44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 7:52:41 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to say hello to all of my colleagues on this Saturday morning. It is unusual for the House to sit on a Saturday, but our entire country is dealing with a situation that is quite out of the ordinary.
We are here to participate in a very important debate on the use of these emergency measures. I am not a lawyer. I do not know and cannot figure out all of the little details, but in my opinion, we need look at only two things. First, the Ottawa Police Service said yesterday that it would be unable to put an end to what is happening in Ottawa and the national capital region without the special measures set out in the Emergencies Act.
Second, we are here on a Saturday morning. Yesterday, it was not safe enough for MPs or senators to come to Parliament. We made an unusual decision to cancel a sitting of Parliament, which is why we are here on a Saturday morning to hold this debate.
All of the party leaders in the House—the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberal Party—agreed with the Speaker of the House of Commons that something was happening here, that it was not safe, and that parliamentarians could not come to work. That is very uncommon.
What I would really like to talk about is the other measures applicable to the funding of extremist groups.
I was born in Montreal into one of a few Black families in my area, in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in a francophone city, a francophone province, an English country and a largely English continent. I like to consider myself a minority within a minority within a minority within a minority. It offers me an interesting view of things.
I can see the way the dominant view is carried out because that is the dominant view. It is natural; it is in the air. However, I can also step back a bit and just see things a little ex centrum, or off centre. I have always felt that is a strength. I always think it is an ability to see life a bit more fully: three dimensions instead of two and more colour than just in black and white.
When I saw what was happening in the lead-up to this convoy, there were things that I was able to see that I do not think other people would see as clearly. Perhaps I am wrong, but give me a chance to explain it.
We know the convoy organizers are the same people who have tried to organize other protests about random issues. In 2016, we had Motion No. 103 against Islamophobia. They tried to rally folks and spark a grassroots protest against the motion. I am talking about Tamara Lich, Benjamin Dichter, James Bauder and Patrick King. Those very same people tried to get Canadians up in arms so they could spread their white supremacist way of thinking.
They failed in 2016, so they tried again last year with the United We Roll campaign. Again, there was not much buy-in.
This time, they succeeded for one good reason: Canadians are tired. Everyone is exhausted. Nobody likes the pandemic, nobody likes restrictions and nobody likes lockdowns. The virus does not care what we think. Canadians are exhausted, and these people took advantage of that general sense of fatigue.
The people who showed up to express their disagreement with mandatory vaccination, lockdown measures and all the other measures implemented by federal, provincial and municipal governments have the right to do so. I am not talking about those people.
The people I am talking about are the organizers who exploit that exhaustion to recruit people on social media and spread messages of hate. We know very well that algorithms enable groups on social media to use extremist statements to attract other people, who then make more frequent appearances online. There is no way to avoid that. When people are constantly exposed to hate, they eventually start buying into that way of thinking.
In 2016, when Motion No. 103 was moved, the movement engaged some 10,000 people on Facebook, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. They spread their message and, at one point, they had almost 200,000 subscribers, which was unheard of.
They hit gold. They now have what is estimated to be over a million people on Facebook. This one million people they have identified do not know what is about to hit them. They are going to get messages over and over again, hateful messages, intolerant messages and misinformation, and guess what? They are also going to be solicited for money. Look at the money that has come in.
All of us in the House face very strict financing rules. With the transparency and financing rules, we can only give a maximum of $1,650. That is a good thing. When we give to a charity, there is a whole bunch of transparency and reporting when it happens. Guess what happens when these folks give through crowdsourcing? There is nothing. There is no transparency, not at all. They raised $16 million on one site and another $16 million on another, 40% to 50% of which, it is estimated, came from outside the country. The names are ridiculous. It says Mickey Mouse gave and so did the current Prime Minister. He obviously did not contribute. That is not good.
The financial measures we have are for good reason. If nothing else, it was worth putting them in the orders. I hope that legislation will follow so that on a permanent basis we can get this kind of wrong money out of the Canadian political system.
966 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/19/22 8:04:02 a.m.
- Watch
With great ease, Mr. Speaker, because this money is not going to normal political speech. Let them give donations to those who want to support this, but they are giving money that is anonymous, that is unverified and that can come from foreign sources to get to politics through the back door as opposed to the front.
Who were the people collecting and distributing this money before it was shut down? Are Lich, Barber and King the people we want to have access to this funding, which people gave in good faith because they wanted to talk about vaccine mandates but is being used for completely different purposes? There needs to be some transparency on it.
If the hon. member had listened to me carefully, he would have heard me say that this is a great temporary measure now and that we should pass a law to deal with this going forward.
152 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/19/22 8:05:47 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question.
Again, the answer is yes. In the news, we clearly saw a trucker who was part of the blockade here in Ottawa saying that he had to leave because he had received a notice from his bank informing him that if he did not leave the illegal blockade, his assets could be seized. He added that he employs 55 people.
It has worked. It will prevent potential blockades from happening in Windsor. We also heard from the Ottawa Police Service and the Windsor Police Service that with these measures, they finally had the ability to prevent—
112 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/19/22 8:07:34 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, what I really like about this piece of legislation, and I would like to congratulate Brian Mulroney and his government for having introduced it, is that the Charter of Rights applies to it at all times. It is fixed for a certain amount of time and parliamentarians have to come together to talk about it. I have every confidence because it is targeted, it is appropriate and especially it is time-limited.
74 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/19/22 9:18:55 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Ontario for his excellent speech.
I would like to ask him a fairly simple question. Is he, like me, prepared to conduct an inquiry to get to the bottom of this matter, understand what happened and why the situation was misjudged, and find ways to ensure that this never happens again?
61 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/19/22 10:01:10 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am rising on a point of order.
I am sure it was an oversight by the person who wrote the speech for the hon. member, but it is the common practice of this House to refer to members by their constituency or by the title they hold and not by their proper names.
56 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/19/22 10:35:25 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his speech. I appreciate his candour in voicing his concerns. I also appreciate the fact that he is open to the opinions of others.
I too am not 100% certain that this is the absolute best course of action, but there is one thing I sincerely recognize. I hope my hon. colleague can tell me about it. I do not want to trivialize the decisions we are making, but would my hon. colleague agree that we are somewhat trivializing the situation in terms of the extremist voices we are hearing in our politics, both in Canada and around the world?
Is it not time to set some limits before things get out of hand?
126 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
