Mr. Speaker, the member for Sault Ste. Marie brings forward a very important point. It is one we need to remind ourselves about from time to time. It is not just some kind of waffle.
We have made different choices in a deliberate way about what kind of society we want to create. It is not an accident that we have chosen to be a bilingual, multicultural nation that celebrates the diversity and differences while also working to build a strong Canadian family that is absolutely inclusive.
Potentially that means we can be more sensitive and vigilant about the protection of human rights and civil liberties, but we ought not to ever take it for granted. We ought not to make the mistake of thinking that because this is who we say we want to be, that this in fact is who we are. At any point in time we can turn our backs on the important protection of human rights, civil liberties and so on.
Having lived in Texas for a year, post-graduate school was perhaps for me the most Canadianizing experience I could ever have. It made me appreciative of the fact that we made different choices about kind of society we wanted to create and produced different consequences in the process.
Not to be beat up on Tom Ridge today, particularly, but when we see in the name of public security some of the things that are happening in the U.S. today in terms of trampling human rights and civil liberties, suspending the rule of law and so on, then one has to be very vigilant that we do not go down the same path. When one sees the argument that he made publicly yesterday, without apology, that public security demanded and dictated that we go to total economic integration, is drawing a very long bow. It is using the argument of public security to massively influence public policy choices that we have a right as a sovereign nation to make and that we have a responsibility to make to ourselves and future generations to ensure that we continue on that path of compassion and sensitivity and a vigilant safeguarding of human rights and civil liberties, which is the only path to true public security.