Mr. Speaker, the short answer to the question is no, I cannot offer an explanation as to why the Liberals are flip-flopping on this position.
We can all understand why, after 9/11, this legislation may have been passed because of high emotion and nervousness. I think it was wrong at that time, but we understood it.
However, I cannot understand why any parliamentarian would stand in this House today and violate precepts of democracy and Canadian civil rights when there has not been one example, in the last eight years, of anybody successfully brought before a judge who would have made this legislation necessary.
In calm, rational, sober thought, in a moment when we can actually address our minds to what this legislation would really do, I respectfully submit that no parliamentarian ought to stand in this House and knowingly violate Canadians' rights. States have always justified incursions into civil liberties by appealing to some fear. They have always tried to truncate people's freedoms with the justification that there is some bogeyman of some type.
The legislation ought to be rejected. I hope that the Liberal Party of Canada finds those principles and that its members find it in themselves to do as they did correctly in 2007 and join with the Bloc and the New Democrats in opposing this kind of very misinformed, dangerous legislation.