Mr. Speaker, the hon. member, who was a member of the original committee in December 2004, has been on the committee throughout that time. In my opinion, he has contributed invaluable work, not only for the positive suggestions that he has made but for asking questions just as he did. If we do not have questions like that, then we do not advance the debate, dig deeper or burrow down and find out the answers.
Contrary to what he says, one of the examples that was given of the potential use of investigative hearings was in the context of the Air-India debate. I am not talking about what has transpired in the last couple of weeks. I am talking about long ago when the RCMP was still investigating. We were told that it was contemplated but that for a variety of reasons it was decided it would not be used. That would be a example of the kind of technique that would have been put in place at that time and a concrete example of what it could have been used for.
However, the answer we have been given is along the lines of what my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood was talking about, and that is to try to prevent something from occurring as opposed to doing something about something that has occurred. The whole idea is to have a range of tools that the police can use in a situation where there are reasonable grounds to believe that something has happened but not enough perhaps to get a warrant or enough to pull someone off the street.
One of the arguments that was advanced by the previous Liberal minister of public safety was that just because it has not been used, who is to say that it has not been effective. Perhaps simply because it is on the books it has been effective.