Madam Speaker, my colleague's question brings me back to my point that there is no substitute for charges under the Criminal Code, for engaging the justice process, for getting somebody into court and proving the allegations or allowing that individual to disprove them, and for getting that person convicted and jailed.
We should be focusing our attention on that. We should allow our system to do that. We should make sure that our system has the resources it needs to engage that process fully without compromising the basic tenets of our criminal justice system, without inventing ways of short-circuiting it because we believe there is some kind of emergency or special circumstances.
Our system has proven its value over and over again. We have experience with it. We have the precedents to know how it works. We know its strong points and its failings. We do not need to invent new exceptions to that process. I believe the ones in this legislation are serious exceptions to that process.
This legislation is saying that somebody is compelling an individual to testify. Arresting and detaining and putting conditions on an individual for preventive reasons are serious abrogations of basic civil rights and basic elements of the process that we have in place in this country.
I do not think there is any evidence to show us that these provisions are useful, that they have been more effective in dealing with terrorism. We have not really engaged them. We may have used the compulsion to testify once in the Air India court case. I do not believe that any of the evidence gleaned in the requirement to testify by one of the witnesses was ever used or was found to be useful in the ongoing court case.
There is no evidence to my understanding that these provisions are useful, that they have been used, that this departure from the normal process is helpful in any way. It is very unhelpful. They go to a diminution of the important and basic values of our society and of our justice system. That is why I think this is dangerous legislation.