44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 8:02:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we heard the justice minister, just two days ago, talk about the financial measures that the member opposite referenced and say that they are going to be used to target people who have political views, not hateful or intolerant views but views that he finds unacceptable. They are going to be targeted by these financial measures included in this law.
The concern that we should have in this place—
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- Feb/19/22 8:04:00 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while the member for Winnipeg North knows not to interject, he talks about foreign interference. We are talking about Canadians having Canadian bank accounts frozen because they have political views that the justice minister does not like. That is not a liberal democracy. It is, frankly, illiberal and I would like to know how the member opposite can, in good conscience, support this kind of gross overreach and infringement on Canadians' charter rights.
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- Feb/19/22 8:08:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we find ourselves here, this morning, discussing another attempt by the Liberal government to make a mad grab at power, a gross overreach. We have seen it before.
We know that the Liberal-NDP alliance have started their heckles because they want to silence me, just like they want to silence people they do not agree with.
We know that, at the very beginning of this pandemic, the first thing the Liberal government attempted to do was make a mad grab at power. It wanted the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money and to raise taxes, to tax Canadians as it saw fit, without parliamentary oversight, for nearly two years.
Her Majesty's loyal opposition was awake at that late hour, and we stepped up. We stopped that overreach. Here we are, at an early hour on a Saturday morning, in an extraordinary sitting of this place, while the government looks to use extraordinary processes to attack people they disagree with. We heard from the justice minister. He said it on TV for all to hear that, if people have political views that he disagrees with, the government is coming for their bank accounts.
If people agree with the justice minister and have the same distaste for the same politicians, maybe this time they are not worried. However, what about the precedent that it sets when a future government that has a different political view goes after the bank accounts of their enemies or people it disagrees with?
We, in this place, have a responsibility to safeguard the rights of all Canadians. We have heard a lot of talk about the impact in downtown Ottawa, so I want to start with that. The residents of downtown Ottawa have seen protests and celebrations in their neighbourhoods for years. It is a feature, normally, of living at the heart of Canada's democracy. As of late, it has been anything but. Many of them are now represented in a class action lawsuit against the protesters.
I would like to, for the House, share what their lawyer, a fixture in the human rights legal community, has to say about the government's invocation of the act:
[This] seriously infringes on the Charter rights of Canadians.
That is the lawyer representing the folks downtown in Ottawa. He said:
...I am acutely aware of the trauma experienced by Ottawa residents, I fully agree that the Emergencies Act is a dangerous tool that was not required.
Who better to pronounce on the urgency of the situation in downtown Ottawa than the human rights lawyer who is representing the downtown Ottawa residents?
Let us talk about the other remedies that have been used to address people as part of this movement. At the Ambassador Bridge, the Windsor border crossing, we saw police of jurisdiction resolve the blockade of our international border. They did it over a two-day period without the use of the Emergencies Act. In Coutts, Alberta, we saw the same result with the existing resources and the existing laws. The police of local jurisdiction there, through police intelligence, identified that there were weapons and ammunition at a nearby site, and they effectively interdicted it without a shot being fired, using the local laws and the local resources. It was not an emergency.
We had the greatest public health crisis in more than a century, which the government presided over, and an economic downturn, the worst in a century, which the government presided over. It deemed neither emergencies. We have an opioid crisis where people are dying on our streets every day, and the government does not declare that an emergency. It is not taking extraordinary steps to deal with that.
However, it goes back to that power grab and it goes back to a pattern that we have seen with this Prime Minister. Every time that he finds someone he disagrees with, and this is no exception, he dismisses them, he degrades them and he dehumanizes them. This includes millions of Canadians because they disagree with him. He said they hold unacceptable views and they take up space. He said they are mostly misogynists and racists. The majority of Canadians, millions of these same Canadians, have said that any signs or expressions of hate or intolerance are unacceptable. They condemn them and I condemn them.
Anyone who commits an illegal act is individually accountable for that, but we have laws to address that. The charges that are being laid in Ottawa are for mischief and “conspiracy to commit”. We do not require an Emergencies Act to deal with these things. We have a public order operation taking place on the streets of Ottawa. It is not an national emergency.
However, it sure was a great opportunity for this Prime Minister to do those things that he does best: to divide Canadians. That is not the job of a Prime Minister, and it is a shame that he finds common cause among the government benches and with the third party in the House. History will not be kind to those who approve of this illiberal power grab. That is not who we are as Canadians.
Many of the folks who are protesting at different places across Canada, who are raising their voices, are tired. We are all tired of COVID. They wanted a plan. They wanted to know how far until we get to that off-ramp because many of them, including those I have met and spoken to in front of this place, are vaccinated. Some of them are not. They just want to know when it is going to be over.
We gave the government an opportunity to present a plan. We asked for it a year ago. We did it again in the last week. The government refused to provide a plan. Meanwhile, those who are following the science, science presented by people like Dr. Moore in Ontario, have signalled when the COVID measures will end in the jurisdictions that they are responsible for.
Before these folks arrived in Ottawa or at those other locations in Canada, Dr. Tam, representing the Public Health Agency of Canada, said that the government needed a new plan. We have not heard that from the government, because this is a great opportunity to pit neighbour against neighbour, family member against family member. It is an opportunity this Prime Minister never misses.
We are wide awake this morning. We have seen what the government has tried to do and we are here to say that it is not acceptable. It is not our Canada. Folks who want to protest absolutely have the right to do that. Folks who want to use their right to freedom of expression absolutely have a right to do that, and there is a place for that on the lawn of Parliament Hill.
The folks who are moved through the public order measures out front, or who have moved on days ago after visiting the seat of our democracy, need to come to the appropriate places to protest, which are the lawns of their city halls and provincial legislatures and the lawn of Parliament Hill, and exercise their rights, balanced with the responsibility of doing so in a lawful way. That is what Canadians do. They do not try to effect extraordinary measures that subvert the regular rule of law and the charter rights that Canadians hold sacred.
This Prime Minister knows better. His ministers know better and the back benches know better. Let us find out, when we vote on this, if they are prepared to tell Canadians that this really is a country that respects the rule of law, a liberal democracy. Let us find out what Canada really stands for.
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- Feb/19/22 8:19:16 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I talk about a Liberal democracy because the government of this country is represented by the illiberal party of Canada, it would appear. The tactic I am using today is reminding the government of the foundation of our democracy, which is the rights of Canadians. When citizens are afraid of their government, and that is the goal the government seeks, they have got it backwards. The government should be afraid of its citizens because our citizens hold the power. That is the key to freedom.
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- Feb/19/22 8:20:32 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the premier of Quebec was able to effect that result in the same way that Toronto was able to effect the same result as they did in Montreal or in Quebec City, which was by using the existing laws of the local jurisdiction and using their existing resources. That is exactly what could be done here in Ottawa. It is what was done in Windsor, it is what was done in Coutts and it is what is being done elsewhere. We are seeing the government try to confuse Canadians and conflate a couple of issues so it can make an unjust grab at power.
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- Feb/19/22 8:22:25 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I condemn it. I also condemn the member opposite's party supporting this grab at power and propping up its coalition partners in the Liberal Party. I am not sure what rationale was given behind closed doors, because we have not heard the rationale. We have laid out very clearly that the laws of local jurisdiction are effective enough. Instead, the government looks to settle scores with its political foes by using an unprecedented power grab, and it is unacceptable.
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- Feb/19/22 8:24:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, to the member opposite, the following is a question from Evan Solomon, the host of CTV's Power Play, to the Minister of Justice:
A lot of folks said, “I just don’t like your vaccine mandates and I donated to this, now it’s illegal, should I be worried that the bank can freeze my account?”
The Minister of Justice responded:
If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried.
If someone supports Donald Trump, the government is coming after them. That is unacceptable in a Liberal democracy.
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- Feb/19/22 9:22:12 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, knowing it is important that order is maintained in this place, perhaps you could invite the hon. member not to use inflammatory language and rhetoric that will create disorder, which he is attempting to do with a comparison between what is happening here and Tiananmen Square.
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