Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Scarborough—Agincourt.
As I get into the debate, I will deal with a few thing. Today the Prime Minister accused the Leader of the Opposition of threatening members of his own party that they had to vote a certain way. I am a member of Parliament. I have a free mind and I can vote whichever way I want. I want to put that on the record because I think it is important for members opposite to understand.
When we first dealt with the anti-terrorism legislation, I, as a member of Parliament, spoke to the issue three times. I took in the debates, read the information and at the end of the day I came to the conclusion that I could not support the anti-terrorism bill. I could not support it because I listened to a lot of folks and I looked at my own experiences.
One of the people who really made very much of an impression on me in his speech, which I made reference to, was the member for Edmonton—Strathcona who, at that point in time, was a member of the Canadian Alliance. He said:
I would like to quote from an editorial entitled, “Terrorism and Freedom” from the November 17 edition of the Economist:
Infringements of civil rights, if genuinely required, should be open to scrutiny, and considered a painful sacrifice, or a purely tactical retreat, not as the mere brushing aside of irritating legal technicalities. Those who criticize such measures should be given a careful hearing, even if their views must sometimes be overridden. After all, one of the chief aims of most terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and his ilk, is to undermine the long-established, hard-won freedoms of liberal societies. In a democracy, one of the chief aims of those in office should be to preserve them.
The member goes on further to state:
I am a Muslim, the targeted group of this particular anti-terrorist legislation and investigation.
He goes on to give a very emotional speech as to what we must watch out for.
I have my own background. I have experienced lack of freedom, living in a totalitarian society. I must say that I have a great deal of concern when I notice in Canada now that we have both the former commissioner of the RCMP and the present Chief of the Defence Staff becoming political.
Susan Delacourt, the Ottawa bureau chief of the Toronto Star, made a profound statement the other day when she said, “Men with guns getting political”.
The two clauses on which we are sunsetting, preventive arrest and investigative hearings, have not been used. However, a person in this House has already been a victim of a drive-by smear as his name was linked to those investigative hearings that are supposed to be secret. Even though we never used the legislation, we saw the drive-by smear happen right in the House.
I really must ask my colleagues in the House a question. Let us think back to 9/11 and those terrible times. In spite of all the actions that we have taken: the American invasion of Iraq; us going into Afghanistan; the naming of the axis of evil by the President of the United States, Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Syria; the building of Guantanamo north; and the holding of people without charge, have they made our world a safer place?
I think that is a critical question to ask because we are heading down a path that threatens every civil liberty and human right that we have.
We all know what happened at the Maher Arar inquiry. We all know that officials involved in those hearings have undertaken a systematic campaign to smear Mr. Arar.
Who is Mr. Arar? He is a Canadian citizen with the highest profile case of anyone who has fallen victim to the fight against terror. When we see what happened to him and how our security officials conspired with the American security folks to send him off to be tortured in Syria and when he came back and we knew he was innocent, those very same officials continued to smear his name.
Mr. Arar is still on the no fly list in the United States. I think that is relevant. This man was completely exonerated and the Government of Canada belatedly apologized to him but he is still on the no fly list in the United States of America. That speaks to the kind of impact Canada has with the United States.
One of the biggest things that bothers me about the investigative hearings is that on Friday we heard that the security certificate process is unconstitutional. The security certificate process is the biggest assault on anyone's civil liberties in this country. Canadians should not become too comfortable and believe that it does not apply to them.
Let us take a look at it. In 1977, the security certificate was put in for non-residents. Under a security certificate, people can be held without knowing the charge against them. They can be held, have trials where they cannot attend, have the decision made by one judge and the only person that person can listen to is the police and the prosecutor. Then we have places to lock them up indefinitely.
The 1977 security certificate was only happening to those people with no status in the country. In 2001 we extended that to immigrants with status in the country. All of a sudden they fell under this draconian piece of legislation.
In 2002, an attempt was made, lest Canadians feel too comfortable that it did not apply to citizens, to put the security certificate into the proposed citizenship act.
Why is this so incredibly dangerous? It is very simple. Any information that is given for a security certificate is never tested. All there needs to be is an investigative hearing, go on a fishing expedition and someone else from the security service takes it into a security certificate hearing and, bingo, untested evidence, a rumour, third source removed, can be responsible for locking people up indefinitely.
I am saying that if a security certificate is combined with the investigative hearing there is a real possibility of disaster, which is why the Supreme Court struck down the security certificate. Unfortunately, it will not strike down the security certificate for at least one year to give Parliament time to fix it, if it is fixable.
I reiterate that our collective safety depends on no one community in our country being stigmatized. I think this is important. We know that racial profiling does not work. Every minority group in our country has some bad people and Canada is a country of minorities.
We have legislation under the Criminal Code that can deal with it. What we must ensure is that we do not let our freedoms, rights and civil liberties become a victim of terror.