Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to Bill S-7, on combatting terrorism.
The Conservative government's intellectual dishonesty knows no bounds, and today is no exception. They are trying to exploit a tragedy so recent—the Boston Marathon attacks—that the victims' wounds are still bleeding.
Our thoughts are with the victims and the many people who risked their lives to protect the Boston area over the past few days. Because of the way the Conservatives do things, our agenda in the House of Commons has once again been flipped upside down without prior notice. Why? Mostly because the government in place lacks vision. It exploits hot-topic issues and uses them to impose its own agenda.
Countries in the G8 are not supposed to rush to pass legislation based on what is going on in the news, especially if the goal is simply to shove the government's own agenda down the public's throat. We must work for the common good, listen to what experts tell us and base decisions on the objectives of our international partners.
This makes it clear that the government cares more about its own agenda than anything else.
The morning after the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, did the government start a debate on crazed killers to help the American president, who has been fighting for tougher laws since then? No. That issue is not in line with this government's objectives.
Given that Bill S-7 has been back in the House since December, why is the government suddenly in such a hurry? Why did we not have this debate in February, for example? With a record number of 30 gag orders, we had plenty of time to debate what has now suddenly become a priority. The government is being purely opportunistic and exploiting current events.
So that we do not play into the government's hands, I would like to recap some facts about Bill S-7.
The committees heard testimony from a number of stakeholders in the legal community and civil liberties groups. They said that Canada's current laws are sufficient.
Immediately providing law enforcement and border services with better resources for field investigations would improve our chances of preventing a tragedy. We should not make a habit of using exceptional measures that threaten fundamental rights. For example, in the case of the Toronto 18, the worst-case scenario was avoided because of a successful investigation, and no exceptional measures were used.
Cuts in the hundreds of millions of dollars to border services and the RCMP make no sense, and they demonstrate this government's contempt for these people. The government loves them so much that it keeps making cuts. I would not wish this government's love and affection on any Canadian. Talk about bad news.
Bill S-7 is useless and disconcerting because it throws wide the doors to infringements of civil liberties and human rights.
Take, for example, the part of the legislation that is perhaps the most disturbing, which is recognizance with conditions or what are known as preventive arrests.
The government included a paragraph in its legislation specifically so that it could use preventive arrests even when individuals were not suspected of terrorist activities. NDP members tried to amend that provision to ensure that only those individuals identified as having potentially been involved in a terrorist activity could be placed under preventive arrest. Committee members were shocked to hear from a parliamentary secretary that the amendment would not be accepted because the government had intended for the provision to be far-reaching so that it would include individuals who authorities do not suspect will commit terrorist activities in the future.
The stage is set for abuse, and the government is promoting it. The fact that the anti-terrorist provisions were never used between 2001 and 2007 clearly illustrates that the government's haste is purely a tactic.
The NDP has gathered a great deal of support for this interpretation of the events. Paul Copeland, a lawyer and member of the Law Union of Ontario, said:
I wanted to comment first on the circumstances of the Air India case, because that is the only case in which this legislation that came in under the anti-terrorism bill was used, and it's a rather bizarre circumstance. It was described as a fiasco, and I think that's an appropriate description.
He concluded his speech with the following:
...the provisions you are looking at here change the Canadian legal landscape. They change it in a way that isn't useful. They should not be passed, and in my view they are not needed. There are other provisions of the code that allow for various ways of dealing with these people.
According to Reid Morden, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, police officers and security forces have all the powers they need to carry out their duties and they do not need any additional powers.
We are talking about very competent people who have taken positions that are very similar to ours.
Further conclusions, also very similar to the NDP's, were expressed in today's Globe and Mail. I wanted to quote this, because I noted that the French-language press was not reporting this as much. These conclusions are quite justified:
“The debate politicizes the Boston Marathon bombings when few facts are known regarding the bombers' motives or inspiration.”
The Conservatives are forcing us to make decisions before the injured have even healed.
“More worrying is the fact that there are aspects of the proposed bill that raise questions about balancing civil liberties with the need to protect citizens.”
The Globe and Mail—and no one can say that it is a leftist leaflet—reached the same conclusion as we did: this raises some serious concerns about fundamental rights.
Here is another quote that made me smile, but bothered me at the same time:
“The government's sudden need to debate Bill S-7 seems more likely to have been prompted by Mr. Trudeau's unfortunate comments about 'root causes'—”