Mr. Speaker, it is a fair question. Just before September 11, I did a survey of my constituents. It was on the aging society and how this would cost more because we would have more demands on health care and pensions, et cetera. The survey said, “If the economy does not improve, we have to cut something. What do we cut?” It was very interesting to see the responses. So many of them asked why we have a defence department and said, “Why not just cut out defence and have the United States takes care of us?” However, about 30% of the responses that came back after September 11 were a total reversal and asked, “Why are you not spending more on defence?” It depends on the circumstances in our world, our milieu, which do drive what we must do to respond to a real situation.
I say to the member that before 9/11 privacy issues were never challenged to the same extent that they are now, but they are not being challenged to undermine anybody's rights or to racially profile anybody. They happen to come under the whole dialogue about how, if we are going to protect safety and security, we had better look for patterns and probabilities; we cannot do a 100% job so we had better target our resources the way we can.
Unfortunately, it means that in the countries where terrorism is most prevalent, people happen to be from a particular group, whatever that group may be. It is not done for the negative reasons that the member would say it is done. In my own view, there are basic privacy rights that must be protected but we always have to ask that question whenever we take steps, whether it be steps in this bill or any other legislative or regulatory steps. We always put that privacy filter there to make sure that any information being collected or used for a specific purpose is clearly related to the security interests of Canada.