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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- Oct/18/22 2:57:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the problem is that they did not manage the crisis. The total lack of leadership on the part of this government is telling. That is what the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, showed the commission today.
He personally spoke with the Prime Minister on January 31, day three of the crisis, to ask for police reinforcements. He then spoke with the Minister of Public Safety on February 3. It took three more weeks for Ottawa to take action, three weeks. If the situation was so urgent that the Emergencies Act needed to be invoked, then why did it take three weeks to deploy police officers? It is urgent, but there is no rush?
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- 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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- 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 1:39:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I share his point of view for the most part. He listed a series of emergency situations that warrant being addressed by the government and rightly so.
Would he agree that both this list of emergency situations and the events we have been experiencing on Parliament Hill over the past three weeks are situations that could be resolved if the government addressed these problems immediately, instead of breaking out the heavy artillery, like the Emergencies Act, every time a situation presents a challenge?
Would tackling the problem of the protests from day one—especially as they shifted from a demonstration to an occupation of Wellington Street in Ottawa—not have resolved the problem and prevented the use of the act before us today?
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- Feb/20/22 12:55:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, whom I also appreciate very much.
I could not agree more with her. I looked at the protesters flying American flags, Canadian flags, Quebec flags and so on. It is easy to conflate all the causes and make comparisons to anti-Semitism. However, we are really far from that. If we were in a situation like the one Poland and Germany experienced in the dark years we would prefer to forget but can never forget, the Emergencies Act would obviously be called for. However, we are not there.
Conflating situations like this is dangerous. First, it does a disservice to the memory of victims of the Holocaust. Second, it undermines the sound, informed and intelligent management of situations here at home.
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- Feb/20/22 12:53:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.
I completely agree with her. The situation has been resolved, as I said in my speech.
It is a difficult situation, we agree. It is unacceptable. People cannot block off streets like that. If there had been a fire or if someone had fallen ill on Wellington Street, it would have been impossible for an ambulance or the fire department to get there. I agree that this is unacceptable.
That said, the situation was resolved through the police. It was almost nice to see the various police forces supporting each other. That is how the situation was settled.
The Emergencies Act needs to be kept for real emergency measures, otherwise we will be shooting ourselves in the foot. It is much like the story of Peter and the wolf. We cry wolf when there is no wolf. At some point, there will be a wolf, but our cries will not be heard.
I am urging us to show restraint. The Emergencies Act should be invoked when there are emergency measures to be taken. If there are other ways to deal with a situation, we should use them. If the act is to be invoked, it should be done sparingly and judiciously, selecting the places where it applies. It was only three provinces, not the ten provinces and three territories, that asked for it.
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- Feb/20/22 12:41:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, I need to clarify something. The Emergencies Act was assented to on July 21, 1988, and it replaced the War Measures Act. I would agree that there are important, not to say fundamental, differences between them. However, both acts set out the manner in which we wish to articulate our interventions and responses to the worst situations, namely a public welfare emergency, a public order emergency, an international emergency or a war emergency. There is nothing ordinary or trivial about this act. It is the heavy artillery of legislation. It must only be invoked sparingly and with the utmost prudence.
Today, we must decide if using this act in the current situation is appropriate. Are we in a state of emergency? If the answer is yes, does the seriousness of the situation justify invoking the Emergencies Act? If so, as provided for in subsection 17(2), what area is affected by this state of emergency?
Subsection 17(1) of the act provides for the Governor in Council to declare a state of emergency after holding consultations under section 25. Pursuant to section 25, this means that “the lieutenant governor in council of each province...shall be consulted”. This exercise should usually make it possible to determine, with a modicum of reliability, if a situation exists in a province that requires us to invoke the Emergencies Act.
In the interest of being thorough, subsection 58(1) provides that the report on the consultations must be provided with the motion for confirmation of the potential proclamation. The Governor in Council's proclamation, dated February 15, 2022, states that the consultation under subsection 25(1) did take place, and it “declare[s] that a public order emergency exists throughout Canada and necessitates the taking of special temporary measures”.
What does that mean, exactly? Like all the other members of the Bloc Québécois caucus, I think that ratifying this proclamation at this point in time would be a grave error that could have worse consequences than the situation it seeks to address. Even setting aside the fact that no end date is given for the allegedly temporary proposed measures, there are plainly at least two big issues with the proclamation. First of all, and this is no small matter, it is clear that there is no state of emergency as defined in the act, which I think nullifies any argument for authorizing the proclamation under section 17(1). The definition of a public order emergency is set out in section 16 of the act and requires “a national emergency”. This national emergency is itself defined in section 3 of the act, which states that the situation must be such that it “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada”. It also states that the situation must “exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it”.
However, the protests and the occupation in Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada have all been dealt with. The blockades have been removed and the offenders punished without the need to invoke the Emergencies Act. The existing laws and provincial and municipal powers to intervene were clearly sufficient. Moreover, the majority of premiers consulted by the Prime Minister confirmed that they did not need this act and made it clear that they were opposed to using it. In fact, of the 13 premiers consulted, only three said they supported invoking the act. How then can anyone seriously argue that the whole country is in a state of emergency?
The Premier of Quebec even said as much to the Prime Minister. Page 5 of the report attached to the proclamation says that “municipal police and the Sûreté du Québec have control of the situation”. It then says that “the use of the Act would be divisive”.
The least we can conclude from that is that the national emergency, which the act states is a condition for declaring a public order emergency, simply does not exist.
Furthermore, in the worst-case scenario, the report on the consultation with the provinces under in subsection 25(1) of the act would only justify the declaration of a public order emergency in the three provinces that were affected and that supported the declaration, namely Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and British Columbia.
The premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec all said that they had the situation under control and did not support the invocation of this act.
Unless the government has no regard for these premiers, it certainly cannot claim that there is a national emergency in these seven provinces as required by the act.
As for the premiers of Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the report merely states that they have not issued public statements. It would be pretty difficult to interpret that silence as a call for help or as approval to invoke the Emergencies Act.
As for Quebec, I will simply read the quote from the report on the consultations regarding the proclamation. It takes up just three short lines in an eight-page document:
The Premier of Quebec said that he opposed the application of the Emergencies Act in Quebec, stating that municipal police and the Sûreté du Québec have control of the situation, and arguing that the use of the Act would be divisive.
Under subsection 17(2) of the Act, the emergency, if it existed, was in only three provinces, so the proclamation should have stated that there was a situation in the provinces of Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and British Columbia, rather than indicating that a state of emergency exists throughout the country, as appears in the third paragraph of the declaration.
The government's claim that the lieutenant governor in council of each province and the commissioners of Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut had been consulted and that it had therefore concluded that a state of emergency exists throughout the country inevitably suggests either a serious lack of judgment or equally serious wilful blindness. As the Premier of Quebec rightly said, this is not an inconsequential mistake, but a potentially divisive act. Do we really need this?
Moreover, it sets a dangerous precedent. This kind of law constitutes a serious argument to convince anyone that the Government of Canada has the power to control its territory. Invoking it on a whim anytime an unexpected situation causes headaches and creates major policing challenges actually weakens its impact. The most powerful weapons should be used only as a last resort. They tend to be more effective as a deterrent than when they are put to use.
Let us be clear. The situation that has been happening on Parliament Hill for the past three weeks is unacceptable in a democracy and should never have been tolerated this long. In a democracy, the right to express disapproval of our leaders' decisions and the right to assemble are sacred.
However, we must bear in mind that each individual's rights end where another's begin. Abuse of those rights is a violation that can and actually should always be punished. Have we reached the point of bringing out the heavy artillery? I do not think so. It might happen one day. We cannot rule it out. As I see it, this act should be delayed for as long as possible and be used as rarely as possible—ideally, never.
In conclusion, the invocation of the Emergencies Act at this point could be seen as a clumsy or perhaps desperate move on the part of a beleaguered Prime Minister trying to make it look like he took action to deal with a situation that is unacceptable in a democracy. Either way, it is a serious, dangerous move whose consequences will not be fully understood for years.
It is therefore my intention and that of the entire Bloc Québécois caucus to vote against the confirmation motion, and I urge my 306 colleagues, be they NDP, Conservative, Green, Liberal or independent, who also care about democracy and the rights we enjoy because of it, to reject this motion.
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