Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on this group of amendments to Bill C-36. As we have heard from other of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, we certainly support the amendment before us and other amendments that we are dealing with at this stage, but oppose the bill without some major acceptance of the amendments being proposed.
It is rather ironic that today of all days we are dealing with the heavy hand of closure by the Liberal Government of Canada. All of us will recall that today is the anniversary of our election, whether as a first, second or many term member to the House. It should be a day of celebration, a day to celebrate democracy, not to be sidelined and bowled over by the heavy hand of closure, which is the reality today.
One year ago we were elected or re-elected to stand and represent constituents and Canadians from one end of the country to the other. We were elected to represent, we were not elected to rubber stamp an arbitrary government measure. We were elected to debate and make tough decisions based on the collective good and the public interest. We were not elected to ride roughshod over the rights and liberties of individual Canadians, yet today we are faced with just that.
It is a sad day, a very dark moment in the history of the country, since so much is at stake. So much of what we are dealing with is fundamental to who we are as a nation. The broad, wide, sweeping powers of the legislation, the substantive change that the bill represents are contrary to the fundamental values of Canadians. In no way is it an answer to what the government suggested is the threat of terrorism as we know it today.
I listened very carefully to the member for Etobicoke North and to others throughout the debate. It is clear to me that they are very much trying to defend the indefensible. It is impossible to pretend to be dealing with the threat of terrorism, which we all agree must be dealt with, by stepping over the rights and privileges of Canadians and dismantling the institutions that hold this country together and the values we hold near and dear to us.
In opposing the legislation without substantive amendments, the New Democrats did not vote against improving the security of Canadians. In fact, the contrary is the case. We are expressing our concern with the bill and raising a challenge to the government in order to find mechanisms to defeat terrorism without defeating basic rights enjoyed by all Canadians.
I quote a Globe and Mail editorial on October 1 in response to all those who suggested that Canadians desperately want this kind of bill that stamps all over the rights of individual Canadians, as there is a question as to whether that is the case or not. The editorial said:
Although Canadians desperately want to see evidence that the federal government is taking strong and meaningful measures to improve national security, there is no evidence that Canadians want to hand the government carte blanche to create a nation where important protections may be suspended arbitrarily if it seems handy.
That is the issue we are really dealing with today. It is that balance between protecting Canadians' against terrorism and ensuring their security while standing up for individual freedoms and liberties that we fought so long and hard for.
Many groups and concerned Canadians made presentations and sent us faxes and e-mails to let us know their concerns. Those concerns by and large were not taken into account by the government in a very heavy-handed process through the committee stage and into the House today. Those concerns ranged from preventive arrest right through to the definition of terrorism. I want to focus for a moment on that issue because it overlaps directly with the concerns we heard about Bill C-11 on immigration and refugee policy.
During those hearings concerns were raised around the fact that we do not have an accepted universal definition of terrorist. This makes it a questionable and weak legal term and one that is open to wide abuse. The label terrorist is often used as a political weapon against a government's opponents without any basis in fact. It is often a propaganda weapon used to discredit legitimate opposition. For these reasons my NDP colleagues and I proposed an amendment to improve the effectiveness of Bill C-11 by dumping the fuzzy language and basing our security provisions on sounder security grounds and verifiable evidence.
The definition we are dealing with today in Bill C-36 presents exactly the same problem. It may make us feel good but when it comes to enforcement, the water muddies and it comes down to personal biases and techniques such as profiling certain groups. That is exactly what has been happening. How can the government rationalize a system that holds someone like Ribhi Sheikha in custody for 57 days, 23 of which were in solitary confinement, for no apparent reason except he is Palestinian in origin? I do not need to tell members of the House that many other Canadians have been detained in the same way.
If the police are profiling identifiable groups as potential terrorists, how is the public going to react to those groups? By the religiously and racially motivated hate incidents that we have seen multiplying since September 11. This is totally unacceptable in Canada and is totally predictable with the approach the government is taking.
The government of the day is putting whole sections of our population under suspicion, suspicion by law enforcement officers and suspicion by their neighbours and friends. Children are being targeted with slurs. Families are being made to feel unwelcome in their own country.
We have to say again and again that there is a better way to protect Canadians. However the government has chosen to ignore honest propositions and responsible alternatives from groups all over the country, in particular groups that deal with immigrants and refugees on a daily basis. Many organizations, like the Canadian Council for Refugees, have offered clear alternatives that strike a better balance between security concerns and civil liberties. We can limit terrorist activity to specific internationally recognized offences. That is clear.
Many Canadians have fought long and hard to protect our fundamental freedoms, freedoms that the bill walks all over. One of the greatest threats to our whole political system is the undermining of our freedom of association. Guilt by association breaks down our trust of each other as was so amply demonstrated by McCarthyism in the United States. This bill reeks of guilt by association.
All of us are probably members or supporters of organizations of one sort or another, yet we cannot be expected to know about every connection to other groups. The average Canadian has no idea about all the interlocking corporate connections where their savings are invested, and that is one of the most sophisticated systems in the world. How can we expect every refugee to know as much as our intelligence services do about activities that function on secrecy?
Bill C-36 flies in the face of that basic quest for accountability and openness. It flies in the face of our basic legal premise that people have a right to know what evidence is being used against them in order to offer evidence to the contrary, if they have any. How are persons fleeing persecution with only the clothes on their backs expected to present their cases as refugee claimants without even knowing what or through whose information they are being challenged?
When Bill C-11 was under review many of us in the House, and from other parties as well, fought very hard for legal protections that we value and are enshrined in our charter of rights and freedoms to be applied to our immigration and refugee process. We said at that time and we repeat today that without the right to defend oneself, any hearing or legal process is a sham.
Canadians have spoken and I hope the government will listen. Many Canadians have made these points over and over again but they have not been included or incorporated in the bill. I want to refer to a few Canadians who have expressed concerns in very moving ways. A woman by the name of Margo said:
I am afraid of this legislation as written, very afraid. I am afraid for myself as a concerned citizen, someone who might choose to speak out, or march in a protest against perceived ills in our society or “for” something I believe in; I am afraid for my children who may choose to exercise their once-democratic rights in the future, and who will do so with their rights of expression and dissent no longer enshrined as they always have been. Yes, we need to make our country safe and as secure as possible against terrorism. But not at the price of abrogating our fundamental democratic rights.
Canadians have spoken. I hope the government will listen.