44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, that was a very thoughtful question. When I was a very young man with a beautiful full head of hair, and it is true that it was there, I was actually a peace officer myself. I remember the pressure as a frontline peace officer at that time.
My hon. colleague's question was about the message we are sending. I certainly cannot speak to what message will be received. I can only speak to what message I hope will be sent. The message I hope will be sent is that we expect our frontline officers, right up to the highest members of management, whether it be the RCMP commissioner or the president of CBSA, to operate with integrity, to operate in a neutral manner and to recognize the difficult landscapes within which they operate. We have talked a lot today about racism and over-representation in the justice system. Those are all issues that concern me and that I want addressed.
The message I hope to send is that peace officers are here to do a job. They are employed by the people of Canada and they have a very tall order to keep us safe, but concurrent with that is an obligation to do so with the highest level of integrity.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate my colleague's last statement. I think the balance of accountability and the expectation that we have on the front line is really important. In my region, where we are dealing with the opioid crisis, there is a great deal of frustration because we have seen the rise in crime. We have seen the rise in deaths in communities we never thought we would see before, and there is an expectation that the police will just handle this.
I remember the Timmins chief of police speaking at a community meeting saying they cannot police our way out of this situation. It is a bigger situation. We have also seen the willingness of police to work with frontline mental health workers. This represents major changes in how policing is done.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague about the role of police, who have to take on many aspects now in a very complex society, yet at the same time, we do need to make sure that there is accountability so they respect that trust. Given my hon. colleague's past, what are his thoughts on these issues?
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of something we have in my riding. It is called Car 40. I am not sure if it is unique to the Kamloops RCMP or not. Car 40 pairs a police officer with a mental health nurse, and they respond to mental health-related calls.
I said earlier that police are expected to do more with fewer resources. I do not think I am speaking out of turn here by saying that we have seen a proliferation of mental health issues. Perhaps it is actually just coming to the forefront. I am not an expert on this. I am not sure which, but I did have a section on opioids in my speech that I did not get to. It is often a case where frontline responders are dealing with the same person, sometimes twice in a shift, with multiple overdoses.
I was very proud that our last platform addressed substance abuse and spoke about health issues. I also echo the leader of His Majesty's official opposition when he says that we want to get to the bottom of this, and we want to deal with treatment. A Conservative government would put treatment to the forefront to ideally ease the burden that is on frontline workers, and let us not overlook the trauma that they themselves go through in dealing with people dying before their very eyes.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to raise something that is a bit tangential. The member mentioned the head of the RCMP, Brenda Lucki. It is very much on my mind that the Parliamentary Protective Service officers here had to work three years to get a decent contract. They do not get back pay. They have to report through the RCMP now. That is a change that I opposed.
I want to ask all hon. members in this place to do whatever we can. Winter is coming. The people who risk their lives to protect us do not even have a piece of plywood over their heads before the storms come. They are vulnerable to extreme weather events and have to stand outside this place. Unlike Centre Block, this building is not adequate to provide any shelter from winter storms. Does my hon. colleague have any comment?
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on her new role within her party.
I am indebted to all forms of law enforcement. Some are obviously closer to us physically than others. The Parliamentary Protective Service officers are close to us. We walk by them literally every day, sometimes without giving a second thought to the protection, security and oversight they provide us not only so we can walk in here unencumbered to do our jobs at the centre of democracy, but also so family and Canadians can be here. I appreciate each and every single thing they do.
I am not familiar with all of the nuances the member spoke of, but my hope is that we can address that and do so in a way that is fair and safe for all.
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Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is obviously in favour of Bill C‑20, which will introduce mechanisms, that is, an independent organization, to handle complaints.
Several years ago, in 2004, there was the Arar case that made it clear we needed an independent organization. In 2022, there are still complaint management mechanisms and organizations that are not independent. There is some independent oversight at the RCMP, but not at the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA.
I would like to ask my colleague why the government, after a number of years, has still not taken action to ensure that complaints are handled fairly and independently and that there are no abuses, particularly with regard to the CBSA.
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Mr. Speaker, obviously I cannot get into the heads of the government members. If I could, this place would maybe run a bit more efficiently, from our perspective.
The reality is that I am not sure why the government took as long as it did. To me, when we are looking at legislation and how much time it takes, and also when it is tabled, it speaks to governmental priorities. In this case, with this legislation, we waited two months before we even got to work, which is ironic given that now we are talking about sitting later to get more work done. However, various other pieces of legislation were put forward, so I can only surmise that the government did not view this as being as serious an issue or as problematic a situation as others that it has put forward.
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Mr. Speaker, off the top I would like to note that I will be happy to share my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.
I am in my place today, aware that we are standing on traditional Algonquin territory. I am also aware that much has been said on Bill C-20 so far, so what I will have to say will kind of act as a recap of where we are. We are debating this legislation that would enact a new stand-alone statute, the public complaints and review commission act, to provide an external review regime for both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency.
To uphold trust and confidence in our law enforcement and border protection services, Canadians should count on a robust system of accountability. Canadians expect consistent, fair and equal treatment when receiving services from the RCMP and the CBSA. Civilian review is essential for the transparency of that system.
Currently, the RCMP is reviewed by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, the CRCC. The House has now heard that the new public complaints and review commission would replace the CRCC, provide enhanced reporting requirements for the RCMP, and establish an independent review mechanism for the CBSA.
I would like to note in particular the impact this bill would have on the Canada Border Services Agency. With some 14,000 dedicated and professional employees, the CBSA is one of the largest organizations within the public safety portfolio. It has a long and rich history of providing border services in an exemplary manner, but inevitably, where there is interaction between the public and border service agencies, disputes will sometimes arise. A transparent means of dealing with such disputes supports respect for the rule of law, but unlike the RCMP, the CBSA does not currently have an ongoing structure for independent review of such situations.
The agency is indeed reviewed by various independent boards, tribunals and courts, but it does not have a review mechanism for specific complaints, including officer conduct and the agency’s level of service. I would remind the House that the CBSA is one of the public safety bodies that many Canadians encounter regularly. I know personally that when I come to the border I always look guilty, no matter what, but I have always been treated with fairness and respect.
Border services officers control the movement of people and goods through Canadian borders. They detain and remove potential threats. They collect duties and taxes. Canadians rely on the border security measures enforced by the CBSA, and at the same time the CBSA is a Canadian public safety institution that non-Canadians encounter, including, for example, the refugees currently seeking asylum in our country. For this reason, a review mechanism must be accessible to all people who deal with CBSA employees. It is key to building public trust in the institution designed to protect our borders.
Under Bill C-20, the public complaints and review commission would have authority to review both the CBSA and the RCMP. Some components of the bill would apply to both institutions. Each year, both would be required to report to the Minister of Public Safety on how they have responded to PCRC recommendations. Both would have codified timelines dictating how soon they would need to respond to those recommendations. The PCRC will disaggregate the data of complaints related to both agencies and report on what it reveals about race-based issues. This will help us, for example, to better understand and address any systemic racism in law enforcement in Canada, at least in this law enforcement system.
Apart from national security issues, which are reviewed through the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, the PCRC would be responsible for conducting specified reviews of any activities of the RCMP and the CBSA. These reviews could be conducted at the request of the minister or on the PCRC’s own initiative. The PCRC will have the responsibility for receiving complaints concerning CBSA conduct or levels of service, and the authority to launch investigations.
Indeed, under the bill, individuals who are detained by the CBSA would be informed that they have an avenue to make a complaint. If somebody has filed a complaint with the CBSA and is not satisfied with the manner in which the complaint was handled, the complainant may forward the matter to the PCRC for review. The PCRC would also have authority to initiate its own investigation into CBSA conduct when it is in the public interest to do so. The PCRC would report its findings and recommendations to the CBSA and to the minister.
I have been speaking about the authority to review complaints, but there is another level of authority required to govern serious incidents involving the CBSA and its personnel. These would include matters that, for example, may have resulted in serious injury or death, or constituted federal or provincial offences. The CBSA is responsible for conducting its own internal reviews of such matters, but there is currently no statutory obligation for the CBSA to conduct such a review.
Under the bill before us, the CBSA would be obliged to conduct internal investigations into alleged serious incidents. The CBSA would be required to notify the police of the jurisdiction in which the alleged serious incident took place and to notify the PCRC.
Furthermore, the CBSA would be required to provide the PCRC with reports and other information on serious incidents. The PCRC, for its part, would have the authority to send an observer to verify the impartiality of the CBSA’s internal investigation, and it would be required to report on the number, types and outcomes of serious incidents as part of its annual reporting. I am sure hon. members would agree that this would provide a much-needed degree of transparency to the handling of serious incidents.
Finally, I would remind the House of the special nature of CBSA review, in that it would seek to provide the consistent, fair and equal treatment that Canadians expect in a manner that would also include people who do not reside in Canada. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, for example, can receive complaints only from individuals lawfully in Canada. The PCRC, on the other hand, would be in a position to accept complaints from foreign nationals that involve allegations of discrimination by the CBSA.
These are important matters in creating the kind of robust accountability mechanisms that are essential for public trust in our border services and law enforcement institutions. The time is well overdue for the CBSA to join its partner organizations in having such a mechanism. Indeed, this is the third time in recent years that the government has endeavoured to reform the system. We attempted it in 2019 with Bill C-98 and again in 2020 with Bill C-3.
This bill is a key part of the government’s agenda, and I urge my hon. colleagues to join me in supporting its quick passage.
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Mr. Speaker, could the member reflect on the importance of establishing this review body so that Canadians can have confidence in the law enforcement and protection agencies that we have? Could he provide his comments on the importance of that?
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Mr. Speaker, back in 2003 the Harvard Business Review issued a publication that I think should be required reading for anybody who has to deal with the public. It was all about fair process in the knowledge economy. Fair process is a really critical issue, as it should be, for everybody who is overseeing the creation of legislation, such as we are doing now, right down to the work we provide in our constituency offices. Fair process means a good hearing. It means objective review of what has been presented, and it allows for independent, objective analysis, review and recommendations.
This is what the legislation proposes to apply to the CBSA, and I think it is probably about three years overdue.
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Mr. Speaker, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip has been calling for amendments to this proposed legislation to ensure that, if established, the enforcement watchdog would employ indigenous people as both decision-makers and complaints investigators.
This was one of the recommendations that came out of the House committee study on systemic racism in policing. I am curious if the member will push his government to ensure that indigenous representation is top of mind, that these amendments are put forward and passed, and that indigenous investigators are probing complaints when it comes to indigenous people's files.
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Mr. Speaker, in answer to the hon. member's question, absolutely that is something that I will definitely advocate and support. I believe that when the committee gets its hands on this legislation, some of the people who are asking to be involved in the system should be called as witnesses, so that they can provide their recommendations directly to the committee and those recommendations can find their way into the final version that comes back to the House.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Fleetwood—Port Kells, both for his congratulations that I am leader of the Green Party of Canada and for splitting his time with me. My chance will come up very soon.
I wonder whether, as a British Columbian member of Parliament, the member has been disturbed by the videos, which I wonder if he has seen, of the arrests and the treatment of indigenous people within British Columbia, particularly those on Wet’suwet’en territories, where land defenders were quite brutalized, and in Fairy Creek as well, where land defenders were also brutalized.
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Mr. Speaker, I have been disturbed by all the factors that have come around that particular project, including any mistreatment of people who are out demonstrating and exercising their constitutional rights. I am also disturbed, though, at the destruction of property and lawlessness that may have been taking place there.
I am also aware that police officers usually have a millisecond to make up their minds on how to react to a situation, whereas the rest of us have all of time after that to review what they have done and to pass judgment on them. This is precisely the kind of mechanism that we need to do a deeper dive into these incidents, learn from them and refine how we approach some very ticklish situations.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise in this place acknowledging that we stand on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation, and essentially this building sits on Algonquin land. To them, I say meegwetch.
I am very pleased that we have seen another incarnation of Bill C-20. The fundamental essence of this legislation, for those who may just be joining the debate, is to ensure that two really significant federal law enforcement agencies have mechanisms for civilian complaint.
Those two agencies are the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency.
The Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP interact with Canadians and foreigners on a regular basis. The RCMP has had a public complaints commission for many years. It has been inadequate. Initially, it did not have powers to subpoena, to find out from RCMP officers what really happened in any event. The ability to summon witnesses is terribly important.
The powers of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP were weaker, but it is unbelievable that we do not have a single entity to handle complaints against the CBSA.
I do not know about my colleagues in this place, but certainly through COVID I had a lot of reasons to be concerned about the structure of the Canada Border Services Agency and the degree of powers granted to individual officers. It will be beyond the scope of this act to deal with some of these issues, so I place them before us now as we go through second reading debate.
This is concerning for all of us. I should not speak for all of my colleagues, but I have a hunch here, because I talked to many of them, regardless of party, during the period of time that we were trying to help Canadians come home to Canada. For instance, those married to permanent residents, not Canadian citizens, had to make their pitch at the border to a Canada Border Services agent, whose decision was final and discretionary to a particular officer. This created no end of misery for Canadian families. I do know that cabinet at the time passed an order in council to try to alleviate the problem, but it is still the case that an individual officer can make a decision on the spot about anyone.
My stepdaughter was once going into the United States to take up a new job that she had in California. She had all her paperwork, but the Canada Border Services agent did not like her. He said he did not believe her and did not think she had a job, and he sent her back. There is no appeal. There is no place to go with that. We need to take a broader look at the Canada Border Services Agency.
Some constituents, who were not my constituents, asked me for help. They happened to be a couple I know from Cape Breton Island, where my family lives and where I am from. The couple was at the New Brunswick border with Maine. When they drove up to the Canadian kiosk to say they were going home, the border agent told the wife she could go home because she is Canadian, but her husband could not go home because he is still a permanent resident. They had to leave one spouse at the border with all the luggage, while the other was allowed into Canada because they were not allowed to go back into the U.S. together. These kinds of things are nonsensical. We need to look at the Canada Border Services Agency and make some policy choices and raise some other issues.
We certainly know that we want, as a matter of policy, which I have heard from many people in the House today, the CBSA to be focused on stopping the smuggling of guns. We want the CBSA focused on stopping the smuggling of contraband drugs too. We do not particularly want the CBSA at the border to terrorize racialized people from other countries. We do not want it thinking that its number one job is to find people whose citizenship is not quite right and whose paperwork as a permanent resident is not quite right, and get them deported as quickly as possible.
We have a lot of complaints about the CBSA and there are concerns about racial profiling in the RCMP. There are complaints that need to be heard. However, I really want to emphasize the extent to which the CBSA, in the past, has brutalized Canadians. I will give one example, because it comes from my own experience. I was just discussing it with the member of Parliament in whose riding it happened before he was the MP for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.
An indigenous man, born in the state of California, came across the border in the 1980s or 1970s with an indigenous woman from Penelakut Island, from the Penelakut nation of Vancouver Island. They married, they had kids and they had grandkids. There is a thing called the Jay Treaty, but obviously the CBSA had never heard of it. It gives additional rights to indigenous people crossing borders.
In any case, for some reason, CBSA agents decided in 2013 to show up at the door of Richard Germaine from Penelakut Island. They had not sent a note saying that they noticed he did not have all of his paperwork done to be a Canadian permanent resident. They just showed up four days before Christmas and arrested him. I am not exaggerating a bit. They put him in leg irons in the back of a van and drove him off Vancouver Island, taking a long ferry ride, to Vancouver, where they placed him in a cell.
I have seen the cells now, thanks to Senator Kim Pate, who likes to take other parliamentarians on tours of prisons. They are in the basement of the Vancouver airport. The people put there are rarely there for more than 24 hours before they are summarily deported. Since the time that I toured that facility, they have moved to a different facility for the deportation of foreigners.
This was a railroading; this was fast. This was taking someone from his home, a grandfather, right before Christmas in front of his wife, who was a residential school survivor, and sending him for deportation without due process, because, well, that was what the political mood wanted to do.
We desperately need this legislation. I will be supporting it to get it through second reading and get it to committee. The CBSA, for a long time, has had a high number of complaints, and these have been noted by the Auditor General. They are complaints of racism, homophobia, transphobia and rudeness. It is an agency that desperately needs oversight. I want to make sure that I say, as other speakers have said, that there are wonderful agents in the RCMP and wonderful agents in the CBSA, but this is crying out for reform.
I will be presenting amendments to Bill C-20 because I want to make sure that it is as rigorous as possible and as fair as possible to the people who experience these issues at the border with CBSA. We also need to do much more to examine systemic racism within the RCMP. We need to do much more to pay attention to that. What if people do not feel like they can make a complaint?
We need proactive anti-racism programs in the RCMP. We also need to take a very close look at so-called wellness checks, as in the case of Rodney Levi, a member of the Metepenagiag Mi'kmaq Nation who in June 2020 was killed by an RCMP officer.
Local complaint commissions, efforts at inquiries and coroners' reports are not really where we want to start the efforts to ensure this does not happen again. The place to start efforts to ensure this does not happen again is specific anti-racism training and specific training to root out misogyny within the RCMP and CBSA, and ensuring that we protect the agencies that are created to protect us. We must take steps to ensure that our RCMP and CBSA agents are protected themselves.
We need to make sure that the process set up under Bill C-20 is robust and fair and does its best to ensure that our law enforcement agencies meet our values as Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member on her re-election as leader of the Green Party.
I am wondering if she could comment on the importance of this legislation and of strengthening this legislation, especially when it comes to the illegal spying against law-abiding protesters. I am thinking right now of Enbridge and the northern gateway pipeline projects, especially when it comes to first nations activists.
Also, the CRCC released a report, after the RCMP was sued by the BCCLA, on Mounties' use of arbitrary searches and broad exclusion zones when it came to Mi'kmaq protesters doing anti-fracking standoffs in New Brunswick. I would love to hear her thoughts on that.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the hon. member for Victoria remembering the Elsipogtog standoff in New Brunswick. It was a non-violent protest and was demonstrated in many ways to be a non-violent protest.
It was also widely supported. The indigenous land defenders of Elsipogtog, part of the larger Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy nations, were widely supported by settler culture New Brunswick residents nearby. There were people on the side of the road supporting the Elsipogtog First Nation. It was letting emergency vehicles through. It was there to protect its land against the hydraulic drilling for what is called fracking.
The RCMP, the night before, had brought the non-violent protesters tobacco, which was a suggestion we were now in a stage of de-escalation and working together, only to have a pre-dawn raid the next morning that involved attack dogs and a fully armed SWAT team moving in. Those kinds of incidents leave a community traumatized. They should leave settler culture Canadians ashamed. The incident was never explored, and there were no answers given to anyone as to why the RCMP chose an aggressive, violent approach to shut down that particular effort to ban fracking.
Fortunately, the government elected right after that event banned fracking in New Brunswick. The current government is wobbly on the point.
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Mr. Speaker, in her speech, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands spoke about the experience her stepdaughter had when entering the States. The reality is these various experiences are arbitrary and can be different depending on the person. They can be different depending on the circumstance. They can be different depending on just about any variable.
I am wondering if she can comment on why she sees the set-up of this structure as beneficial for an individual like her stepdaughter, who will have somewhere to go to file a proper grievance or complaint.
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Mr. Speaker, it was a real blow, because she had a job set up and some arbitrary guy decided no, he is not letting her fulfill her life's dream. It was his decision and there was no appeal. Obviously having an appeal would help, but so too would examining the day-to-day operations of CBSA and providing more guidance.
For instance, an officer should not have full discretion to decide whether they like the cut of someone's jib when people are coming into Canada. They should have some criteria. If the criteria has not been met, they have a reason to say no. However, there is no criteria, and it is often as subjective as the member for Kingston and the Islands suggested. It is arbitrary and discretionary, and it is specific to each officer.
My constituents have had completely different experiences at different airports with different CBSA officers, and on the same fact set there have been completely different decisions. I urge the ministers responsible, as we get Bill C-20 through, to say that CBSA officers should not have unfettered discretion to make decisions that affect people's lives as fundamentally as they do. I know this will be outside the scope of the act.
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Mr. Speaker, I was not around when this was brought up twice in the past. Bill C-98 and Bill C-3 came out in the 42nd Parliament and 43rd Parliament. They did not come through and both died on the Order Paper.
Perhaps the member could share some of her wisdom as to why she feels these bills did not make it through and why here we are again debating pretty similar legislation for the third time.
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