Mr. Speaker, I have, and I am sure many members in the House would have had much the same experience, had many conversations with constituents in my riding over the last number of weeks. Particularly over the last couple of weekends, I had the opportunity to speak to probably thousands of people in my riding at some of the major community events I attended. They are very concerned about the threats that are posed to Canadians by the international jihadist movement and they expect our government to do everything we can to ensure we protect Canadians and provide the tools that are necessary for our security agencies to do so.
As I mentioned in my remarks, one of the things that is a very important principle is that they would expect that if our security agencies were aware of a potential terrorist plot, they would do everything they possibly could to try to prevent such a plot.
I have a quote I would like to share as well, along the same lines from Professor Elliot Tepper at Carleton University. He says:
Bill C-51 is the most important national security legislation since the 9/11 era...Bill C-51 is designed for the post-9/11 era. It's a new legislation for a new era in terms of security threats....we need to keep our focus on the fundamental purpose and the fundamental challenge of combatting emerging types of terrorism.
There are certainly many people out there speaking for this, including our constituents and experts as well.