Indeed it could, Mr. Speaker.
To quote someone who is eminently unquotable, Ronald Reagan said, “One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter”.
How do we define terrorism? The provisions of the bill are directed at compelling people to come forward and potentially be jailed in the name of fighting terrorism. Who defines that?
Today we say we do not have to worry about that because it will never be defined in any improper way. Really? In the history of this country, labour leaders have been jailed for exercising what at the time were considered inappropriate actions and all they were doing was trying to organize workers. That was considered a criminal act.
It is not a stretch of the imagination for someone to think that an accumulation of people might, in their view, be an activity that might threaten the security of this country. It has been done before by people in the party of members opposite who thought that trade unionists were criminals.
It has been done in the name of racial profiling. Recently members of the Canadian Muslim community have been unfairly targeted for doing nothing other than being members of the Islamic faith.
A person was rendered to Syria and thrown in jail for two years and tortured because, as a truck driver, he had a map of Ottawa. CSIS, in its great secret service intelligence gathering fashion, thought it was a map to be used for improper purposes. It turned out to be a map telling him how to deliver goods to warehouses.
When someone stands up and says, “We can violate rights. Trust us. We are never going to violate the rights of anybody who ought not to have their rights violated”, that is not a reliable basis on which to pass legislation in this country. Everybody's rights should be protected in this country.