Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. The problem that I have with the Conservatives' approach is that it minimizes the potential impact of the fight against radicalization and it minimizes the fact that ISIS is taking advantage of vulnerable young people. Rather than offering assistance, the Conservatives tried to minimize the importance of those efforts. They did away with the police recruitment fund, they took away all the public safety resources, and then they tried to use incidents that occurred around the world to justify expanding the legislative powers of our national security agencies. However, CSIS exists because a distinction needs to be made between the work of the police and that of intelligence agencies.
Bill C-51 gave CSIS threat disruption powers. That issue remains despite the bill's attempts at making some small improvements, all of which sadly amount to nothing at all given the potential for the human rights of Canadians being violated. On professors Carvin and Forcese's podcast entitled “Intrepid”, Bob Paulson, who as my colleague knows is a former RCMP commissioner, said that he was concerned about CSIS being given that type of power because that type of power belongs to the police.
Does my colleague agree with that? Why not focus on giving the police the tools they need to do their job rather than legislating to give CSIS powers that defeat the very purpose for which it was created?