44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I completely agree with my colleague.
I think this sends the right message to the public. It is a message that might restore public confidence in the country's institutions. We know that, both for the Canada Border Services Agency and for institutions in general, the public has lost confidence in public safety institutions and agencies in Canada, and even in elected officials.
Bill C‑20 will bring in mechanisms that will enable people to follow the complaint process and see the results. It is all well and good to file a complaint, but if it is never mentioned again and nothing comes out of it, then it serves no real purpose, and that does not show that people have been heard. I think this sends a rather positive message.
This could have been introduced sooner, but we are glad it is before us today.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have a magical way of manipulating the numbers. I know there are more border control officers today than there were when Stephen Harper made his notable and well-known cuts to Canada's border control. That I am fairly confident of.
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Madam Speaker, we in Châteauguay—Lacolle have a major border crossing at Lacolle. Admittedly, we do receive complaints, from time to time, about problems people have experienced at the border, but I also get calls from officers who work at the border. As we know, they have to deal with a whole range of legislation and regulation; however, cutbacks in recent years have limited training in particular.
I would like to hear from my colleague about the importance of this legislation and how it will help border services to better serve the community and Canada.
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Madam Speaker, to address many of the phone calls the member receives, what the legislation would do is build upon public confidence in Canada border control agents. If, for example, someone is going across the border and is deeply offended because of an incident that occurred, they would have, for the first time, an independent commission where the issue could be raised so there would be a feeling that justice is served.
We know there are bad apples in every profession, including among border agents. Unfortunately, a bad apple is a reflection on all, which is one of the reasons it is important to recognize that legislation of this nature benefits everyone, including border control agents and RCMP officers.
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Mr. Speaker, the timing of that question could not be better because this afternoon we are starting clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-21, which would be transformational legislation when it comes to gun control in this country.
However, that is not all we are doing. We are also ensuring that communities have the resources they need to support young people from starting involvement with gangs. We have put a billion dollars into the border to make sure that we are bolstering our border to prevent guns from being smuggled. We know that we need a multi-faceted approach, and that is exactly what we are doing.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my most hon. colleague from Drummond for his question and commend him for all of his work.
I will come back to what he said, but, as I said in my speech, there is also a part of the bill that will enable us to better document these cases of racism and to collect data. I spoke about it in my speech, but I thank my colleague for bringing me back to the subject.
It is thanks to that data that we will be able to make changes. It takes facts and figures to get an overall picture of what is happening, and that is what the bill will enable us to do, so that we can avoid the type of situation that his friend has all too often experienced.
We all have stories about times when it was more complicated to cross the border than usual. Having worked for an MP who had border crossings in his riding, I heard some pretty crazy things. This bill will enable us to document it all to prevent this sort of situation from happening. I hope that the CBSA will do some soul-searching so that it can build public trust.
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Madam Speaker, when we talk about borders, a whole range of topics or themes comes to mind. That has often been problematic. There is the issue of vaccination, the whole COVID period, what the Americans wanted and what we did not want, Roxham Road, third countries, wait times, trust between the two governments and so on. In short, the border is typically a problem or a source of conflict between the United States and Canada. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on this.
Why has the current government not succeeded in reducing border-related tensions over the past seven years?
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Madam Speaker, I would say that this lack of interest by federal governments goes back much further than seven years. From 2007 to 2011, I was an assistant to a member of Parliament who had border crossings in his riding, and even back then, there was tension. It was palpable.
As we saw during the pandemic, the government does not seem concerned about our border crossings and has failed to competently manage what happens there. It was clear that it did not pay enough attention to this issue. This is one of the criticisms that can be levelled at the government. We saw it during the pandemic, the borders were real—
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Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on a thread that I started with his colleague from Langley—Aldergrove, which is testing the theory that we can interdict our way out of dealing with drugs, guns or other things coming across our borders.
I have done some research and the U.S. border between Canada and the U.S., the longest undefended border in the world, has 12 million vehicles cross it every year. That includes Canadian vehicles going into the U.S. and coming back, and U.S. vehicles coming in. That is about a million vehicles per month. I have already pointed out that at the Port of Vancouver we have about 1,450,000 containers every year that the CBSA cannot inspect.
Does my colleague really think that interdiction at either the Canada-U.S. border or at ports is going to make a serious dent, or would a wise policy of trying to go after these goods that are coming across our borders, or do we need—
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Madam Speaker, I believe in deterrence. As I mentioned earlier in my speech, we had someone from our rail institution saying one one-millionth of all cargo that comes across is checked. I think that is just atrocious. That is a ridiculous number. I cannot even fathom what that is. It is next to nothing.
There is a common saying in law enforcement that we want voluntary compliance of the law, and I believe that if there is some deterrence and some fear, quite frankly, at the border crossing that one could get caught, then yes, I think people would stop doing it.
I think right now our unattended border is poorly managed. Being from just north of Toronto, I hear constantly, and we studied it recently in our committee, about the issue with with illegal guns coming across our border. We need to do something about it. We cannot just throw up our arms and say, “Come across.” Yes, we do need to have some deterrence there, and we do—
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Madam Speaker, I would like to build on the question my colleague asked earlier.
When I worked as the assistant to the member for Brome—Missisquoi, the president of the Customs and Immigration Union, Jean-Pierre Fortin, visited our office. In the early 2000s, we saw the negative effects of the Conservative government's cuts to border crossings. Those cuts created a lot of extremely frustrating situations for the workers.
My colleague brought up the issue of illegal weapons at the border and how it is important to better control them. I would like to hear what he has to say about that.
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