Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this very important debate. Let me say from the outset that I completely understand the need for Canada to have the appropriate balance in monitoring communications and collecting information that is important when it comes to our collective security.
I say that because several years ago, I was commencing a three-week international visitor program in the United States. My first day of those three weeks was in Washington, which happened to be the morning of 9/11, and thus began my three weeks throughout America. I learned a lot about security and the evolution of security thinking, and apparatus, on a continental and global basis.
However, listening to the government views on this, and I have listened intently now for most of the day, I would like to remind the House that a lot of Canadians are deeply concerned and troubled by this. I have an international airport, the Ottawa Airport, in my district. I have received many comments and questions about what is going on in that airport as people fly in and out of our national capital, including, by the way, 65,000 foreign officials each and every year.
This motion today is a simple one. For Canadians who are watching, listening, or reading, it means simply that we would create an all-party committee to oversee the activities of the Communications Security Establishment Canada. This would, of course, be in keeping with what is already happening in other jurisdictions. A similar committee exists in the United States. There is one in the United Kingdom. One is in place in New Zealand, and yet another is operating in Australia. We are talking about having a fixed number of MPs, sworn to absolute secrecy, who would play an important role in monitoring the activities of this particular organization's agency, to make sure that Canadians' collective paramount right to privacy is maintained and upheld.
As I listened to the government members respond to this, I was perplexed. Only several years ago, all parties in the House came together, in a report of 2004, and agreed to create an all-party committee. In fact, the government brought in legislation saying it would do precisely that. The Minister of National Defence today was a member of that committee, who spoke perhaps most strongly in favour of doing this. Therefore, why has the government flipped its views in this regard? We have seen, as I just explained, other jurisdictions that are doing this. They are our partners, working with Canada on a daily basis with respect to security matters. Why would the government resist this?
If I could sum up the government's position, it would go something like, “We actually want more secrecy, but we cannot say why because that is a secret”. That is what we heard the Prime Minister say today during question period when he was asked precisely about this question. His answer was that he could not say anything about this because it was secret. That is not reassuring for Canadians.
I have to ask, where are all the Conservative libertarians? Where are all the former police officers, the remaining lawyers, or the military officers in the caucus, who all swore an oath to uphold the rule of law? Can they categorically look at each one of their constituents and say there is absolutely nothing wrong going on here, when we know there are committee reports that say “Houston, we may have a problem”? They cannot say that. Where are those voices? What has happened to those people? What has happened to the caucus? It is deeply troubling to hear what the government is saying.
One would think that the Conservatives, and the Prime Minister in particular, would be in favour of improving oversight. Here is one reason as to why, one incident to justify why they might be in favour of that. Let us all harken back to the Iraq war. Let us harken back to the the former leader of the opposition, now Prime Minister, writing an open letter to major American dailies in New York City and Washington, attacking the Canadian government for not participating in the Iraq war when the the former prime minister Jean Chrétien made the fact-based decision not to participate in the Bush war.
In contrast, one would think, knowing what we know now about the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction, despite the assertions by the entire security apparatus of the United States, and that it was a construct and a fiction foisted on the world, which decimated America's security reputation for the decade that followed—