44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 20, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/20/22 8:53:37 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to start by noting I will be sharing my time with the member for Halifax.
I appreciate the opportunity to take part in today's critically important debate at a difficult time for our country. It is difficult because it pains me to see the lengths that those who descended upon Ottawa and our border crossings across the country, and those who sympathized with them, felt they needed to go just to have their voices heard. It pains me to see the response that was necessary to restore order in our country.
For three weeks the occupation of Ottawa's downtown core has forced businesses to close, putting thousands out of work. It has restricted the movement of essential workers and goods and has threatened the health and safety of the city's residents. Since the blockades began at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, over $390 million in daily trade with Canada's largest and most important trading partner has been adversely affected.
Border blockades have stretched as far away as the Pacific truck crossing here in B.C., causing significant damage to our supply chains and our economy, and even reconstituted yesterday. As the Deputy Prime Minister has made clear, these costs are real. They threaten businesses big and small, and they threaten the livelihoods of Canadian workers just as they are working hard to recover from the economic damage caused by COVID. They also threaten our reputation as a reliable trading partner. Clearly, this is unacceptable.
These illegal blockades and occupations are not just a threat to our economy. The leaders of these activities are not just calling for their voices to be heard. They are calling for Canada's recently democratically elected government to be overthrown through threats of violence and coercion and by holding our cities and our supply chains hostage through illegal activities that rob fellow citizens of their rights.
The leaders of these protests are supported by a vast, coordinated and well-financed international network of disinformation that is seeking to sow doubt in our country's institutions, in independent media and in science. It is a network involving the alt-right that promotes xenophobic and racist views that, despite our hopes that Canada was immune from it, presents a real and present threat to our democratic institutions.
It is a coordinated effort to use mistruths and half-truths to misrepresent constantly evolving scientific evidence as a reason to attack and discredit expert opinion. It pains me to think that in Canada we are talking about fake news, yet here we are. This coordinated effort has exploited the very real frustration that we all feel having lived through this pandemic for two whole years. It has exploited people's legitimate desires to gather, let loose and enjoy the company of others by using conspiracy theories that scapegoat the Prime Minister, governments, experts, the media and shadow elites, rather than recognizing that we all face one common enemy: the virus.
I do not want to paint all the people who have attended these protests or those who sympathize with them with the same brush. I have spoken to many who have legitimate concerns and see this as an opportunity to express the frustration that we all feel. Coming to Parliament to make our voices heard in peaceful protest is a sacred right that we all must protect. I want to assure the folks that have reached out to me by phone, email and social media that they have been heard. What we are debating here today is not about silencing their voices, but rather re-establishing order and restoring freedoms to those who have had them taken away.
To the measure at hand, on February 14, the Government of Canada appropriately declared a public order emergency. This order is effectively and peacefully putting an end to these illegal acts. Make no mistake. This is an extraordinary and unprecedented measure that was invoked in the context of ongoing border blockades, which became necessary after weeks of impasse with the occupation in Ottawa and after all other measures had been exhausted. It comes after occupiers had been directed to leave for weeks, after additional resources were provided to the police of local jurisdiction and after coordinated efforts of law enforcement were not able to rectify a solution nor remove the illegal blockade in Ottawa.
This is not the first resort and it has not been used lightly. Contrary to what many believe, it does not suspend the application of our rights and freedoms. This act is replete with checks and balances to ensure it is not abused. This is an, at most, 30-day time-limited measure overseen by a committee of parliamentarians that is proportional, targeted and will be followed by an inquiry. It can also be revoked by Parliament at any time, and it is our duty to ensure that these powers are used prudently and only so long as they are needed.
The measures being implemented allow the temporary designation of secure areas to prevent blockades, allow for the freezing of accounts of those financing illegal activities and other assets used in the furtherance of these illegal activities, allow the RCMP to enforce local bylaws, bring law enforcement capabilities from across the country to bear and importantly enable the government to commandeer tow trucks to finally move the blockade. This is precisely what we have seen happen in the last week.
We have heard from the opposition that these powers are not necessary, so I want to quote the interim Ottawa police chief. He said, on Friday, “Without the authorities that have been provided to us through these pieces of legislation, we wouldn't be able to be doing the work we are today.” I want to thank law enforcement for their professional work to carry out this operation, largely safely, and the vast majority of the protesters who eschewed violence and went home peacefully. I also want to thank members of the media for putting themselves in harm's way to cover the events of the past few days in the face of so much abuse.
I have had constituents question whether there was, in fact, a public order emergency, as the act requires to trigger this measure, so I want to touch on that briefly. The Emergencies Act states that the threshold that must be met is a reasonable belief that a public order emergency exists. Public order emergencies are defined as serious threats to the security of Canada, and such threats are defined by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act as including:
foreign influenced activities...that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person
threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective within Canada
activities directed toward undermining by covert unlawful acts...to lead to the destruction or overthrow by violence of, the constitutionally established system of government in Canada
We know that over half the donations made in furtherance of these illegal blockades came from international sources, thousands of which funded the January 6 insurrection in Washington. Also, there have been serious threats and destructive acts to individuals and businesses in Ottawa, and the stated purpose of this enterprise was to overthrow the government. Therefore, from my reading, this threshold is clearly met.
Many have raised concerns about the precedent that using this act presents, and while this act must always be used sparingly, I believe it is warranted in this situation for the reasons I mentioned before. I would also counter that we need to be similarly concerned with the precedent that would be set if we did not act. The precedent would be allowing an openly seditious movement to be legitimized, and to legitimize the methods of blockading critical infrastructure and of seeking to hold cities hostage for weeks on end with the goal of forcing a change in government policy or of the government itself.
I would agree we should never have ended up at this point. We should not have had to resort to the Emergencies Act, but here we are. The last few weeks have revealed vulnerabilities in our law enforcement system, and it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to learn from these illegal blockades, and who and what was behind them, to take remedial action and to take seriously the threat that misinformation and foreign influence pose to our democracy. If we can do that, we will ensure that tools, systems and protocols are in place to prevent similar situations from occurring without the need to invoke the Emergencies Act, as we must do now.
I also want to clarify a distinction and misinterpretation that sits at the heart of these illegal activities, and that is the idea of freedom. Freedom cannot be absolute in a free and democratic society. Freedom is not a form of unbridled licence to do whatever we want regardless of how it harms others. Personal freedoms must be limited when they take away the freedoms of others. The flip side of personal rights and freedoms is societal obligations and responsibilities. They must be balanced with the rights and freedoms of others. That is how a democratic society functions, and that is why these blockades must end.
Political protest is protected by our charter right to freedom of expression, but there is no right in this country to block critical infrastructure, to harass fellow Canadians, to vandalize businesses and homes, to defecate in the streets, to saddle others with the cost of policing these actions or to saddle our country with billions of dollars in economic losses from illegal blockades. None of these aforementioned acts can ever be considered a legitimate form of expression.
I have to say that I have been embarrassed by what I have seen in Canada over the last month, from the hateful symbols we have seen in public and hateful political rhetoric to the horrible messages my staff, many of my hon. colleagues and I have been receiving. We need to be civil. We need to be better. We need to be able to truly listen to the ideas that differ from our own without pointing fingers and calling each other names. As elected representatives of Canadians, that starts in this House.
With that, I look forward to questions from my hon. friends.
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- Feb/20/22 9:04:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not want to comment on the ongoing investigations right now, but what I will say is that the freedom convoy's stated purpose was to do just that, to overthrow the democratically elected government that we are all honoured to sit in today. Those ideas and that intent were made very clear from the beginning, but I will not comment on the ongoing investigations that may be taking place right now.
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- Feb/20/22 9:05:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. neighbour, the member for North Island—Powell River, for her very important question, which is also to point of the member opposite who asked the previous question.
Certainly not all those who are involved in these debates hold those views, but we need to be very careful that those views are not normalized within Canada, that seeing swastikas and Confederate flags is not normalized and kind of swept under the rug as being just the acts of a few folks. We need to be very vigilant on this point, as I mentioned in my speech earlier, and the real threat that it could pose to our society if it becomes normalized. I completely agree with the comments and suggestions of the member.
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- Feb/20/22 9:07:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.
I do not want us to have to use these measures for long. In fact, we cannot use them for more than 30 days. However, we have already seen the impact they had on downtown Ottawa and elsewhere in the country. Investigations are already under way.
I look forward to seeing the response from the Minister of Public Safety. We must not put these measures in place if they are not necessary.
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- Feb/20/22 9:08:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think we all need to be very careful about what we say in this House and what we say in public. I mentioned in my speech that we do not want to be calling people names and we do not want to be pointing fingers, and that is the responsibility that we all need to take to heart to make sure that we are doing better, because we are setting an example for Canadians. We are here to represent Canadians, and that is a responsibility we need to take very seriously.
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