Madam Speaker, we have to be very cautious. We need to look at this in committee, because we have conflicting information.
As recently as the last couple of months we have heard from law enforcement authorities who say that they do need additional powers, that what they have today is insufficient in the extraordinary case of a situation that is highly volatile and that puts the country in immediate peril.
By the same token, I can read something said by the former director of CSIS, Mr. Reid Morden, who said:
Police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service have “perfectly sufficient powers to do their jobs”....
He went on to say:
If they're properly resourced...they don't need more powers.
I think that there is a careful balance. We have conflicting information from both the intelligence community and the policing community on what additional powers are needed. That is why I really think people have to discount and ignore the government as it tries to ram things through, because we do not want to get it wrong.
I would also add that any balance in this bill today, any additional leveling out, is because of the good work in the Senate done by our Liberal colleagues there. I really want to commend them for the work they did to bring forward a number of amendments that I think substantively improve it.
No doubt, we have more work to do in committee. It is important to look at it there. From the witnesses we are going to have, we are going to have to sort out some of these things to make sure that we get it right.