Mr. Speaker, I am most pleased to speak today to Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015. It is an important bill and all sides have expressed strong views about it. We saw that in the lead-off speeches yesterday and have seen it in some of the discussions here today.
The bill should not, and I underline this, become a wildly partisan debate. Let us show Canadians that in the House, the 300-plus of us who are here, we can make this a better bill. The government does not have all the answers, but collectively we can produce a better bill. I ask the government to allow amendments to improve the bill.
This is an extremely serious matter. It does indeed affect all Canadians. We have a responsibility as parliamentarians to find the proper balance between national security and civil liberties and freedom of expression.
In my remarks today I do not want to get into all the technicalities of the bill, the unlawful versus the lawful distinction, et cetera, but to focus on two key areas: one, process; and two, oversight, which is extremely important. The last speaker said there is oversight. There is not oversight in this bill and the Conservatives should know that.
I will start with a statement by the leader of the Liberal Party yesterday:
...keeping Canadians safe in a manner that is consistent with Canadian values is our most sombre responsibility as legislators and community leaders. To ensure that we never lose sight of our Canadian values and never forget who we are, we should always aim to have both the security of Canadians and the protection of their rights and freedoms in mind when we set out to combat those threats.
The question is, how do we do that? How do we find that balance? We can do that, certainly by allowing witnesses from a strong cross-section of Canadian society to be heard, and when they speak at committee, we all have to listen.
The government must be prepared to accept amendments based on legal expertise, based on human concerns, and based on evidence-based testimony. I will in a moment outline some of those concerns, just to touch base with the concerns expressed in that area by individuals and groups and to make the point why they must be heard.
May I also say in fairness to the cabinet that I and a number of colleagues in this corner in the Liberal caucus understand the pressures that one is subject to when looking at an intelligence briefing in the morning about a terrorist threat. We understand the pressure that pushes government to give security and police agencies greater power and authority to challenge those threats.
I hope those threat assessments coming to the government are brutally honest, telling the facts as they are and are not exaggerated. I was not impressed, to be quite honest, by the Prime Minister's speech in Richmond Hill, where I do think he went over the top in terms of the threat to Canadian society. However, only those who have those assessments would really know what that threat is.
I can remember in my own caucus, as my colleagues here with me can recall, and certainly the member for Mount Royal, the strenuous debate we had and how fortunate we were to have that both there and within Canadian society and in committee when we brought in the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 and expanded on it later.
However, because of that debate we put in sunset clauses to ensure that certain authorities granted to the police and CSIS would cease to exist at a certain point in time. We put in place a mandatory statutory review so that this chamber and the committee could review the good, the bad, and the ugly of that legislation at a certain period in time.
We do not see any of that in Bill C-51. Hopefully, amendments can be made that will draw in those points. However, in order to have amendments, the process has to change. Let us not fool anyone here. We all know what happens at committees. I talked about it earlier today. The parliamentary secretary sits fairly near to the chair of the committee on the government side. Government members are lined up in a row. Over against the back wall is the staff for the government side. Sitting among them is the staff for the whip's office. In there too is the staff for the PMO. Mike Duffy called them “The boys in short pants”. Well, they are both boys and girls because I have seen them, women and men. It is as if that guy or gal against the back wall is pulling the string of the parliamentary secretary.