Mr. Speaker, I am sorry I have a shortened time today. I know my friend from Winnipeg North in particular was looking forward to hearing the fulness of my remarks, but he will have to wait.
This is an important bill and an important time to be discussing it. The issue of security and terrorism is very much on the minds of Canadians, in particular in the context where we know that people from Canada have gone to fight for organizations whose values and objectives are totally at odds with those of Canadians. Now some of them may be coming back.
We heard very weak answers from the government to real and legitimate security concerns put forward by the opposition. We in the official opposition take the view that the first job of any government is to keep its citizens safe. In the Canadian context, Canadians expect the government to have their safety and security top of mind, yet we have not heard a response at all to legitimate and serious questions we have presented on that subject.
Bill C-59 seeks to repeal and change portions of the previous Bill C-51. The government's response to the bill in the previous Parliament was anything but clear or consistent. We in the Conservative caucus, then in government, now in the official opposition, took a principled approach to give our security agencies reasonable powers, subject to oversight, in order to keep Canadians safe and to disrupt and stop terrorist activity. That was the Conservative position.
The New Democrats took a different position. They opposed the bill. They were consistent in that. We were consistent in our position.
The Liberals though were trying, as they often do, to see which way the wind was blowing on this. At first, they said they were going to fully support the legislation. Then, as the public debate progressed, they continued to say they supported the legislation, but kept modifying the context of that support. Eventually, their justification for supporting it was that they did not want people accusing them of not supporting the bill. Then they said not to worry, they would repeal the problematic aspects of it from their perspective. However, they still voted for the previous legislation and were anything but clear about what they would change.
Now we are a couple of years into the Liberals' mandate as they try to figure out what they actually had a problem with. They wanted to be in between on the issue but could not figure out where they were going. That was the reality of the government's position. Now, finally, they have brought us legislation that makes some changes. Now they want to have it proceed to committee for study before it is even voted on in the House at second reading. It is interesting they have put forward a bill but are already putting it in a direction that allows them to make very substantial amendments to it.
We see this continuing lack of direction and general indecisiveness on security matters from the Liberal government. The Liberals, it seems, still do not really know where they actually stand and where they want to go when it comes to the particular provisions of the bill. The Prime Minister and the minister who moved the bill both voted in favour of the original Bill C-51.
As we look at the bill, which makes changes in a variety of different areas, we are concerned about some of the provisions because it shows the government does not properly take the need to defend the security of Canadians and the need to have provisions in place enabling the protection of that security at the level with which it should be dealt.
A number of provisions jump out at me. For instance, in part 5 with respect to information sharing, we see them undoing the information provisions that allowed the different departments within government to work together, risking us moving back to a silo mentality, where government departments are not working effectively together.