Madam Speaker, when the Anti-terrorism Act was originally introduced and the sunset clauses were put into place, it was done specifically so we could take a look at the period that transpired and how these tools worked and how effective they were.
No one is suggesting by any means that somebody can just be picked up without cause. The standard is set extremely high. I go back to some of the points I made that were added by the Senate, which are critical to my support in seeing this go over to the committee.
There are increased emphasis, as I mentioned before, on the judge to be satisfied that law enforcement has taken all other reasonable steps before using this as a mechanism, the ability of people to both retain and instruct counsel, requirements for an annual reporting by the Attorney General and the Minister of Public Safety, the flexibility of a provincial court judge to hear a case on a preventative arrest and so forth.
When we look at the threshold that has been established, it is extremely high. It is not law enforcement officials on their own making a decision to detain somebody. It is them going before a judge, making a case that an individual needs to be detained and needing to prove they have done everything else that they possibly could and that this is the only tool left at their disposal.
When we take a look back over the past five years and the fact that this has only been used once, it shows it has only been deployed in the rarest of circumstances, as would be appropriate. This is the type of tool that we would only expect to be used in very rare circumstances. One would hope that Canada would never again face the kind of threat that would necessitate the deployment of this option.
Nonetheless, in extreme circumstances, it is important we reserve that right. There has been a lot of work to date to ensure this balance is struck. I would submit the balance there is sufficient enough to warrant this going to committee to for further study.