Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the amendments proposed by my friend from Pictou—Antigonish from the Progressive Conservative Party. I would like to indicate on behalf of our party that we support these amendments.
Before I go to the specific amendments, I would like to acknowledge the work that the committee did and the fact that the Liberal government saw its way through to add that provision to protect journalists. Work that has been done by journalists specifically on organized crime has been exemplary. They do that profession proud. The fact that the government has recognized their work and their need for that protection by the expansion of the provisions to prevent intimidation is an excellent one. I congratulate them on it.
The two amendments proposed relate to the necessity of having a judicial review of police officers who commit crimes in the pursuit of the provisions of these amendments to the code. I believe it is really important to take a bit of an historical perspective on the necessity of having this type of protection built into the legislation.
As my friend from the Bloc indicated, no one here has any misgivings about what we are doing with the rest of the bill. We recognize the seriousness of organized crime in the country, particularly in Ontario and even more so in Quebec over the last number of years. It has become a prominent issue. No one is downplaying the significance of the need for this legislation. No one is downplaying the significance of the need to protect police officers in their duties, especially in this area. They are at constant risk for their own safety and at times their lives. So there is no issue with regard to that among anyone in the House or in the government.
However that does not say that we ignore the reality of the structure that we have built in our legal system over the centuries. There has been any number of times in the past where we have gone to excess in dealing with a criminal problem. I am afraid this could be one of those occasions, if we pass this these amendments to the code without the provision of a judicial review for police officers who commit crimes or breach other parts of the criminal code because of the necessity to do their work.
We have had a long history of balancing our responsibility to provide protection in a safe environment for our citizens with the recognition that there are civil liberties in the country. We have to recognize those. We always hear that we are just worried about the criminals. Police officers are human. They can make errors. The whole idea behind our system is that we provide someone else, in the form of judges, to protect us from those errors. Again, I am not going to suggest judges are perfect. I have appeared before too many of them in my career to suggest that. However it is an additional measure, and a very important one, to provide all citizens with that type of protection.
As a result of questions from I think at least three of the four opposition parties, we have heard the Solicitor General of Canada and the Minister of Justice repeatedly say the that it is just too cumbersome, or synonyms of that word.
That is just plain nonsense. We have used this system in providing warrants, sometimes very complicated warrants, and our judges have been able to deal with that. There is no reason, given the skills they bring to their positions, that they cannot do the same thing in this area.
I know a number of groups appeared before the committee when the bill was being reviewed. The Civil Liberties Association and a number of the bar associations made representations. All pushed strongly for this extra protection. Quite frankly, all indicated their understanding of the need for the legislation, but wanted the safety net built in to provide all citizens with this protection. It is our responsibility. We should fulfil our responsibility by accepting the amendments of Progressive Conservative Party and by supporting them.