Madam Speaker, I apologize to my colleague; I want to ensure I am understanding correctly. I believe my colleague is talking about pre-clearance, which is another issue. Bill C-23 and Bill C-21 are sister legislation in the sense of the agreements that have been signed between the Government of Canada and the United States government with regard to the border.
On my colleague's point, the issue is one where we do not want one bad apple to poison the whole basket. On pre-clearance specifically and Bill C-23, we certainly had issues with that. We were proud to oppose it, given the unprecedented powers we were giving to American agents on Canadian soil and even when it comes to Bill C-21 and this type of information sharing. My colleague raises that issue. I do not run into any issues when I am at the border and I am certain many of my colleagues here do not.
However, we are fighting for that. We are talking about individuals who get profiled and once their names are in the Department of Homeland Security database, God only knows what will happen after that. Let us face it, when we look at kids and the no-fly list, a disproportionate number of them are Muslim. Why is that? It is because of the names are on the no-fly list, an American no-fly list in many cases. That is our biggest concern . As Canadians, with the charter and our values, our priorities, despite the U.S. being a friend, ally and neighbour, and I do not want to discount that, we can sometimes be a little different, particularly in this day and age when we see the comportment of the U.S. administration.
When we oppose legislation like this, it is because we do not believe, with this widening national security net, even for innocuous information sharing, the robust safeguards required to protect Canadians' charter rights and their privacy are not in place. It is particularly true when it comes to our dealings with the Americans who have different legal safeguards in place, many if not all of which do not apply to Canadians.