House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was billion.

Last in Parliament September 2008, as Liberal MP for Etobicoke North (Ontario)

Won his last election, in 2006, with 62% of the vote.

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Statements in the House

Prime Minister's Awards March 20th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate two constituents in my riding of Etobicoke North who are among the 2006 recipients of the Prime Minister's Awards for Teaching Excellence and for Excellence in Early Childhood Education. These awards honour outstanding and innovative early childhood educators and elementary and secondary school teachers in all disciplines.

Ms. Kamla Rambaran is a teaching excellence recipient and is receiving the Certificate of Excellence.

Ms. Eleanor Szakacs is an excellence in early childhood education recipient and is receiving the Certificate of Achievement.

Every Canadian has a special memory of a teacher who made a difference in their lives and helped or inspired them to realize their potential. Today we commend the achievement of these teachers and their commitment to excellence because it is in our classrooms and in our schools that we build a better country and a better world.

As spoken

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns March 19th, 2007

With regard to the User Fees Act, S.C. 2004, c. 6: (a) what actions has the government taken since the passage of this Act to introduce the policies and guidelines needed to fully implement it; (b) which departments or agencies under the authority of this legislation have introduced or amended a user fee since this legislation came into force; (c) of these departments or agencies that have introduced or amended a user fee, what measures and processes have they adopted to ensure that new or amended fees are in full compliance with the User Fees Act; and (d) what is the government doing to ensure that the spirit and direction of the User Fees Act is being applied to existing user fees, especially with regard to performance standards, and the reporting to Parliament and Canadians on user fees and service standards?

Committees of the House February 19th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I bow to the wisdom and experience of my colleague from Willowdale. He said it all. He reinforced some of the messages that I was making. He gave a good example with Peerless shirts which is exporting globally. It has created a niche all around the world. It was not intimidated by the free trade agreement. It was not intimidated by globalization. Other examples abound. I will leave it at that.

As spoken

Committees of the House February 19th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, we find in this House of Commons that there are times and occasions when we do not all agree. In fact, I am on a subcommittee dealing with the anti-terrorism legislation and I seem to be not totally in agreement with my colleagues, so these things happen. This is the real world. It is not a homogenous playing field.

As I said earlier, my colleagues on the international trade committee have looked at this in much more depth. How I will be guided in terms of a vote, I will consult with my colleague from Brampton and others and be more apprised of the situation.

My purpose in speaking here today was to relate some of the experience I have had with respect to China, with respect to bicycles, barbecues, textiles and apparel. When I was a member of the finance committee we had extensive and exhaustive meetings and discussions with our finance minister at the time to provide some relief for the textile and apparel industry.

We heard the example earlier on shipbuilding. The Department of Finance was essentially saying that textiles and apparels are sunset industries. Our government at the political level said no, we were not going to accept that. We said we would give them a chance to become more productive, to deal with the competition. That is what we did. The members who criticized the Liberal government should go back and read the record on what we actually did.

As spoken

Committees of the House February 19th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, if we wait until there is, as the member called it, a fair wage in China, India or Bangladesh, we will be waiting a long time.

Fair is a subjective matter. Perhaps the member was not listening when I spoke earlier of the author Jeffrey Sachs whose sole commitment is to lift poverty around the world. This very reasoned gentleman argues that even though we find it uncomfortable to see child labour or women in employment with horrible hours and horrible working conditions, he has actually been there and talked to some of them and they say that it is not great, but it is better than the alternative. The alternative would be no work at all and their children would be starving.

If we say we are going to wait for a so-called fair wage, with respect, all we are saying is that we are going to provide protection almost forever. Even if we start raising the wages and working conditions of the people in developing countries, our wages and our working conditions in the west are going to increase, and the gap will never be dealt with. To use Al Gore's expression, the inconvenient truth is that we will never get a fair wage in those countries based on the gap that exists today and where we are headed in the future.

As spoken

Committees of the House February 19th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate today on the motion for concurrence in the House of Commons committee report to provide some relief to Canada's apparel and textile industries.

I had the great pleasure, in 2004, of working as a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance when we did a very exhaustive study of the textile and apparel industry and came out with our report in October. The report was entitled “Duty Remission and Zero-rating of Tariffs on Textile Inputs: the Canadian Apparel Industry”.

As a result of that report and other requests, the minister of finance at the time, the member for Wascana, brought in a very complete package to try to assist the apparel and textile industries in Canada to cope with the competition arising offshore and to try to give them a transition whereby they could become more productive and more accommodating to that competitive environment.

When China acceded to the World Trade Organization, it committed to develop a market economy. In Canada, we view that on a sectoral basis, guided by the Special Import Measures Act, SIMA, and we review by sector whether a market economy exists, in this particular case in China.

I have had some experience working on some issues that came up with respect to bicycles and barbecues. We had a similar problem. Industries in China are hugely competitive in terms of costs. Some of that is driven by low wage costs. I think we have to distill and separate out of this some of the issues and how we go about dealing with them.

If we as Canadians have concerns around low wages in China, there are mechanisms to try to deal with that through our meetings with the Chinese. I believe firmly that we should be engaged with the People's Republic of China and that the best way to get change is to trade and invest with China, with some restrictions.

I am not a very keen supporter of state-owned enterprises buying up our natural resource companies, and I have spoken out about that on a couple of occasions, but generally speaking we should be open to trade and investment with countries such as the People's Republic of China. I think that over the medium term to the long term that is how we are going to be able to influence policies like low wages or the employment of children and the like.

There is a very interesting book that I would recommend to many members of the House. It was written by a gentleman by the name of Jeffrey Sachs. Jeffrey Sachs is the United Nations coordinator with respect to the millennium development goals. Recently I read his book. Unfortunately, I do not remember the title.

In that book, he talks about the use of child labour and the use of very coercive labour techniques in terms of hours of work and conditions of employment. This gentleman is responsible for monitoring the millennium development goals on behalf of the United Nations, and what he concludes is that while we should argue for improvements, the reality is that there are so many more people employed who otherwise would not have any income whatsoever. For the woman or the young child working in a small village in China, India or Bangladesh, even though the wage to us seems totally unfair and unreasonable sometimes, without it, that person might not be able to look after their children or have any standard of living whatsoever.

So while we realize that the competitive positioning of China right now is very favourable, not only for reasons of low wages but for the way it is using technology and the way it is capitalizing on some of its competitive and comparative advantages, we all know what is happening.

It is the concept of what is called offshoring. This is happening around the world. We are losing many industries to countries such as India and China. Rather than arguing that it should not be happening, we have to adapt and respond to that. This is a reality.

I have heard a lot of critiquing of what our Liberal government did or did not do, but I would like to set the record straight. Our government increased the Cantex funding. Cantex is a program that encourages companies to improve productivity through projects such as lean manufacturing and the implementation of new information technology and logistics systems.

Back in 2004, the Liberal government increased funding to Cantex by more than $70 million over five years. That additional funding was to assist the textile and apparel industries to become more competitive and to respond to the competitive pressures from countries such as China.

If we look at the textile and apparel industries, we see that they cut somewhat along these lines. There is a very strong textile industry in Quebec. There is some textile industry in Ontario as well, but Ontario has had quite a strong presence in the apparel industry. Quebec does as well.

If we look at the apparel industry, we see that its main objective is to have cheap raw materials, so there is a creative tension between the apparel industry and the textile industry. The textile industry wants to compete against countries such as China, India and Bangladesh. The apparel industry wants to get the cheapest raw materials it can. Within all that, though, they do work together. There are some meetings of the minds and some accommodation is made. They generally have been supportive of a number of programs.

The apparel industry, for example, has the benefit of the duty remission orders. The duty remission orders were introduced in 1997-98 to give textile and apparel companies relief from some duties. The government had previously sunsetted them. They were about to expire in 2004. Our government decided to extend them but to sunset them to provide the industry with a little more time to adapt to this new competitive reality. I was very happy that we did so.

As part of that announcement in 2004, we also eliminated the tariff on fibre and yarn imports, which was worth about $50 million a year, and on imports of textile imports used by the apparel industry, which was worth up to $75 million a year. That was effective as of January 2005.

These were efforts to try to assist Canada's textile and apparel industries to adapt to the increasing competition from countries such as China, India and Bangladesh, but there is also the reality that this is a new world and this kind of competition is here to stay. In fact, under the Doha round and under commitments that our federal government has made, there is I think an inclination to reduce tariffs so that those in the developing world can actually sell their products, uplift their economies and help alleviate poverty in their home countries.

There is a careful balance here. Do we allow all these imports from countries in the developing world? In the agricultural sector, it is a very big issue. Do we allow this surge in imports from countries in the developing world so they can lift their economies, provide more employment for their people and address poverty but also create some economic destabilization in this part of the world?

These are difficult questions, but there are remedies available to countries where there is huge disruption. The gist of this motion is to say that the kind of competition coming from China is causing a huge disruption in the sector and the committee would like to bring in safeguards to deal with that.

To go back to the bicycle and barbecue example, there were protectionist tariffs on bicycles and barbecues. With commitments made by our government, and in fact by governments all around the world, once we were convinced that China was a market economy, those tariffs would come down. For example, in the case of bicycles, CCM and other companies located in Ontario and companies in Quebec were very concerned that if those tariffs were eliminated completely there would be a flood of bicycles into the market, and the jobs and the economy activity that goes with them would be threatened.

There was a lot of pressure on the government, but the issue was a basic one. Are we satisfied as a government that in China there is a market economy as it relates to bicycles? I will use the bicycle example first. There were many visits by Canadian officials to the People's Republic of China to ascertain whether there was a market economy functioning in the sector of bicycles.

We need to be careful because subsidies and dumping are different issues. There are other remedies available. In terms of these protectionist tariffs that Canada had on bicycles, the issue was whether China was operating as a market economy with respect to the market for bicycles.

What the officials concluded after many trips back and forth and by working with local missions was that the bicycle market was operating much like a market economy. In other words, the government was not dictating prices. That is largely the test: is the government involved in setting domestic or export prices? They concluded that it was not.

Having worked in China as a business person and having been to China number of times, I must say that I was initially a skeptic. At the time, I had the great honour to serve as parliamentary secretary to the minister responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency. I remember requesting a number of briefings on this issue, in which I was asking people to convince me that there was a market economy operating in China with respect to bicycles. I must say that they had done a lot of work and had a fairly convincing case that a market economy did exist with respect to bicycles.

In Canada, we approach a market economy definition for China on a sectoral basis, as I indicated earlier. That aligns with the way we go about the Special Import Measures Act. There are some countries, for example the United States, that decide as a global entity when, in their judgment, China is a market economy. They have a slightly different approach. Some of the companies in Canada were somewhat dismayed by the fact that Canada had a different approach, but it was aligned to our own legislative framework and the way that we approach things generally, so that is the way it was.

The reality is that in the case of bicycles the tariffs came down. I have not followed up since then and I do not know if the bicycle or barbecue manufacturers in Canada have used some of the special measures that are available. I forget the exact process, but I think the case goes to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal in the first instance. Ultimately the decision is made by cabinet, which says that notwithstanding the obligations it has, our industry is being negatively affected in a very substantive way and therefore the cabinet is going to provide some tariff protection in the short run.

I am not sure if the bicycle manufacturers or the barbecue manufacturers avail themselves of those provisions. From the point of view of a business strategy, I know the companies were looking at finding the niches where Canada can compete more effectively. This is what I think we need to do more and more with respect to the textiles and apparel industry. I will give an example.

The textile industry in Canada, rather than staying with the typical rugs and carpets and apparel, has moved into textiles as they relate to automotive use and other OEM-type applications. The argument with the bicycles at the time was that yes, we would get a lot of bicycles into Canada, but they would typically be the lower end and lower cost bicycles, and that Canada's companies could position themselves in the middle to upper end of the bicycle market. That is what we need to do, not only with bicycles and barbecues, but with textiles and apparels. The reality is that economies like China, India and Bangladesh are here to stay and Canada has to find the strategies to move up the value chain.

We could look at the amount of outsourcing, or offshoring as it is called, that is going on in Canada with respect to India and the information technology industry. There was a good example that I read about not too long ago. It was in a book called The World is Flat.

The example used was of California's animation and cartoon industry. Today some of that work is being farmed out to India. Bangalore and various centres in India have developed a huge cadre of IT professionals who are quite qualified. They can turn a lot of that information into animated cartoons which are then sent back to California, and the industry in California upgrades them. They are adding value to that raw material. They are finding actually that they are growing their industry in that sense, because the industry in Bangalore is just developing and is not as mature as the industry in California. The IT professionals in India are able to do the basic animation, actually in a quality way, but they are not trained yet to do the value added.

We have a great responsibility in this world as a developed country to allow more access for the products of the developing world. We are seeing a growing gap between the rich and the poor nations, and if we are going to deal with that, we are going to have to be a little more accommodating with respect to allowing developing countries access to our markets. In doing so though, there are ways in the short to medium term that we can provide some protection to our industries, but if we do not deal with this, we are deluding ourselves because this is becoming a serious problem globally.

I am not suggesting that terrorism is a function necessarily of the growing gap between the rich and the poor countries, but I would say it is a factor. Therefore, not only is it the right thing to do, it is the pragmatic thing to do to try to close that gap. One way to do that is to provide more market access for the developing countries.

With respect to this motion, my colleagues have been more intimately involved. I will have to be guided somewhat by them and do more research myself, but I wanted to speak on this topic because it is a very important one and something that we need to be seized with, and that is how to cope with these new emerging economies of countries like China, India and Bangladesh.

As spoken

Anti-terrorism Act February 12th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. I appreciate his question.

As I was saying at the beginning of my speech, there is always a balance between protecting citizens against terrorist attacks and protecting the civil liberties of Canadians.

That is not very easy, and I am not going to get into the question of compensation today, but would like to point out that some think these investigative hearings and preventive arrests are done without application to a judge. That could not be further from the truth.

If anyone is invited to an investigative hearing, it has to be with the prior consent of the Attorney General, and an application can be made to a superior court or provincial court judge for an order for the gathering of information. This thus has the approval of the Attorney General and the approval of a provincial court judge. There also are many protections with respect to investigative hearings. People cannot incriminate themselves and also they have a right to legal counsel.

With respect to preventive arrests, again it is with the prior consent of the Attorney General that peace officers can carry out these arrests, but they must bring these people before a provincial court judge within 24 hours. A provincial court judge would have to be confident that these people need to be detained, the prosecution or authorities would have to show cause, and the judge might put conditions on the arrest or how they might behave after that. I think it is wrong to suggest that these people do not have access to counsel or that judges and the Attorney General are not involved in this.

Partially translated

Anti-terrorism Act February 12th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, let me say to the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley that in the subcommittee we are looking at all other aspects of Bill C-36. It is a very comprehensive review. That report will be finished in the not too distant future. Really, I hope the government looks at that report seriously.

With respect to Mr. Arar, my argument would be that these provisions have not been used. If the provisions of investigative hearings and preventive arrests had been abused since 2001 until today, I would be the first one to say we should sunset them. In my judgment, and I think in the general consensus, they have not been abused because they have not been used.

Therefore, my argument would be that because they parallel many of the provisions currently available in the Criminal Code, although they are not precisely what is needed under Bill C-36 and that is why they were written in, my argument would be that they have not been abused, they are still needed, and they therefore should be extended.

As spoken

Anti-terrorism Act February 12th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, let me say first of all to the member for Palliser that I will respect the point of view of the members of our official opposition who will vote against this motion, because this is not a black and white situation although for me it is black and white. For many of my colleagues it is black and white as well. In fact, many of them will say that in 2001 that was the compromise, that putting in of the preventative arrest and the investigative hearing. Now that they have not been used, they are not needed, they say, so that was the whole idea of the sunsetting. That is not my judgment, but I respect that judgment.

As I said earlier, I am not going to hide behind all the testimony I heard. I heard testimony on both sides of this issue. What it comes down to is that we have to make individual choices. Our leader knows full well my views on this. That is political life. We win some and we lose some.

I am not sure how my colleagues in the House are going to vote, but I certainly can respect different points of view. My own point of view is that these provisions are still necessary.

As spoken

Anti-terrorism Act February 12th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, being the member for Etobicoke North, I will not be saying how I will be voting either on this matter.

I am pleased to enter the debate on this motion that has been brought before the House by the Conservative Party to extend for a period of three years the provisions related to preventive arrests and investigative hearings.

I serve on the subcommittee and in fact I served on the subcommittee in the previous Parliament as well. We agreed to revive the former testimony from the last Parliament so that we could get on with the recommendations. We are working still very feverishly on the main body of the report. Unfortunately we had to uncouple the provisions related to investigative hearings and preventive arrests because they have the sunset clauses. I believe they will sunset this week. Those provisions had to be uncoupled from the main body of the report and that is why they are on the floor of the House today.

I know that the committee is doing a lot of hard work on the Anti-terrorism Act generally. There will be a report at some point, hopefully in the not too distant future, which I think will respond to many of the concerns raised by many Canadians.

I am disappointed that the government has chosen to ignore the 10 recommendations of the subcommittee and has brought in only two of the recommendations. In fact, the two recommendations with respect to extending the provisions differ from the recommendations of the subcommittee. The subcommittee recommended that they be extended for five years. We did that because we know how long it takes to review these provisions. These are very complex matters. They require a lot of testimony and witnesses on both sides of the issue. If there was a three year review, I would suggest that some subcommittee would have to begin that review almost immediately.

Some of the other recommendations were more of a housekeeping nature, but there were a couple of recommendations that were important and the government has chosen to ignore them. I raise the same concern as my colleague from the Bloc. I am hoping that as we are putting in this effort at the subcommittee that the government will actually listen to what the subcommittee has to say.

On a general theme, it is very difficult to get balance in life. That could be at a personal level. How does one balance one's professional life and career with a family? How do we balance so many different competing demands on us as citizens? That is very true, in fact more profoundly true, for governments and parliaments when they have to find the right balance between protecting their citizens against threats to their security, whether those threats are internal or external, and balancing that against the legitimate rights of Canadians to have their civil liberties protected and respected, for their privacy rights to be respected, and for their rights and freedoms to be protected. It is never an easy task and it will never be an easy task. It was not an easy task in 2001 and it is not an easy task here today when we are presented with these issues.

It would be easy for me to hide behind the fact that I was on the subcommittee in both Parliaments. I heard all the testimony. In fact, I had the great honour to serve as parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness in the last parliament. I am not going to hide behind all that because I think all of us in this House know what the issues are.

There are questions around the fight against terrorism and the protection of civil liberties. That is what it is about. At the committee we heard from both sides. We heard from civil libertarians that these provisions were excessive and we heard from many other witnesses that the provisions were necessary or in fact did not go far enough.

This is what life is about. We have to wrestle with these issues and we have to make some decisions.

What I would like to do first of all is to come back to the recommendations that the government, at this point and perhaps forever, has chosen to ignore.

What the subcommittee recommended was that investigative hearings only be available when there is a reason to believe there is imminent peril that a terrorist offence will be committed. It surprised me to learn that right now an investigative hearing can be called into play when a terrorist act has already been committed. We challenged the government members at the time to bring forth evidence that would justify that provision, not just looking forward, but looking backward. We were not able to get that evidence, so we made that a recommendation.

With respect to preventive arrest, we said that a peace officer must have reasonable grounds to believe a terrorism offence will be committed. The government has chosen at this point not to deal with that one. It is difficult, when the government comes in with two out of ten recommendations and two of the recommendations are different from what the subcommittee recommended, to respond to that.

In a general theme, my view is that since 2001, nothing much has changed. We still face the threat of terrorism. I would agree with my colleague from Leeds—Grenville that perhaps a terrorist threat is more complicated, more intense, more sophisticated than ever before. I do not think much has changed since 2001. If anything, the terrorist threat could be worse.

It is no secret that our forces are fighting in Afghanistan. That has many people not very happy with us. We are on the al-Qaeda list, not necessarily because of Afghanistan, but perhaps for other reasons as well. I do not believe that the terrorist threat has diminished very much, if at all. In fact, I think it has probably increased.

I can certainly respect the judgment of my colleagues in the House on this side and the other side that 2001 was a grand compromise. Many in the House felt that preventive arrest and investigative hearings were instruments that were too severe and, as a compromise, the sunsetting provisions were written into Bill C-36. Today, five years later, the debate is if they have not been used, they are not needed, and therefore that is why we did sunset them. That was the purpose of it. Because we were not comfortable with them back in 2001, and therefore we should be sunsetting them.

I certainly respect that point of view. It is not a point of view I agree with, but that is what this place is all about, having debate. I do not agree with it because I believe that the other argument is equally or, in my judgment, more valid. If those provisions have not been used, then clearly the concerns of those in 2001 that maybe law enforcement or authorities would abuse these provisions has not been borne out. They have not been used. For me, that makes the case that we should extend them.

We know that with respect to investigative hearings there was a time during the Air-India inquiry when an investigative hearing was requested, but by the time the Supreme Court ruled, and the Supreme Court ruled that it was an appropriate instrument, it was too late because the Air-India work had been completed. That was a decision of the Supreme Court. The investigative hearings as a function have never been used, nor have preventive arrests.

Last summer 15 young people were arrested in the Toronto area. Some ask if the provisions of Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism legislation, were used. They were not used. Some argue that if they were not used, then why do we need them. It is a good debate.

What we are missing here is that there will be occasions when there is enough evidence to arrest people under the normal provisions of the Criminal Code, but we do know that with terrorism offences, sometimes all that the security people or the law enforcement people are seeing is maybe email messages, sometimes encoded, but they have a very strong feeling that some terrorist attack might be imminent. In a case like that, they might not have all the evidence they need to arrest people under the current provisions of the code and they may need the provisions under Bill C-36.

I recall the testimony of the ombudsman from the United Kingdom who came to our committee. He basically oversees the anti-terrorism regime within the United Kingdom. When pressed about why these provisions were necessary, he used the analogy of when the police believe that a bank robbery is imminent, but they do not have a lot of evidence and they just put two and two together. The police have been around and have seen it all and can figure things out sometimes that something is about to happen. With a bank robbery, if they thought that something might be happening, they could stake out the bank and just watch for signs of suspicious activity.

This witness from the United Kingdom said, and I think he is so right, that with a terrorist attack we cannot stake out the place. If someone comes in with a bomb and blows up a building, it is too late because the person, who probably would look like any of us, would walk in and might have bombs or other terrorist instruments and therefore we cannot stake out the joint. We have to deal with it.

That is why these provisions were put into Bill C-36 and that is why I believe that they are still required.

I think there is misinformation circulating with respect to these provisions. There are already provisions in Canada's law that are equivalent for example to investigative hearings. Investigative hearings are investigatory and not intended to determine criminal liability within the context of the law related to public inquiries, competition, income tax and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. There are already provisions for investigative hearings in those areas.

With respect to recognizances with conditions, that is preventive arrest, there are equivalents with respect to peace bonds that are issued to deal with anticipated violent offences, sexual offences and criminal organization offences.

Both these legislative measures, preventive arrest and investigative hearings, already have some grounding in the criminal law of Canada. Unfortunately, these provisions themselves do not apply to terrorism offences so they had to be written into the law to be applicable to terrorism offences.

The member for Leeds—Grenville chaired the subcommittee. I was surprised that he was not able to have all 10 recommendations dealt with by his government. That is a disappointing aspect for me.

With the reports coming out of the Maher Arar inquiry, we are anticipating increasing demands for oversight over the RCMP and over CSIS. In fact, it was our Liberal government in the last Parliament that tabled a bill to set up a committee of parliamentarians to oversee our national security policy and agenda. I am hoping the government proceeds with that legislation or something akin to it because I think it is appropriate to have these oversights.

The drafting of the bill was worked out with all the parties in the House in the last Parliament. Whether it would have the support of all parties in this Parliament I do not know, but I suspect many of the same people are around and that we could reach some agreement on what should be in a national security committee of parliamentarians. I think more oversight is needed and that would be an important step.

Also, the Maher Arar inquiry has recommended certain initiatives to increase the oversight of our agencies: CSIS, the RCMP and perhaps the Canada Border Services Agency.

We also need to deal with some concerns by Canadians about the sort of star chamber aspects of some of the provisions of Bill C-36 and also the security certificates. Even though security certificates are outside the realm of Bill C-36, the subcommittee, in its wisdom or lack thereof, decided to include security certificates. I know that these are of much concern to many Canadians. The government refers to them as a three-walled cell. People can be detained under security certificates if they pose a national security threat to Canada but they are free to leave at any point in time. There are star chamber elements about that and I would like to see those dealt with.

There are also questions from various charitable organizations, and I think rightfully so, that feel they could be delisted when something inadvertently happens even though they applied the due diligence that would normally be expected.

There are many things that we can do to deal with the balance between civil liberties and the need to protect society against threats. In fact, I think there is a lot of outreach that the government and all parliamentarians should be doing. Under the previous Liberal government, we started a major dialogue with the Muslim community in Canada. I attended a meeting with the then prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, when we met with 35 imams from across Canada. These imams were speaking out against the violence in the United Kingdom in which terrorists bombed buses and innocent people lost their lives.

These imams spoke out against that violence, so the then prime minister and my colleagues and I met with these imams, first to thank them and congratulate them for speaking out against violence and the injuries to and deaths of innocent bystanders, but also to begin a dialogue on how to reach and connect with the Muslim community in Canada. In my riding of Etobicoke North, I have the third largest Muslim community in Canada. These people are very much against violence and against injury to and the death of innocent bystanders. The imam there spoke out against that as well.

We need to do more. I think we need to do more at our border. We know what the policy is: no racial profiling. But we know about, and I have heard of, real life experiences of people coming across our border who have been treated unjustly, unfairly and with a discriminatory sort of bent. That is why our government launched the fairness initiative, which would have given everybody coming across our border an outlet to go to if they felt they were treated unjustly or discourteously at our border. They would have had an objective observer to complain to, where those matters would be dealt with and disciplinary action would be taken if that was what was uncovered. I hope the Conservative government introduces that.

We started a consultation process under the previous Liberal government, but I do not see anything coming forward to give people dignity and respect at our borders and to cut out racial profiling. Threat profiling? Absolutely. Racial profiling? Never. We should not allow that. We can take measures to start to deal with that.

We need to do more work. The government needs to orchestrate this with CSIS, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency to redo the outreach to these communities, because there is a lot of misinformation. There is a lot of miscommunication. I do not mean to single out the Muslim community, but the Muslim community is affected. We have to deal with that. Muslims are largely affected. There are some misunderstandings. There is some miscommunication going on. We need to deal with it.

I hope this government seizes upon those opportunities to dialogue with the Muslim community, because the vast majority of the Muslim community is made up of peace-loving people. They too want peace and security in Canada. They tell me, “We live in this country as well, and we want peace and security for ourselves and our children and our children's children”. We need to do more dialogue and outreach. As I said, our Liberal government started that process, but I think much more needs to be done.

Twenty or more years ago now, in Canada we witnessed the Air-India terrorist attack, so anyone who argues that Canada is immune from a terrorist attack just simply does not get it, in my judgment. We cannot be naive about these things. These terrorist organizations are very organized. They are prepared to do whatever it takes to make their point.

To wrap up, nothing much has changed since 2001, in my judgment. I think we still have terrorist threats. While we do not like to infringe on civil liberties, in my judgment the balance is still appropriate. It is not Draconian in my view. I think it is still necessary to ensure that we protect our citizens, give them peace and security and, at the same time, reach a good balance with their civil liberties.

As spoken