44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/22/22 10:22:57 a.m.
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The last time the House debated this bill, the member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia had seven minutes left for her speech.
The hon. member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matana—Matapédia.
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Madam Speaker, it seems the members across the way misunderstood my meaning, whether intentionally or not. I think it is wonderful when members stand up in the House and speak on behalf of their constituents. The member for Winnipeg North speaks quite often on behalf of the government, maybe occasionally on behalf of his constituents, but the point is that he spent 20 minutes telling us there have been too many people speaking to this bill. He gave a 20-minute speech about how we should just stop debating this bill and, in fact, let it pass.
I would put it to the member that if he wants more legislation to pass, he could speak less himself, if that was his goal. I am not suggesting that he speak less. He is welcome to speak as much as he wishes. However, it is a bit rich for him to tell other people to speak less when he is giving a 20-minute speech on this legislation. I am sure there are other members of the government caucus who have a particular interest in these subjects or particular expertise and who might have wanted to speak as well.
The other point to make about legislation is that the member is right to say that we had bills in the last Parliament that were put forward and then did not become law. I was trying to remember what happened in the last Parliament that might have prevented government legislation from becoming law.
One thing was that the government suspended Parliament completely, with the acquiescence of the NDP. For a substantial portion of 2020, when Conservatives were saying it was time to bring Parliament back in some form and that we were ready to work in a modified form, the Liberals, in fact, wanted to shut down Parliament because they did not want to have to deal with question period. Part of that was that their legislation did not move forward, and then they prorogued Parliament. We came back after prorogation, and then they called an election.
The Liberals now come back to us and say that they have these bills they have been working on for multiple Parliaments. They ask what happened, when they are the ones who made the decisions around suspending Parliament, prorogation and calling an early election. I think the member for Winnipeg North and the government have to face up to the fact that, if there are bills before us today that have been considered and were widely supported in previous Parliaments, they certainly bear some of the responsibility for decisions that they made.
I will make a final point in response to what the member for Winnipeg North said about how the government really wants to pass the bill. We have the same situation when Private Members' Business has been substantially delayed by the government's calling of an early election and by the government's unwillingness to be collaborative.
I will give one example. My private member's bill on organ harvesting and trafficking has been before the foreign affairs committee, approaching the full 60 sitting days, at which time it will be automatically reported back to the House. We actually also have another private member's bill, by a government member, which is before the foreign affairs committee, that has been subject to the same kinds of delays. We have private members' bills, as well, that have been back, Parliament after Parliament. Rather than the government being willing to have those studied at committee, we have seen significant delays.
Hopefully if the government wants assistance in passing legislation, it will take seriously the fact that there are good ideas that come from all corners of the House and take a little bit more of a collaborative approach around moving forward with Private Members' Business as well.
Bill C-20 deals with oversight for law enforcement, as well as for CBSA. It is a bill that underlines, I think, the profound failures of the government when it comes to criminal justice and policing in the country.
I want to share some statistics that underline the fact that whatever the government is doing is clearly not working. We are not seeing the kinds of outcomes we would want to see.
There has been a 32% increase in serious violent crime since 2015. There were 124,000 more violent crimes committed last year than in 2015. There were 788 homicides in Canada last year. There were 611 in 2015. That is a 29% increase in homicides, a 92% increase in gang-related homicides since 2015 and a 61% increase in reported sexual assaults since 2015. Police have reported that hate crimes have increased 72% over the last two years.
The point I made in a question earlier in debate and that I will underscore again is that when we look at these statistics we have to at some point face up to the fact that the government is failing if its objective is to reduce crime. We hear a lot of talk from the government about the problem of violent crime and how we need to work to reduce it. At the same time, the government is presiding over a significant escalation in violent crime, which means that either its strategy is making the problem worse or at least not solving it, or there is such a preponderance of exogenous factors that are shifting the landscape that those factors are driving this increase in crime despite the government's best efforts.
What we heard from an NDP member earlier, as we might expect offering defence of the government's approach, was that we should acknowledge that the causes of crime are complex, that there are many different issues that may be contributing to the rise in violent crime we are seeing in Canada and that we should acknowledge it may not all come down to what the federal government is doing. That is plausible. It is true that the causes of crime are diverse and complex. It is true that there are always lots of different things going on that may contribute to crime.
However, the government has pursued a particular strategy around criminal justice that is different from what we had seen previously, including the legalization and decriminalization of things. In the case of B.C., we have the government decriminalizing the use of extreme and very dangerous drugs like fentanyl. We see a particular approach to criminal justice being taken by the government with no acknowledgement that, in light of the increase in violent crime, there may be some relationship between the fact that the government changed the strategy on criminal justice and at the same time there was a significant increase in crime.
It is also particularly telling that this deflecting of responsibility to exogenous factors is what the government always does on every policy issue. The Liberals talk about how they are trying to achieve certain things and about how they are fighting for certain things, yet when the outcomes they promised are not realized, it is always somebody else's fault.
It is the current government that came in saying it was going to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. How is that going? We have an affordability crisis in this country seven years after the government took power. The Liberals said that they were going to work to bring about change for the middle class, to make life more affordable and to promote economic growth and so forth, yet we are seeing significant negative outcomes in terms of the middle class and those working hard to join it.
However, the government is here to assure us it is not the government's fault and that all of the measures it put in place were apparently positive. It says that the fact we have an affordability crisis has nothing to do with actions government members have taken, even though experts, including Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and prospective future leader of the Liberal Party, has said that inflation is a homegrown problem. We have these instances when, on the economy, the members of the government say things are going wrong but it is not their fault because they are there for the middle class, even though things have gotten significantly worse for the middle class.
On drug policy, the government says it is going to take a different approach and it has solutions to offer, which include decriminalization and safe supply, in which the government subsidizes drugs. Again, how is that going? The government has pursued a policy approach that is not working and is not achieving the results it promised. Then the Liberals are here to say again, on drug policy, that it is not them, that it is other factors driving this.
We see this in violent crime. It is worth mentioning the hate crime statistics again. There has been an increase of 72% over the last two years in hate crime. There are many factors, absolutely, that may be impacting levels of hate crime, but if the government says that its goal is to combat hate, and then we see a significant increase, it might be worth coming back to the government and asking why its policy approach has not achieved the results that clearly we all consider desirable.
Maybe doubling down on the same failed approach is not the right way to go. We see this across a broad range of policy areas. There are exogenous factors, of course, but if the government constantly says that when things go well it is because of them, and when things go poorly, it is not the government causing it, that is liable to generate some suspicion. We see how the failures of the government on a broad range of policy issues in criminal justice, drug policy, the economy and other areas, are contributing to a declining faith in government, a declining trust in institutions.
The good news, of course, is that we can try to rebuild that trust by having a new government that would chart a new course. What we see now increasingly is a declining trust in institutions, with people having a sense that the current government is not on their side and looking for change.
This bill, in creating a mechanism of oversight for the RCMP, seeks to engage in that dynamic of declining trust in institutions. There is a question of the level of public trust in certain communities in particular, of our RCMP, our CBSA, etc., and what can be done to strengthen that trust and to respond to the discourse around declining trust in government and other institutions.
I would say this about the broader question of trust in institutions. There are a couple of different factors that can cause declining trust in institutions. One is those institutions failing to earn that trust, but another is those institutions being maliciously run down by those who have an agenda to run them down. What we see in this case is the government failing to earn the trust of Canadians, thus losing their trust. Sometimes when the government shows itself to be unworthy of trust, it tries to invoke a “trust in institutions'” discourse to suggest that people should not be criticizing the government because that leads to declining trust in institutions.
In those cases it is important we hold the government accountable, that we push the government to, in fact, earn that trust of Canadians, to act with integrity and to address the repeated problems of corruption we see within the government. I know the Conservative Party is prepared to do that as we offer Canadians an alternative.
In the case of law enforcement, mistakes have been made at various times by various enforcement agencies, but I think we also have a dynamic in which trust is challenged because trust in our law enforcement is repeatedly undermined by those who offer extreme criticisms of those agencies. It is very important that we work to build up and support those who serve in our various security agencies, who have a challenging job, who do their best and are worthy of our support.
There are some quarters in the House where we hear, for instance, people talking about defunding the police. I will say very clearly that I am against these proposals for defunding the police. I think clarity from other quarters would be appreciated on that topic. We recognize the allied service provision has a role to play alongside law enforcement, absolutely, but we also recognize the critical role played by law enforcement. It is not realistic, in many cases it is counterproductive for those most vulnerable, to say we should be pulling resources from law enforcement.
Law enforcement should earn the public's trust, and we should also be critical of a discourse that seeks to run down that trust or undermine that trust. We need to recognize, appreciate and affirm the positive role in our society played by law enforcement. To understand the reality of proposals to defund the police, one only needs to look at places in the world where law enforcement is not available, where the institutions of justice, police, courts, etc., do not function properly or are not available to protect the vast majority of society.
In all of those cases, inevitably, when people do not have access to protection and justice, there is more crime, more violence and more harm done. From our perspective on this side of the House, we need to reject those efforts to undermine our law enforcement. At the same time, we need to build up those institutions, such as this civilian complaints mechanism, that support the building of trust.
With that in mind, the legislation before us should proceed to committee and be studied. We look forward to the further review on how to make this legislation work as effectively as possible.
I think there is work required, but we need to also understand the context in which this work is happening. It is a context in which we have increasing crime and increasing concern about public safety. The government's response to that concern is to double down on a failed approach of reducing sentences. Lowering sentences does not help people give up a life of crime.
There are various critical steps that we could take to support rehabilitation, and I am a big believer in rehabilitation. This is work that the justice system and all of us need to do to help people make a transition from a life of crime to a healthy, safe and productive life. However, reducing serious consequences for serious criminality is not a way to achieve that.
In terms of oversight of law enforcement and this government's failed approach, I will say a few words about the horrific mass shooting in Nova Scotia. This was an example of perhaps not only gaps in enforcement but also significant failures of policy.
We had an individual who was never a licensed firearms owner in Canada, but who had a NEXUS card. By all indications, he repeatedly brought guns across the border from the United States, using the ease facilitated by his NEXUS card. He was known by others in his community to have firearms, even though he was not licensed to be a firearms owner in Canada, and he carried out this horrific act of violence.
The immediate response of the government was to try to seize this moment to say that it needed to change and tighten its policy around firearms. However, the lesson it should have learned from that situation, and probably a variety of lessons around enforcement, was that the policy solution clearly was not to make more guns illegal. This was a person who smuggled guns from the United States. He used illegal guns, and he was never licensed to own firearms in Canada.
How do we have a situation where someone who had guns, but was not a licensed firearms owner, was not apprehended for his possession of illegal guns in a way that would have prevented this violence? These are questions that we need to hear answered. The fact of the matter is that the government was missing the point, and it was missing the response that was required. It was not about which guns were legal. It was about the fact that illegal guns were still being brought into this country and used.
I call on the government to recognize its failures in policy, to stop doubling down on those failures, to correct policies that clearly are not working and to take a new approach when it comes to criminal justice.
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Mr. Speaker, I have noted my colleague's comments. Earlier in his speech, he mentioned how it seemed that, on that side of the House, it is often the same few members who rise to speak. There seems to be a very limited circle of people on the other side of the House who take the floor. I found that interesting.
I was wondering whether my colleague could tell us more about his thoughts on that. I wonder about the government's respect for democracy when there are only one or two members of the governing party who speak in the House. Does he not think that other parliamentarians have things to say?
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I really appreciated my colleague's nuanced and moderate speech. In particular, he cited facts related to his personal experience. It is good to hear speeches that leave hyperpartisanship behind. I really want to congratulate my colleague for his speech and the position he has taken.
This brings me to a subject that he only touched on, but that seemed important to him. I am referring to the role and work of both border and police officers. We can see that these people are under a lot of pressure and work under a lot of scrutiny. We wonder if they are doing their job correctly or whether they are abusing their power.
Abuses of power and unpleasant situations do happen. However, I have also heard from people who work in this field. They say that they go to work in the morning with a weight on their shoulders. They do not like feeling as though they are constantly being criticized and monitored at work. They no longer know when or how they should intervene, and that is making their job difficult.
I would like to know what my colleague thinks about passing Bill C‑20. The Bloc Québécois believes that this bill must be passed. What message should Bill C‑20 send?
I think my colleague might have something to say about that.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to drill down into the answer the member gave to the member from Winnipeg a couple of questions ago.
Can he explain to the House why it is so important that he speak for 30 minutes on this issue? I heard what he said. He said it is important that he express his position on this, but let us just analyze this for a second. He spoke for 30 minutes. If all 118 Conservatives spoke for 30 minutes on this, that would put us in the position of having to debate this bill for literally weeks, if not months, just to get it to committee.
Is the member basically saying that occupying all this time for him to give his speech is more important than the legislation getting adopted? Is that what he is saying? In theory, that is what he is saying. He is saying, “I need to speak to this for 30 minutes.” If we let everybody do that, it literally will not go anywhere.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her very interesting speech, in which she explained how the CBSA's existing complaint management system can result in injustice, especially toward certain minorities that may be targeted.
Just before that, my colleague from Kingston and the Islands said that, every time someone rises to talk about Bill C‑20, they are just wasting time and delaying passage of the bill.
Does my colleague think she wasted our time with her speech?
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, we have Bill C-5 before us, which deals with minimum sentences. We have Bill C-21, which deals with guns. Now the member is going over some statistics. I realize there is a great deal of latitude. I am just pointing out that she might want to save parts of her speech for other pieces of legislation that are more—
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Madam Speaker, with all due respect, she did not. What she did was she talked about guns, she talked about various different crimes, and she talked about her position on this government, which is all very important. I listened to her speech from beginning to end, and there were only two or three sentences at about the nine-minute and 30-second mark where she actually brought it back to the bill by saying that what we are going to vote on is the oversight on all of this stuff.
I am wondering if she would like to take the opportunity now to comment on why it is important to have this oversight committee set up to look into the conduct, the actions and, indeed, the complaints brought forward. That is what this bill is really about.
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