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Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees

Blaine Calkins

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
  • Conservative
  • Red Deer—Lacombe
  • Alberta
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $146,499.79

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 39 - Mar/2/22
Mr. Blaine Calkins (Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC)
  • Mar/2/22 7:28:24 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague for Calgary Shepard. It is an honour to rise today to discuss this extremely serious matter. The unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act requires the utmost scrutiny, and the committee that will be struck is obviously going to play an essential role. The government's attempt to strong-arm the opposition and rig the committee to deliver a favourable outcome is not shocking given the history of the current government; nonetheless, it is unacceptable. I want to start today by reminding Canadians how we got into this situation in the first place. When we take a step back to consider the actions taken by the Prime Minister and the Liberal government, the need for strong opposition oversight becomes even clearer. In the early days of the pandemic, the Prime Minister acknowledged that mandating vaccinations would be a deeply divisive and socially harmful policy. That was about 13 months ago. He then saw an opening to try to move from a minority government to a majority, and decided that dividing Canadians and threatening the social fabric of our country would be worthwhile if it gave him a blank cheque for another four years. While the Prime Minister has always been keen to divide Canadians and others who do not agree with him, recent months have seen him take it to a whole new level, charging those people who do not like his policies as racists or misogynists, or as holding unacceptable views and taking up space. He has taken to suggesting that hon. members of Parliament, even descendants of Holocaust survivors, are standing with Nazis. What we are seeing is an increasingly tired, scandal-plagued Prime Minister clinging to the reins of power by stoking fear and division. Common-sense Canadians can see right through this. That is why thousands of Canadians from coast to coast left their homes to protest the Prime Minister's divisive policies and his decision to double down on vaccine mandates and restrictions when many provinces and countries around the world were lifting them. The protesters came with a very simple message for the Prime Minister: Canadians want their rights and freedoms back, and it is time to allow Canadians to manage their risk tolerance for COVID-19 themselves, just as friends and family in other countries have been doing for months. Instead of speaking with them, understanding their concerns and trying to assuage their fears, the government continued to override Canadians' freedoms with no end in sight, and the Prime Minister resorted again to more name-calling. Then, in a move I cannot fathom, the government and the NDP refused to support our Conservative motion asking for a plan to lift the mandate restrictions. Two years in, the Prime Minister does not believe that Canadians can be trusted with the metrics the government is using to justify public health measures. This is far from the commitment that the Liberal government made: In an open and accountable government, government data and information should be open by default. I wonder if the Liberals remember that pledge. We cannot accept illegal activity at our borders or on our streets. Infringing on the rights and freedoms of fellow citizens while protesting the government cannot be accepted as the norm, but neither should we as Canadians accept dangerous and divisive rhetoric from the executive branch of our government meant to incite Canadians who disagree with it. It is clear that the Prime Minister no longer shares the guiding philosophy of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's sunny ways, but instead is relying on the winds of bluster. This is in large part the backdrop against which the Emergencies Act was invoked. After years of insulting, shaming and marginalizing Canadians who disagreed with the Prime Minister, those Canadians rose up in opposition. The use of the Emergencies Act does appear to have been wholly inappropriate in this matter. Conservatives are extremely concerned that in striking the committee as the Liberals are proposing, they intend to simply stack the deck to skirt over the great many concerns that Canadians rightly have. It is important to note that the existence of an emergency does not mean that the Emergencies Act is the proper tool to be used. I know that many Canadians impacted by the blockades felt that this was an emergency that required extraordinary intervention, but that is not the threshold for using it. In order to use this legislation, the predecessor of which was the War Measures Act, there can be no other options in our federal or provincial laws. We must not lose sight of this fact. I have listened carefully to experts, including to police officers who were tasked with cleaning up the mess that the Prime Minister instigated. It is clear that the powers under the Emergencies Act were helpful in clearing the blockades, but again, whether they were used or were helpful is not the test for whether the act should have been invoked. It is whether the situation could have been dealt with in any other way through existing authorities. So far, I have seen no compelling evidence that it could not have been. We know that the police can compel reasonable assistance from others at any point in time. This authority is laid out in the Criminal Code, and that would include calling tow-truck drivers. We know that if police see a crime in progress, they are able to act on it even if they are outside their regular jurisdiction. Further, there is a process to deputize police from other departments or areas to act. This was done in Ottawa prior to the Emergencies Act being invoked, and it worked. The Emergencies Act may have been more convenient, but it was not necessary. Convenience is not the test in the legislation. The increased offences that were granted under the Emergencies Act were not necessary, because there are already viable offences and authorities in the Criminal Code. The border blockades were coming down before the invocation of the Emergencies Act, so clearly it was not necessary in those instances. The financial measures were not necessary to bring down the blockades at our international borders, and we were already seeing crowdfunding platforms that were voluntarily cutting off funds without the need of this legislation. They also do not appear to have been charter-compliant, as individuals were assumed guilty and sanctioned by their banks without any due process. These are all things that the committee needs to consider, and that we cannot simply allow to be swept under the rug by a committee designed to exonerate the Liberals' actions and justify the NDP's backing of them in an attempt to wipe the egg off their face from when they voted to affirm the act's use, only to have it withdrawn 36 hours later. The government’s proposal for the structure of the committee is totally inadequate. As I have outlined, this committee has a very serious task ahead of it, and it ought to be credible. I appreciate that the views I have laid out, and that I have heard from my constituents, are likely not going to be universally accepted in this Chamber. However, they are valid views and deserve to be heard and considered. A strong and represented opposition is essential for the functioning of our democracy. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is beholden to the people of Canada, not to the cabinet, to members of the governing party or to their coalition partners. To try to minimize our role because they do not like what we might say or what we might have said in the past flies in the face of our parliamentary system. While the Liberals have proved to be too comfortable in criticizing Canadians who disagree with them as holding unacceptable views, and it is their right to say so, no matter how arrogant it makes them sound, they are not the arbiters of acceptability for our parliamentary system. That is a role that is reserved for Canadians at the ballot box, not for the government House leader and the caucus that sits behind him. While he may have threatened an election over the Emergencies Act, it did not happen and our voices are just as valid in this place, or at committee, as his or any other member's on the government benches. To quote Sir Wilfred Laurier, a Prime Minister greatly admired by Liberals: ...it is indeed essential for the country that the shades of opinion which are represented on both sides of this House should be placed as far as possible on a footing of equality and that we should have a strong opposition to voice the views of those who do not think with the majority. I ask the government to take that advice now. While the government may be inclined to disavow its claimed beliefs for the sake of politics and retaining power, my colleagues in opposition should not have the same concerns. While I have spoken at length about the government’s attempt to vilify Canadians who disagree with it, it is important to remind hon. members that the government has also attempted to curtail the powers of the opposition on multiple occasions. The fact that it is now trying to marginalize the official opposition’s role in the committee because it knows we disagree with it is another link in a concerning pattern by the government to use policy and now procedure to punish those who disagree with it. We should remember Motion 6, which attempted to marginalize the role of opposition back in 2016 and give the government broad sweeping powers here in Parliament. We should recall the attempts by the government in 2017 to change the Standing Orders so that the opposition would lose numerous tools to hold the government to account. In the early days of the pandemic, the Liberal government tried to give itself the authority, unilaterally and without parliamentary oversight, to raise or lower taxes as it saw fit for up to two years. When these things happened, opposition parties banded together to say no and oppose the government. The ideological and policy differences that existed then still exist now, but that was not the point. We knew that for our democracy to function effectively, there must be a strong and capable opposition, even if we did not necessarily like what the other parties had to say. It is in that spirit that we should come together now. In the absence of consensus, the Emergencies Act provides a formula that can be used for striking this committee. While I understand the frustration that some Liberal MPs may have, given that they do not have a Senate caucus, despite the independence of senators appointed by the Prime Minister being questionable, that frustration lies at their feet and at the feet of their Prime Minister who made that decision. They had every ability to harmonize the Emergencies Act with the current structure of the Senate over the past six years, and they did not do so. Unfortunately, with a closure motion being forced on us to stifle debate, a decision must be made, and I would suggest that adhering to the formula set out in the Emergencies Act will help to ensure a fair and impartial assessment of this incident.
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