Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. Certainly the horrific killings in Boston remind us of the recent killings and senseless violence in Newtown and in Colorado.
However, I am thinking about why this bill is being brought forward today, and I think of Annie Maguire and her six family members in London who were sentenced to 15 years in jail for the crime of being Irish because the government at the time thought it would fight terrorism and it would get rid of all liberties. I am thinking of Maher Arar, whose only crime was that he was a Canadian citizen who came from the Middle East, and the Liberal government at the time did not mind his being taken off and tortured. Of course, years later we saw that it had been a fundamental abuse.
Today we are being called upon to push this through. We are being accused of being soft on terror and all the other crazy stuff that the Conservatives talk about.
I would like to ask a question of my hon. colleague about today's Globe and Mail editorial saying that the government's anti-terrorism legislation smacks of political opportunism, that the debate is politicizing the Boston Marathon bombings and that the debate should not happen until we have a chance to ensure that basic civil liberties would not be undermined in an attempt by the government to simply embarrass the Liberal Party. I do not know why they are worried about embarrassing the Liberal Party; the Liberal Party has been supporting the undermining of civil liberties for years on this issue.