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Feb/19/22 8:53:49 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very delicate question. From the beginning, we have seen people brandishing hateful flags and encouraging conversations that go as far as to say that the Prime Minister of Canada should die, that he should be killed. I agree with her that in Canada, we must deal with issues involving extremists.

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Mr. Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)

Feb/19/22 8:54:25 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am, with mixed emotion, rising this morning to participate in the debate currently in the House. I say that because I have had many, many constituents of mine reach out to me about the troubling situation that was occurring here in their nation's capital. They were concerned about what was happening to the people living here in Ottawa, from the far distance of Prince Edward Island. However, they were also concerned about the tone of the dialogue that was occurring around the situation. Those constituents asked me why governments, in the plural, were allowing this to occur, why government could not take action. In standing here today and listening to a lot of the debate, I note the discussion has been around protests. I have been in public life a long time. I have been the focus of many protests. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you may have had a few as a provincial politician. Let us not gloss over what was happening here in the streets of Ottawa and call it a protest, which all politicians and parliamentarians have faced over the years. People have the right to protest. They have the right to peaceful protest. As I indicated, I have been the focus of a number of them. I fully respect the right of citizens to protest and express their displeasure with the actions of government at any time. However, we have to do it in a peaceful format. We have to do it with respect. Let us be clear. What we have witnessed here in Ottawa is not a protest. Let us call it what it is: It is an unlawful occupation. It was meant to intimidate people and it was meant to intimidate parliamentarians. Anybody who wants to take the time to educate and familiarize themselves with the objectives of the leadership of this group should take pause for concern and reflection. That is what has been so disheartening about watching this over the last three weeks. What was disguised as a trucker's protest was hijacked by individuals with ulterior motives. They are available for anybody to see. This cannot be tolerated by any government or any parliamentarian. No individual or group of individuals have the right to so blatantly trample the rights of other individuals, as we have witnessed here in Ottawa over the past several weeks. It is fundamental that government protect the rights of all individuals, but to participate in an unlawful occupation chanting “freedom”, while at the same time having such a blatant disregard for the freedoms and the mental stability and well-being of our fellow citizens, is just wrong. We can look at the interviews with people here in Ottawa. People with disabilities have been traumatized, forced to stay in their own homes. They cannot get out as they are scared. That is not the peaceful protest that this country promotes and endorses. That is, as we have called it, an unlawful protest. We cannot diminish the significance of the difference between the protests that have occurred across this country and those that were intent on overthrowing a government. Anybody who wants to can take the time to look at the objectives of the organizers of this group, what they are doing, who was supporting them and who was funding them. All parliamentarians should be concerned. The government took the action required to bring this unlawful occupation under control. I want to acknowledge and commend the men and women serving in uniform who are ensuring the laws of this country are being upheld. What we are witnessing is the removal of an unlawful occupation by a professional police force in a democratic country. That is what is occurring on the streets of Ottawa today: a professional police force operating under the rule of law in a democratic country. That is why we elect Parliament and that is why we elect government. It is to give the authorities and legal tools necessary to ensure no individuals' rights are trampled on by a few championing that they are there to protect their freedoms. This debate will go on for a number of days, and it is interesting to listen to the various perspectives. I have been here for the last three weeks and I have watched it. In fact, I have witnessed some of the hate myself. When I was walking with my parliamentary assistant, he was told by a protester to go back to where he came from because he is brown. It was said in a very racist and harassing tone. My assistant has the same rights that I do because he is Canadian. We have to ensure that Parliament does not succumb to the hate that gets displayed by a few. We cannot champion it. Even by association, we cannot allow it to be legitimized as being right. That is why I am speaking today. The people I represent in Egmont make up a community that embraces respect, and they support one another. It is a population that is proud of Canada and supports the unity of this country. Something that has disturbed me over the last several weeks comes from watching one party. It was interesting. The combined failed leadership of the Conservative Party united with the interim leader of the Conservative Party, who united with the aspiring future leader of the Conservative Party, who by association was attempting to legitimize this unlawful protest. It was disturbing that the failed combined leadership of the Conservative Party, with the present leadership and the aspiring future leadership, by association, was attempting to legitimize this unlawful occupation. As a parliamentarian, I will always stand for the rule of law. I will always support legislation that protects the rights of individuals and does not allow any individual to claim their right to participate in an unlawful occupation while trampling over the rights of other individuals.

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Mrs. Rosemarie Falk (Battlefords—Lloydminster, CPC)

Feb/19/22 9:04:21 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to follow this debate and hear the justification Liberal members have to support this unprecedented government overreach through the Emergencies Act. What is interesting are the assumptions Liberals members, specifically, have about these protesters, and those assumptions kind of fall in line with everything the Prime Minister has accused the protestors of being, that being that they are all racist and misogynist. It is really unfortunate. We have also heard members recognize the fact that Canadians are tired of this pandemic. They are tired, and they want to see a light at the end of the tunnel. With the recognition that Canadians are tired of the pandemic and mandates, why did the hon. member vote against our motion last week for the government to table a plan so Canadians could see an end to the mandates and have hope?

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Mr. Robert Morrissey

Feb/19/22 9:05:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was very specific. I referenced the leadership of this unlawful protest, not the combination of people on the street. I voted against the motion by the Conservative Party because I will not support motions that are, and this may be unparliamentary, hypocritical. I am saying that because the majority of the mandates have been put in place by the provincial governments. Let me clear for the record. I support the mandates and the measures taken by the Government of Prince Edward Island under the leadership of Premier King. I did not have the benefit of the medical advice that he was given, but I assume he acted on that advice in the best interest of Islanders. That is why it will be in conjunction with provincial governments that these mandates will be eased.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Feb/19/22 9:06:41 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Egmont for his speech, which I would describe as quite constructive. His speech was much more constructive than those of many of his colleagues, who seem to want to spread propaganda. I can also say that one other member has been constructive, and that is the member for Hull—Aylmer. I encourage all Liberal government members to adopt that same attitude. I would like to ask the member the same question as the one my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles asked. Do the government MPs realize the consequences for people whose bank accounts have been frozen? I get the impression that the government is making all this up as it goes and has no answer to that question. It seems like the government cannot understand the consequences of the measures it has implemented. Could the member for Egmont enlighten me on that? If not, could he get back to me by Monday night?

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Mr. Robert Morrissey

Feb/19/22 9:07:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a parliamentarian, I will support all legislation that seeks out, terminates and uncovers illicit funds that are coming in from foreign bank accounts to create turmoil in a democratic country.

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Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Feb/19/22 9:07:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since this has been brewing, I have heard nothing but divisive language used in the House. It is like poking the beast of extremists. Leaders of this movement have ties to white nationalist movements, as we witnessed with some of those who were arrested yesterday, and they have hijacked movements for other purposes. Why did the government let this go on for so long? Why did the government allow it to get so out of control that we are seeing what is happening right now? I also wonder if my hon. colleague, now that we have witnessed police hugging extremists in some cases, feels it is necessary to do a public inquiry into policing in this country.

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Mr. Robert Morrissey

Feb/19/22 9:08:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the obvious answer is that there is due process. The government must follow due process. The primary police force was that of the City of Ottawa, with its municipal police force. Then it went to the Province of Ontario and then the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada followed that process until the situation was addressed by the Government of Ontario.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Feb/19/22 9:09:34 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Hamilton Centre. I am always proud to stand in the House. I am certainly not proud of where we are today as a nation, but I am proud to be here, because when we are facing a crisis of this nature, it is incumbent upon all of us to step up and address it so people can live in safety and the rule of law in maintained. How did we get here? Canada, with its traditional social solidarity, had among the lowest COVID deaths in the world, but when omicron hit us, and it hit us like a baseball bat, I think it threw us all. It caused us all a lot of psychological damage, yet in our region, I saw people lining up for boosters and vaccines. I saw volunteers and incredible social solidarity. How did it fall apart so quickly? We are at a time when restaurants are reopening, when children are back in school, and when my dear mother and daughter can plan to go off to some warm climate, which is something I have never done as I am not a warm-climate guy, but they could because our country is opening back up again. We are coming through one of the hardest moments of this pandemic because of our social solidarity, yet we have seen a total fracturing. As a New Democrat, I am willing to agree to measures to make this city safe, but New Democrats want a full public inquiry. We want an inquiry into the failure of the Ottawa police, the police board and the actions of the mayor to keep people safe, because we should never have been put in this situation. We need an inquiry to understand how it was that the Ambassador Bridge, a vital link to our nation, could be shut because people believe vaccine conspiracy theories. We also need an inquiry to look at the damage that was done to our economy. If we talk anyone in the auto sector, they will tell us that this damage will be long term. There needs to be inquiry. Just prior to this situation, I met with six people from the Attawapiskat first nation who came to give a peace message to the government. Security was on them in a second, yet these guys out front were able to set up their bouncy castles and block all the major intersections, and there was no effort to stop them. That is why we need an inquiry. We need answers, and Canadians need answers. In January, Canada's Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre said that there were “likely” extremists involved and that there was a “trigger point and opportunity for potential lone actor attackers to conduct a terrorism attack” out of this convey, which is not say that the people who were standing on the bridges were part of that. However, Canada's Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre recognized a danger of lone actors, so how was it that the people who came in with the trucks were invited right up onto Parliament Hill and allowed to park? Was that a security failure or was that collusion? I can tell members that there are trucks and other vehicles out there that just showed up for a protest and never thought they would ever get down here, yet they were put in a place outside of the Prime Minister's office. That needs to be assessed. We know that the U.S. Congress is demanding Facebook to now explain the mass rise of fake overseas accounts that were promoting the convoy and Russian disinformation. We will never hear about that from the Conservatives. How is it that we can fail in our country on basic issues of security? We need to assess these things, and this is why we need an inquiry. People need to know whether this response was an overreach or not. We need to know how it was possible that so much money, foreign money, was being funnelled through a right-wing account that was used in the January 6 attack. Any day of the week, I will say as a Canadian that I will stand up and make sure that dark money does not come into our country, and we need a law in place to make sure that accounts in the Cayman Islands are not directing political activities in the nation. That is not being partisan. That is our duty as politicians. I know some Conservatives find that very upsetting, but there is enough blame to go around. I blame the Prime Minister and his failure to stand up to give us a vision when we needed a vision. I blame Doug Ford, who was off snowmobiling and kept missing key security briefings. There is a lot of blame to go around, but I certainly blame the Conservatives, who seem to think there is a political advantage to promoting extremists. They are telling the Prime Minister of our country to meet with the leadership, a leadership that came to this capital with an MOU calling for the overthrow of a democratically elected government. How is it possible that we are at a point where it considered okay to go out and meet with people who want to overthrow the government? Who were those people, the people that the interim leader said we need to make this sustained and be a problem? Chris Barber, a vicious racist, likes truckers as long as they are white. He is one of those the interim leader said we were stigmatizing. Pat King singled me out for having the temerity to speak, as is my right, in the House. He is a man who talks about shooting the Prime Minister and shooting cops. Another one who the interim leader thought our Prime Minister should go out and meet is Tamara Lich, a woman dedicated to breaking up our country. No, I will not negotiate with people like that. They belong in the crowbar hotel. We need the rule of law. What I have seen over the last three weeks has been shameful. We should never have needed these tools. These tools should have been used by the city of Ottawa to do ticketing. They should have been used in a proper manner, as the city of Quebec did, as the city of Toronto did, but we are in a situation now where this has been allowed to metastasize. If the occupiers took over Thunder Bay or Red Deer, that would absolutely be local and provincial jurisdiction, but this is the nation's capital. We cannot be made to look like a failed state to the world, yet we cannot even manage to contain this. I talked earlier about my frustration with the failure of Ottawa police, but I look at the role the police have played over the last few days, and what we saw yesterday was policing at its best in this country. I know police officers who have come down from the north. I know friends from the Quebec side, from the Sûreté du Québec, who are here. This is a terrible situation. It is a national embarrassment that we are here, but we have to have an assurance that people can travel in this city. That buddy who has a big truck and has decided he is going to block a major intersection for three solid weeks has more rights than someone who works at Metropolitain, a restaurant that has been shut down, or the young women I know who was harassed and insulted. They say it is all peaceful. It is all peaceful for a white guy with an upside down Canadian flag on their back, but it is not for someone who is a resident of Centretown being harassed in the grocery store for wearing a mask, or being insulted and told to go back where they came from. I have seen this. Again, I blame the Ottawa police for not doing their job when they were supposed to, and I blame the mayor. It is our responsibility as legislators to say enough is enough. I want that inquiry. I want to know why the committee has not been struck. I want answers. I want to know that these tools will never be used against legitimate protests. We have to have answers. I hold the government to account for that. I hold the provincial government to account. As a legislator, I am ready to do my job to say the rule of law and the right of people to be safe in their own city has to be a sacrosanct responsibility for all of us.

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Hon. Greg Fergus (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the President of the Treasury Board, Lib.)

Feb/19/22 9:18:55 a.m.
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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?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Feb/19/22 9:19:23 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we need an inquiry, and it has to be an independent inquiry because what we have seen in this Parliament is the inability for members to step up and put the nation first, as opposed to local and partisan interests. That independent inquiry has to have the power to compel witness testimony, and we have never had any rules or connections at the civic level, but in Ottawa, yes, I want to hear about the failure of the City of Ottawa and what happened here. I want to know about what the Americans are asking about, about foreign overseas accounts that were flooding Facebook in the lead up to this. We need to know where that came from. We need to know how the dark money was used. We also need to be able to assess the claims that the government has made so that we are ensuring that there was not overreach, that the people who are charged were legitimately charged. There has to be oversight. I welcome the Civil Liberties Association saying it is taking this to court. We need oversight.

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Mr. Dan Albas (Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC)

Feb/19/22 9:20:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while I disagree with much of what the member has to say, he is absolutely right. It is a national embarrassment, because we have seen newspapers across the world and journalists documenting what has gone on, which is really a failure. It is a local policing issue that has gone out of control. What we are here to debate today is very simple. Does the House confirm the declaration made by the government regarding the Emergencies Act? I have concerns that the government has not justified it. In fact, this is supposed to be the nuclear option when a province is unable to carry out its duties. Policing is a provincial responsibility. Will the member be voting for the government or will he be voting against it?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Feb/19/22 9:21:30 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, but I think he mixed up his lead-up to the question and where he was going. The issue of oversight is fundamental. Has the government justified this? A committee is supposed to be struck and I want that committee to be struck. However, we are now in the middle of a major police operation, which I think even the Conservatives recognize. Actually, I withdraw that comment because I know the Conservatives are pretending that this is Tiananmen Square. What we have seen is that police are undertaking the rule of law with representation from all over our region—

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:22:05 a.m.
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We have a point of order from the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.

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Mr. Michael Barrett

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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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:22:29 a.m.
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I thank the member for that intervention. I think we should all try to work together on this and make sure that we do not inflame the situation more than we have to. The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Feb/19/22 9:22:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know I am deeply offending the member of the “boo hoo” generation over there for talking about their own Twitter feed, which is promoting that this is Tiananmen Square. What we are witnessing is a police action undertaken within the full sight of the media. We have the representation of police from across the region— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:23:01 a.m.
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Order. Let us go on to the next question. Question and comments, the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

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Mr. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas (Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ)

Feb/19/22 9:23:12 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my take-away from my colleague from Timmins—James Bay's speech is that he supports the Emergencies Act because there is a national crisis. Oddly enough, some former NDP MPs disagree. I would like to quote two former MPs, Svend Robinson and Erin Weir, whose statements appeared in an article published on February 18 in the National Post. Svend Robinson stated that the NDP caucus in 1970 under Tommy Douglas took a courageous and principled stand against the War Measures Act, and that today's NDP under the member for Burnaby South betrays that legacy and supports Liberals on the Emergencies Act. He says that it is shameful and that a very dangerous precedent is being set. Mr. Weir stated that it is disappointing to see the federal NDP today support the Emergencies Act when there really is not a national emergency as is settled in that legislation. I would like my colleague to think about this. My question is as follows. The NDP said that it might stop supporting the Emergencies Act, but only on the basis of various emotional criteria that we are still in the dark about. I would like my colleague to tell us what those criteria are.

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Feb/19/22 9:24:19 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have two things to say. First, I would like to thank the National Assembly of Quebec, which has offered its support to Ottawa residents by sending in the Sûreté du Québec and providing their expertise. I therefore thank Mr. Legault. The second point for my friend, who has not been here all that long, is that he missed a part. When Brian Mulroney's government brought in the Emergencies Act, the New Democrats said this: ...we are pleased that the Minister has brought forward a proposal to replace the War Measures Act.... [We] do not want to reopen old wounds. Instead, I hope this Bill as amended will complete the healing process. Yes, there is a difference between those acts.

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