Mr. Speaker, in listening to the remarks of my colleague from Vancouver East, I was reflecting on the notion that of all places in the Canadian Parliament, in the House of Commons, we should be using our time and be seized with the issue of strengthening and reinforcing those fundamental rights and freedoms by which we define ourselves as Canadians instead of bearing witness to the erosion and the undermining of those very rights and freedoms, one of which is the citizens' right to privacy, because members seem to have things upside down on that side.
We, as citizens, have a right to know what the government is doing with our money, and we have a right to know what the government is doing in terms of policy and planning on our behalf. But the government does not have a right to know everything that we are doing and certainly a foreign nation does not have a right to know everything that we are doing, our freedom of movement, our personal health records, our credit card information and who we travel with. That information could be very damaging in the wrong hands to our well-being, so the government has an obligation to uphold our right to privacy, not negotiate it away.
As I listened to my colleague's speech, it is so topsy-turvy for us to use precious parliamentary debating time on a matter that threatens to erode and undermine those basic fundamental freedoms on which we built our nation, those freedoms that define us as Canadians.
It frustrates me that we cannot convince our opposition colleagues of the basic truths that the member for Vancouver East was trying to convey, that these are things we have to hold on to and we have to be vigilant because it is a fragile, tenuous thread that holds our democracy together. Those threads are the rights and freedoms that we crafted in the formation of this country. It is at our peril that we let any of them be eroded or dissipated by legislation or regulation. Certainly the Government of Canada should not be negotiating away at an international bargaining table those basic fundamental freedoms that we enjoy here today.