Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. I appreciate his question.
As I was saying at the beginning of my speech, there is always a balance between protecting citizens against terrorist attacks and protecting the civil liberties of Canadians.
That is not very easy, and I am not going to get into the question of compensation today, but would like to point out that some think these investigative hearings and preventive arrests are done without application to a judge. That could not be further from the truth.
If anyone is invited to an investigative hearing, it has to be with the prior consent of the Attorney General, and an application can be made to a superior court or provincial court judge for an order for the gathering of information. This thus has the approval of the Attorney General and the approval of a provincial court judge. There also are many protections with respect to investigative hearings. People cannot incriminate themselves and also they have a right to legal counsel.
With respect to preventive arrests, again it is with the prior consent of the Attorney General that peace officers can carry out these arrests, but they must bring these people before a provincial court judge within 24 hours. A provincial court judge would have to be confident that these people need to be detained, the prosecution or authorities would have to show cause, and the judge might put conditions on the arrest or how they might behave after that. I think it is wrong to suggest that these people do not have access to counsel or that judges and the Attorney General are not involved in this.