Madam Speaker, no. In fact, I would invite that member to consult the testimony made by the last head of CSIS who, before he left his post about a year ago, had testified in front of one of our committees—I cannot remember which one—saying that powers of preventative arrest from tools in Bill C-51 had been used several dozen times. There had never been an incident where a situation of a charter violation was going to be used at all.
What this was about, and why I referred to the Prime Minister's own comments, is that this was about my three major concerns. Changes to preventative arrest, raising the burden for peace bonds or protective orders, actually went contrary to what we heard from victims and those impacted by these attacks. The tools are not unique to terrorism.
As I have said, the terrible case of the mosque shooting, the Bissonnette case, is a case where the tools could have been applied if they had thought social media rantings went to a “likely to commit”. By using a “necessary” standard, we are handcuffing law enforcement and they are struggling to maintain the high level of safety and security they want to deliver for Canadians.
Why do we not trust law enforcement in a way that is balanced and backed up by our court and charter? The Liberals are taking our system and not balancing it. They are putting our police at a disadvantage.