Mr. Speaker, the reality is that Canada's Criminal Code does deal with that. If a Canadian is charged with these kinds of crimes, there are mechanisms which accommodate exactly that. We do not need a special process like this. Those mechanisms already exist in the Criminal Code of Canada. We can see that right now, because there are Canadians charged with these kinds of crimes and those processes are in court. Those kinds of issues will be dealt with by the court as well.
To say that we need this lesser process to deal with people who are not Canadian citizens I think is a very flawed thing. To say that we need a separate system of justice or a lesser system of justice for someone who is a visitor in our country or is a permanent resident I think violates the charter at a very fundamental level. It certainly violates my hopes for what the charter might mean to someone who is present here in Canada.
I am someone who believes that the charter should apply to anyone who is here in Canada and that what is good for a Canadian citizen should be good for any of our brothers and sisters around the world, that we should respect that hope with all of those people. I do not accept that we need a separate process to deal with that.
I also do not accept that the special advocate in any way will address the problems of hearing secret evidence. We have seen that it has been a flawed process in Britain and in New Zealand. We have seen many recommendations made by experts in Canada about what a special advocate process might look like here. Unfortunately, the government chose not to implement any of them in the legislation it brought forward. It had that possibility and it had the studies for a long time, yet the bill that was presented here did not reflect any of that wisdom.
Some of the special advocates in other jurisdictions in Britain have said they have had to leave that work because all they were doing was adding a veneer of respectability to a very flawed process. I do not want to put a lawyer in Canada in that position. I think that is why the government has had to extend the deadline for applications for people who wish to be special advocates in Canada: because lawyers in Canada are unwilling to participate in that kind of flawed position. It is a flawed position that the Canadian Bar Association has said is likely to be held unconstitutional, so here we are debating a law that is going to end up back in court and which is likely to be rejected again according to many of the experts who appeared before the committee.
I do not think that is an acceptable process. We need to be clear about what our hopes are for our justice system. We need to be clear about protecting the principles of that justice system that has been established over hundreds of years and that we have fought hard and long for in this country. I believe this legislation flies in the face of that experience and that tradition. That is why I will not be supporting this legislation.