44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Feb/28/22 1:21:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will be able to get past all the partisanship and get the committee under way.
There is something that my colleague did not address but that I believe is important. I saw a certain complacency toward the protesters among some Conservative members, in particular my colleague from Carleton. I would like to know whether my colleague thinks that this complacency should be looked into by the committee.
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- Feb/28/22 1:21:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is the government's actions that should be held to account here. It is the government that decided to invoke the Emergencies Act. We need to find out what thresholds were met. We also need to understand, as I said, that there is a strong level of anger and anxiety that exists and that it has manifested across this country because of what people have been dealing with over the last two years. What we saw in Ottawa is the same thing we are seeing in Barrie—Innisfil and in other parts of the country.
We need to look at not only the manifestation of what has gone on, but also the government's actions. It is the one that invoked the Emergencies Act. The government is the one that has to justify it and be accountable for this. That is where the focus should be, in my opinion.
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- Feb/28/22 1:23:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the government House leader and his suggestion about the use of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. I sat on that committee when Chris Charlton, an NDP member, and former senator Bob Runciman were the co-chairs. It worked really well under the independent counsel of Peter Bernhardt.
We learned at that committee the definition of SOR, or statutory orders and regulations. In those regulations that are referred to the committee, we see questions: Does the government have the authority to invoke those regulations or orders? Does the government follow the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, among others? Does it execute and not over-exercise its power?
In the emergencies order, I believe the government did not meet the threshold. Having a committee like the scrutiny of regulations committee would be an excellent suggestion. Why does the member believe the government has rejected that suggestion?
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- Feb/28/22 1:24:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. I made that point during my speech.
I believe that the scrutiny of regulations committee is purpose built for many of the reasons the hon. member stated and many more within its mandate. It could have been constituted easily because it is already an existing committee of Parliament. There might have been some moving parts and pieces in terms of members. However, it could have been up to us or the government side to determine that.
Why does the government not want the scrutiny of regulations committee? I think it is because it does not fit the narrative. It wants to vilify Conservatives as somehow being mean-spirited, and it wants to demonize us for our actions of simply listening to our constituents and listening to Canadians. It does not fit the government's narrative.
Developing and creating a committee that undermines the purpose of this committee is, quite frankly, the purpose of what the government is proposing.
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- Feb/28/22 1:25:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, very quickly, the Prime Minister and the government recognized, right from the outset of the proclamation for the Emergencies Act, that accountability and transparency were important. That is why the Prime Minister made reference to the committee we are talking about and the inquiry that follows.
Would the member not recognize that all of us have a responsibility to be held, to a certain degree, to task? We are recognizing that what we are trying to do here is say that we have two opposition parties, one opposed and one in favour. The objection is no to the government and no to the official opposition, primarily because of other actions that I do not have the time to expand on at this point.
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- Feb/28/22 1:26:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let me start by saying that the Prime Minister did not even have the courtesy of introducing the Emergencies Act within our symbol of democracy, which again shows contempt for our institutions. We have seen this pattern of contempt continue throughout the six and a half years of the government.
The other thing I would say is that what we are proposing in our amendment, to have a Liberal member from the House and a Conservative member from the Senate, is a reasonable proposal. It is just as reasonable as our scrutiny of regulations proposal was at the beginning of these discussions, which leads us to the hammer being dropped today.
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- Feb/28/22 1:26:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the hon. member for La Prairie.
Today, we are being asked to speak to a motion aimed at creating a joint parliamentary review committee of the House of Commons and the Senate to meet our obligations under subsection 62(1) of the Emergencies Act. There appears to be a consensus on the need for such a committee, and the broad terms of its composition and mandate are defined in the act. Under the circumstances, I am tempted to say that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the motion and to thank the government for its good intentions.
However, I understand that my colleagues in the other parties intend to debate the issue in order to justify their vision of who should appointed to the committee and who should or should not serve as chair and vice-chair. To be frank, as long as the proportion of members of each party in the House is reflected in the composition of the committee, this is not really an issue for the Bloc Québécois.
I will say, however, that the Bloc Québécois is extremely interested in how the committee will carry out its mandate, and that we believe that this exercise is crucial.
We live in a world that is constantly and rapidly changing. These last few years, the news has kept us tense, concerned and worried about the way our leaders were responding. Whether we are talking about the pandemic or, more recently, the war that just started in Ukraine, governments in every country have had to react and offer the people they govern a reasonable and effective position and response in line with their values and interests.
Unfortunately, one crisis often led to another, to which governments also had to respond. Some governments are criticized for being too soft, others for being intransigent, and still others for their lack of boldness and imagination. Although most of this criticism is constructive, it can get aggressive at times and can even degenerate into social disruption, which then leads to its own crisis that also requires a response.
One thing is certain. The modern era has its share of unusual challenges that will force us to find unusual solutions. This means going off the beaten path, but each step will require vigilance and prudence.
For the purposes of this debate, although it is obviously a concern, let us set aside the war in Ukraine for a moment and focus on the mandate of the committee we are creating. We must look at the protests that some people justified by saying they were the direct result of the measures taken by the authorities in response to the health crisis facing the entire world, namely the COVID-19 pandemic.
The crisis caused by the pandemic forced the authorities to impose health measures with which not everyone complied. That is obviously normal. Some people wanted to express their disagreement in our streets, in front of public buildings, and that is also obviously normal. It is a legitimate exercise of the rights and freedoms recognized by all our governments, in both Quebec and the rest of Canada.
Unfortunately, some people took advantage of the situation to organize unacceptable and sometimes even dangerous protests that had to be contained. That is when the federal government decided to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to the protests caused by the health measures, which had themselves been adopted in response to the pandemic.
Was it necessary, appropriate or useful? That is what we have to decide. This soul-searching is unavoidable and essential, because we cannot forget that the Emergencies Act is the heavy artillery of the federal government's legislative arsenal. This is the act that would give us the power to implement the measures needed to respond to an international crisis or a state of war. Think about it.
The global COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine were not enough of a concern for our government to invoke the Emergencies Act, but the protests in recent weeks were.
The committee should therefore review the exercise of powers pursuant to the proclamation of emergency measures on February 14, which was confirmed by the House on the evening of Monday, February 21, before being revoked less than 48 hours later on Wednesday, February 23.
What happened to this major proclamation? How did we use the tools it provided us? Did we abuse those tools? Did we leave any of them unused?
What can we say today about the results it delivered? Was the proclamation useful or not? Is it possible that it was actually detrimental to the interests of the government and its citizens?
This is a rare and extremely important mandate, as rare and important as a proclamation of emergency measures should be. We must therefore conduct a thorough and exhaustive analysis.
We owe it to our fellow Quebeckers and Canadians. We owe it to future generations, since, even though we hope it will not happen, there will very probably be other crises that could give rise to such a declaration in the near or distant future, such as disasters, states of emergency, international crises, even war. Future leaders will undoubtedly look to past precedents. What conclusions will they draw? What will we inspire them to do?
That is for us to decide today. It goes without saying that the committee will have to work with all due seriousness and diligence. The Bloc Québécois hopes that the work will begin immediately and that all of the resources needed for the committee to carry out its important mission will be made available without delay.
It will have to hear from witnesses. Will it face obstructions like the ones we experienced last year?
The committee will also need access to all of the relevant documents, legal opinions, and minutes of cabinet discussions and meetings. Will government officials co-operate?
These questions are of more concern to me than who sits on the committee. I am eager to hear the answers. With all due respect, dear colleagues, I encourage us to work effectively and collaboratively.
Now, let us get to work.
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- Feb/28/22 1:35:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member fully when he says “let's get to work”. This is something we very much want to see happen. It is within the legislation that this standing committee is required. How much weight, for example, will the standing committee give to the RCMP commissioner, who talked about the benefits of having this tool, or the interim Ottawa chief of police, who used this tool virtually immediately from the moment in which it was proclaimed, or very close to that?
It is important that once the committee gets together, it assigns the appropriate amount of weight so that as legislators we can look at ways in which we can improve upon the system. I am wondering if the member could provide his thoughts. This process should enable us to improve the system going forward. Would he not agree?
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- Feb/28/22 1:36:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his question, and I share his concern.
I too am confident that the committee will give due weight to each position. It will study documents and hear witnesses. The value of one person’s testimony should not be tainted by the value of another person’s testimony. We can get the job done. However, it has to start now.
I understand my colleague’s concern. Although I know that it is not up to him to answer my questions, I am tempted to ask whether he can commit on behalf of his government to co-operate with the committee, since that is my concern. Will the committee get the documents? Will it have access to the Prime Minister and the ministers responsible when it wants to question them?
That is our main concern. However, I fully agree with my hon. colleague that due weight must be given to every person involved.
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- Feb/28/22 1:37:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. We need to create this committee soon.
I know there has been an issue of public and private information that becomes available to the committee, and how much should be public and how much should be private.
I know the member has expertise in this field. I am interested to know, as we move forward, what sort of criteria he would be looking for on public information to made public and private information to be made private. I think it is a fair question.
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- Feb/28/22 1:37:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his excellent question. I think that the committee’s mandate is exceptional, as I mentioned in my opening speech, since I do not think we have had the occasion to study the use of the Emergencies Act very often in the House.
Since world events have been pressing upon us week after week in the past two years, I am convinced that future members of the House will look back in a few years on what we did. We need to send them the right message. Yes, we will need all the information, because the committee’s report will probably be studied for many years to come.
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- Feb/28/22 1:38:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is consensus among three of the four parties recognized in the House, as well as among most groups in the Senate. It seems to me that we could have adopted this motion by unanimous consent today and started work tomorrow.
However, one party is refusing to consent. I would like to know whether my colleague finds it unfortunate that we have to wait several days, rather than start tomorrow morning by consensus of the majority of the parties in the House and Senate.
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- Feb/28/22 1:39:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question. I, too, would like to get started on this right away because, as I said from the start, I think that this is an important mandate that must be carried out diligently and responsibly. I would have liked for this motion to be adopted unanimously and for the committee to start its work tomorrow morning.
However, since we do not always get what we want in life, I will settle for hoping that this is done with diligence, that we resolve this issue and that the committee is able to start its work this week. We must not take forever to decide on the composition of the committee. My colleague is right; we need to get to work as soon as possible.
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- Feb/28/22 1:40:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are talking here about the creation of a joint committee, which is important because it is the next logical step to the Emergencies Act, an exceptional measure. I am using the Prime Minister's words to make sure that people are not saying that the member for La Prairie is exaggerating again.
When the Prime Minister said that he was invoking the act, he said that it was the ultimate tool and the last resort, so much so that this law's predecessor, the War Measures Act, was used only three times in Canadian history. The Emergencies Act has not been used since it was created in 1988. It needs to remain an exceptional measure.
I welcome the creation of the joint committee to examine what was done before the act was invoked. We need to conduct a review and find out what happened beforehand in order to determine whether the use of this ultimate tool was justified. Obviously, we are in favour of this exercise. It is mandatory, but we still want to say that we think it is an excellent idea.
If the committee is to look back at what happened, it must absolutely examine the crisis as a whole and explore what questions need to be asked as a result of those events. The first point I want to make is that even before the truckers arrived in Ottawa, they made it clear that they planned to protest in front of Parliament. Some of them left Vancouver in their 53-foot-long trucks, and they did not get here over night. Let us just say that if they were clean shaven when they left, they looked more like ZZ Top when they arrived. I do not know how many days it took, and yet people here were surprised and wondered what they were going to do.
Why did it take so long to figure out how to let them protest here but without actually taking over and occupying the city? There had to be a way. Quebec City managed to do it, and it could very well have been done here, too.
During the first two weeks, we hardly saw the government, and the Prime Minister was pretty much absent. First he added fuel to the fire, but then said it was up to the police to resolve the matter. It will be important to paint an accurate picture of the government's actions. Was the government's inaction as bad as it seemed? Some questions need to be asked.
People can be like ducks. They can appear calm and still on the surface while paddling like mad under the water. Was that the case here? Was the government paddling like mad or did it do nothing? It is important to look at what actually happened.
Did the government use every tool at its disposal before using this last resort? Did it reach out to the various police forces? Did it offer any assistance? When the chief of the Ottawa Police Service said he needed help from the federal government, was that request acted upon? What was done?
If the committee is to do a decent job, it must answer those questions and look at what measures were actually taken. I could go on and on because we have so many questions.
The Emergencies Act was invoked on February 14, but the government did nothing with it until five days later. I wonder why. When it finally took action, did it use the legal tools available? Could authorities have done what they did on that weekend without using the Emergencies Act? In other words, was it necessary? We do not know and we wonder.
The following Monday, after the people left, we arrived here and were told that it was awful, and that we absolutely needed to continue using the legislation. The Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois wondered, and rightly so, what we were fighting against, and who we were intervening against with this legislation. There was no one left outside.
They tried hard to convince us. They twisted themselves into a knot. At one point they said that the situation is unacceptable and we absolutely must keep enforcing this legislation. The Liberals and the NDP wanted everyone to know that this was essential.
However, on the Wednesday, 42 hours later, the government announced that it no longer needed to invoke the act after all. It was like a balloon at a porcupine party; 42 hours later, the whole thing was suddenly over and the act was no longer needed.
That makes no sense. Can we find out what happened? On Monday evening, the government was saying that it absolutely had to intervene, even though we could not see why. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, since you were there, playing close attention and thinking the speeches were good. You were probably a bit surprised when the government, which was pushing to still invoke the act on Monday evening, decided it was no longer necessary by Wednesday.
For these reasons, it is extremely important to have a special joint committee to figure out what, exactly, happened, whether the invocation was worthwhile and, if this situation were to happen again, how the government could be more effective.
The Bloc Québécois's approach was simple. We wanted it to happen fast, we wanted to come to an agreement quickly and we wanted a neutral chair. Because all of the parties' positions were clear, we wanted a neutral chair that reflected the views both in favour and against.
This, therefore, made a single chair impossible, unless that person had a personality disorder. We then needed two co-chairs, one person in favour and one against, or two in favour and two against. That is what the Bloc Québécois was calling for. Above all, the Bloc Québécois was looking for a consensus.
Earlier, my colleague from the NDP said that his party's position was shared by two of the three other recognized parties in the House. I disagree. The Bloc Québécois was against it. Based on what my colleague, the official opposition house leader, said, he would not be okay with it either. I am not great at math, but one plus one equals two. There was more than one party against it. The Bloc Québécois was also against it because we wanted a consensus, but for that to happen, the chair would have to be neutral.
The Liberal motion proposes that the co-chairs be one NDP member, thus in favour, one Bloc member, thus against, and one independent senator, a Liberal, and thus in favour. If I have calculated correctly that makes two co-chairs in favour and one against. That is not impartial, and it is not what we are looking for. The Conservatives' amendment proposes that there be two co-chairs consisting of a Conservative senator, thus against, and a Liberal MP, thus in favour. We like that better.
We have seen the parties argue about who will serve as co-chairs. I can say that the Bloc Québécois has always sought consensus, and I am convinced that all leaders of the other parties will agree on that. That was and continues to be our position.
We must get to work quickly, and do so in the most intelligent way possible. There was a crisis and the government used a tool that we believe was disproportionate. We are asking to be convinced. It may be that behind closed doors the government will pull a rabbit out of a hat, which will convince us that its decision was not that crazy. It is possible, and that is all we want to find out.
That is why we are here. The Bloc Québécois will fully co-operate in order to get to the bottom of what happened and to ensure that this act will never be used again unless it is truly warranted.
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- Feb/28/22 1:49:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one thing we can recognize in the government resolution is that the Bloc was in opposition to the Emergencies Act being implemented as an opposition party. The NDP, on the other hand, was in favour of the Emergencies Act. We have two co-chairs, one in favour and one opposed, who are in a far better and greater position to be independent in taking on their role of chair.
Does the Bloc party not see the value in having two opposition parties? I do not believe Bloc members were promoting and congratulating the protests out front.
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- Feb/28/22 1:50:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
He is right in saying that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP represent one in favour and one opposed. The problem is that there is one presumably independent senator. We generally know where “independent” senators stand or which side they are on. It is like the leaning tower of Pisa, as Maurice Duplessis said.
Two essential conditions must be met. First, the condition of impartiality is not being met. Second, there must be a consensus.
The Bloc Québécois agrees, but we would have liked all of the parties to be in agreement so that we could reach a consensus. That is all.
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- Feb/28/22 1:51:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one thing that has come to light throughout the course of this whole thing is how important it is for the government to be held to account for its actions in invoking the Emergencies Act. However, the government and the NDP seem to be holding some opposition parties to a greater account.
To the hon. member from the Bloc, how important is it for us to hold the government to account on this?
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- Feb/28/22 1:52:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague and thank him for the question.
Once again, we need to emphasize how important impartiality is. In that regard, I want to point out that, in the beginning, the Conservatives wanted a Conservative chair, just to follow up on the thoughts and comments my colleague just shared with us.
When I spoke with the leader of the official opposition, he expressed interest in having an impartial chair, so I can only applaud his openness and willingness to compromise.
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- Feb/28/22 1:52:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague for his speech.
I in turn will ask him a question about the importance of reaching a consensus. It is all well and good for my colleague to work on reaching a consensus, and that is also what the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and I are trying to do, but there is no consensus. That is where things stand.
I find that sad. Instead of obtaining the unanimous consent of the Bloc Québécois, the government and the NDP today on a motion that will let the committee get to work tomorrow, we will have to debate it for several days.
Does he too find that sad?
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- Feb/28/22 1:53:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I obviously find that to be sad. However, when four parties are involved, the agreement of two or three of them does not constitute a consensus. To reach a consensus, all four parties must agree.
We have discussed this at length, and I worked to reach a consensus. Unfortunately, we were not able to do so because of the rigid position of some people in this place. What can I do?
I cannot reinvent the wheel. I have to say that there is no consensus. I would have liked to reach a consensus, but we do not have one. The Bloc Québécois cannot perform miracles.
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