Mr. Speaker, this is the hard thing about amendments. Canadians listening to us will hear the amendment, and then a sentence is added in to a much larger text. What does that larger text say that the minister just quoted? It says that the Governor in Council “may” issue directives related to information obtained, and it then enumerates torture, abuse, all the bad things that happen in countries with less than stellar human rights records. It is the very type of information that we do not want CSIS or any other agency to be using. Therefore, they “may” issue directives related to that.
The next section that the minister talks about, where it says they “must”, is that in the event they choose to, because they “may” do it, they “must” issue it to the following deputy heads. Therefore, it is basically the list of who would get the directive if the minister chose to issue it. That is the problem here. My amendment would get rid of that grocery list of deputy heads. It says flat out that when it comes torture, the Governor in Council must issue a directive, and that is it.
Let us not get lost in this debate on this specific amendment. Let us ask Canadians to go back and read the transcript of the committee hearings. I read time and again into the record amendments that explicitly prohibited any of these agencies from using information, even if we suspected it was obtained through the use of torture. Listen to the recorded votes, as Liberal after Liberal and Conservative after Conservative voted against them. That is what they stood for. That is what they are standing for. There is no other way about it. When it comes to torture and standing up for human rights, directive are just not good enough.