Mr. Speaker, Paul Copeland, a lawyer with the Law Union of Ontario, said, “First of all, I would like to make a comment with respect to the Air India case because it is the only time when provisions of the anti-terrorism law were invoked, and the circumstances surrounding it were quite strange. We characterize this episode as a fiasco and this description seems perfectly appropriate to me. In my opinion, the provisions that you are examining here in committee will unnecessarily change our legal landscape in Canada. We must not adopt them, and in my opinion, they are not necessary. Other provisions of the code provide various mechanisms for dealing with such individuals”.
It is a good question and one that we would hope the government is prepared to answer. What is the government's motivation? Many witnesses from across this country have talked about the fact that those particular measures, preventative detention and investigative hearings, either have not been used or, when they have been used, they have been used to no particular effect. Why is the government continuing with this kind of agenda?