Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on the bill because I am not sure what else I can say. This will be the sixth time the bill has been resurrected.
A little over two years ago, we were in Edmonton attending a caucus meeting when our day, and everyone else's day in our country and probably around the world, was shattered when we saw a plane crash into one of the towers in New York City. While we were watching it and thinking that perhaps it was someone learning how to fly who had lost control, boom, a second one appeared in the picture and we saw a second tower being hit. That day changed the world in many ways and it has not been the same world since.
We often talk about the loss of innocence. Innocence was lost for a lot of us because prior to September 11, 2001, we lived in a different world, certainly when it came to worrying about ourselves in relation to safety and security. We knew there was always a crackpot around. Anything could happen anywhere at anytime, but with the security forces we had the likelihood of it happening were slim to none. We came to work each day not worrying about who was on the bus, who was walking behind us, what was in the knapsack, and who was in the gallery. We just took it for granted.
September 11, 2001, changed it all. All we have to do is come up to the Hill to see an entirely different setting. We see fences, security and screening. When we go to an airport, we see tight security which was not there before. Should it have been there before? Well, maybe to some degree. However, we should not overreact. Really, no one saw the need for it.
September 11 came along and changed the world. A lot of people reacted. Some people overreacted, and certainly, in the sense of the word, that is exactly what happened with our own government. It was completely caught, utterly unprepared, and probably not having the personnel to deal with such an issue in an expeditious, responsible and carefully planned way.
We saw the government react quickly. It said it would bring in legislation which would make us a more secure country. Over two years later we are looking at a piece of legislation that has bounced around all over the place. This spring the government closed the House early when there were lots of things on the agenda. If this were a fine piece of legislation that had to be implemented to ensure that our country was secure, then we should have dealt with it two years ago.
The length of time it has taken, the consequences that have ensued, and the changes that have occurred since put into question whether or not we should even be debating this specific piece of legislation.
Do we need to beef up security in our country? The answer is yes. Is our country secure? The answer is no. However, many of the things that could be done to make our country secure are not dependent on this legislation at all. Security could be done by strengthening a number of the mechanisms which we did, and presently do control.
When the legislation was introduced originally, it sent up a red flag. A lot of people said that what this would do is create a mechanism to give government complete control so that the minister could successfully suspend the rights and freedoms of individuals living in this country perhaps without any reason except his own, which he would not have to divulge.
That is a serious thing in a country like ours, where we so strongly defend the rights and freedoms that we have. We pride ourselves in the type of country in which we live because we have these rights and freedoms.
Should rights and freedoms ever be suspended? Yes, undoubtedly, most of us would say there are times for the good of all of us that these things could occur, provided the reason be serious and the mechanism introduced in such a measure be valid, solid and acceptable. That is not what we see in light of the legislation that is before us.
This legislation has been watered down because as time elapsed, changes occurred and some of the things that were suggested originally are no longer relevant. New incidents occurred around the world that created different issues and different responses.
One of the things mentioned in the legislation is the introduction of protected zones. It is great to talk about protected zones. We would pick areas, key harbours and airports, and ensure that we would create the type of defence mechanism that would ensure that no one could penetrate these zones. This would guarantee our safety.
We would ensure that there would not be any smuggling taking place through the harbours of Halifax or Vancouver or maybe even St. John's--however, St. John's is not mentioned. That is easy enough to say. So we bring in our legislation and we tell everybody about the great mechanisms that we would put in place to ensure no terrorists would come ashore in these areas.
Terrorists are not fools. They know where, when and how they can enter a country. We have in our own country, as admitted to by the Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans and National Defence, all kinds of gaping loopholes. We have had immigrants come to our country, land in secluded areas, and nobody would have known they were there except that somebody has accidentally run across them.
In my own riding, in the farthest eastern point in the country, a few years ago a ship just dropped into the ocean a couple or three lifeboats containing a number of Tamils. Local fishermen fishing in the dense fog accidentally ran across them, took them aboard and brought them to shore. This area is the foggiest part of North America.
It was amazing that these people were located by fishermen. If they had not been found and had continued to drift to sea, all of them would have ended up certainly being lost. It was more luck than design that they were found. Undoubtedly, the ship which dropped them off saw fishing boats in the area on the radar and took a chance on the boats finding these people, and they did.
As I say, the skipper is a good friend of mine. As he tells the story, he was sailing along and suddenly saw these little heads appear in the fog. Because the fog was low, the only thing he could see above it were the heads of a few individuals standing in the boat. Then he found the other boats involved and brought them to shore.
Why were they dropped there? Because they knew there was no Coast Guard around. They knew there was no radar surveillance to pick them up. We hear about boatloads of immigrants landing on the other coast in British Columbia. Are they spotted? Not until after the fact. Why? Because they land outside the areas where there is radar surveillance.
When I raised that issue with the minister, he said that they had corrected it. He said the one problem that they had was when boats approached our shore, they were always required to give us 24 hour notice so they then could track them to see where they would go, watch their progress, ensure collisions were avoided, et cetera. That has been changed. Now they have to let them know 96 hours beforehand so it gives them much more time to watch and plan.
This is very good for solid oceangoing traffic when people follow the rules and report as requested. Does anyone think for one minute it makes any difference when a ship is smuggling drugs or individuals into our country, if it calls either 24 or 96 hours beforehand? Of course not. They will sneak in to ensure they avoid radar coverage. If we know where the gaps are, surely they know. It is amazing and certainly not coincidental to see the boats land just a few miles outside the radar coverage in the respective areas.
These people are professionals. They know what to do and how to do it. How can we ensure they do not do it? One way is by greater radar coverage. Another way is to build up and strengthen our Coast Guard. I admire tremendously the work the people of the Coast Guard do with what they have. Their hands are tied. They tell us that security is not their job, however, the very words coast guard basically gives them some assurance that these people are guarding our coasts.
I know their duties are refined, defined and specific. However, we should ensure that the Coast Guard plays an extremely important role in guarding our coasts so that the traffic which frequents our coasts is not polluting our coasts and that oil tankers which travel our waters are solid and will not break up in the smallest storm causing major damage to our coastlines.
They also have to ensure that vessels which should not be in our waters are checked and the issue dealt with in relation to why they are here. If a ship does not have enough fuel to go from one harbour to another or if boats are tied up in port because government does not provide the funding to do the job and people are overfishing on one side or trying to land drugs or immigrants on another, then we have a major problem.
The government for 10 years now has been procrastinating over providing helicopters to our forces, helicopters that would play a major role in the security of this country. We have wasted three times the amount of money that the original helicopters would have cost if the government had accepted the deal instead of cancelling it back in 1993.
Our forces throughout are underfunded and mismanaged. We have major concerns with general security. Is it the fault of the people who work in that field? Is it the fault of the Coast Guard people who go to work every morning? Is it the fault of people who are in our forces? Absolutely not. It is the fault of the government which has totally and utterly neglected the forces and the security generally in Canada.
What we see now is reaction and panic. Instead of the government bringing the bill forward for further debate, it should perhaps scrap it completely, take it off the table, go back to the drawing board, look at the specific needs required to provide proper security in Canada and then put the money where its mouth is.
We are just regurgitating what has been said before, not only by us, but by all parties on this side and many members on the other side of the House. It is about time the government started to do things. Maybe when the new prime minister, whomever he or she might be, is in place we might see something. However that is not a reasonable expectation. The problems I raised such as lack of funding for our forces, cutbacks to fisheries, the Coast Guard trying to operate with practically no budget, show a complete and utter lack of planning. They all depend on funding.
Funding comes through the Department of Finance. The person who passes out the money, the person really responsible for such decisions is the Minister of Finance. The person most people think will be the next prime minister is the individual who for most of the past 10 years was the minister of finance. However it will not be the people who will pick him. He will automatically assume that job because he will win the leadership role in the party. The election might prove something else.
Maybe we should be asking who is responsible? Instead of people expecting so many things to change, they might say that this is not a new entity, that this is a person who has a record and that record should be reviewed. If we want to know what a person is like or what a person can do, we just have to look at what the individual has done. We should not listen to what the person tells us he or she will do.
In campaigning I prefer to tell people to look at what I have done and not listen to what I say I will do. All politicians make great promises. The individual should be judged on his or her record. In this case, as in many other cases, I believe the record of the minister of finance will probably paint an entirely different picture from the one being painted by his spin doctors.
Hopefully the government will do the right thing and bring in legislation with the money involved, legislation that will not take away the rights and freedoms of people, but will ensure that they live in a country where they have rights and freedoms and that they are also properly protected.