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Context: House Hansard - 137 - Nov/29/22

Nov/29/22 2:59:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is precisely the precedent that the father of the Emergencies Act, former minister Perrin Beatty, was concerned about. When he appeared before the committee, he said that once the act has been used for the first time, the temptation will be to use it for other crises. He recalled that he had consciously included the specific criteria that must be met in order to counteract the arbitrariness and abuses that the old War Measures Act allowed for. The Liberals flouted these criteria when they invoked the act. Can the minister tell us what will prevent any future governments from using it arbitrarily to suspend individual freedoms?

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Context: House Hansard - 136 - Nov/28/22

Nov/29/22 2:58:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in a Radio-Canada interview on Sunday about the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the Minister of Public Safety defended himself, stating that the act has some shortcomings and needs to be updated. That was a candid admission that his government knew it had not met the threshold for invoking the act, but did so anyway. In a country governed by the rule of law, the end does not justify the means. Do the Liberals acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact that the precedent they set now authorizes any future government to suspend individual freedoms as it sees fit?

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Context: House Hansard - 136 - Nov/28/22

Nov/28/22 2:39:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if the legal opinion fully vindicated the Liberals, they would have printed out hundreds of copies and distributed them to the media. The Liberals saw those legal opinions. They read the act, they saw that they did not meet the threshold to invoke the act, but they invoked it anyway. It was precisely to prevent this kind of thing that there was a shift from the old War Measures Act to the Emergencies Act. It was supposed to prevent any government from saying, “Just watch me”, and arbitrarily suspending individual freedoms. Does the government realize that, in doing so, it has set a dangerous precedent?

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Context: House Hansard - 122 - Nov/1/22

Nov/28/22 2:37:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is still not being transparent about its decision to invoke the Emergencies Act. CSIS told us that the convoy was not a threat to national security. We know the convoy did not fit the definition of a national emergency in the act. The government claims to have based its decision on one single document, an obscure legal opinion that the Minister of Justice is hiding. As a lawyer, the minister might be bound by solicitor-client privilege, but his client, the government, is not. Are we honestly supposed to believe the government would hide a legal opinion that provided ample justification for invoking the act?

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Context: House Hansard - 122 - Nov/1/22

Nov/1/22 2:57:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, worst of all, when the Liberals saw the truck convoy driving towards Ottawa, they did not put any plans in place to stop them from laying siege to the city. They had no plan for how to get them to leave, either. The Liberals developed a communication strategy to escalate the crisis, because they thought they could score political points. Not only did they allow the protesters to hold the city of Ottawa hostage, but their strategy led to over three weeks of tension. How can the minister justify his strategy to the people who were held prisoner in their own city?

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Context: House Hansard - 118 - Oct/26/22

Nov/1/22 2:56:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the Rouleau commission we learned that before the truck convoy even arrived in Ottawa, the government was planning to insult the occupants to wind them up. Text exchanges between Liberal employees show that it was strategic. They wanted to give interviews on the extreme elements of the convoy to make them look bad. This would, and I quote, bring out the nut jobs. Two days later, the Prime Minister did in fact insult the convoy, and the police confirmed that this inflamed the crisis. Does the government realize that its strategy was dangerous and irresponsible?

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Context: House Hansard - 118 - Oct/26/22

Oct/26/22 3:26:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I too am looking forward to the Prime Minister's testimony. Today, Inspector Robert Bernier of the Ottawa police confirmed that it was not the emergency measures that helped end the siege. The police operation was developed the day before, on February 13, by police officers who, at the time, were unaware of the federal government's intentions. Mr. Bernier confirmed that police forces carried out the operation as planned regardless of the emergency measures, because they already had all the necessary powers to act. Once again, can the Prime Minister explain why he invoked the Emergencies Act if there was no need for it? Was he just trying to follow in his father's footsteps?

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Context: House Hansard - 114 - Oct/20/22

Oct/26/22 3:24:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the Rouleau commission, three police forces confirmed that the Emergencies Act was never needed to end the truckers' occupation in Ottawa. The RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ottawa Police Service all told us they did not need it. The RCMP even warned the feds, hours before they invoked the act, that they had not yet exhausted all available tools. Can the Prime Minister explain why he invoked the Emergencies Act against the RCMP's advice?

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Context: House Hansard - 114 - Oct/20/22

Oct/20/22 2:41:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the federal government sat on its hands for three weeks before finally invoking the Emergencies Act. Today we found out from the commission that all of its excuses for using the most extreme of last resorts were false. Yesterday, CSIS testified that there was no foreign funding behind the convoy. The Ontario Provincial Police demonstrated today that there was no credible extremist violence. Every government excuse was false. Is it not true that the federal government's lack of leadership for three weeks was the only reason for invoking the Emergencies Act?

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Context: House Hansard - 113 - Oct/19/22

Oct/20/22 2:40:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to be a Bloc MP. It was not just a lack of coordination between governments that allowed the trucker convoy to stay in Ottawa for 24 days, it was a lack of leadership. The request from the City of Ottawa was simple: It wanted 1,800 police officers, from anywhere possible. How many did the federal government send? It sent 250 RCMP officers out of the 1,800 that had been requested. The majority of those officers were deployed not to the streets of Ottawa, but in front of the Prime Minister's house and Parliament. If the Prime Minister truly believed that the situation was serious enough to warrant protecting his home, did he not think that it was equally justified to protect the public?

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Context: House Hansard - 43 - Mar/22/22

Oct/19/22 7:26:37 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-289

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to speak to Bill C‑289, which was introduced by the Conservative member for Simcoe North. I will start by saying that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill C‑289, which will amend the Criminal Code to make it an offence to give false or misleading information to a financial institution requesting that information in accordance with the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. Right now, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act asks financial institutions to verify their clients' true identity and the source of funds under certain circumstances. Financial institutions must also report transactions they deem suspicious to the government, so the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, can carry out the necessary verifications, prevent laundering of the proceeds of illegal activities and prevent such funds from being used to finance illegal activities, such as terrorism. The problem is that we know from experience that there is a serious lack of rigour and very little vigilance, at all levels, in the tracking of dirty money. If a bank's client makes a false statement, it is very likely that they will get away with it. There is minimal verification. Since the act of intentionally making a false or incomplete statement is not criminally sanctioned at present, this client has every chance of falling through the cracks. This leaves FINTRAC with incomplete information, and its work becomes less effective. This is how the chain of negligence results in dirty money being laundered in the real economy. This is a flaw that Bill C-289 will correct. It will not fix everything, of course, but it is another step in the right direction to better uncover money laundering activities. In May 2022, the Consulate General of Italy in Montreal organized an event to mark the 30th anniversary of “operation clean hands”, a vast anti-mafia and anti-money laundering operation during which, let us not forget, two judges were murdered. Retired Italian judge Roberto Scarpinato came to Montreal to give us a warning. He told us that Canada had become a paradise for the mafia and money laundering and that we as a society had to do something. He encouraged us to develop what he called “antibodies”, to stop being naive, to be more vigilant and not be afraid to enforce our laws to the fullest extent, because money laundering is a scourge in Canada and in Quebec. According to Transparency International, the amount of money laundered annually in Canada could be between $43 billion and $113 billion. This means that up to $113 billion a year in proceeds of crime, from both here and abroad, is being reintroduced into our economy, allowing criminals to reap the benefits of their crime with impunity and causing economic distortions, such as skyrocketing real estate prices. British Columbia launched a commission of inquiry into money laundering, the Cullen commission. The Cullen commission may be the most comprehensive effort ever made to understand the phenomenon of money laundering in Canada, its effects, its causes and the best ways to prevent it in future. It submitted its report in June after more than two years of work and hundreds of witness testimonies. The report points the finger at the RCMP and FINTRAC for not taking money laundering seriously enough. It excoriates the banks for looking the other way. In fact, it accuses pretty much everyone of negligence. It also provides examples of what money laundering looks like. Take the case of Runkai Chen, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in Vancouver in 2006. While reporting an income of about $40,000 a year, he built a real estate empire worth tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Chen was a front man tasked with laundering in Canada the proceeds of corruption in China. He regularly received large transfers from foreign numbered bank accounts and reinvested the money in Canadian real estate. He made false statements to financial institutions here that, unfortunately, were no longer asking the questions they were supposed to ask. Not one major Canadian bank raised a red flag, not RBC, not CIBC, not the Bank of Montreal. In the end, it was a foreign financial institution that alerted FINTRAC and led to his downfall. That is the type of across-the-board negligence that Judge Scarpinato was referring to when he spoke about the need to develop “antibodies”. We actually already have a lot of the legal arsenal needed to deal with this problem. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act is a powerful tool. Banks are required to verify the identity of their clients and where the money is coming from. They have the power to freeze funds they deem to be suspicious. They are required to report suspicious transactions, large cash deposits, and international transfers if they have difficulty determining where the money actually came from. All of these requirements exist, but unfortunately, most of them rely heavily on the client acting in good faith and the financial institution being vigilance. When the government decided to invoke the Emergencies Act in what we believe, need I repeat, was an unjust manner, the Standing Committee on Finance held hearings on the financial aspect of the orders that were made following the emergency proclamation. At these hearings, representatives of the Department of Finance could not say whether the funds frozen by the financial institution had been frozen under the Emergencies Act or under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, the law that we are discussing today and that Bill C-289 seeks to strengthen. From the moment the occupation of downtown Ottawa was declared illegal, the financial transfers used to fund it fell within the scope of these laws. All that was required was vigilance. There was no need to invoke the Emergencies Act. It would have been sufficient to enforce the existing laws, namely the Criminal Code and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. By forcing clients to make true and complete statements to the banks or face criminal penalties, Bill C‑289 addresses the first step, which is to verify the identity of the client and the source of the funds. This could start off a virtuous cycle rather than a vicious one, as the financial institutions themselves would be more diligent about checking. Government organizations would be better informed and more likely to co‑operate with their counterparts abroad. In short, it would help us begin to develop the antibodies needed to seriously address the scourge of money laundering. That is why I am pleased to reiterate that we will support Bill C‑289.

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Mar/22/22 10:01:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency.

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Mr. Rhéal Fortin

Feb/28/22 1:39:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question. I, too, would like to get started on this right away because, as I said from the start, I think that this is an important mandate that must be carried out diligently and responsibly. I would have liked for this motion to be adopted unanimously and for the committee to start its work tomorrow morning. However, since we do not always get what we want in life, I will settle for hoping that this is done with diligence, that we resolve this issue and that the committee is able to start its work this week. We must not take forever to decide on the composition of the committee. My colleague is right; we need to get to work as soon as possible.

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Mr. Rhéal Fortin

Feb/28/22 1:37:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his excellent question. I think that the committee’s mandate is exceptional, as I mentioned in my opening speech, since I do not think we have had the occasion to study the use of the Emergencies Act very often in the House. Since world events have been pressing upon us week after week in the past two years, I am convinced that future members of the House will look back in a few years on what we did. We need to send them the right message. Yes, we will need all the information, because the committee’s report will probably be studied for many years to come.

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Mr. Rhéal Fortin

Feb/28/22 1:36:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his question, and I share his concern. I too am confident that the committee will give due weight to each position. It will study documents and hear witnesses. The value of one person’s testimony should not be tainted by the value of another person’s testimony. We can get the job done. However, it has to start now. I understand my colleague’s concern. Although I know that it is not up to him to answer my questions, I am tempted to ask whether he can commit on behalf of his government to co-operate with the committee, since that is my concern. Will the committee get the documents? Will it have access to the Prime Minister and the ministers responsible when it wants to question them? That is our main concern. However, I fully agree with my hon. colleague that due weight must be given to every person involved.

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Feb/28/22 1:26:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the hon. member for La Prairie. Today, we are being asked to speak to a motion aimed at creating a joint parliamentary review committee of the House of Commons and the Senate to meet our obligations under subsection 62(1) of the Emergencies Act. There appears to be a consensus on the need for such a committee, and the broad terms of its composition and mandate are defined in the act. Under the circumstances, I am tempted to say that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the motion and to thank the government for its good intentions. However, I understand that my colleagues in the other parties intend to debate the issue in order to justify their vision of who should appointed to the committee and who should or should not serve as chair and vice-chair. To be frank, as long as the proportion of members of each party in the House is reflected in the composition of the committee, this is not really an issue for the Bloc Québécois. I will say, however, that the Bloc Québécois is extremely interested in how the committee will carry out its mandate, and that we believe that this exercise is crucial. We live in a world that is constantly and rapidly changing. These last few years, the news has kept us tense, concerned and worried about the way our leaders were responding. Whether we are talking about the pandemic or, more recently, the war that just started in Ukraine, governments in every country have had to react and offer the people they govern a reasonable and effective position and response in line with their values and interests. Unfortunately, one crisis often led to another, to which governments also had to respond. Some governments are criticized for being too soft, others for being intransigent, and still others for their lack of boldness and imagination. Although most of this criticism is constructive, it can get aggressive at times and can even degenerate into social disruption, which then leads to its own crisis that also requires a response. One thing is certain. The modern era has its share of unusual challenges that will force us to find unusual solutions. This means going off the beaten path, but each step will require vigilance and prudence. For the purposes of this debate, although it is obviously a concern, let us set aside the war in Ukraine for a moment and focus on the mandate of the committee we are creating. We must look at the protests that some people justified by saying they were the direct result of the measures taken by the authorities in response to the health crisis facing the entire world, namely the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis caused by the pandemic forced the authorities to impose health measures with which not everyone complied. That is obviously normal. Some people wanted to express their disagreement in our streets, in front of public buildings, and that is also obviously normal. It is a legitimate exercise of the rights and freedoms recognized by all our governments, in both Quebec and the rest of Canada. Unfortunately, some people took advantage of the situation to organize unacceptable and sometimes even dangerous protests that had to be contained. That is when the federal government decided to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to the protests caused by the health measures, which had themselves been adopted in response to the pandemic. Was it necessary, appropriate or useful? That is what we have to decide. This soul-searching is unavoidable and essential, because we cannot forget that the Emergencies Act is the heavy artillery of the federal government's legislative arsenal. This is the act that would give us the power to implement the measures needed to respond to an international crisis or a state of war. Think about it. The global COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine were not enough of a concern for our government to invoke the Emergencies Act, but the protests in recent weeks were. The committee should therefore review the exercise of powers pursuant to the proclamation of emergency measures on February 14, which was confirmed by the House on the evening of Monday, February 21, before being revoked less than 48 hours later on Wednesday, February 23. What happened to this major proclamation? How did we use the tools it provided us? Did we abuse those tools? Did we leave any of them unused? What can we say today about the results it delivered? Was the proclamation useful or not? Is it possible that it was actually detrimental to the interests of the government and its citizens? This is a rare and extremely important mandate, as rare and important as a proclamation of emergency measures should be. We must therefore conduct a thorough and exhaustive analysis. We owe it to our fellow Quebeckers and Canadians. We owe it to future generations, since, even though we hope it will not happen, there will very probably be other crises that could give rise to such a declaration in the near or distant future, such as disasters, states of emergency, international crises, even war. Future leaders will undoubtedly look to past precedents. What conclusions will they draw? What will we inspire them to do? That is for us to decide today. It goes without saying that the committee will have to work with all due seriousness and diligence. The Bloc Québécois hopes that the work will begin immediately and that all of the resources needed for the committee to carry out its important mission will be made available without delay. It will have to hear from witnesses. Will it face obstructions like the ones we experienced last year? The committee will also need access to all of the relevant documents, legal opinions, and minutes of cabinet discussions and meetings. Will government officials co-operate? These questions are of more concern to me than who sits on the committee. I am eager to hear the answers. With all due respect, dear colleagues, I encourage us to work effectively and collaboratively. Now, let us get to work.

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Feb/20/22 4:50:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I understand that she believes that the situation is untenable, and I share that point of view. It is not normal to set up barbecues and occupy a street like that for three weeks. However, I also understand that she believes that nothing could have been done, that the government did not have the means to remove the blockades. I gather from her response to my other colleague that her government would have crumbled and that the protesters could have taken over. I would like to know whether my colleague, whose constituency is in New Brunswick, agrees with her province's premier. According to page 6 of the report that is appended to the proclamation we are talking about, the Premier of New Brunswick commented that he does not believe the Emergencies Act is necessary in his province, stating that policing services have sufficient authority to enforce the law. Am I to understand that my colleague—

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Feb/20/22 4:19:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Does he believe that Canada's current laws and the provinces' current resources and powers are so insufficient as to warrant federal intervention when a protest takes place or streets get blocked? If so, should we expect the Emergencies Act to be invoked every time there is a protest on Wellington Street in Ottawa?

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Feb/20/22 3:38:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I would like to ask him whether he believes the situation for which the government is taking emergency measures could be handled using the legislative tools that we already have, such as the Criminal Code or any other federal or provincial legislation in effect in Canada. Should we not consider using other acts or legislative tools to manage the blockades and protests?

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