Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Charlottetown, who also works very hard on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
I appreciate that we will not be the only ones asking for sufficient time to study this bill properly. I am sure we will have the opportunity to ask the parliamentary secretary about that when he speaks later. It will be interesting to see if it means anything when people give their word in this House. I think we all share the same objective of wanting to study the bill thoroughly.
I invite the members of this House who are interested in this to look up what are known as “the forms” in this bill.
When someone goes before a judge to try to obtain the right to seize or preserve data, the police officer or individual investigating must have some evidence. That is where the terminology has been changed. Previously one had to have “reasonable and probable grounds to believe”, but that wording has been changed to “reasonable grounds to suspect”. Perhaps it means the same thing and we are worrying for nothing. That being said, we would like to debate this issue.
I worked with lawyers long enough, for nearly 30 years in fact, to know that sometimes all it takes is a change in the wording to completely mess up a case.
Accordingly, we must be very careful and do everything we can to ensure that this is the best possible bill when it comes back to the House and that it achieves the intended results.