Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my Conservative colleagues who finally rushed into the House. They often talk about terrorism and how they would protect Canadian human rights and invest in the RCMP and other agencies, yet they do not want to participate in this debate. That is very sad.
There are many valuable tools that should have been introduced into the Anti-terrorism Act, which would have been influential toward combatting terrorism while upholding the integrity of Canadian values of liberty and rights. We should be promoting inter-agency co-operation to reflect the multi-faceted nature of terrorism and address the source of terrorist activities. Efforts against terrorist activities should be performed without discrimination of any kind. The government should be transparent in its dealings with terrorist activities, and we should be able to hold them accountable for their actions. These do not seem like unreasonable requests, yet when they were proposed in committee by the NDP, they were determined to be beyond the scope of the bill.
We cannot sit here and watch the fundamental rights of our citizens being taken away by the Conservative government. Even the United Nations, which requested that states align their legislation with Security Council standards, has established that human rights are integral to combatting terrorism, stating: “Respect for human rights and the rule of law must be the bedrock of the global fight against terrorism.”
The government has an obligation to all Canadian citizens, to all within Canadian borders and to the international community and the international bodies that govern our human rights. The government must respect our current freedoms, protect our rights as well as our security, and fulfill its obligations to Canadians by investing in effective counter-terrorism strategies.