Mr. Speaker, certainly I appreciate the member's comments. We seem to be of like minds when it comes to the charter, civil liberties and human rights.
Let me say to the member that, yes, essentially we use overblown rhetoric to justify actions that really do not get at the problem the government is trying to solve. This is totally inappropriate legislation.
I reiterate that if there is someone who is a serious security threat in this country, the person should be in custody. We have other ways of getting rid of the person, instead of using something as draconian as the security certificate process, which totally ignores the legal sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I will say to members in this chamber that I came to this country 50 years ago. My family and I tiptoed through minefields to get to freedom. We know what it means to live in a totalitarian dictatorship. We know that threats to civil liberties can never be taken lightly.
I go back to the central point I made in my presentation, that the only way we are going to be secure, and I will quote another American, George Washington, the price of security is eternal vigilance. We also have to recognize that eternal vigilance means that we defend our basic rights in the process. If we fail to do that, people can make a very good case that Osama bin Laden and his ilk did so much more damage to us because we did it to ourselves.
If we are going to fight terror, we have to fight it with a coherent plan. We are certainly not going to fight it by releasing dangerous individuals from custody to go back to the caves of Afghanistan or Pakistan or wherever. We will do so by keeping them locked up securely for the reason for which we have convicted them.