Mr. Speaker, like the previous questioner, I am a former solicitor general in Ontario as he was in Quebec. Although I was not the debate when the law was originally passed, I have some real trouble understanding the logic put forward by the minister.
As I understand it, at that time members of the House were seized of ensuring that all the laws, which could possibly be there in a democracy, were in place to prevent the kind of events about which he talked. At the time this was highly controversial. Within that bill, these were a couple of very controversial components. Why they are different from the other examples the minister uses is they can, in the wrong circumstances, take away and deny Canadians their civil rights. If anybody thinks that in this day and age this it is still just an argument, let us remember Maher Arar. It happens.
The sunset clause was put in through their wisdom at that time. Therefore, the question would be this. If the wisdom of the Parliament at the time was that this should be allowed to fall by the wayside if it was not being used after an X number of years or if it had been problematic, then why would we not follow with that logic, given that safety in this case errs on the side of the human rights of ordinary Canadians and given we have other legislation that would allow our police officers to do the job we mandate them to do?