Mr. Speaker, what is being debated in the House of Commons is the need to ensure oversight, to protect the rights of Canadians and to ensure the laws are being applied.
That would be a fairly straightforward thing for any normal government to support. Unfortunately, it seems the current government is very threatened by anybody establishing any basic standard of accountability, which is why the Conservatives continually undermine and attack the officers of Parliament.
For the folks back home, the officers of Parliament have the role of protecting the basic rights of Canadians. Therefore, as New Democrats, we have brought forward a motion to ensure that the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has the tools to find out, when every 27 seconds somebody is spying on Canadian citizens, what the basis of that is. Why are they snooping and demanding this information?
For the government to not want to give that information out and for the telecoms to refuse to co-operate is very disturbing.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague what he thinks it says about the culture of secrecy and obstruction within the government that it wants to deny the officer of Parliament whose job it is to ensure laws are being applied fairly and being complied with. The government wants to keep her from doing her job of defending the rights of Canadians.