Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting debate. I have been listening to a lot of the arguments that have been flowing around this place.
As a preamble to what I am going to say, it seems to me that we have another bill before us that we probably do not really need. The impression I am getting, via the events of today and the events that have happened in the past few years, is that we have sufficient means and sufficient legislation to work for the safety of our country.
The intent of the original Anti-terrorism Act was to update Canadian law to meet international standards, such as meeting the requirements of the United Nations, and as legislative reaction to 9/11. All the provisions of this act, except for the investigative hearings and the recognizance with conditions, remain law today.
The sunset clause was attached to the original bill because serious concern was expressed during the 2001 law-making process that these measures were largely unprecedented in Canadian law and could easily be used inappropriately.
What I find interesting is that, upon review of this legislation that was passed as a reaction to a specific event and in a state of panic, we have learned that there was in fact no need for that legislation.
As of the day of their sunset, a number of investigative hearings have been held. There were no instances when recognizance with conditions was required.
It is unfortunate that the mandated parliamentary reviews of legislation made a number of recommendations that were not incorporated into Bill S-7. It is my understanding that the NDP proposed 18 amendments. It is not unlike what happened to us on the food safety bill. We came and said we would work with the government to improve the bill that was before us—necessary at that time—and it then rejected all of our amendments.
As our colleagues are probably already aware, we have proposed amendments that would improve transparency and strengthen reporting requirements, to minimize the negative impact of the bill on Canadians’ civil liberties. This is an important point. These amendments are based on evidence we heard, so we did not just make them up. As I understand it, we drafted amendments on the basis of evidence heard in committee that reflect the values that we believe are dear to Canadians.
Among the issues dealt with in these amendments, there is first the addition of a SIRC review of a possible co-operation protocol between the agencies, to ensure its effectiveness and its respect for rights protected by legislation before the offences relating to leaving the country come into effect.
Second, we want to ensure that the evidence gathered during investigative hearings cannot be used against an individual during extradition or deportation proceedings, and not just during criminal proceedings.
Third, we want to ascertain the right to legal aid provided by the federal government if the individual is to appear at investigative hearings.
Fourth, we want to ensure that annual reports include detailed information about all changes to the legislation, to policies or to practices in terms of exit information or exit inspections.
Fifth, we want the comprehensive reviews to cover the implementation of the four new offences relating to leaving the country and for the issue to be dealt with by elected members of Parliament, not just by the Senate.
Other amendments have also been proposed, but they were all rejected by the Conservatives. This is the key point.
As this House has already heard, this bill has been in the works for months. It came from the Senate and all of a sudden the Conservatives decided to bring it forward today.
We have received the answer to our question; we know why we are discussing this bill today. I do not need to belabour this point.
I would like to point out that the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh spoke against Bill C-17 in the House in 2010. He said:
When facing a crisis, we as political leaders feel that we have to do something even when all the evidence shows that the structures we have, the strength of our society, the strength of our laws, are enough to deal with it. We passed legislation in early 2002 to deal with terrorism when we panicked. We have learned in the last eight years that there was no need for that legislation.
My colleague, the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh, is a lawyer. He spent many years in the field. He was our justice critic. He is always the person to whom many of us look, to this day, for his judgment when it comes to the various laws here, and he has basically said that we do have sufficient legislation to combat what we need to combat in regard to terrorism.
I mentioned the actions of today, and I would like to congratulate and thank all those law enforcement officers and those men and women who have put together the roundup today, that they were able to penetrate a terrorist cell. I am not sure of the details, but as a citizen I would like to thank them for that effort. We have professional people on the ground who collaborate, not only with other law enforcement agencies in our country but with other countries, and that goes on. What we need to do is give them more resources, not fewer resources as is happening now. We need more resources to beef up our borders, to ensure we do not have illicit guns coming across the border, and to have people on the ground to penetrate terrorist cells and to work with their counterparts in other countries, so that we in this country can continue to feel safe.
Something that disturbed me, and this is a result of one of the committee hearings, is that Reid Morden, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, stated in 2010:
Speaking strictly on those two particular provisions, I confess I never thought that they should have been introduced in the first place and that they slipped in, in the kind of scrambling around that the government did after 9/11....
It seemed to me that it turned our judicial system somewhat on its head. I guess I'm sorry to hear that the government has decided to reintroduce them.
Police and security services have “perfectly sufficient powers to do their jobs” and “they don't need any more powers”.This is the former director of CSIS, saying this in 2010. As I flipped through my notes and tried to prepare my speech, that disturbed me.
I will sum up by saying that I believe, as do members of my party, that we have the legislation in place. If we are going to improve, we need to improve the resources on the ground so we can equip those men and women to combat the potential terrorism threats to our country, which I feel confident they are capable of doing.
