- Member of Parliament
- Deputy House leader of the Bloc Québécois
- Bloc Québécois
- Saint-Jean
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $109,900.56
- Government Page
- Nov/25/22 11:29:12 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have the rule of law to protect ourselves from arbitrary decrees, to ensure that the law is enforced uniformly, whether or not we like the person it applies to. The minister just threw the door wide open for future governments to make arbitrary decisions.
Does he realize that a Conservative leader could have used the same argument against the indigenous demonstrations during the Wet'suwet'en crisis? Does he realize that he is giving the green light for another leader to use this argument against environmentalists blocking a pipeline, for example? Does he realize what a dangerous precedent he has just set?
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- Nov/25/22 11:27:53 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the justice minister just showed the Rouleau commission that he was on a power trip. He admitted that the truck convoy was not a threat to national security for the purposes of the Emergencies Act, but he invoked the act anyway by interpreting the text more broadly, even though he had been given advice to the contrary. In other words, he decided to interpret it to his liking. The minister is not only a minister, he is the attorney general. He invoked a very significant law knowing that he did not meet the threshold.
Is he aware of the precedent he has just set?
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- Feb/19/22 4:55:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the interesting question. I answered that question directly in my speech.
I said that I am very worried that a request from a province or city that had failed to respond to a national crisis could become a justification to use the act. Failure is not one of the criteria set out in the act. All available resources must have been exhausted first.
Unfortunately, there were some problems and complacency on the part of police. A police chief resigned. However, that should not be a reason to justify such a strong legislative measure that has such potential to arbitrarily violate fundamental rights.
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- Feb/19/22 4:54:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the War Measures Act was created with several scenarios in mind, but nothing specific. One of the tenets of a law is that it must not apply to a specific situation. It must be devised for general application to prevent it from being abusive.
That is why there are criteria for determining whether the Emergencies Act may be invoked. I do not see how it is useful to think of a very specific situation where the act could apply because it was designed to be broad and there are safeguards to ensure that the principles of natural justice and democracy are respected. There is no need to even consider potential applications, because the act is already designed to address that.
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- Feb/19/22 4:52:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I remind members that the Emergencies Act states that the government must have done everything possible. However, before invoking the act, the government made no attempt to co-ordinate the various police services. That is proof that the nuclear option, as some members are calling it, was used without justification. The work was not done.
The only measure not permitted under existing legislation is the requisitioning of tow truck services. My colleagues demonstrated that. The invocation of the Emergencies Act is smoke and mirrors and an attempt to remedy the government's poor management of the crisis.
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- Feb/19/22 4:41:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Mirabel.
First of all, I would like to say that I will be doing something that I normally do not do. Rather than ad lib my speech, which is something I tend to strongly favour for parliamentary debates, since it makes them much livelier, I will be reading it from beginning to end.
That is my way of trying to help out the support staff in the House who are working very hard right now so that we can do our jobs. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them very much.
Today we are debating something exceptional. I am not talking about the situation, but about the Emergencies Act itself. The act is exceptional. The act is an ex post facto law. That means that it applies after the fact. This is a complete departure from the basic principle of natural justice that a person should not be subject to arbitrary laws imposed by a government that can decide that an action is illegal after the fact, especially retroactively.
When it proclaimed this act into law in 1988, Parliament defined very clear criteria for invoking it, specifically to justify deviating from this basic principle and to avoid undermining the foundations of democracy, which state that citizens should be protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Those criteria are precisely what members should be looking at today.
The only question that matters is this: Keeping in mind that these criteria were rigorously set out to protect the bulwarks of justice and democracy, are we satisfied that the invocation criteria have been met?
The government's backgrounder is quite enlightening on these invocation criteria:
The Act contains a specific definition of “national emergency” that makes clear how serious a situation needs to be before the Act can be relied upon. A national emergency is an urgent, temporary and critical situation that seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians or that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada. It must be a situation that cannot be effectively dealt with by the provinces and territories, or by any other law of Canada.
Basically, not only does it have to be proven that the act is useful, but it also has to be proven that it is necessary. It is not enough that the situation be serious; the conclusion must be that the only possible response to the emergency is to invoke the Emergencies Act.
The problem is that I have listened to the speeches given so far by the members who support the use of the act. I have listened to them in good faith, in case I hear an argument that makes me doubt my own position. I have heard nothing persuasive so far. I feel like listing off the greatest hits of some of the arguments that I have heard since the beginning of debate and offering my thoughts in response.
Unfortunately, we have heard a lot of speeches where members have tried to justify using the act because, for example, the situation has prevented the public from enjoying the beauty of Ottawa, or because people have not been able to go to museums, or because businesses have not been able to open.
It may seem a bit ridiculous to bring up these arguments that have been used in this debate. I am only doing so because these arguments have not just been raised a couple of times.
Several members have tried to justify their choice using arguments that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, even remotely in the same league as a national emergency situation. To me, that exposes just how flimsy the arguments in support of invoking the act are.
Another argument we have heard is that 72% of the population agrees with invoking the act. I actually find it frightening that anyone is justifying the use of this exceptional measure on the basis of a survey. Obviously, nowhere in the criteria I listed earlier does it say anything about how, if a certain percentage of the population likes the idea, then invoking the Emergencies Act is justified. Thank goodness for that.
That said, here are my thoughts on the survey results. I am absolutely certain that the 72% support is not specifically for the act. I think it is actually indicative of people's desire to see the situation resolved one way or another. It reflects people's reaction to the appalling lack of government leadership in managing this crisis. Ultimately, the government's use of the Emergencies Act is merely a pathetic attempt to cover up its incompetence.
Nevertheless, we have heard some arguments that seem convincing, and they deserve some more attention.
In his questions and comments today, the member for Windsor West emphasized several times that the situation at the Ambassador Bridge has not been completely resolved. He pointed out that although some traffic has resumed, there are still obstacles and barriers. He mentioned that families were prevented from accessing health care, for example.
He asked my Bloc colleagues what we had to say to those families. He asked whether we should not support the Emergencies Act for them. Obviously, I have all the compassion in the world for those families, but I still believe that invoking the act is not the solution.
As evidence, the authorities have been able to use the emergency measures since Monday, and yet, according to the member himself, the situation has not been resolved. Moreover, the blockades were shut down for the most part using the legal means already available before the emergency order was invoked.
It is not the use of the act that is the issue here, but rather the misuse or incomplete use of the resources that were already available, and those families should not be led to believe that invoking the Emergencies Act will solve their situation.
The leader of the NDP and many of his colleagues have also argued that the situation is urgent, particularly because many of the occupiers have started calling for the current government to be overthrown, which would be outright sedition.
I did most of my studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal. There was a protest almost every week calling for the government to be overthrown. Luckily, no one asked to invoke the Emergencies Act. If they had, Montreal would have been in a constant state of emergency.
Seriously, though, I doubt that the criterion of a serious and real threat to the sovereignty of Canada applies here. If we hold to Max Weber's definition, the government is not about to lose its monopoly on legitimate violence, and we are not facing an insurrection.
As for territorial integrity, I realize that Ottawa residents are patriotic, but, even though Ottawa is the nation's capital, I doubt that taking over an area of a mere three square kilometres constitutes undermining the territorial integrity of a country that covers 10 million square kilometres.
We have also heard the argument that the police officers have said that they would not have been able to do everything they have done without the Emergencies Act. I have heard police officers say that the act was useful, but I have not heard them say why it was necessary.
My colleagues in the Bloc have brilliantly explained how existing legislation would have allowed meaningful action to be taken without the use of the Emergencies Act. Before Monday, there was nothing stopping the different police forces from working together to achieve the results we have seen in the past 24 hours.
What is more, it is not the role of the police to justify the use of the act. It is the role of parliamentarians. I think simply citing the police without tangibly and clearly establishing what legal vacuum the Emergencies Act is filling is a weak argument. I even see it as an abdication of the parliamentary role.
The member who primarily used the opinion of police officers to justify his support for the act said in response to one of my colleagues that he was not 100% sure that using the Emergencies Act was the best thing to do. The Emergencies Act is the type of legislation that calls for us to be more certain than that when the time comes to apply it and to have at least tried to resolve the situation some other way first.
Another argument made by a colleague this morning was that the Emergencies Act has probably discouraged protesters from joining the occupiers who are already here. I find the slippery slope of even considering the Emergencies Act as a deterrent, and a preventive one at that, particularly dangerous.
In fact, from Monday to Friday morning, while the act was in force, nothing discouraged protesters from partying, barbecuing, or getting into a hot tub in the middle of the street. What served as a deterrent was not the act, but rather a start of a coordinated police response at long last.
I would like to quote Jim Watson, who said this morning that this police operation should have happened on day two. The point is not just that it should have happened, but that it could have happened even without the Emergencies Act.
Lastly, it was argued that we should support the Emergencies Act because it was requested by the City of Ottawa and the Government of Ontario, which have also enacted their own emergency legislation.
Provincial approval is a safeguard governing the application of the act, not simply a justification for invoking it. Again, the criteria for invoking the act are well defined, and the mere fact that a province requests it is not one of them. If it were, there would be the unfortunate risk of unwarranted use of the act when a province loses control of a situation without first demonstrating that all possible solutions have been tried and that the province is genuinely out of options.
Basically, I am not convinced. I am still waiting to hear an argument that will change my mind by Monday, but I must admit that I have my doubts. The government has not met its burden of persuading us that we have no choice but to use the act, as the act itself requires, so I find it hard to see how I could support it.
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- Feb/19/22 3:50:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech by my colleague from Davenport, whom I like very much.
From what I understand, she agrees with the principle of using the Emergencies Act, because she agrees with how it is being applied and the rules for enforcing it. However, this is special legislation that is supposed to protect us from arbitrary government. It is to be used only in emergency situations when nothing else can be done.
Does she not think it sets a precedent if she focuses only on the use of the act and not on the criteria for invoking it?
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- Feb/19/22 2:20:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in her speech my colleague spoke a lot about how serious the situation was to justify the enforcement of the Emergencies Act.
She described a lot of situations that are indeed very serious. That said, I will not get into certain issues, such as the fact that a business was not able to deliver biscuits.
My question is the following: What would my colleague say is a necessary condition for act to be enforced, the severity of the situation or the fact that all other options have been exhausted?
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- Feb/19/22 1:22:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
To justify using the Emergencies Act, he mentioned the fact that several Ottawans, including some of his employees, were bullied.
This past December, we passed Bill C‑3 to criminalize intimidating a health professional and people wanting to obtain health services.
I would like to know what justifies the use of the Emergencies Act now, when it was not justified when we were passing Bill C‑3.
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- Feb/17/22 11:56:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am thoroughly convinced that the NDP leader was not happy about announcing his support at the outset, unlike the Minister of Public Safety, who said he was proud to support the Emergencies Act.
The NDP's current position is inconsistent with the history of the party and the legacy of Tommy Douglas, which they claimed to represent when marking the anniversary of the Emergencies Act.
We will be debating this over the next few days before voting on it later this week. The situation we are discussing could also evolve and change.
I would like to know whether there is anything that might make the NDP leader change his mind and withdraw his support for the Emergencies Act.
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