Madam Speaker, I appreciate many of the comments made this evening. I listened very closely to the parliamentary secretary, and a couple of thoughts crossed my mind. Sometimes I think we might be putting the cart ahead of the horse. Members of the Bloc and the NDP say that if the bill goes to committee, they have lots of concerns about what is in the legislation. The parliamentary secretary talked about what we have in place already and how the proposed legislation, Bill C-353, could in fact cause a harmful outcomes for hostages.
At the very least, what might have been nice would have been for a standing committee to look at the issue in its entirety and possibly come back to the House with recommendations as to how we might be able to give strength to the legislation and, ultimately, protect all the different interests that were highlighted by my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, who is responsible for public safety and deals with foreign affairs on so many occasions. He has done an outstanding job representing Canadians in many different types of situations.
When I look at the private member's bill before us, those are the types of concerns I have. I do not believe that we should send the bill to committee, based on the arguments that were presented. We need to recognize that we stand up, first and foremost, for Canadian values. We need to protect Canadians and their interests and work with other like-minded countries. We all want a more stable and secure world; that is one of the reasons Canada is working with allied countries in order to deal with some of these very complicated issues. Our laws, through time, are modified and given strength, which reflect our values, what other allied countries are doing and the best practices taking place.
There were a couple of things the parliamentary secretary referred to. One of them is how the bill would mandate the sharing of information. Information is so critically important and can be a deciding factor in many ways in the outcome of a hostage-taking situation. If there were certain legal mandates that compel information, that information could ultimately compromise a negotiation that is taking place. What we are really talking about is the lives of Canadians.
At the end of the day, I do not have any interest in being involved in high-stakes negotiations and having to deal with individuals who have taken hostages. We see this virtually every day on the news lately with regard to Hamas and what is taking place in the Middle East. I hear that if this particular legislation were to pass in the manner it is proposed today, we would be providing incentives for people kidnap or hold people as hostages as a way to derive cash or be given some sort of preferential treatment to come to Canada. That goes against what possibly even the member wanted to be in the legislation.
That is the reason I would say the legislation, on that one aspect in itself, raises a lot of flags, and we should all be concerned. When one talks about providing incentives for someone to ultimately kidnap or about providing information or mandating its being released, when it could ultimately compromise someone's life, I have a difficult time with that.
What I have not heard in any of the discussions and the debates I have listened to is anything that is very clear about how the legislation would help in a way that would not come back to hurt the victims and their families. There is a certain amount of discretion necessary in the releasing of information, as an example. We have to go out of our way to ensure that we are not providing any form of an incentive for people to be kidnapping Canadians or holding them as hostages.