Mr. Speaker, the member for Trinity—Spadina raises a number of really important issues. Though I do not have a lot of time this afternoon to pursue some of them, I want to talk about the no-fly list. It is interesting when people like Senator Ted Kennedy and, indeed, the member for Winnipeg Centre in the House can be on the no-fly list with no recourse to get themselves off of it. What are we really doing here? We cannot even ask questions about this.
I want to remind members of a very important presentation that was made to the committee when it studied the bill. It was made by Nathalie Des Rosiers from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. With everyone's indulgence, I will read part of her presentation into the record because it is very important for members in the House to be reminded of what she said. She said:
Certainly to the extent that there is an expectation of privacy protected by the charter, this bill would not meet a section 1 challenge, because it has no limitations. It does not adequately protect the problems that may arise with the disclosure of information, and so on. So the first point is that there is a constitutional vulnerability that should be looked at before we go too much further.
She went on to say:
I would mention to the committee that in the United States, the no fly list is under constitutional review as we speak. It has been challenged because there are too many false positives arising.
The process has been described as Kafkaesque, in the way it does not allow people to know whether they're on it, how to get off it, and what evidence is on it. So that's the danger. The danger is that Canadian passengers, Canadians, will be put at risk of being stuck somewhere with no possibility of flying back. There's no guarantee that an innocent Canadian could not be mistakenly placed on the list. There's no guarantee that innocent Canadians mistakenly placed on the list will not be prevented from flying or from being detained in the U.S. or elsewhere without due process.
I want to ask the hon. member this. If that can happen to the late Senator Ted Kennedy and the member for Winnipeg Centre, what guarantees do Canadians have that they will not be similarly impacted?