- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-324, An Act to amend the Special Economic Measures Act.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Calgary Rocky Ridge for seconding this bill.
The bill that I am bringing forward is about changing the name of the Special Economic Measures Act to the Sergei Magnitsky global sanctions act. As many in the House know, in 2015, Senator Raynell Andreychuk, as well as myself, had introduced, in the Senate and in the House, the Sergei Magnitsky law to sanction gross human rights violators and corrupt foreign officials.
Since it was passed in the House in 2017, it has only been used on 70 individuals. The first name on the list is the President of Venezuela, President Maduro. It is about making sure that we go after those who are creating the greatest crimes against their own citizens and enriching themselves through that process.
What we need to do is make sure that the Liberal government is always naming people who have committed human rights violations and who are destabilizing peace and security in the world by using the name Sergei Magnitsky. This is about the standardization of our nomenclature of our Canadian sanctions regime.
We have to remember that Sergei Magnitsky, who was a Russian lawyer and accountant, fought against corruption in Russia. He was arrested, falsely accused, tortured and killed while in detention and while he was defending Bill Browder. A lot of us know Bill Browder. He was a business person in Russia at the time and has been living in London, England, since then. He wrote a number of books, two of which are Red Notice and Freezing Order. I encourage everyone to read those books to understand how corrupt the Russian regime is under Vladimir Putin.
The Special Economic Measures Act has been used roughly 1,300 times against Russian individuals and entities. The majority of the people we are sanctioning now, because of the war in Ukraine and crimes committed against humanity, are Russian kleptocrats and Vladimir Putin himself. Therefore, let us make sure that we are consistent with our allies when we use sanctions and we say that we are using the Sergei Magnitsky sanctions to honour the legacy of Sergei Magnitsky. Let us make sure that his name is synonymous with standing up for human rights, for the rule of law, for democracy and for standing against corruption.
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise today to speak to Bill S-223, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to stop the trafficking in human organs. I want to thank Senator Salma Ataullahjan, who brought this bill forward in the Senate, where it passed all three readings. It is now being considered here in the House of Commons, sponsored by my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
This bill would amend the Criminal Code to create some indictable offences for those who are engaged in illegal organ harvesting. It would also allow the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship to intercede. If it is believed that someone is in Canada as a permanent resident or here as a foreign national, they can be deemed inadmissible to Canada if they have participated, in one way or another, in the harvesting of human organs.
I have been advocating for this for quite some time. We brought forward the Sergei Magnitsky law, which passed this place unanimously in 2018. The government has failed to use it since that time, other than for the first tranche of people who were sanctioned. It was to make sure that those individuals who are committing gross human rights violations around the world were held to account and that they were not allowed to use Canada as a safe haven.
We know there has been a systematic organ harvesting program going on in China, led by the Communist regime in Beijing. They have used it on political dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities, like the Falun Gong practitioners, like the Uighurs, like Christians and others. They have gone out after them, arrested them and then forcibly removed their organs to profit from them.
We talk about gross human rights violations. It is disgusting that someone would actually take people who are being persecuted because they are a minority group or someone who does not agree with the regime in Beijing, or other countries for that matter, and arrest them, detain them and then literally rip them apart and market their organs around the world.
Bill S-223 would make sure that those individuals, if they ever came to Canada, would face our criminal justice system. They would not just be facing sanctions and be banned from Canada or have their assets frozen here in Canada, but they would face criminal prosecution here in Canada.
Let us consider someone who needed an organ transplant and knowingly used an organ that was harvested in this manner from a political dissident, from a Falun Gong practitioner or Uighurs. Right now, the Uighurs are being persecuted to the highest level. Essentially a genocide is being carried out by the Communist regime in Beijing against the Uighurs. If somebody wanted to buy one of these organs, they could be facing criminal prosecution here in Canada.
We know that this market exists. Estimates suggest that illegal organ trafficking generates $1 billion to $2 billion Canadian every year. That is sourced from 12,000 illegal transplants, predominantly coming from mainland China. That is 12,000 transplants a year. We have to put an end to this.
I had the privilege of working with the Falun Dafa Association here in Canada. It represents Falun Gong practitioners. Many of them have fled mainland China to make sure they had the ability here in Canada to have the things that we take for granted, such as freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. All of that is denied by the Communist regime in China.
They put together some great research over the years. A former colleague has put together a rather large report with the assistance of David Matas. When I say a former colleague, I mean David Kilgour, who was a long-time MP here, who always championed human rights.
They had a list of over 150 individuals who were profiting from the sale of illegally obtained organs that were harvested from Falun Gong practitioners. Last spring, I presented a petition that called on the government to look at this. It said that in the last 21 years, Communist Party officials had orchestrated the torture and killing of a large number of people who practised Falun Gong and that it was being done on a mass scale so their vital organs could fuel the communist regime's organ transplant trade. There were 14 names to sanction under the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, the Sergei Magnitsky Law, and the government responded but never sanctioned any of the individuals named.
In October 2021, I sent a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs congratulating her on her new appointment and asking her to take action on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners. I asked her to look at the entire list of individuals, which said who they were, what position they held in mainland China and what operations they were involved in with regard to persecuting and arresting Falun Gong practitioners, harvesting their organs and ultimately trading those organs around the world. I first sent the 150 names to her predecessor at the time and then to her. Again, we got a response but no action was taken.
I know the bill is getting support from all sides of the House and from every corner of the chamber, but we need to make sure we step up and sanction those individuals to ensure they are not coming to Canada. We can sanction them using the Sergei Magnitsky Law. They are hiding their wealth, taking advantage of our strong banking system, taking advantage of our fairly robust real estate market and capitalizing on the illicit gains they have been able to achieve because of this illegal trade in organs.
There are Canadians who need organ transplants. We have to encourage more and more people to donate organs in Canada so that we can extend the life of those who need transplants. That way, we can also deter this illicit trade in illegally harvested human organs and make sure it does not spread to other jurisdictions. We always like to concentrate on the communist regime in China, but we know this is happening in other places in the world. There are stories of African nations, and it is not just governments doing this, but gangs and the people out there in human trafficking who are resorting to this as a way to generate illicit revenues.
We need to continue to stand on the side of the individuals who cannot stand up for themselves. We have to make sure Canada continues to be a leader on the issue of human rights.
We need to make sure that those committing these crimes can be held to account. I know Bill S-223 would go a long way in ensuring that they would not be allowed to work in Canada and would be arrested if they did, and would not be allowed to travel to Canada or they would be arrested and face charges. We also need to make sure that those who know they are purchasing organs through this gross human rights violation of illegal organ harvesting face the full cost and full force of law here in Canada.
I again want to congratulate Senator Ataullahjan for bringing this bill forward. It is something she has been working on for a number of years. It has died on the Order Paper in the past, and this is our opportunity to make sure it comes into force as quickly as possible.
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise to discuss Bill C-27, an act to enact the consumer privacy protection act, the personal information and data protection tribunal act and the artificial intelligence and data act. There is a lot happening in Bill C-27. I have a lot of concerns about this bill, and that is why I will be voting against Bill C-27. It would not do the things we need to do to protect the privacy of Canadians.
I would first flag, in looking at this legislation, that the first act it would create is the consumer privacy protection act. Why is it not the Canadians' privacy protection act? Why are we talking about consumers and giving more ability to corporations to collect the privacy data of Canadians? That, to me, is very disconcerting and one of the things I want to talk about during my presentation.
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, was the very first piece of legislation we had back in 2000, so it has been 22 years since we have updated legislation related to the issue of the privacy protection of data that has been shared online. Of course, technology has evolved significantly over the last 20 years. If we look at PIPEDA, it all rolls back to 34 years ago when the Supreme Court of Canada said, “that privacy is...the heart of liberty in a modern state”.
It said “privacy is...the heart of liberty”, and that completely falls back on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Concerning fundamental freedoms, subsection 2(b) of the charter says, “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” while subsection 2(d) refers to, “freedom of association.”
We know very well that people's privacy has to be protected on anything they do online, what they do through mobile apps, what they do in their email communications and the collection of that data by service providers because, ultimately, anything we do online goes through a service provider on the Internet, and we have to ensure that our charter freedoms are protected to ensure our liberty.
We already know that under freedom of association, a lot of people who gather in Facebook groups and other fora on the Internet have already been violated by the Emergencies Act. We know that during the “freedom convoy” in the city, the government was harvesting data and that data was then shared by some means. With GiveSendGo, the data was mined off of it, shared on Google Maps and distributed across the country. People's individual financial information, the ultimate piece of privacy that should be protected, went across this country and the government failed to intervene.
Bill C-27 falls short on what needs to happen to protect privacy, recognizing how people are using the Internet and modern technologies, especially with mobile apps and everything that is happening on our phones. However, the protection of individuals is worth it and the privacy rights are worthy of constitutional protection, which Bill C-27 fails to recognize. We do not have a definition of privacy rights or a guarantee of privacy rights in Bill C-27, and that is why it fails.
I am the shadow minister of national defence, but earlier this year I served for a number of months as the shadow minister of ethics and digital information. I can say that, during my time serving on the ethics committee, it dealt with a number of issues. One of them, of course, was the use of Clearview AI, the facial recognition software that the RCMP and other police agencies use across this country. The ethics committee dug in deep and provided a report.
The Liberals let the RCMP make use of this technology under their tenure and did not say anything until it became public. Clearview AI, an American company, was scraping images off of Facebook and other social media such as Instagram to populate its database.
That information was then used, using artificial intelligence, to profile and identify people using mass surveillance techniques. We found through testimony that, not only was this done illegally, and the Privacy Commissioner ruled that Clearview AI had broken the law and that the RCMP had used it illegally, but also it was racially discriminatory as well, and it was a huge problem that people of colour and women were unfairly treated by this AI.
Bill C-27 would not regulate the use of facial recognition technology such as Clearview AI. Right now, we know the RCMP disagrees with the ruling of the Privacy Commissioner, so the question is whether CSIS, the Department of National Defence or the Communications Security Establishment are making use of similar types of technology. I will get into some of the recommendations from that report if I have time later on, but we did call as a committee, and it was adopted by the majority of members on our committee, for a federal moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology. We called for new laws, guardrails and safeguards to be built into legislation through PIPEDA and through the Privacy Act.
Bill C-27 would not provide that protection to Canadians. It would not ban or install a moratorium on the use of FRT, so that is absent.
Also, we asked that all companies be prohibited from scraping the images of Canadians off the Internet, whether it be through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or whatever the app might be. We know that this causes potential harm to Canadians, yet Bill C-27 fails again to recognize this harm. The Liberals failed to incorporate recommendations coming from a standing committee of the House into this legislation.
One of the other things we heard about was that Tim Hortons was caught mass tracking Canadians who were using their app. If anyone who had the Tim Hortons app went to a Tim Hortons location and bought a coffee and a donut, that app was then used to track the behaviours of consumers of Tim Hortons as they were travelling for the next 30 minutes.
Again, this shows how the sharing of personal information and the mass data violation with the tracking of individual Canadians violated their privacy rights. Although Tim Hortons assures us they are not doing it now, we are not sure what happened with that data. Was it shared or sold to other corporations? Again, Bill C-27 would give companies, under clause 55 of the bill, a litany of exceptions to consent to sharing that personal information they collected through the use of their app. That would violate our privacy rights.
Although the Liberals have built in here words about consent and the ability for individuals to write in with consent or get removed, when it comes to terms and conditions, most Canadians, when they download an app and check the box to say “yes”, they have not read those terms and conditions. They do not know that some of these apps, as Tim Hortons was doing, were actually undermining their own privacy rights as they apply to the use of mobility data information, and because those terms and conditions are long, legalistic and cumbersome, people refuse to actually take the time to read it. Just because someone checks the box to say “Yes, I consent to using this app”, does not give those companies the right to violate the privacy of those individuals' outside of the commercial transaction that takes place between them and, in this situation, Tim Hortons.
The exemptions that are allowed under the bill for corporations need to be changed in the bill. There is no we can support it as Conservatives because they would be huge violation of privacy and of mobility, which are all things that are provided under our charter rights.
Under the government, we also saw the Liberal Minister of Health stand up and defend the Public Health Agency of Canada, which was caught red-handed having companies such as TELUS track the movement of Canadians via their cellphones. It said that it de-identified all the data it collected, but it wanted to know how Canadians were moving around the country underneath the auspices of the COVID pandemic and how transmission was occurring. That was a violation of privacy.
At committee, we made a bunch of recommendations, which the government has failed to implement in Bill C-27. Bill C-27 gives companies, such as TELUS and other mobile service providers, the ability to track the movement of Canadians across this country. It may want to call it “meta data” or say it has been de-identified, but we also know from testimony at committee that it can re-identify the meta data that has been turned over to the government. We have to make sure that it is done in the public interest and under the auspices of national security, public health and national defence. If that type of data is being collected, then there has to be a way to dump that data and ensure it disappears forever.
One of the other studies we undertook was of the Pegasus software system, which is very insidious. It is being used for national security. A similar type of technology is being used right now by the RCMP, CSIS and others. It has the ability to turn people's cellphones into video cameras and listening devices. It is a very cryptic, insidious spyware, or malware, that people can get on their phones by accidentally clicking on a piece of information, like opening up an email, and it will download. Then they can listen to the individuals in that place.
They do not have to bug people's houses anymore. They do not have to use high-grade technology to listen to the interests of individuals because it gives them the ability to turn cameras on to watch what they are doing, and turn microphones on to hear what they are discussing without them ever knowing it.
We want to make sure charter rights are protected. There are times we have to use this in the collection of data. There was definitely the admission by members of the RCMP that they have used it over a dozen times. They have their own system, not Pegasus, but one similar to it. We know that to use that type of technology, to protect the rights of Canadians, there should be a warrant issued to ensure there is judicial oversight, even if it is being used by the Department of National Defence and CSE, we have to make sure it is not being used against Canadians and only deals with those national threats they refer to as threats that are foreign entities. That is something that Bill C-27 fails to recognize.
I should say this as well. We heard at committee that this type of technology is being used against politicians, that there is foreign interference out there. As we have come to learn on different occasions, there are countries out there and other agencies that are interested in what we are saying as politicians, not just here in the House, but the private conversations we have in caucus, among colleagues, when we get together at committees, at pre–committee meetings, and the discussions we have in our offices. Our phones have become listening devices, so we have to be aware of that.
One of the things we have always talked about is what the gold level standard is to protect individuals, the citizens of our country, and to ensure their privacy rights are paramount in all the discussions we have. At the same time, we know there are going to be advances in technology, and the need at times to have police agencies, the Department of National Defence and the military use technology that could violate the rights of some people, but always with that judicial oversight that is provided underneath the charter. That gold standard is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. We see that the gold standard goes well above and beyond what Bill C-27 is trying to do.
Bill C-27 falls way short. We heard at committee that with the data collection taking place on apps, online surveillance measures have to provide the right for data to be forgotten, or the right to data disposal or erasure, another terminology that is used. It is about making sure that data collected, even if it is for the public good or even if it is metadata, is disposed of at the end of the day.
It should not be that I consent to have my data removed from a database by checking something off or having to write in an app being used to buy coffee at the neighbourhood store, for example. It should be that it is our right to be forgotten and that after a certain time frame, data is erased forever from the database where it is being held and is not used again for commercial purposes, nor used, sold or traded among commercial entities.
The gold standard that the European Union has is not included in Bill C-27. Again, that is why we have so many concerns.
When we look at clause 55, which has already been mentioned by a number of my colleagues, it has a boatload of exemptions built in for corporations to get around the removal of privacy data. These exemptions allow them to write in, make changes and share data. We have to make sure the onus is not on Canadians to get their privacy information back or to get their privacy information removed. The onus should be on corporations to prove why they need it. The onus also has to be on the government. This is about transparency and accountability. There needs to be a realization that Canadians deserve an explanation as to why some of their data may be used, even if it is de-identified, and why it would be used for the buildup of public policy or to deal with issues like a pandemic.
Just to move forward a bit, I note that given some of things we saw at committee when we were looking at facial recognition technology, the power of artificial intelligence and the growing power of AI, we made a number of recommendations. They included that whenever the government looks at using artificial intelligence or FRT for military, defence or public safety, it needs to be referred to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians for study, review and recommendation, and it needs to be reported publicly. There also needs to be a public artificial intelligence registry for the algorithmic tools being used. However, we do not see that registry for artificial intelligence companies in Bill C-27.
I have already talked about the right to be forgotten and said there needs to be a set period of time. I have talked about the prohibition on the practice of capturing images of Canadians from public platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We also need to make sure there is a federal moratorium on using FRT until we have proven it is needed by police agencies, the justice system has proven that it works and we are sure it is not racializing Canadians in its use. Ultimately, the Privacy Commissioner and judicial authorization have to override that.
As Daniel Therrien, the Privacy Commissioner, said about the RCMP:
[It] did not take measures to verify the legality of Clearview’s collection of personal information, and lacked any system to ensure that new technologies were deployed lawfully. Ultimately, we determined the RCMP’s use of Clearview to be unlawful, since it relied on the illegal collection and use of facial images by its business partner.
Its business partner was Clearview AI.
There is an ongoing need to ensure that charter rights and international human rights are brought together in a collaborative way in how we all form our opinions on Bill C-27. I hope the bill is taken back and redrafted, and if not, I hope there is an opportunity to make massive amendments to it so that it actually takes into consideration the privacy rights of all Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, I am proud to stand today to speak to Bill C-281, the international human rights act. I want to thank the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South for bringing forward this important piece of legislation, which would amend legislation I introduced in the House back in 2018, Bill S-226. My partner in crime in the Senate at that time was Senator Raynell Andreychuk, who worked very hard on that bill. She and I had had numerous meetings with the government, to the point where we had unanimous consent on the bill. The legislation we are debating today reintroduces some of the changes to the earlier iterations of Bill S-226.
We have to make sure everybody understands that we use Magnitsky sanctions to move in lockstep with our allies. When the parliamentary secretary says we want to have a coordinated response with our allies, our allies, whether it is the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia, are all using Magnitsky sanctions. Unfortunately, the government has not used Magnitsky sanctions since 2018.
All the sanctions that have been brought against some of the corrupt foreign officials and gross human rights violators we are seeing today in the war in Ukraine, and what Russia has been doing with its kleptocracy, have all been under the Special Economic Measures Act. We know that act does not have the same teeth or accountability built into it as the Magnitsky law itself. Having Parliament provide a mechanism to put names on a list to present to the government through the foreign affairs committees of either the Senate or the House would provide more accountability, as well as debate and discussion as to why certain names should be added to the list.
I have worked with numerous communities for years to try to get more of these gross human rights violators and corrupt foreign officials on the list. We have submitted names to the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development and the Department of Justice, and none of those names have ended up on any sanctions list, either SEMA or the Magnitsky law. The Vietnamese community, the Cambodian community and Falun Gong practitioners have dozens of names of people proven to have committed gross human rights violations against citizens in those countries, yet the government sits idle.
Amending the Magnitsky act, as has been brought forward by my colleague from Northumberland—Peterborough South, would address that shortfall. It would allow communities and parliamentarians to come forward with names. Then, the ultimate accountability of the government would be to report back within 40 days as to why it is either taking action or not taking action. It would also file annual reports. The bigger goals are naming and shaming those committing gross human rights violations around the world.
We have to make sure we move forward with this legislation. I am glad we are getting to the point of probably having unanimous consent for sending this bill to committee, but I would say to my colleagues in the Liberal Party that, instead of trying to make a whole bunch of amendments to the bill at committee, they actually listen to the people who have suffered violations of their human rights because of corrupt foreign officials, the human rights violators who put their own ideology or wealth ahead of that of the citizens they are supposed to be serving.
We have to make sure we go back to using Magnitsky sanctions, just as our allies do, to ensure there is one declaration that these individuals have violated the human rights of their citizens, are corrupt, they are being held to account and cannot use Canada as a safe haven. I know the government has been apprehensive about using Magnitsky sanctions because it is required to report on financial institutions on a quarterly basis whether any of the names on the sanctions lists we have under Magnitsky are making use of our financial institutions to hide their wealth, or hiding their families here and taking advantage of our great universities. Those practices have to be monitored, and the best way to do that is through the amendments suggested in Bill C-281.
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- Oct/17/22 2:00:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested in April by Vladimir Putin's thugs on a trumped-up charge of spreading false information about the Russian military. His supposed crime: condemning Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine while speaking on U.S. soil. Just last week, the Kremlin kleptocrats and their kangaroo court have upped the ante by charging Mr. Kara-Murza with treason, which carries a 20-year sentence. This is a despicable show trial by Putin and his cronies.
Clearly, the corrupt Russian court system is helping Putin punish his political opponents and muzzle anyone who dares to speak the truth about his barbaric invasion and genocide he is committing in Ukraine. These are the kinds of gross human rights violations the Magnitsky act was designed to address. If Russia refuses to bow to pressure and release Vladimir Kara-Murza, the full force of sanctions must rain down on all responsible for this abuse of authority.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a political prisoner, a prisoner of conscience and a human rights defender. Canada must speak up on the international stage and forcefully call for his immediate release.
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- Jun/13/22 2:11:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sad to announce the passing on June 2 of Mr. Markus Hess. Markus is the founder of Black Ribbon Day, a global demonstration against human rights violations by the former Soviet Union. As a son of immigrant parents from Estonia and initially angered in the 1980s by Soviet occupation of his parents' homeland, Markus spent much of his life advocating for the rights and freedoms of individuals who suffered greatly at the hands of communist dictators and blood-thirsty murderers.
He served his community from the Baltic and central European states as chairman and president of many organizations. As a board member for Tribute to Liberty, he was instrumental in constructing and erecting the memorial to victims of communism right here in Ottawa.
Markus received many recognitions for his contributions, including the Gold Cross from the Republic of Poland, and was named to the Order of the White Star by the Republic of Estonia. Because of his human rights advocacy, Markus was banned from Russia early this year. I hope he viewed this as a badge of honour for his life's work.
I offer my sincere condolences to Markus' wife Eha and their children and family. Markus' work inspires all of us. We will continue his legacy, because together, our democratic forces for freedom can overcome totalitarianism once and for all.
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- Apr/7/22 2:58:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the most recent G7 meeting, the Prime Minister and the Liberal government committed to eradicating forced labour from international supply chains. However, the Liberals still entered into a $222-million contract with Supermax, which has been linked to egregious acts of forced labour, and they signed a $250-million contract with Sinopharm, a communist state-owned company controlled by Beijing that is committing gross human rights violations against Uighurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners.
How can the Prime Minister justify these contracts, which are directly funding gross human rights violators?
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- Mar/23/22 3:34:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to table a petition signed by a bunch of my constituents.
The petitioners are calling on the government to take more action on companies working abroad that could be abusing human rights and causing environmental damage. They call on the government to bring about the proper regulatory environment so that we can hold those to account who are doing things like human rights abuses, slave labour and things of that nature, as well as environmental damage.
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- Feb/17/22 7:56:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing that we are here debating the use of emergency powers as has been laid out by the Prime Minister. This is really an indictment of failed leadership. This is about a Prime Minister who has not only dropped the ball when it comes to dealing with this crisis, but has also failed to unite Canadians because he constantly divides, stigmatizes, insults and marginalizes those who have concerns about vaccine mandates and the restrictions that have been brought in by the federal government. He does not seem to listen.
I do not believe the Emergencies Act needs to be used. I do not believe the threshold has been met under the definitions of the Emergencies Act. I do not believe the federal government has used the powers it already possesses to deal with these situations. What I do believe is that in this order in council, under I believe section 19 of the Emergencies Act, there are open-ended powers being handed over to the current Prime Minister.
We know that, at the beginning of this pandemic, the Prime Minister tried to ascertain how much power and control was possible over Parliament, the treasury and the executive of the government, because he thought he needed to grab on to that power. We know that his lust for power brought us to an early election, because he thought he could win a majority in the middle of a pandemic. He ignored the plight of Canadians who were dealing with the issues surrounding the pandemic and he ignored the plight of the Afghan refugees who had worked alongside our soldiers and were trying to get to Canada, all because he wanted more power and thought he could get his majority.
In the past, we had the War Measures Act. I acknowledge that the Emergencies Act is a modernized version of that, but it still has the same ultimate goal of dealing with major catastrophes in our country. Have we had a major hurricane or an earthquake? Were we attacked? No, we were not. Are we in a world war, such as World War I or II? Have we gone through something like the 1970 FLQ crisis? Have leaders of government been kidnapped or murdered? No, there have not. There is no way that the sovereign nation of Canada is under threat so that we have to use the Emergencies Act.
What we see out on the streets is sometimes annoying to those who live there. I am a property owner. There is no doubt, and I denounce all of those who show signs of hate. I have spent my entire political career, and before that, denouncing racism, anti-Semitism and those who fly Nazi flags and dress up as Nazi soldiers. I denounce those who are carrying Confederate flags. We have to stop racism. Each and every one of those people who have infiltrated the convoy need to be called out and held responsible for those hateful acts.
However, at times, to get attention and make a point, part of being a Canadian is to have a peaceful protest. Sometimes that includes civil disobedience. I have said this in the House before. When the Liberals had their long gun registry I refused to register my long guns. That was my act of civil disobedience, to stand against an overbearing, overreaching Liberal government policy.
I will also say this because there is a lot of concern about how traffic, borders and infrastructure have been blocked. I always oppose blockades. We cannot hold our economy hostage. I believe everybody has made their point. I am glad they are going home, and they are going home from our border points without the use of the Emergencies Act. It was provincial governments, local policing and local municipal leaders who were able to negotiate and remove those blockades, the same way the current government has dealt with blockades in the past at our Vancouver port, pipelines and railway crossings. They went on for days. We did not call in the Emergencies Act to get those blockades removed, because we listened to the people and their concerns. The government refuses to talk with the truckers on Wellington Street. That is disturbing to say the least.
The biggest concern I have is that this is suspending our civil liberties and charter rights because it is open-ended at this point in time.
I am of Ukrainian descent and I want to remind everyone that under the War Measures Act, in World War I, my baba and gedo came to Canada on Austrian passports. They were declared enemy aliens and for four years had to go 20 miles one way to the RCMP station every week to register. Summer, winter, fall and spring, it did not matter what they were doing on the farm, they had to register, even though my baba's brother was fighting for Canada in World War I. They still had to report in and they had to for two years after the war ended because the government refused to lift the War Measures Act and that violation of their charter rights.
I am concerned that the Liberal government will want to continue to erode the civil liberties that we have now. We have to make sure that does not happen. I do appreciate and acknowledge that the Emergencies Act does provide parliamentary oversight, and that is why we are having this debate tonight, to make sure that we can ask for it to be revoked if it passes with the support of the NDP. I have to say that I am really upset that the NDP would stand against freedom and the charter and support the Liberals and the Prime Minister in this ham-fisted approach to dealing with the crisis they think is out on the street.
Section 2 of the charter, peaceful assembly, right now is undermined. I walk through the convoy every day. Everybody says hi and has been very polite. Sometimes they honk the horns, which at 10 minutes to seven this morning was annoying, but they do not do it all day long, just for short periods here and there. The first week it was a bit overbearing, I will say that.
Section 7 is life, liberty and security. How are the Liberals going to ensure those things to the tow truck companies when they are commandeering equipment to tow away the vehicles on the street right now? What is beyond the pale in all of this is that they are violating section 8 of the charter, unreasonable search and seizure. They are locking down the bank accounts of people who gave generously to help the trucking convoy. They could not join and felt they had no other voice, so they financially supported the convoy. Now having their bank accounts locked down is disgusting. This is an overreach of the Government of Canada and I am concerned, now that they are on FINTRAC, that they are going to be treated like they were funding a terrorist organization and will not be able to get loans, access their savings accounts or even get mortgages. That, to me, is really disturbing.
Really, what is next? Section 19 of the Emergencies Act and referenced in the order in council says that there are going to be other temporary measures authorized under section 19 of the act. That is not known.
I again come back to the issue of failed leadership, inaction and paralysis by the Prime Minister. I have been here for quite a while, 17 years, and I am shocked that we do not have an emergency management plan for the Parliament buildings and Ottawa as the capital city. I was here when the terrorist attack happened in 2014. We witnessed what happened January 6, 2021, when the riot occurred on Capitol Hill. We know there should have been plans made to deal with a situation like this.
When the Minister of Emergency Preparedness was the Toronto police chief in 2010 and protests were taking place at the G20 in Toronto, in a couple of days 1,100 protesters were arrested. The RCMP, the OPP, the Toronto city police and regional police in the area were brought in to deal with the situation. If we did not need an Emergencies Act to do that then, why do we need it now?
It is time to de-escalate this situation. The Prime Minister has to stop stigmatizing, marginalizing, traumatizing and name-calling those who do not agree with his policies and bring people around, take the heat off and end these restrictive and divisive mandates so that we can get back to a normal life again and live as a strong, united Canada.
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