Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the parliamentary secretary does not keep up with the work that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is doing, that she does not consult the people who work directly on the ground, that she does not realize she is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and that the Department of Public Safety's budget has been cut by 10% since 2012.
There have been serious consequences and they are evident. The Department of Public Safety reported them and the Parliamentary Budget Officer has been reporting them since 2012.
The members opposite are pretending to address the problem and are offering us a false choice between public safety and civil liberties. However, we all know how important it is to have a free country. The freer a country is, the freer and safer its people are.
I spoke to many stakeholders about the content of Bill C-51. It seems to me that the members opposite do not remember the cases of Maher Arar and Air India and the resulting reports and recommendations. Instead, the Conservatives decided to work in a vacuum. They are not working with the experts on the ground and they are not learning from their mistakes.