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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Feb/17/22 6:51:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. I know she is a great democrat, perhaps one of the best in this House. She gave a detailed, nuanced and constructive analysis. We have not heard a lot of constructive comments or a focus on dialogue from the government these days. My democracy is suffering too, under the circumstances. I am very concerned about the fact that the government is responding so radically with the Emergencies Act. Could my colleague share her thoughts on the government's arrogance, lack of planning and demagoguery, especially since it announced it was invoking the Emergencies Act?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Feb/17/22 6:51:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. I agree that the debate is emotionally charged on both sides. This does not help our society find a solution that will bring our country, our provinces, together. I am disappointed in the level of discourse and the demonizing of those with different opinions. We must have a minimum level of respect for each other in all of our debates in Canada. That is essential. That is one of the things that defines Canada. We are not a country that gets divided over dog whistles.

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Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Feb/17/22 6:53:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say, over the last couple of days, I have heard, first of all, inaccurate and complete anti-indigenous racism in the rhetoric around what is going on outside. This is not a peaceful protest. This is an illegal occupation. To be stigmatized within what is going on out there is absolutely damaging and violent to indigenous people from across this country. I want to read something to the hon. member very quickly. It was written for The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi. She writes: There’s a lot going on in the world right now. If you’re not Canadian, then the protest in Ottawa might not be top of your list of things to worry about. But I’m afraid you should be worried. You should certainly be paying attention. What’s unfolding in Ottawa is not a grassroots protest that has spontaneously erupted out of the frustration of local lorry drivers. Rather, it’s an astroturfed movement—one that creates an impression of widespread grassroots support where little exists—funded by a global network of highly organised far-right groups and amplified by Facebook’s misinformation machine. We know that the Soldiers of Odin and the yellow jackets are involved in this. They are posing a threat to our democracy. Our democracy is under threat. I would like to caution the member when referring to indigenous people as examples when we are talking about an alt-right, white supremacist movement fuelled and funded by the white supremacist movement on the other side. Does the hon. member agree that is not a fair—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Feb/17/22 6:55:16 p.m.
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The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Feb/17/22 6:55:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I made that point earlier today to the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, who was trying to say that somehow it was hypocritical that the government did not crack down on Wet'suwet'en people, who he referred to as protesters. Those were Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs with legal rights derived from the Constitution of this country and Supreme Court of Canada decisions. I could not agree more with what she said, and I will add nothing to it except to thank her for making those points.

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Ms. Anju Dhillon (Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, Lib.)

Feb/17/22 6:56:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her speech, which is always eloquent. I think we all learned something from her today. What should a responsible leader, a prime minister, wait for before declaring an emergency? What kind of egregious harm should befall a country and its citizens before we do something, or do we stop it where it is?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Feb/17/22 6:56:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I feel as though the city of Ottawa and many Canadians are in the situation of a battered wife, where the police ask if her husband has used a gun on her or hurt her yet. We are menaced by an occupation, and we do not want to wait any longer to have this problem solved. We found guns in Coutts. We know that this group has been infiltrated by the alt-right global network, which the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre referred to earlier.

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)

Feb/17/22 6:57:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will splitting my time with the hon. member for London—Fanshawe. I will start by acknowledging that we have all been in the pandemic for two years, and frustrations are mounting. People certainly want to be to able to get on with their lives. To some extent, this has culminated in what we have seen over the last few weeks. However, make no mistake: We really do need, as parliamentarians and indeed as an entire country, to acknowledge the intense gravity of the situation we find ourselves in. This truly is a watershed moment in Canadian political history, because we are now, as a House, being asked by the government to confirm the declaration of a public order emergency that was proclaimed on February 14 of this week. This is something that has never happened before. This is the first time that this act has been invoked in this way. I and, I suspect, many members of Parliament have been receiving concerns from constituents who are concerned over this drastic step. I owe it to the great constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford to talk about this extraordinary time and why we have found ourselves here. We need to have a serious conversation about why we find ourselves in a place where the enacting of the Emergencies Act is suddenly a necessary action, because it should never have come to this. The use of the Emergencies Act, even the consideration of its use, is an acknowledgement that we have had a failure of leadership from many different levels of government. The citizens of Ottawa rightly feel abandoned by their own police. The provincial government has not been there, but more importantly, the federal government has not been there. That is what I am here to focus my remarks on. We are now two and a half weeks into an occupation. It might have started off with many people who joined this movement thinking it was a protest. Certainly people have that cherished right in our democracy. The right of citizens to peacefully assemble, protest, make their views known and push for change is very fundamental to a well-functioning democracy, However, what we see in Ottawa and what we saw at many of Canada's border crossings were not protests. They were not peaceful assemblies. They were occupations and they were blockades. They started having a very negative impact on residents, on small business owners and on workers. That is where the line was crossed. People in Ottawa did not feel safe in their own homes. We saw reports of attempted arson in some of the buildings. We know that people have been suffering verbal abuse on a daily basis. Sometimes it has been physical. They have had to deal with all sorts of noise complaints and ongoing pollution from idling trucks. The city of Ottawa, our national capital, has seen some of our most precious and honoured national monuments defiled and, in some cases, completely walked over. It has been completely unacceptable. The border blockades have impacted far more people. We know that trade between Canada and the United States numbers in the millions of dollars every day. Factories in southern Ontario had to shut down, impacting families there. Many agricultural manufacturers, processors and producers out in the Prairies and across Canada were negatively impacted by the blockades. They was having an impact on those people. It is those people we need to keep our remarks focused on to answer the question of why we are here today, suddenly debating the invocation of the Emergencies Act. The Emergencies Act, of course, was first brought in as a piece of legislation all the way back in 1988. Pursuant to section 17(1) of that act, we have had a public order emergency declared by the Liberal government. There are a few things that come about as a consequence. Now the government has the ability to designate specific areas and declare that any assemblies in those areas will henceforth be unlawful. This would include the downtown core of Ottawa so that the main thoroughfares can be cleared of all of those trucks and so that the residents can get their lives back. It will also include some of our critical infrastructure, notably our ports of entry with the United States, the Windsor Ambassador Bridge; Coutts, Alberta; and Emerson, Manitoba being the most recent examples. However, we also saw disturbances in Vancouver and in other ports of entry, such as Sarnia. The act is going to allow the federal government to direct essential services, such as mobilizing tow trucks to help with clearing those streets. It is going to give FINTRAC the ability to cover crowdfunding. Also, the federal government is going to have the extraordinary power of freezing the commercial bank accounts and personal bank accounts of people who are funding these illegal occupations. It is a very real and extraordinary attempt to cut off the funding that is supporting the occupation of Ottawa and all of this misery. As well, it is going to give the RCMP the power to act as provincial police officers and municipal police officers and enforce their respective laws. I certainly have personally wrestled with the invoking of the act, wondering if I am doing the right thing in supporting it, but what gives me some level of comfort, and I want to be very clear to the constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, is that this is not a blank cheque. The powers we are granting to the government will be carefully reviewed on an ongoing basis. I will not hesitate to withdraw my support if I feel the government is overstepping its confines. By that I mean that the application of these powers has to be specific and it must be in relation to the disturbances that we are seeing from the blockades and the occupation. These powers must be used only in relation to that situation, and they must be quickly withdrawn once public order has been restored. It has taken a long time to get to the point where we find ourselves now. I am very proud that my caucus colleagues in the NDP and I have been trying to push the government to take this crisis seriously, because the warning signs were there from the beginning. As the public safety critic, I was able to initiate a study at the Standing Committee on Public Safety into crowdfunding platforms and their possible involvement in funding movements like this. I was also able to move a successful motion to call upon the RCMP, the CBSA, the Ontario Provincial Police, Ottawa police and the minister for public safety to eventually come before our committee to explain how we got to this point. Why did we have such an intelligence failure and lack of coordination over the last two and a half weeks, bringing us to the point where we now have to use the sledgehammer of the Emergencies Act? Of course, I have to recognize my colleague, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, and his private member's bill to basically ban symbols of hate, which we unfortunately have seen evidence of in this occupation. Also, our leader was able to initiate an emergency debate in the House of Commons so that we could give parliamentarians their first opportunity to focus on this situation. In conclusion, Parliament is where we make the laws of this country. It is the pinnacle of our democracy, and every single one of the 338 members who serve in the House of Commons was duly elected to this place to make laws and to hold the government to account on behalf of the citizens in their ridings. To try to subvert that is an affront to the people who participate in our democracy, and we must uphold that cherished right. I will end by saying that it is with great reluctance that we are going to be giving our support to these emergency powers, but I can assure people that we will not take our eye off the ball and we will not hesitate to withdraw our support should any powers be used past their intended purpose.

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Mr. Kody Blois (Kings—Hants, Lib.)

Feb/17/22 7:07:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague and I have the privilege of working together on the agriculture committee. I always find him to be balanced, reasonable and quite eloquent in his remarks. I did not catch all of his speech, but I did catch the tail end. I have often heard members in this House, particularly Bloc Québécois members and Conservative members, say that they want to see more leadership from the Government of Canada. Of course, this member would know that policing is inherently in the municipal jurisdiction and the the provincial jurisdiction, and that really the role of the federal government would be to impose some of the measures we have seen today. Ultimately, the very last resort would be to call in the army. Can the member at least opine on what he has heard from leadership? The Conservatives are calling for the government to acquiesce to what the protesters are calling for, while the Bloc members say that this should not apply in their jurisdiction. What does the member think, in terms of leadership from the federal government? Does he agree with this as a step to giving the tools to the provinces and municipalities to address the situation at hand?

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor

Feb/17/22 7:08:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy serving at the agriculture committee with my colleague. Specifically with respect to the last two and a half weeks, I would say that history will not be kind to municipalities, to the province and to the federal government. There was a failure at all levels, but the federal government had an important role to bring all of those separate pieces together. There was a failure in intelligence and there was a failure in coordination. It was as though we were just asleep at the switch in figuring out how bad this situation was eventually going to become. Yes, I am glad that we are now taking this important step to reassert control and to give people their lives back, so that workers, small business owners and residents can actually enjoy their lives again.

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Mrs. Anna Roberts (King—Vaughan, CPC)

Feb/17/22 7:09:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been waiting awhile to speak, and I want to speak on behalf of my constituents of King—Vaughan. I have been flabbergasted today by the number of emails I have received from the constituents of King—Vaughan. I would like to share this one with the hon. member: “The freedom convoy is not asking that people do not wear masks if they choose to. They are not telling people not to get vaccinated if they choose to. They are not telling people not to stay home; if they don't feel safe, they should. They are simply saying that we should have the freedom of choice to do what we feel is best for us as individuals. That right, that freedom, is what our brave and heroic veterans fought for us in the wars. This is the right of our country to be free and strong.” I would like the member's comments, please.

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor

Feb/17/22 7:10:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I very strongly agree with individual rights, but we also have responsibilities that come with those rights. The responsibility we have as individuals goes beyond our personal selves and out to the larger community as a whole. We have just gone through two years of an incredibly deadly pandemic. I know we have had our failures, but we have had success in dealing with this disease in comparison with other jurisdictions that have had a more libertarian approach. This is about saving lives and about making sure that we get through this pandemic together. There have been tough choices that people have had to make, but with that individual freedom comes a greater responsibility to the community as a whole. That is how I would answer that question.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Feb/17/22 7:11:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for sharing that he is finding this difficult, that he is troubled about it and that it is not easy for him to approve this measure. I appreciate his honesty. However, he also said that he was not giving the Liberals and the government a blank cheque by supporting this measure, which I do not understand. How is the NDP's support not a blank cheque? What kind of measures would it take for his party to see reason and reject the use of this act? What would it take to change his mind?

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor

Feb/17/22 7:11:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is not a blank cheque, because in reading the act, we can see that there is considerable room for Parliamentary oversight. Furthermore, all it takes is for 20 members of Parliament to indicate that they no longer wish to have this act in force. If they submit a letter, we can initiate debate, and debate will conclude with a vote on whether these powers should remain in force, so there is that strong parliamentary democracy oversight. As I said in my speech, if I feel the government is overstepping its bounds, I will not hesitate to withdraw my support for this current course of action.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP)

Feb/17/22 7:12:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today. I feel that we are standing at a crossroads. I have heard so much frustration and disappointment from people in London. They are frustrated by this pandemic that will soon mark its third anniversary. People are frustrated that they have sacrificed and struggled to help one another. They have done the work that we asked them to do to keep people safe. To them, I want to give my thanks. I want to tell folks in London that I understand their frustration. I am tired of this pandemic too. I share in the wish for this to be over, but I also see the bigger picture here. People are not just frustrated because of the pandemic. This is much bigger than that. They are frustrated that, even though people are working harder than ever, sacrificing more and more, their government has offered less and less. There is a growing sense throughout Canada that our elected leaders are not listening and do not appreciate the struggles of Canadians. The protests that we have seen in our streets and our communities are a symptom of that frustration. It is understandable why someone would feel like that, because for years now successive Liberal and Conservative governments have asked Canadians to do more with less, to pull themselves up by their boot straps when they do not even have shoes. Today, many people feel that their government has let them down, especially when they needed support the most. These last few years have been tough on my community, like so many, but within this last year we experienced the loss of the Afzaal family to an extremist act of hatred and violence. In spite of that, I saw my community come together in incredible acts of love and kindness. That is what I hold on to tonight. I grew up in a very political household and watching my mother at community meetings and standing up for what she believed in, fighting for a better world, truly shaped how I saw my role in the world. I knew that I benefited significantly from the systems and programs that people and governments had created for me and that I had a responsibility to pay that forward. I came to this place because I wanted to make the necessary changes for people, to pay it forward. As people continue to struggle, I fear that we will lose that sense of community and that people will turn away from each other more and more. The more people struggle, the less they have for themselves, the less they feel they can give to others. The more they have to fight for the little that they have and the less that they have to fight for, the greater the divide between the richest in this world and the rest of us, the worse this will get. People will turn on their governments and they will turn on each other, because they believe their governments have turned on them. Canadians are looking for answers and they are looking for solutions. The system has been rigged and they want to do something about it. Solutions offered by right-wing politicians and extremists online must be called out as entirely, completely unacceptable. I am often in awe that Conservatives seem to provide simple solutions to the complex problems that we face. This is not unique to Canada. We saw these simple solutions offered in the U.K. on the vote for Brexit. They said that life would get better, but it did not. We saw many simple solutions offered by Donald Trump, just south of us, ones based on racism, sexism and fear. They did nothing for working Americans. Their lives did not improve under his administration. We see these so-called solutions being offered in this House as well. Lift all public health measures and let neighbours and friends fend for themselves. Simple solutions are often the most dangerous. I hope that this protest will end shortly but the reasons for it will not go away. Look at any crisis. It takes a long time to get to that critical point, and it takes even longer to fix it. Let me be very clear. Nothing makes the racism, the hatred or the threats of violence that we have seen in Ottawa over these past days acceptable. However, to truly address the causes that have led to so many people feeling disenfranchised, to feeling like they are not being heard or that they are abandoned by the government, resulting in their resolve to occupy the streets in Ottawa or critical infrastructure across Canada, we have to address the systemic issues at the heart of the matter. New Democrats are offering alternatives to move forward, rather than what is offered by the right wing that has allied with them. There are concrete measures the government can make to address rising inequality in our country. We can tackle rising drug costs with a national pharmacare plan. We can tackle the housing crisis that is impacting every community in Canada, and my home city of London, by getting the Canadian government back into the business of building housing. We can take on poverty and disparity in our streets by establishing a guaranteed basic livable income. We can address the lack of education and access to it by making post-secondary education accessible, removing those financial barriers. We can take on the growth of low-paid insecure work by updating labour codes, creating a living wage and tipping the scale back in favour of Canadian workers. We can sign trade agreements that protect Canadian jobs, instead of making it easier to ship them overseas. We can strengthen and safeguard workers' pensions, ensuring pensioners can retire with dignity and security. We can ensure the rich pay their fair share and close tax loopholes. Many people are rightly concerned about the impact of the Emergencies Act. It should have never come to this. The use of the Emergencies Act, and even the consideration of it, is an acknowledgement of failure of leadership from all levels of government, including the Prime Minister. They have allowed things to escalate unchecked since the beginning, and I share the concern of many Canadians and people from my constituency that the government may misuse the powers in that act, so I want to be very clear. We will be watching and we will withdraw our support if at any point we feel these powers are being misused. People in communities across our country are feeling the impacts of the convoy. Health care workers, retail and grocery store workers, truck drivers themselves, small business owners and residents have been harassed, intimidated and even assaulted during these illegal occupations. Thousands of workers have been forced to stay home from their jobs, making it harder for them to feed their families and to pay their rent. Canadians have been missing the national leadership they need during this crisis. They are tired of jurisdictional excuses, and they just want this to stop. We owe it to them to use every tool available to stop these occupations that are harming Canadian workers and their families and to work on a plan to get this to end. I want to reassure my constituents that the NDP is taking the use of the Emergencies Act very seriously. We will not give a blank cheque to the government. We also believe the federal government, and all governments, need to take responsibility before things are allowed to escalate further. We cannot abandon Canadians to deal with this on their own. Over the coming days we need to see action from our police in ending this occupation and returning the streets back to our communities. Over the coming weeks New Democrats will remain vigilant in watching and protecting Canadians' rights and freedoms, and holding the government to account. In the next few months we will push for more supports to remain until the pandemic is over and to call for a science-based approach to see us out of this pandemic. Better is possible, but it will take tough and courageous choices for us to get there. It is not too late to make a better world.

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Mr. Peter Fragiskatos (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue, Lib.)

Feb/17/22 7:20:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the member did a very good job of outlining why these measures are justified. I want to ask her a question about what will happen after in terms of combatting hate, and what members of this House, across party lines, can do to do just that. We have seen hate expressed by the alt-right in the United States in recent years, and evidently it has made its way northward, unfortunately. What can we do, collectively as elected officials in the House, to work together to fight hate? We have seen its effect in London, clearly.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen

Feb/17/22 7:21:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is something that we have been talking about in London for quite some time, especially after the murder of the Afzaal family. We must come together and ensure that there are legislative solutions. I know that we have been pushing for the government to introduce legislation on online hate. I believe that has now come forward again. We need to ensure that is passed. We need to hold those Internet companies and social media companies accountable as well to be a part of that solution. I think overall larger solutions involve education. They involve ensuring that we, as I said in my speech, provide for each other and make sure that we are not closing in on ourselves because of that fight against poverty and that fight against desperation. We have to work harder on those social programs and those social solutions that provide for each other, so that we can share with each other and fight for each other and be together.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Feb/17/22 7:22:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member talked about withdrawing support if New Democrats see abuse. As she knows, the Emergencies Act provisions are already in force. What we are essentially talking about here is a confirmation vote by the House of Commons on whether to keep these provisions in place. What we should be doing is preventing harm from happening in the first place. What my caucus and many Conservative members want to do is to prevent the harm we see going on with innocent people having their bank accounts frozen based on commentary that has been made by the Minister of Finance. I want to draw the member's attention to what the NDP caucus did in 1970, 11 years before I was born. I was born in a country where there was martial law at the time. In 1970, Tommy Douglas took a courageous and principled stance, many people would say. I would have probably disagreed with his position, but it was definitely courageous to do. He stood against the War Measures Act at the time. Today, the NDP has decided to side with the government and allow the government extraordinary powers for 30 days. I wonder if the member would explain why.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen

Feb/17/22 7:23:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to recognize that those are two very different situations. The thoughtfulness that Tommy Douglas and his caucus put in at that time about the War Measures Act and the implementation of it is the same thoughtfulness that my caucus has taken on the implementation of the Emergencies Act. The leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South, talked about that today. He told the Prime Minister directly that New Democrats will not let him off the hook and we will be watching. I stand here today, like I said, with a heavy heart because so many things are at play. I have spoken to people on the street who are worried and have been assaulted, and that cannot stand. The hatred cannot stand.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Feb/17/22 7:24:39 p.m.
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The member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert has time for a brief question.

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