- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Liberal
- Fleetwood—Port Kells
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,090.09
- Government Page
- Feb/21/22 3:34:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member and his party need to pick a lane. On the one hand, he is saying we should have stepped in sooner, that we should have been proactive, that we should have gone in without any invitation from the provinces to deal with this. On the other hand, he says that Quebec does not need the federal government.
Did we step in without Quebec's request to help out in long-term care homes? No, we did not. We waited until Quebec asked us.
Would the hon. member not believe that is actually the way we would proceed in this circumstance, that if Quebec asked us to help with the Emergencies Act, he would recognize that and welcome it?
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- Feb/21/22 1:52:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what a change that was. I am wondering if the member listened to the speech this morning by the hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka. My goodness, what a change in tone that was, and not for the better.
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- Feb/21/22 12:54:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think we need to respect the member for Nunavut's story because she is probably closer to the essence of what is really behind the protest that we have seen.
We cannot take it at face value that this is about vaccines and mandates. This is about an attack on our democracy and perhaps she would have some useful insight for us as to what would draw people to support the very evil-minded folks who have been behind this protest. We need to know that to more effectively reach them and bring them back into a democracy that includes them.
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- Feb/21/22 9:14:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, a year ago we saw Alberta lift its restrictions for the best summer ever, and it was not. Albertans suffered. The hospitals were overrun, and Albertans died who did not need to die, but this is the same message we are hearing from the protesters, at least some of them, the ones who are not trying to overthrow the government.
Does the hon. member believe that it would be best to not have only politicians making the decisions to lift mandates, but politicians backstopped with good, wise, sage public health advice?
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- Feb/21/22 8:01:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member talks about freedom. I am wondering which freedoms he is trying to preserve. Is it the freedom to overthrow the government? Is it the freedom to terrorize people in Ottawa? Is it the freedom to choke off billions of dollars in trade? Is it the freedom to flout the law after everybody was very, very clear on what the people in Ottawa, at Coutts, at the Ambassador Bridge, wanted?
Are those the freedoms he is trying to protect?
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- Feb/19/22 11:10:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there seem to be two conflicting views. One is that the convoy was all about vaccine mandates and personal freedoms. On the other hand, when listening to the leaders, it sounded like an insurrection, that they were coming with the intent of overthrowing the democratically elected government. The supporters of the protest, including the Conservatives, have either been naively blind to the fact that they were gamed by the true leaders of this, or they are wilfully blind to the evidence that those leaders presented. What are your thoughts on that?
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- Feb/19/22 8:45:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member finds this question entertaining.
There are places in Canada that did not need the Emergencies Act. Coutts, Alberta, was one, because after the police found some pretty awful elements with huge stashes of weapons, charging some of them with conspiracy to commit murder, what did the blockade do? Those good people in the blockade said, “This does not represent us. Let us go home,” and they did.
Would the hon. member put the same advice to the people who overstayed their welcome by at least two weeks on Wellington Street in downtown Ottawa?
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- Feb/17/22 9:56:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first and foremost, this does not apply to the people in the places that the hon. member mentioned. They can go and protest anything they like, and as long as their local officials do not believe it is illegal, they are good to go. However, the nature of this act really helps us pinpoint the areas where illegal actions cannot be condoned and supported by anybody in good faith and need to be dealt with very thoroughly.
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- Feb/17/22 9:55:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will refer to somebody on Twitter who said something kind of colourful. He said something like, “You know, if you've got somebody walking along waving a swastika and you've got 100 people walking along with him, you've got 101 Nazis.” However, I will set that aside for a second.
What has happened here? The federal government has warned that it is concerned about this situation. We have offered additional support to the municipalities. We saw that the municipality, in this case Ottawa, was unprepared to deal with the issues it was facing, and the flouting of the law brought the law into disrepute. The escalation, step by step, brought us to where we are today, and the premise of my remarks tonight is that I believe the government is thoroughly justified.
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- Feb/17/22 9:53:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, these are crafty rascals that we are dealing with here. If we examine the words used by Mr. King, he did not say that he would do it and he did not call on anybody to do it; he just said that it could happen, but the implication and the inference is definitely there. Should he be arrested for that? Probably not, but he is gaming the system like the rest of them, knowing that they can get away with so much.
Is it right, though? Would the member agree? I do not think he would.
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- Feb/17/22 9:42:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a message tonight for all my colleagues here in the House of Commons and especially for everyone at home in Fleetwood—Port Kells, who are rightfully having a good debate right now about the justifications for using the emergency measures act. I want to provide my own thoughts and the rationale behind my support for the government's actions. To do that, let us focus specifically on the questions in this debate. Is the government's use of the emergency measures act justified and are the measures being invoked legally?
The second question is the easiest to answer because that answer is yes, if the measures being used to deal with this situation conform with the legislation that has been on the books since the 1980s. Given that this is the first time the legislation has been used, there should be scrutiny of the measures to make sure that they do conform with the law. However, that is the easy part.
We have to talk about the justification. The act is right to the point. It says:
a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that
(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or
(b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada
Let us take that apart and look at the evidence.
Does the current situation endanger the lives of Canadians? Well, the border disruptions certainly endangered the economic quality of life of Canadians and therefore their well-being. There is ample evidence of that in Windsor, especially in the auto sector, and for so many businesses and their employees in Ottawa. The threats of physical violence toward people in Ottawa's downtown neighbourhood have been real, and charges have been laid against 13 people in Coutts, Alberta, apparently because they appeared ready to murder RCMP officers.
Does the activity endanger our health? There is no doubt that the premature lifting of public health measures, as demanded by the protesters, would do this. We saw this very clearly in Alberta last year when it lifted the mandates for the best summer ever. It was not. We do not want a repeat of that. However, the stated aim of the protest is to force the government to abandon public health measures regardless of the advice from the Public Health Agency of Canada and provincial authorities.
Do the blockades endanger safety? When protesters harass and bully people and threaten assault, yes. When protesters allegedly try to set fire to a residential building in Ottawa, gluing the doors shut in the process, yes, indeed. When police found that cache of weapons that was seized in Coutts, Alberta, how could there not be a perception that public safety was endangered?
Does the situation exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it? This is not true in every case, but certainly in some, notably in Ontario. It is why the use of the emergency measures act clearly sets out that it can be specifically targeted to locations where provincial authorities need additional help to restore order. One point that has been raised a few times is that all these things were cleared up just as the emergency measures act was being announced. Let us face it. We want to prevent people from bringing disorder back to those locations, which is a real and current threat.
Do the current actions threaten Canada's sovereignty and security? The manifesto of this group calls for Canada's democratically elected government to be deposed and for the government to be turned over to a committee made up, in part, of them. We can put a check mark next to that one.
There will be some who say the answer is no and that if we consider the protesters at face value, it is just some good old boys and girls and kids in big trucks challenging the government to preserve God-given and charter-enshrined rights and freedoms. However, people who believe that, like some of our Conservative colleagues, have been deceived. They have been gamed by crafty, intense, grey-faced agents of passive aggressive manipulation and sedition. One can only imagine the information our security services have on them.
The gaming that they performed has been intense indeed. Canada has had a long and sometimes very colourful history of civil disobedience where people break the law and the police show patience and restraint while protesters make their point. Then, having made their point on a reasonably transparent agenda, they and the government trade ideas, the deal is done and the protesters go home.
Well, those behind the blockades and occupations know this and have gamed us to a fare-thee-well. They allegedly gamed the Ottawa Police Service too, telling them they will do their thing for a few days and then leave, while planning to use the grace period to dig in. They may have also gamed Ottawa's mayor, who thought there was a deal to get some of the trucks out of the residential areas until one of the leaders, Patrick King, stepped in and said there was no deal and they were not going anywhere.
Do the current actions seriously threaten Canada's sovereignty and security? Well, the evidence says yes. When we take a close, honest look at the people calling the shots in the protest, do their actions seriously threaten Canada's sovereignty and security? Yes, absolutely.
Patrick King, who has demonstrated significant influence in the Ottawa occupation, has deposited a great deal of material online. I am going to quote him, and the “you” in the quote refers to the Prime Minister: “someone's gonna make you catch a bullet one day. To the rest of this government, someone's gonna...do you in.” At another point he said, “The only way that this is gonna be solved is with bullets.”
The 13 people charged in Coutts, Alberta, by their history of arrests and violence, represent a very clear danger to police and to Canadian society. Do members want to know what their motto is for change in Canada? It is “gun or rope”. How many times have we seen news of mass shootings, tragic bloodshed and loss of life only to find out in the aftermath that there were signs the authorities should have picked up. Well, signs have been picked up, and the government will not want the postscript to an act of domestic terrorism to be an indictment by Canadians that we did not act.
This gets us to the real point of the protest, the real agenda of the people behind it. Theirs is a world of anger, resentment and hate, of minorities, immigrants, liberal values and the democracy they represent. The core people behind the protests are precisely as the Prime Minister has described them.
Many agree. Glen Pearson, writing in National Newswatch today, noted:
This hatred for hatred's sake doesn't find an easy landing in Canada, as it might do south of the border. But as the convoy protest revealed, the hate movement is increasingly interested in this country, hoping to undermine its authorities and replace them with chaos. The goal of such insidious agents was never to help the truckers succeed but to make sure the governments and security forces didn't.
Some of the messages put out by the protest leaders make it abundantly clear than Glen Pearson is right that the blockades and occupations have little to do with vaccine mandates and even less to do with truckers. They say Canada should eliminate vaccine mandates for truckers operating back and forth across the U.S. border. They know this is a ridiculous rationale for the protest as long as the U.S. demands anyone entering their country be fully vaccinated. We could eliminate our vaccine mandate right now for truckers, but those truckers would still be out of work and still be out of luck. Some 90% of our truckers agree. They are fully vaccinated, so this foolish premise for the protests has no traction.
The protest leaders and their political familiars frame their actions as legitimate dissent of government actions. That is allowed in Canada. However, the protest leaders have tried to obscure the methods they are capable of using and are possibly threatening to use. Well, we are onto them. They know and we know that those methods are not allowed. They are illegal, and given the size and scope of the blockades and occupations, and even the amount and sources of funding to support them, Canada's security and sovereignty are most certainly under attack.
Two-thirds of Canadians agree with justified, careful measures applied with the emergency powers in the act, with parliamentary and legal oversight and in co-operation with the provinces that need our support. That is what this debate is intended to examine. The majority of Canadians will be looking for justified, careful and measured opposition in this debate, offered in the interests of doing what is best for the country, because what is best for Canada, even when difficult to do, is our government's agenda. It should be the agenda of everyone debating this measure over the weekend.
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- Nov/24/21 10:41:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a question on a different part of the community infrastructure, but I want to congratulate the member for his very obvious grasp of the essential elements in his communities. I think they are being well served.
Based on experience I had a long time ago when I was on the radio in Kamloops, we broadcasted to Merritt and we broadcasted to Princeton. If anything happened, people could turn on the radio and find out what was going on.
How did the broadcasters perform in your communities during this emergency?
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