Madam Speaker, as for my naïveté, I always remember that John F. Kennedy said that in politics, you can lose your illusions, but not your ideals.
With regard to what my colleague from Laval is saying, I would give the example of the Patriot Act, which George Bush introduced in the United States after the September 11 attacks. We saw how that law was misused. It was based on lofty principles and patriotic ideals. The government said that the purpose of the Patriot Act was to protect the people and ensure that no one would ever commit terrorist acts on American soil again. The problem is that we saw how the Republican government used that law. Far too much power was put in the hands of politicians, who used it to further their own personal interests. That is the danger.
I would like to talk about the October crisis of 1970. I am too young to remember it; in fact, I was not even a gleam in my parents' eyes. In a way, the government raided the sovereigntist movement for the simple reason that these people had views that contrasted with those of the federal colonial government. What did the government do? It arrested the leaders of the sovereigntist movement, the union leaders, the business people, the defence lawyers. It arrested everyone who was likely to oppose what the government decided. Then it introduced martial law.
For a government that does not always have good ideas, as the Conservatives have demonstrated, this bill places far too much power in certain people's hands, and that can have an adverse effect. I want to tell my Conservative colleagues that we are not opposed to the bill. We are not opposed to the spirit of the bill. We are opposed to the adverse effects this bill may have. There is a difference. I hope my Conservative colleagues will be able to set aside partisanship and draw the line with us to protect people's privacy.