Mr. Speaker, the minister is one of the senior officers of the law in this country. I know that is frustrating to him, but nevertheless he is an officer of the law and he is bound to uphold the law. That is his obligation.
When he is proposing that the provisions not sunset but in fact be extended, he has to ask himself three questions. The first question would be, is the limitation of rights rationally connected to the threat? The second question would be, is this the least intrusive measure possible? The third question would be, is there a proportionate balance between the effects and the limitation of the rights? Those are the three questions that he as a senior officer in this country has to ask himself.
When his predecessor introduced the bill, those three questions were asked. That was the reason for the sunset provisions. There was not sufficient justification in the current context that would allow this to be permanently placed in the Criminal Code.
We have now had five years' worth of experience. What we have seen in the five years has been that these two provisions which were very controversial at the time have not been used. What we have seen, and this is in the public domain, has been a substantial abuse of Canadians' rights. The member's government had to apologize to Mr. Arar, and I commend the government for doing that. It paid compensation. Clearly, Mr. Arar's rights had been abused. There are others whose rights are alleged to have been abused.
What we have seen in the five years is no use for these particular provisions, an abuse of Canadians' rights and that the police have had all the tools they need to arrest terrorist suspects and charge them as incidents have arisen over those five years.
I ask my colleague these fundamental questions: Is the limitation of rights rationally connected to the threat? Is it the least intrusive measure possible? Is there a proportionate balance between the effects and the limitation of rights?