Mr. Speaker, I agree 100% with what the member said about the need to protect our citizens in Canada, that we have some international obligations to carry this out. Definitely, Canadians right across the country expect the government and this Parliament to initiate these types of measures to ensure that terrorism can be disrupted.
When we know a terrorism undertaking may be happening, we need our police officers and our judges to have the tools they need to execute the necessary measures to disrupt the planning process. We need to be able to hold people, investigate what they are doing and, hopefully, charge them under the Criminal Code for their activities.
We need to remember there are a number of safeguards to protect the rights of these citizens we are so concerned about, especially when we talk about investigative hearings. We need to remember that this does not just involve the federal government. It also involves the provincial jurisdictions. The peace officers, of course, will be the ones carrying out the investigations, looking at the situation and then making their recommendations to the court but they will need to come forward with a pretty strong case.
First, they will need to get the consent of the attorney general of either Canada or of the respective provinces to go ahead with the application. A judge will then need to look at the information that is presented, weigh it off against the rights of the individual, along with the information as presented, and then will need to exercise his or her authority as to whether an order will be provided for the investigative hearing. Therefore there is that safeguard.
It also is important to note that both federal and provincial crown attorneys general would be required to report annually on the use of any of these investigative hearings.
This is a five year process that we are undertaking here right now with the legislation, with the review after 2011, and these annual reports will help set the tone, I believe, on ensuring the process does work, that it does protect Canadians, and that it looks at the overall scope of how this whole process was applied through the investigative hearing.