SoVote

Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

May/3/24 10:20:36 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-20

Mr. Speaker, I like the member, and I like working with him at the public safety committee. However, seriously, the CBSA cuts were done under the Conservative government. The Liberals have not fixed what the Conservatives broke, but the Conservatives broke it in the first place. The reality is that we saw Conservatives filibustering this bill, Bill C-20, repeatedly at the public safety committee, for months. Every time we showed up at the public safety committee to actually go through the bill, we ended up going through some motion, another dilatory motion that was raised by Conservative members at the committee. The reality is that we are debating, today, the deletion of the short title. The cost to taxpayers of the hours of debate around this Conservative fringe motion, which is only in place to delay this legislation, is going to be tens of thousands of dollars, and we would not get to third-reading debate, which I agree would be an important debate to have. Will the Conservatives withdraw this dilatory motion to delete the short title so that we can vote on report stage and move on to third reading?

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Context: House Hansard - 308 - May/3/24

Mrs. Brenda Shanahan (Châteauguay—Lacolle, Lib.)

May/3/24 10:36:23 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciated the comments of my colleague regarding the empowerment of citizens to forward their complaints through this process. I would like to know his thoughts on how this complaints process would help the RCMP and the CBSA to better manage their affairs.

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Context: House Hansard - 308 - May/3/24

Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

May/3/24 12:40:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is an important bill. The accountability and transparency of many agencies, including the CBSA and the RCMP, is fundamental. I would like my colleague to explain to me in French why the Conservatives are delaying the passage of this bill right now, even though they say they support it.

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Context: House Hansard - 308 - May/3/24

Mr. Gérard Deltell

May/3/24 1:24:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I welcome the comments from my colleague. I think I said many times that we would support the bill. We are saying that the bill is going in the right direction and, yes, we need to confirm the responsibility of our people who are working in the RCMP and in the CBSA. The issue is that we have to modernize our rules, obviously. In 2024, and in the years ahead, the challenges are far different from what we had 30 or 40 years ago because of artificial intelligence, social media and also the transfer of information. We are saying that the bill is going in the right direction. It is not as good as we expected, but at least it is in the right direction.

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Context: House Hansard - 308 - May/3/24

Mr. Alex Ruff (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, CPC)

May/3/24 1:28:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this bill for the first time. I understand I have only two minutes, so I am not going to be able to address all the concerns. However, I just want to start. There has been a lot of commentary so far about how members should not have the opportunity to debate. It is one of my biggest observations, and I find it very frustrating when members across all parties want to have the opportunity to speak to a bill, yet we are constantly, especially with the current government in the last couple of years, met with countless time allocation motions and restrictions of the ability for members to speak to legislation here in this chamber. Really, what is this bill all about? It renames an existing body that already exists for the RCMP. It obviously expands upon that, but most importantly, it does expand to cover the Canada Border Services Agency. This is very important, because currently the CBSA is the only public safety agency in Canada without that independent oversight body for public complaints. Establishing this independent review body would foster and enhance public trust and confidence in Canada's law enforcement and border services institutions, something that I think all parties desperately agree is very important. As I just mentioned in my previous comment, it is disappointing that this bill has languished for the last six months and has not been a priority for the government. I am going to address a number of concerns, recognizing I only have a few seconds left. I want to highlight the lack of consultation around this bill, specifically some other issues around potentially how the actual members of the commission would get appointed, and the lack of independence in the process. I will get to that when this bill becomes a priority for the government once again.

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