Mr. Speaker, I want to put this into a broader context. This is an analysis from “The Impact of Post-Enactment Review on Anti-Terrorism Laws: Four Jurisdictions Compared”, from February 15, 2012.
I mentioned the review process that took place, and now we have a piece of legislation that disregards all of the concerns that were raised around civil liberties. There is a bit of a context, and what the review says is that:
Governments seem all too vulnerable to the pressure to react to terrorist violence with fresh legislation and they frequently try to ensure that the legislation is given as little opportunity as possible to impede the swiftness of that response. The fact that legislators are at a distinct disadvantage in this scenario from the outset due to their very limited access to security intelligence assessments means that the deliberation over the government's measures hardly ever occurs on an even playing field.
This is a review that took a look at a number of different jurisdictions and talked about Canada's lack of ability to actually review the effectiveness of its legislation and problems with that review process.
When this original piece of legislation, Bill C-36, was first enacted, it was in response to a very horrific incident that took many lives. Therefore, the government of the day reacted swiftly, but with an omnibus bill that did not allow the kind of oversight that is required on very serious measures that start to infringe on Canadians' civil liberties.
We then had the review process that gave the Conservative government of the day an opportunity to bring forward a piece of legislation that reflected these concerns from Canadians. However, once again, there was disregard for those concerns that had been raised around due process and civil liberties. Why is it that the Conservatives are continuing to disregard the concerns that are raised around due process and civil liberties?