Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out in my speech, I believe any of the actions that might be part of terrorist activity are already covered very effectively in the Criminal Code. We know any activity related to terrorism or even plotting those kinds of activities is illegal and subject to severe punishment. There is no deficiency that would merit suspending basic civil rights, due process and interfering with the way our justice system operates to protect us from the possibility of terrorist activity.
We need to provide our police and intelligence agencies with the resources they need to do the job we require of them, to investigate issues around terrorism or organized crime for that matter. We need to ensure they have the resources they need to do those jobs appropriately and effectively. I do not think they need these extra provisions outside of what is already in the Criminal Code, outside of what is available in their usual process around investigation and toward laying charges.
We need to ensure that our police and intelligence agencies are cooperating. We know in the most difficult example of terrorism to face Canada, the Air-India bombing, there was a real problem in the investigation of this terrible tragedy where so many Canadians and others died.
We know the RCMP and CSIS had difficulty working together. Because of that there were very serious problems with the investigation and ultimately with the case that was presented against people who were ultimately charged after a considerable period. We know too that our police and intelligence agencies did not have the ability to do the kind of investigations they needed to do. For instance, they did not have the language capacity to do the important work.
This is not a matter of having all the new bells and whistles and the fancy technology of the intelligence system, the kind of James Bond and science fiction of intelligence work. It is a matter of having people on the ground, people who have very basic abilities such as language and to find the appropriate connections and basic investigative work to ensure the safety of Canadians in these circumstances.
This has been missing in the past. It has been so clearly proven to have been missing in the past in our approach to dealing with terrorism in Canada.
The clauses we are debating today have never been used. That should say something about how crucial they have been in protecting Canadians from acts of terrorism. Even in the circumstances where people have been alleged to be participating in some kind of terrorist activity, the provisions were not used. The Criminal Code was used in those circumstances.
Therefore, I am not prepared to say that we should compromise civil liberties to protect ourselves from terrorism. I believe our criminal justice system already has the ability to do that and it should be engaged fully. We should ensure that our police and security intelligence agencies have the ability to do the job that needs to be done around these kinds of issues.