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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

Feb/28/22 12:41:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am really looking forward to discussing this situation. Before I begin, I would certainly like to express my concern for the people of Ukraine and the current situation they are going through. All of us are watching very closely. We see the government acting and we are, as Conservatives and as Her Majesty's loyal opposition, in support of many of the government's actions. I note we will be engaged in a take-note debate. Through unanimous consent, we just recently extended the take-note debate to allow more speakers to discuss this current situation. On Saturday, there was a rally held in Barrie. There were roughly 150 concerned citizens, many of them born in Ukraine. They are Canadians of Ukrainian heritage. They expressed their concern about what was going on, particularly the illegal actions of Vladimir Putin. Yesterday, along with members of the government and the opposition, I attended the rally down at Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square. I do not know how big the crowd was; some estimated it at about 10,000 people. It was quite something. Everyone was united with the brave people of Ukraine. Our thoughts are with them. In the days and weeks ahead, I am sure we will see more significant action on the part of western nations and our allies. I look forward to being able to support those actions. The sad reality is that we are dealing with a government motion today when we should be dealing with and discussing many of the issues that are happening currently in Ukraine. We are here because we as Conservatives, and I know Canadians, are looking for some sense of trust in government. We are certainly looking for trust. In the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the government took upon itself extraordinary powers to deal with a situation. We can argue about whether those powers were needed or whether the emergency declaration in the province of Ontario or the emergency declaration in the city of Ottawa were sufficient in dealing with the situation, or whether these extraordinary actions the government took were able to deal with the situation. There was likely a lot of planning that went on before the invocation of the act on that Monday, February 14, so we really need to restore some level of trust in government through this committee. As the government gave itself extraordinary powers, it is incumbent upon us as members of Parliament to provide extraordinary scrutiny of the government, and not just of the decisions that led up to invoking the Emergencies Act but also of the actions the government took, which I think is what was envisioned in the act as it was crafted in 1988 and approved by this body. What reasons were there for what the government did? The government House leader spoke about sedition, which is a strong term, and other factors. It is incumbent upon the committee to find out whether the government's actions were justified and whether they met the threshold for declaring an emergency. This is a matter of trust in government. It is important that we as members of the opposition, and all other parties, make sure that we provide that trust to Canadians for the sake of our public institutions. I was listening intently as the government House leader was speaking earlier, and he talked about the actions of members of Parliament. Frankly, and I say this with all due respect to the government House leader, the government does not get to judge the actions of others as they relate to establishing a parliamentary committee. All of us in this place have taken an oath to ensure that we act in the best interests of Canadians, and this committee and the establishment of this committee should be no different than that of any other committee. In fact, I would say it is somewhat similar to what we see in other committees, particularly oversight committees, where members of the opposition are actually the chairs, as in the ethics committees, the government operations committees and the public accounts committee. Those are all oversight committees of Parliament. They have been long established. It should stand to reason that there should be a member of Her Majesty's official opposition as a chair of that committee. It is designed to provide extraordinary oversight. We can argue all we want about the protests. The protests are gone. Conservatives obviously believe in peaceful protests. For several weeks we were asking the protesters to go home because their voices had been heard. What we saw in Ottawa and across the country, whether it was at border crossings or at other demonstrations, even in my own community of Barrie—Innisfil, was a manifestation of years of frustration, anger and anxiety with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Our job as members of Parliament is to listen to our constituents and to Canadians, make sure that we understand their concerns and deal with those concerns. That is not just precluded to those we agree with. It includes people we do not agree with. I get lots of calls and emails in my office, as we all do, of varying opinions, ideologies and political ideals, but that does not mean we discount that. We have to listen to everybody. That is our job. Listening those who came to Ottawa was important, to hear their voices and their anxiety, to hear the frustration they were feeling. Last week, I was returning phone calls and emails and that same level of anger and frustration, over what we have been dealing with over the last two years, was being relayed to me while I was sitting in my constituency office. There were some people who were upset about the Emergencies Act being invoked. There were other people who were happy about the Emergencies Act being invoked. All of them felt the same way, that we need to understand what led up to the Emergencies Act invocation, what evidence was used and what decisions the government made in invoking the Emergencies Act. Was it political? Was it to protect the Prime Minister because he had been seen as not acting on this? Was it actually to suppress the seditionist forces that the government is speaking about, that the government House leader just mentioned? We have to get to the bottom of it. The only way that we can do that is to make sure that we have a committee that is reflective of the proportionality of parliamentarians in this place, not casting or judging what each member of Parliament is going to preclude on that committee, but basing our decision and our recommendations to Canadians and our findings to Canadians based on what we are hearing, what evidence is being provided by the government and other institutions, like law enforcement. I do not think that is an unreasonable request. What led up to the circumstances that have brought us to now dealing with two hours of debate, and I suspect several hours of further debate on another day, when we should be getting down to the work of the committee? As the government House leader said, and as prescribed in the act, there is a requirement for us, once the revocation order is made, to study the issue. That is really where we have tried to go on the formation of the committee, to find some sort of consensus. Then there will be an inquiry within 60 days. What led us to this point where the government has to drop the hammer of presenting a motion to Parliament to determine the establishment and composition of this committee? In our first discussions with the government House leader, Conservatives actually proposed that the scrutiny of regulations committee look into this action by the government. We felt, at the time, that it was purpose built, and if we look at the mandate of the scrutiny of regulations committee, a lot of what we are working on and intending on finding in relation to the government's action is there. It is actually mandated within the scrutiny of regulations committee. It is a joint committee of Parliament, with members from the Senate and the House of Commons. It has 16 members on it. It is chaired by a Conservative member of Parliament on the House side and by a senator on the Senate side. I do not think that, at this point, the scrutiny of regulations committee has met to constitute and formulate a chair because of COVID. We felt that was a reasonable proposal because the government had initially proposed, as the government House leader said, the medical assistance in dying committee, which became an ad hoc committee of Parliament. It had two co-chairs, not three as is currently proposed in this motion. We felt that was going to be a reasonable solution to this, a joint Senate and House committee that is purpose built and purpose driven for what this committee will be charged to do. We presented that. It was on Thursday before the vote, and then the Monday of the vote, the government House leader came to me and said that he had spoken to the third and fourth opposition parties and they had come up with a solution to the committee. There was no opportunity for me, as opposition House leader, to work or reflect on this. That is what led to this motion being proposed today. Members can imagine what I thought when I saw the composition of this committee. I looked and saw three co-chairs. There is not a parliamentary standing committee today that exists, even in the scrutiny of regulations committee, that has three co-chairs on it. This is proposing a co-chair of the third and fourth parties of the opposition, plus one from the Senate side as well. To us, that was a non-starter, despite the fact that the government House leader had already spoken to the other opposition parties about this. The challenge was that we were not going to agree with this, so we were effectively at a stalemate. What we thought was a reasonable proposal on this committee was rejected by the government, an already existing committee, for this new ad hoc committee. As the government House leader said, he did not trust the opposition parties, members of the opposition, to have good judgment on this committee. I think that is an absolutely ridiculous and absurd assertion. Failing any further agreement, we find ourselves in the position that we are in today, which is what I believe to be an absolutely absurd proposal of three co-chairs for this committee, one each from the third and fourth parties and a member of the Senate, and providing for two Conservative MPs, neither of whom are to be chairs. I take members back to my earlier statement when I said the oversight committees of Parliament, those standing committees, are always chaired by an opposition party. There is a reason for that. It is because they are designed to provide oversight. This committee is designed to provide oversight on the government. If the government is convinced that its actions both leading up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act and its actions subsequent to the invocation of the Emergencies Act is justified and defensible, then it should have no problem being held to the account that is required. The government should have no problem justifying to this committee, whether it is led by an opposition chair or not, and providing that information. The committee should have no problem, without prejudice, doing its work to hold the government to account and restore that trust in government that Canadians expect. As I mentioned earlier, part of the challenge is understanding how we got here and this manifestation of anger. There are a lot of Canadians right now who are upset. They are upset after two years of lockdowns and two years of restrictions. They see other G7 countries opening up. In fact, just today, the U.S. Congress announced that there would be no more mask mandates. Other countries are limiting their restrictions and eliminating the mandates, yet here in Canada, as provinces are lifting some of those mandates and restrictions, we are still seeing this level of control with regard to the federal government that is causing a lot of anxiety and a lot of confusion among Canadians. It was just a couple of weeks ago that we proposed, with the support of our Bloc colleagues, for the government to establish a plan by February 28 to move away from the restrictions and mandates so that we can provide Canadians with some sense that we were going to get back to normalcy in the country, yet the Liberals and their coalition partners in the NDP voted against that motion. They voted against the plan, despite the fact that their own chief public health official had talked about living with COVID, that this was going to be a normal occurrence and that we had to start thinking about living with COVID. That was all we were asking for. We did it while people were protesting here and in other parts of the country, so think of the message that was sent to Canadians who are desperate to get back to some sense of normalcy, to spend more time with their family in the United States and to not have to worry about some of the mandates and restrictions vis-à-vis flying and other things. We are at a 90% vaccination rate at this point, which is greater than some of the other G7 countries around the world. They are the ones that are limiting their mandates and reducing them and getting rid of them, yet here we are, still locked down. That anger is being manifested in what we saw with these protests. Instead of providing Canadians a bit of hope, they just beat them down again and fed into that anger and that anxiety. All we were trying to do was provide a little hope. Give us a plan, an exit strategy or something that we can go back to Canadians with and say that by this date, this will happen and by this date, that will happen. I know the government's talking point on this is that they follow science and evidence-based decision-making. I would suggest that they do that only when it agrees with their ideology. This is not about science any more. This is about political science. It is about the Prime Minister, his party and the NPD holding on, for some reason, to this complete control over Canadians. It has to stop. This started a long time ago. This did not just start now. As I said, this manifested itself, this anger and this anxiety, months and months ago, when, in May, the Prime Minister made a statement that he did not believe in mandatory vaccination, that this is not the kind of country we are in and that we do not do that in Canada. Then, all of a sudden, a day before the election, the Prime Minister stands up and says that we are going to have mandatory vaccination, creating a wedge issue during the election, an election that nobody wanted, that cost $660 million and was at the height of Afghanistan falling and western Canada burning. There were lots of things that were happening around the world, but it was the Prime Minister's intention to call an election and use the issue of mandatory vaccinations, despite the fact that at the time there might have been 75% or 80% of Canadians being vaccinated, as a wedge issue to further divide Canadians. We saw, through the course of the election, the Prime Minister of the country referring to Canadians who were not vaccinated as misogynists and extremists. He asked whether we had to tolerate these people. It is no wonder people became pissed off— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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