Mr. Speaker, I want to make an observation based on what I heard earlier this morning from the Minister of Public Safety. She spent a lot of time talking about what we have learned from this and she kept referring to the anti-terrorism bill.
The anti-terrorism bill was passed in 2002 in response to the tragedy that had happened on September 11 in the United States. It was largely modelled on the Great Britain anti-terrorism legislation that had come into place much earlier to deal with terrorism from the IRA in Great Britain. After 17 years, 1985 to 2002, we finally get some measures put in place to deal with terrorism. My point of view on this is that we did not really learn a whole lot during the 17 years on terrorism.
I know the member for Windsor—Tecumseh is very well thought of in the legal community and I think he could shed some light on the public inquiry. I am a lawyer. I have heard these questions and I do not have a clue what the answers are. I would like to know what the answers are. Canadians would like to know and certainly the families of the victims would like to know what the answers to those questions are. We are totally in the dark on this.
This matter cries out for an inquiry. We should find what went wrong. The justice system and the whole system has let many people down and we failed to address it. The minister said that if we hold a public inquiry, this will be very damaging to the justice system. I am scratching my head. I have not seen a lot of justice come out of this situation and there are many questions that have not been answered.
I wonder if the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, with his legal background, could possibly explain what great damage a public inquiry would do to the justice system.