- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Jun/4/24 9:58:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been some suggestions about what my colleague's speech could have focused on, but normally the way speeches proceed in the House is that members choose particular themes that relate to what they are hearing from their constituents. Certainly, the rise in crime that has occurred under the NDP-Liberal government over the last nine years is a major topic of concern in constituencies across the country and is affecting many of the country's most vulnerable communities to a greater extent. People who do not have the means to protect themselves or secure their property in other ways are more vulnerable as a result of the rise in crime that has been driven by the failed policies of the NDP-Liberal government.
I wonder whether my colleague can share a bit more in particular about what he is hearing from people in his community about the negative impacts of the government's policies, the way that as soon as it took office there was a change in the trajectory of crime, with it dropping under the previous government and rising again under the now nine-year-old NDP-Liberal government.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak to Bill C-293 from my friend across the way. I think the last time I spoke to this bill, I was suggesting some slogans for his leadership campaign, but I continue to wish him very well in all of his personal endeavours. He did very well, although he did not take my advice to go with the slogan I suggested at the time.
I do, more seriously, want to recall and build on some comments I made in my last intervention on this bill regarding the impact the pandemic has had on our communities and the need to seriously reckon with some of the challenges that have resulted from that.
The last time I spoke in the House on this bill, I said that I wanted to conclude by saying that I am very concerned about some of the social and cultural impacts of this pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were already seeing trends where there was a breakdown of traditional community and greater political polarization. People were less likely to be involved in neighbourhood and community organizations, community leagues, faith organizations and those kinds of things, which were becoming more polarized along political lines. Those existing trends were dramatically accelerated through the pandemic, when the restrictions made it difficult for people to gather together in the kind of traditional community structures that had existed previously, and we have seen a heightened political polarization with people being divided on the basis of their views on masks and their vaccination status.
As we evaluate what happened during the pandemic, and this is more of a cultural work than a political work, we need to think about how we can bring our communities back together, reconcile people across these kinds of divides and try to rebuild the kinds of communities we had previously where people would put aside politics and were willing to get together and focus on what united them.
Over the last two weeks, with the exception of some arrive scam hearings that brought us to Ottawa, most of us were in our constituencies connecting with our constituents. I had a number of round tables and discussions with my constituents. It has really come to the fore again and again, as I have talked to people since the pandemic, how the failures of government during the pandemic impacted trust in government decision-making and, indeed, trust in our institutions. It would be desirable for people to be able to trust our institutions, but that trust has to be earned. Government policy-makers and public institutions cannot demand trust simply by virtue of the positions they hold. They have to earn that trust by demonstrating themselves to be trustworthy.
For many Canadians, the pandemic was a demonstration that institutions they had trusted were not as effective as they had thought they would be and were not defending their concerns or their interests. People were affected by the pandemic in various ways. They were, of course, forced apart from each other. They were also impacted by draconian policies that demonized people and punished people for personal health choices.
This has not just affected that moment in time. It is not just something that happened in the past during the pandemic and is now over. There have been profound consequences in social trust as a result of those events, and it was a result of the fact that the government was not prepared for this.
In the years before the pandemic started, in the years leading up to it, the government was not attending to the appropriate stockpiles of materials. Then the government madly thrashed around, giving different advice, such as saying one should not mask and then that one should mask. Initially, the public health authority said that masking was counterproductive and then reversed that recommendation. Initially, we were told to take any available vaccine, and then we were told to actually take these ones as opposed to those ones.
There was inconsistency, and I think a lack of humility, in the kinds of pronouncements that were made by governing authorities. This has affected social trust in significant ways, and understandably so.
We had an exchange on this specific point recently, during the break, at the public accounts committee, where, in the process of Conservatives criticizing aspects of government decisions, a Liberal member said we should not do that because that is impacting social trust. Our view is that government institutions have to earn trust, and it is our job as the opposition to hold them accountable for their failures.
Therefore, it is through accountability, through honest reckoning with the failures of government and other public institutions, that we are able to come to the kind of reconciliation that is required. I do think there is a stock-taking required. Although Conservatives do not support this bill because there are some significant problems in the way the proposed reviews are structured, as my colleagues have pointed out, there is a need for a fulsome and independent reckoning. The government failed in so many different ways in the course of its management of the pandemic and the kinds of decisions it made throughout.
In my own constituency, from conversations I have, people now struggle to believe anything they hear from the government or any other kind of official institution because of how badly betrayed they felt by the inconsistencies and the demonization that happened during the pandemic. We need to have a government that does its job, that plans for crises effectively and that understands its responsibility to earn the trust of Canadians rather than demand the trust of Canadians. Governments ought to try to earn people's trust through the work they do.
At the same time I think about the kinds of processes that should happen for investigations of this nature, and they require authentic independence. We see over and over again with the government that, when it wants us to be looking at or investigating some kind of issue, it always wants that investigation to be something where it can control the outcome. We are dealing with this issue, for instance, in the government's approach to the arrive scam scandal.
Every independent investigation has been extremely critical of government procurement. The government has now said it is going to have an internal investigation within CBSA by an investigator who is within and reports to the chain of command within CBSA. Inevitably, that is a process that can be controlled by the government, and the people who should be held accountable through that process actually cannot be held accountable effectively because the investigator is part of that internal structure. Again, we see a process proposed in this private member's bill that has similar obvious kinds of flaws.
To review the key points, the government failed profoundly during the pandemic. It contradicted itself and spent a great deal of money on matters that were not pandemic related. We saw it, in the early days of the pandemic, pursue this horrifying power grab, trying to seize on the worry that existed at the beginning of the pandemic, saying it wanted to have the power to effectively make law without Parliament. Conservatives pushed back and put a stop to that. Then we saw how it tried to use the circumstances of the pandemic to create division and conflict within this country at the expense of certain Canadians who were making certain choices.
There is a need for a reckoning, but it has to be an honest reckoning. We need a government that is prepared to do the work to rebuild trust, not a government, like the Liberals, that continually fails Canadians yet demands their faith and trust in spite of all these failures. We need a government that is honest with Canadians and works to get things done for their good.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House today on Bill S-205, a bill that comes from a Conservative senator and a Conservative member of Parliament. It is a Conservative initiative aimed at combatting domestic violence.
Before I speak specifically about this bill, I do want to pay particular tribute to Senator Boisvenu, who is responsible for putting this bill forward. Senator Boisvenu has seen the impacts of this kind of violence on his family. He has turned personal tragedy into public advocacy, standing up for victims of crime. He has devoted his energies in the Senate and outside of the Senate to standing for justice and for the inclusion of victims' voices in various processes.
I want to take this opportunity to recognize his incredible work on this bill and on so many other different areas. He is now retiring, and I think all members from all sides in the other place and in this place would pay tribute to him, his commitment to public service and his work. Bill S-205 is one of many proposals he has put forward for combatting domestic violence and other forms of violence, as well as standing up for victims.
Bill S-205 seeks to deal with orders that go against perpetrators of domestic violence, which a judge would issue in order to protect victims and control the perpetrators' activities. In particular, it would create a mechanism where a judge can mandate that a perpetrator would wear an electronic monitoring device and also that victims would be consulted in the process of judges making decisions about the kinds of orders that apply to perpetrators.
These initiatives make sense. They are common sense. They would give victims of domestic violence a greater sense of security, and I believe they would reduce subsequent violence and would save lives.
Unfortunately, what we have seen in the process of this bill making its way through Parliament is that members of the Liberal government supported amendments at committee that would weaken the bill, so here we are in the House at report stage, which is when this bill comes out of committee, and Conservatives are working to add back in some of those critical sections that were removed at committee. There is a lot of discussion in this place about combatting domestic violence, but when the rubber hits the road, we have Liberals voting against critical measures that would actually protect victims of crime.
Victims of crime are not primarily concerned about words of solidarity from politicians. There are a lot of politicians who say they have had enough, that enough is enough and that it must stop, but the rubber hits the road with the concrete legislative initiatives we put forward that punish perpetrators of this horrible crime and that create the kinds of mechanisms, such as electronic monitoring, that will allow victims of these crimes to feel safer.
It is disappointing that, while having words to say about the problem of domestic violence, Liberal members have not actually supported the constructive initiatives that Conservatives in the other place and in this place have put forward.
As well, I wanted to mention an issue I have been working on and advocating for, and that is more bystander intervention training. I think one of the ways we can combat crime, domestic violence and other forms of violence, is by empowering bystanders, people who may be outside of a situation and see things that are going on, to know how to respond, how to intervene and what kinds of tools are available to them. I have been to a number of bystander training events, including in my own community, and I think these are very powerful tools for combatting this kind of violence. We have focused a lot, as we should, on punishing the perpetrator and protecting the victim, but I think we can also look at other people, bystanders and potential bystanders, in terms of how to engage them. I have put forward Motion No. 57 in the House that deals with promoting more bystander intervention, awareness and training, which I think is another step we should be talking more about in terms of combatting domestic violence.
Fundamentally, this is a phenomenal bill, a great bill, and I want to again recognize the excellent work of Senator Boisvenu throughout his life and career standing for and with victims of crime. However, it is unfortunate to see efforts by Liberals and others to water down these kinds of initiatives. Words of solidarity are not enough. We need action, we need policy, to punish perpetrators and protect victims. Those concrete initiatives are going to really make a difference to vulnerable people in our society. I hope that the House will support Conservative efforts to reverse the watering-down amendments at committee and to strengthen this bill again so that we can do the work that everybody talks about, which is to protect victims of domestic violence.
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