The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted?

Senator Carignan: Yes. However, I would not want to violate the rule of 15 minutes without an extension, but, with leave, I would like to have five more minutes.

Senator Plett: Well, we will leave it at that.

Last Monday, leader, when the Prime Minister announced that he would invoke the Emergencies Act, he repeatedly said those powers would be time limited. He said that numerous times.

Just a few days later, the Trudeau government reversed itself entirely. When it comes to their new financial surveillance powers, in a press conference, Minister Freeland stated:

We will be putting forward measures to put those tools permanently in place. The authorities of FINTRAC, I believe, do need to be expanded to cover crowdsourcing platforms and payment platform and their payment providers. So that is something that we need to do and we will do and that needs to be in place permanently.

Leader, on Monday this power was brought forward as a time‑limited act, and by Friday it was permanent.

My question, leader, is this: How and when does the Trudeau government intend to make this financial surveillance power permanent? Will it be bundled into an expected budget implementation act later this spring to be voted on as a confidence measure?

As was clearly the case with the motion before the other place tonight, leader, numerous times today you have referred to one of the opposition parties supporting the government. You failed to mention that the Prime Minister — and I’ll call it a threat — threatened everyone with this being a confidence vote: If you don’t support this, we’re in an election. Is that what he is planning on doing again or will they be brought forward in stand‑alone legislation?