know what is best and to heck with what witnesses said”.
This is very unfortunate, because Bill C-36 changes the balance between security and individual freedoms. Whenever we change that balance, we must do so carefully and thoughtfully. Unfortunately, it seems that the Liberal government was content with its own way of seeing things and not open to other people's views.
Let us now turn to the various motions before us. Motion No. 1, presented by the Canadian Alliance member, does not change things very much. There are still problems with the very broad definition of the expression terrorist activity.
We agree with the second motion dealing with transparency and we will support it. We will also support Motion No. 3 dealing with having one's name on the list as a person or organization.
I want to go back to Motion No. 2 on transparency, because it is essential. The various amendments that the Bloc Quebecois presented in committee were intended, in part, to give greater transparency to the bill, to the government's activities.
Again, we must be very careful when we attempt to change the balance between individual rights and security. We must take every possible measure to ensure greater transparency, so that all Quebecers and Canadians will know what to expect, particularly since this bill is a fundamental philosophical change in the Canadian legislation. Therefore, we support Motion No. 2.
As for Motion No. 3, as I was saying earlier, it is very serious business to be on a list of individuals or organizations that promote terrorism. Asking the minister to make a quick decision as to whether a person or organization is to be deleted from this list is the least of our worries. If the minister is not able to do so within 60 days, it seems to me that, based on our legal philosophy of presumed innocence, it is obvious that the name of the individual or organization would have to be deleted if there were no ministerial decision within those 60 days.
As for Motion No. 4, the Bloc Quebecois moved numerous amendments in committee to ensure that the right to counsel, one of the fundamental elements of our legal system in Quebec and in Canada, was respected and, more than that, guaranteed. Once again, let me repeat, the government decided to spurn all amendments by the Bloc Quebecois, including the ones on this.
We are therefore going to be supporting the motion by the right honourable leader of the Conservative Party to ensure that the right to counsel is respected. I know that the right hon. leader of the Conservative Party has far more experience than I.
I do not, however, have any doubts as to the desire of this government to vote against these amendments, even the ones that make sense and should be adopted. The Liberal government has decided it knows more than everyone else and so it is thumbing its nose, not just at the opinions of parliamentarians, whether this involves the amendment by the Alliance members, those by the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party/Democratic Representative Caucus Coalition, or those by the Bloc Quebecois, but also at the proposals made by the various witnesses in committee.
For this reason, I believe this whole thing is going to give our institution even more of a black eye as far as public opinion is concerned. The expert witnesses were not heeded, those wonderful people who came before committee to present their views and who deserved to be listened to.