44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 2:22:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for Humber River—Black Creek for her speech. I know she has been a big champion for many things throughout Parliament and her career, particularly the Canada-Taiwan organization, and I applaud her for that. She is now championing the issue of the Emergencies Act. The reality is, as she indicated, that this is throughout all of Canada and it is being put in place on everything.
Would the member champion the seizure of vehicles and the freezing of bank accounts of foreign-funded eco-terrorists responsible for the violence and destruction, and the millions of dollars in damage, to the Coastal GasLink? I hope she would champion that cause as well with her government, with the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/19/22 2:23:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things that I continue to be concerned about is the amount of violence that is happening throughout our country on different fronts for different reasons. Maybe some of it is the result of the pandemic and the stress on people. That is what I would like to think it is. Once we can get a bit further along with this pandemic, people will feel better. They will be calmer and they will find a more rational way of dealing with problems.
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- Feb/19/22 2:24:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to start by sharing a story. One of the earliest photos I remember of myself and my grandparents is from the mid- to late eighties. For background, my grandparents immigrated to Canada after World War II from Ukraine, and my grandmother survived the Holodomor, the famine genocide in 1932-33 when Joseph Stalin closed Ukraine's borders and confiscated all food to destroy millions of Ukrainians for opposing his rule. My grandfather risked his life on many occasions, because he was peacefully advocating for a free and democratic Ukraine.
In that photo I was mentioning, I am about nine or 10 years old and I am standing in front of the Ontario legislature, known as Queen's Park, along with my grandparents. At the time, we were asking that Canada and the international community stand up for the people of Ukraine and other countries that had been conquered by the Soviet Union, because their freedoms were being violated. People could be arrested for not speaking Russian, for holding a different political view or for suggesting that Ukraine should be a democracy or free.
That day, with my grandparents in front of Queen's Park, we were protesting for the freedom of millions of people. We actually did so on many occasions after that, and I have done so many times in my life. Despite the horrors my grandmother lived through, despite the horrors my grandfather's family was still living through back home, and despite the hurt, trauma and anger, on that day, and many other days afterward, my grandparents protested for freedom, but they always did so while respecting the freedoms of other Canadians.
I am sick of COVID restrictions, and so are many of my constituents. They have voiced that in many ways. They have sent me letters, they have sent emails, they have called me and I have spoken with them. Some of them have protested. I have always taken the time to listen and try to understand their perspectives. Often, constituents help me understand issues better. They offer solutions and they point out better ways for government to proceed, and I welcome that. That is what makes me a better representative, and that is how we make our country better, but those constituents I am talking about, just like my grandparents, have voiced their concerns while respecting the freedom of others.
Peaceful protest is the right of every Canadian. We have the right to be heard, to communicate our views and to say anything we want, as long as we abide by the law, because the law protects the freedoms of others. These blockades are not respecting the rights and freedoms of others. They are violating the law and doing harm to so many Canadians in many ways.
They have threatened the safety of Canadians and the welfare of our communities. We have heard stories throughout this debate about what this has done to the people of Ottawa. They have done great harm to our economy and the livelihoods of so many Canadians, especially with the blockades at the border crossings. They risk impacting our economy in the years to come by undermining the confidence of our trading partners, who we are trying to convince that Canada is a good place to invest. Canada is a great place to trade with, yet our borders are being blockaded and trade is being prevented from happening. They have undermined the rule of law and they risk undermining confidence in our laws and institutions, which are designed to protect our rights and freedoms.
These blockades and occupations are having tremendous consequences for our economy and for our democracy, and that is why these blockades have to end.
I believe the Emergencies Act powers are needed to stop the blockades, and I want to share why. It is abundantly clear that we do not have to be law enforcement experts to know that local law enforcement has been unable to enforce the law and clear the blockades, especially here in Ottawa. That is very clear.
Let us talk about what the Emergencies Act does, and then why I believe it is necessary. What does the Emergencies Act actually do? This is not the War Measures Act. This is not calling in the military. To suggest those things is not to be truthful with Canadians. What the Emergencies Act actually does is allow the RCMP to enforce local and municipal laws, which it previously could not. It allows the federal government to mobilize essential services such as tow trucks. That is what my colleagues have spoken about. It provides new authorities to law enforcement to prohibit blockades and keep essential infrastructure open, such as border crossings. It provides powers to stop the flow of money that is supporting illegal activity such as the blockades.
Under these powers, the government is doing a few things. It is providing direction so accounts that are supporting blockades can be frozen, and vehicle insurance is revoked.
It is broadening Canada's anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they can cover crowdfunding platforms such as cryptocurrency. Originally, the blockades were being funded through conventional means, and then they went to cryptocurrency. Why? Because that is harder to track. The government wants to make sure it can track that and stop that. It provides the ability to authorize banks to cease providing financial services when a person is using their account to fund illegal activity.
These are the kinds of things that the Emergencies Act is doing.
Experts have said that it is critical to clear the blockades. It is critical that we have the RCMP able to enforce local law, because the act provides the ability for multiple law enforcement agencies to come together really quickly, as we are seeing right now in Ottawa on the street.
The act provides the ability to compel tow truck drivers to tow vehicles. We need to be able to do that to clear these blockades, and we were not able to before.
It provides the ability to ensure that certain infrastructure can remain open, such as border crossings, and to ensure that the people who are blockading know that they will face penalties. If they know that their accounts will be frozen, they know they will face a penalty and that there is a consequence to their illegal behaviour. That is important.
It is an important measure to enforce the law, to ensure that we stop the blockades, and to ensure that money supporting the blockades ceases to flow.
These are all things that are under the Emergencies Act. This is what the Emergencies Act is doing. These are the specific steps.
There is no doubt that these measures I have just mentioned have helped to clear the blockades at the borders and in Ottawa. We do not have to take my word for it. Chief Bell in Ottawa, and multiple police chiefs and security experts, have repeatedly said today and in recent days that we would not be able to clear the blockades if it were not for the measures in the Emergencies Act. The Emergencies Act powers are clearly needed to enforce the law, to stop the blockades and to protect Canadians' freedoms.
Some have said that this is overreach: that this is the War Measures Act. Let us be clear. This does not involve the military. In fact, the military cannot be called in under this act. It is a completely separate act called the National Defence Act, which is required if we want to call in the military. That is the first point.
The second point is that the declaration is for a limited time. It is for 30 days, and I know the government would really like to be able to remove its invocation even sooner than that if it can. The scope of these measures is geographically targeted. It is about specific infrastructure. It is about specific locations we are trying to protect, and the act is always subject to the Charter of Rights. We cannot argue that this is a violation of people's rights or freedoms if the Charter of Rights is supreme to the act. Everything that happens under the act must be subservient to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is where our freedoms and rights are enshrined and protected. It conforms with that. It protects our rights.
We are having this debate in Parliament because it is required in the act, so there is that accountability mechanism. There will be a parliamentary committee struck to provide oversight. When the measures expire, the act requires a public inquiry to examine its invocation. There is a lot of transparency and a lot of accountability, so that Canadians and MPs can assess the implementation of the act and make sure it was done for the right reasons and in the right way.
I started my remarks by talking about my grandparents and how they taught me to advocate for freedom but always to respect the freedom of others, to respect the freedoms of Canadians, while doing so. These blockades have not done that. They have threatened the safety of Canadians and the welfare of communities. They have done massive harm to our economy, hundreds of millions of dollars every day, and harm to the livelihoods of Canadians. People have lost their jobs. They have lost their businesses. These blockades risk impacting our economy in the years to come by undermining the confidence of our trading partners, especially the U.S. They have undermined the rule of law. They risk undermining confidence in our laws and institutions, which are here to protect our freedoms and our rights. These blockades, and these occupations, are not respecting the freedoms of Canadians.
I support the invocation of the Emergencies Act in this case. We cannot allow these illegal and dangerous blockades to continue. I believe it is necessary to keep Canadians safe, to protect our economy in the short and long term and to restore public order.
It is limited in time, its scope is proportionate and it is subject to oversight and accountability by MPs of all parties.
Just as my grandfather or grandmother would have said if they were here, it is what is necessary to protect our economy, our democracy and our freedom.
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- Feb/19/22 2:34:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the point here comes down to one fundamental issue, which is that the test, or the threshold, for invoking the Emergencies Act requires that situations such as this cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law in Canada.
I heard the member comment a little about that. He said that the Ottawa police could not deal with the situation, but from all accounts and reports, that really came down to a matter of resourcing and not the actual law.
Experts have said that the Criminal Code of Canada specifically provides the powers that the police need to deal with the situation.
In light of that, why does the hon. member think that the threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act has been met?
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- Feb/19/22 2:35:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Emergencies Act has been critical in supporting what is happening in Ottawa today and, frankly, in clearing blockades at the border crossings over the last number of days. I say that because there are a number of measures in the Emergencies Act that give the police powers they did not have before, such as cutting off funding for the blockades, ensuring that people who are blockading a border crossing or in Ottawa know that their accounts can be frozen, and making sure that the RCMP can enforce local laws. We could not have otherwise provided the resources the member is talking about in the time needed and the amounts needed to clear these blockades. The Emergencies Act is helping in Ottawa and it has helped at the border crossings.
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- Feb/19/22 2:35:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his wonderful and heartfelt speech. He shared some rather personal stories and I thank him for that.
However, there is a police operation that has been happening right before our eyes on Wellington since yesterday morning. We can watch what is going on on television, and it reminds me a lot of the images I was seeing last weekend at the Ambassador Bridge. Police officers there were able to control the situation without the Emergencies Act.
We are very reluctant to support the use of this act because we fear that it sets a dangerous precedent. The government could have used some other tools in its tool box before opting for the measure of last resort.
Does my colleague worry that this creates a dangerous precedent?
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- Feb/19/22 2:36:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.
First, I would say that I am not worried about setting a precedent because the act, as written, ensures that MPs and Canadians can scrutinize how the act was used. There are protections in the act to ensure it is not used if it is not necessary.
Second, Windsor was an exception. With other border crossing blockades, the act helped the police put an end to them, partly by cutting off funding.
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- Feb/19/22 2:37:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to thank everybody working in the House who is allowing us to do our jobs as members of Parliament.
I appreciate my hon. colleague's intervention. I know it is really difficult to share, especially traumatic histories about family, so I want to honour that.
I want to talk about extremism. We know that people were struggling before the pandemic. We also know that since the pandemic, people have been struggling even more, feeling despair and alienation. When people are not looked after, it is fuel for the fire in the rise of extremist and anti-democratic movements.
I wonder if the hon. member agrees with me that more support needs to be provided to people in Canada to avoid these extremist movements from rising.
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- Feb/19/22 2:38:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her words.
We have done a tremendous amount of work, but we have a lot more work to do. There are members on duty today who have led a lot of that work. Many members have worked very hard to address extremism in this country, and I look forward to working with them and others on all sides of the House to make sure that we do so.
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- Feb/19/22 2:39:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not think I have ever felt more compelled to add my voice to a debate in the chamber than I do in this debate about the invocation of the Emergencies Act. I am going to start by making a number of things very clear to the people listening, including my constituents. They might want to know where I stand on a number of issues that cannot be separated from this debate.
I am proud to belong to a party that has always stood for both law and order. At no point have I condoned, encouraged or made excuses or apologies for unlawful conduct. I was appalled by the border blockades that immediately harmed the economy and brought into question Canada's core competence as a sovereign country able to control and secure its own borders. I was horrified by the violent attack on workers at the Coastal GasLink pipeline two days ago that resulted in injured police, terrorized workers, millions in property damage and barely a peep out of the federal government, or the press gallery, for that matter.
I was elected on a platform that would make it an offence to block critical infrastructure like highways, railways, ports, pipelines and border facilities. I stand by that. I believe in prudent and reasonable public health measures, especially during a pandemic, but not inflexible mandates. I stand today in the House of Commons opposed to the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the order that the government has made pursuant to the act. I oppose the invocation because it fails the tests set out in the law, because it sets a terrible precedent for future governments and because the current government in particular cannot be trusted with the powers that it would grant itself.
The first reason is simple. The present situation clearly does not meet the tests set out in the act. The government has declared a public order emergency. The act itself defines a public order emergency as follows:
an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada and that is so serious as to be a national emergency
This definition was always understood to mean war, widespread deadly violence, insurrection or threats to Canada's sovereignty.
What was the situation when this order was invoked last Monday? It is certainly true that there had been blockades at border crossings and partially blocked streets in and around the parliamentary precinct here in Ottawa. However, by the time the order was made, conventional policing was prevailing at the border crossings. Arrests with serious charges had been laid in Coutts, and others left peacefully of their own accord. The Ambassador Bridge was also cleared peacefully. Let me pause and commend the police, who successfully ended these blockades with no injuries, no damage to property and no violence with existing powers and solid police professionalism.
Given that the border blockades were resolved without additional powers granted under this act, and the downtown Ottawa situation was all that remained, did the situation in Ottawa really meet the test of a national emergency? Make no mistake. Laws were broken, and people who live and work in the Ottawa core were harmed by traffic disruptions, noise and reported incidents of harassment. However, was this a national emergency, a threat to the security of Canada and one that could not be solved using existing laws and conventional policing methods?
I arrived in Ottawa the day the convoy arrived. I have been here for all but one day since. I have walked through and among the trucks and the demonstrators every day to and from my apartment, this chamber and my office across the street. There was clearly and obviously a breakdown of law enforcement. That is clear and obvious to all, but I did not see a national emergency. There was a downtown Ottawa emergency, perhaps, but a national emergency is an emergency that threatens 38 million Canadians. This emergency did not even prevent MPs from working right in the middle of it. A former member of Parliament, Erin Weir, perhaps summed it quite nicely when he said, “The only element of the protest that may have been a national emergency was the blockade in Windsor”. However, the police reopened that bridge on Sunday night without the federal Emergencies Act.
The second reason I oppose the invocation of the Emergencies Act is for the terrible precedent that it would set, or has set, really. This law has been on the books since 1988 and has never been invoked until now. There have been many threats to public safety and security during that time, yet no government has ever reached for the powers under this act: not during the Oka crisis, not after September 11, 2001, not during the dangerous and paralyzing highway and railway blockades two years ago and not during the COVID crisis. However, this invocation is going to be the bar set for future governments.
We now know how the Prime Minister feels about those who disagree with his federal policy of mandatory vaccinations. We know how he lumped together all those with whom he disagreed and called them racists, misogynists, anti-science and a fringe element; talked about how they should not be tolerated; and complained about how they take up space. He did this during an election, when he cynically did everything he could to divide Canadians and weaponize the pandemic and vaccines. However, now he has invoked the Emergencies Act in response to a protest, and hardly the first protest that has taken place since this law came into effect in 1988, or even since 2015 when this government came to power or even since 2020. However, this protest is being conducted by those whose views are abhorrent to the Prime Minister. These protesters are people the Prime Minister has systematically demonized, vilified, stigmatized and scapegoated since he made the cynical self-serving decision to do so during the last election. Now this is going to be the bar set for future use of this act. Every future Prime Minister will have this precedent for using the act as a tool against citizens who hold opposing views.
This brings me to the third reason why I will oppose this motion. The tools contained in this order are so ill-defined and draconian and so utterly out of proportion to the situation at hand that they simply cannot be supported. This order, among other things, immediately orders banks to seize the accounts of anyone affiliated with the blockade and to do so without a court order. Thousands of Canadians who disagree with the government have given financial support to this protest, and many likely did so before any laws were broken. These Canadians are now left to wonder exactly what constitutes the phrase “being used to further the illegal blockades”
Is this really to be the new way that governments in Canada deal with protesters? Are we to become a country where governments say the legal system is really inconvenient and time consuming so let's just keep it simple? That is not Canada. No government present or future should deal with a breakdown of law enforcement at a local level with suspension of legal process, and certainly not over something as politically charged as dealing with a group of people who have been deliberately alienated not just from their government but by they their government itself.
Before we take any comfort from the government's assurance that its members will not misuse the powers they are granting themselves, let us remember what kind of government we are dealing with. We are dealing with a government whose members have been repeatedly sanctioned by the Ethics Commissioner for conflicts of interest, and with a Prime Minister who tried to interfere in a criminal prosecution by creating a new law to get a corrupt company off the hook and who then fired his attorney general, who refused to be complicit. This is a government that tried to give itself unlimited taxing and spending power at the beginning of the pandemic, a government that has tried to control, through regulation, what Canadians post online and a government that has defied court orders of this chamber. We are talking about a government that wanted to receive private banking information and is now seeking a partner from which to track mobility data. I would not want to give the government the extraordinary power that it seeks. Its appetite for power and control and its failure to comply with the law are simply too well established.
To conclude, there is no justification for this act. The emergency is local and does not require additional powers.
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- Feb/19/22 2:49:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard the member reference some quotes from parliamentarians, so I will reference quotes from a couple of parliamentarians too. The member might remember Peter MacKay, a Conservative minister, and Vernon White, a senator. They said, “But what we have seen in the occupation of Ottawa and blockages at border crossings is not the right of protest enshrined in our constitution, but illegal activity that represents a national security and economic threat to Canada.” Vernon White later went on to say on CBC, “I support [the Emergencies Act]. I felt we were at a point of no return.”
Why does the member disagree with these Conservatives? Is it because what we have across the way is really the Reform Party?
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- Feb/19/22 2:50:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was watching the debate earlier in the day, and I must say the level and quality of debate we had in the chamber was much better before the member for Kingston and the Islands came—
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- Feb/19/22 2:50:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, notwithstanding the fact that I take exception to his comment and I think it is inappropriate to say in the House, the member would know he should not be referencing my presence in the House at any time, whether I was here or not here.
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- Feb/19/22 2:50:51 p.m.
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The member cannot say if another member is or is not in the House, according to the rules.
The hon. member for Calgary Rocky Ridge.
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- Feb/19/22 2:51:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly would not refer to the presence or absence of a member in the House, but from the time that the member began to rise and engage in debate, the civility and the quality of the debate certainly took a turn for the worse. Carrying on—
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- Feb/19/22 2:51:25 p.m.
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Thank you. That should finish that point of order for the moment.
We are still on the answer to the original question put to the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge.
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- Feb/19/22 2:51:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will answer his question by saying that I agree with the premise but not the conclusion of some of the remarks that he quoted.
I would agree that there is a very serious situation of unlawful acts that required a response. I disagree that it required this response.
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- Feb/19/22 2:52:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with what my colleague from Calgary Rocky Ridge said. I understand why he rejects this law.
If this act was not the answer, what was? Was it leadership? Was it vision? Was it a law?
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- Feb/19/22 2:52:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have had an absence of leadership in Canada under the Prime Minister all the way around.
I recall the remarks from the member for Louis-Hébert, who pointed out the extent to which this government made a deliberate choice to pit Canadians against each other long before this current crisis. One really must connect these two events. There is tremendous responsibility with the Prime Minister for the discord throughout our country.
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- Feb/19/22 2:53:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I represent the Ambassador Bridge area, with 40% of Canada's daily trade with the United States.
I can assure the member that the Conservative Party's talking points are not correct. The Ambassador Bridge is open to a degree of normalcy, but at the same time, the barriers, like they are in Ottawa, are now throughout the community, blocking us from businesses, blocking children from getting to appointments, including medical appointments, and causing a series of different problems.
Right now city of Windsor residents are on the hook for over $10 million. We will continue to pay for that because the OPP, the RCMP and the City of Windsor are still protecting 14 kilometres of the 401 system. What is the Conservative Party's position? Will it support, provincially and federally, paying this bill and continuing to pay this bill?
What is it going to do in regard to convoys? A couple more convoys coming into the area have already been intercepted, and the threat there continues to exist—
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