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- Beaches—East York
- Ontario
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- Jun/3/24 11:53:04 a.m.
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the support to get the bill through report stage. I am confident we will be sending the bill to the Senate. It is very important that we do so and that the bill becomes law. We have lived through a pandemic that no one wants to live through again, and it is important we put measures in place here today, as parliamentarians, to ensure accountability not just in the current Parliament but also in future Parliaments.
What do I mean by accountability? I mean that all future governments would have to table a plan in the House to ensure that they are as prepared as possible for the next pandemic and that they take efforts to reduce risks to prevent the next pandemic. We can remember SARS. What happened after SARS? There were reports, studies and recommendations, and some of the recommendations were even adopted, but not all of them. Politicians forgot. Politicians were not studying the reports or calling for renewed action in the wake of the reports, and it fell away.
Were we as prepared as we should have been for the pandemic? Were provinces as prepared as they should have been? Was the federal government as prepared as it should have been? Absolutely not. No one wants to relive what we lived through, but let us remember what we went through, because if we do not remember, we are destined to live through something very similar.
If we remember, we will remember the army having to go into nursing homes. We will remember the fear of the unknown that we all experienced. We will remember the great scale of loss. The pandemic required a wartime effort across levels of government and across parties to do what we needed to do to save lives. The pandemic upended so many lives. There were not just lives lost; it also upended employment. It upended relationships. It made it so hard for so many.
Before I get into the second piece, I want to speak to what the bill would do. Some people have said we could have a plan already, that the bill would be overreaching and get into provincial jurisdiction. What would the plan do? It would do one thing, very simply. It would require the government to table, in Parliament, a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan to ensure that the government and the health minister take a whole-of-government approach and work with ministers across government to turn their minds to how they would take steps to reduce pandemic risk and prepare the current government and future governments for the next pandemic.
I was not going to get into the missteps along the way. I can criticize the way the wage subsidy rolled out. I can criticize different public health measures. I was furious, as the father of kids who are now seven and four years old, when Ontario closed its schools for the final time in a January during the pandemic. However, we should consider the alternative. I know not everyone loves the Prime Minister today, but the Prime Minister stood outside his home on a daily basis and acted like a prime minister. He delivered benefits, putting politics aside, and worked with opposition parties and other levels of government to support businesses and individuals in a time of crisis.
Let us consider the counterfactual, such as if the Leader of the Opposition were the prime minister during a crisis like the one we just had. When faced with questions about the special budgetary measures that were being put in place, everyone else was putting politics aside, but not the leader of the official opposition, the member for Carleton. He said we did not need big, fat government programs. He said we needed to lower taxes and eliminate regulatory red tape. It is as if we pull a string and the doll says the same thing again and again, even in a crisis.
Every other party at every other level of government was willing to work across party lines to save lives and support individuals and businesses through the crisis. Let us imagine if the Leader of the Opposition had been the prime minister at the time and had said, yes, people who own small businesses are having their lives upended and yes, they are losing employment because they cannot go into work because of the pandemic and crisis, but that we are going to lower taxes and cut red tape. Does anyone in the House think that is a serious answer? Absolutely not.
The Prime Minister was acting like a prime minister. Let us forget about supporting the special measures; we know the counterfactual, that a Conservative prime minister would not have supported special measures. What about public health measures? Conservatives at the time were saying two things. They were saying that vaccines were not going to rollout fast enough; they did. Conservatives then undermined public confidence in immunization. Of course, there is a credible debate to be had about certain public health measures, and we can have that credible debate.
We could have had a credible debate at the time, but there should not have been an instance where the local health officers of the regions of the member for Sarnia—Lambton, the member for Haldimand—Norfolk or the member for Niagara West, whether it was the head of Norfolk County's EMS or the public health officer in Sarnia—Lambton, had to issue public statements correcting the record to say that we should defend public health efforts and that people should ignore the comments from one's elected officials and not listen to them. Yes, we can have a credible debate, but we cannot afford to undermine public confidence in immunization.
What happens if we do? We see what is happening. In Ontario, there has just been the first death in years from measles. Why did it happen? It is because vaccination rates have plummeted. That is a direct consequence of the willingness to undermine public health efforts and undermine immunization. Again, debate is warranted and individuals can protest as they like. I, as some people in the House may know, criticized the invocation of the Emergencies Act. What I did not do, though, was bring donuts and coffee and celebrate lawlessness. That is not the conduct we should expect from a prime minister. That is not something we should expect from someone who should be acting as a statesman in a crisis. It is actually the opposite of what we should expect from our leaders.
Just imagine if the leader of the official opposition had been the prime minister. I do not say Erin O'Toole, as I think he would have managed through the crisis just fine. He is a serious person. The individual who occupies the current chair of leader of the official opposition is unserious and would have managed us through the crisis in the most unserious way.
I want to close with this, because I have heard some members ask about agriculture. One should know what is in the bill, which says that we have got to make efforts to address antimicrobial resistance. We should. Farmers are doing that. Agriculture is doing that. The bill says that we should regulate activities to address pandemic risk.
Conservatives trip over themselves to talk about biosecurity if it means ending whistleblowing on farms, but they do not want to talk about biosecurity when it means reducing pandemic risk, because that is all it is. In fact, farming operations already take pandemic risk incredibly seriously here in Canada, but not all around the world. We see pandemics driven by spillover risks associated with animals. What is a “one health” approach? All it does is recognize and address the fact that animal health, human health and environmental health are interconnected.
I am going to quote the member from Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. I could not believe it. With respect to promoting alternative proteins, there is a huge pulse industry in Canada. It is a good thing to promote alternative proteins. Instead, the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke says, “alternative protein is...a far-left dog whistle [for eating] crickets”. I put that to the representative from Soy Canada. He did not really know what to say at committee. Again, the Conservatives are completely unserious. If we want to make efforts to prepare for the next pandemic or to reduce the risk of the next pandemic, we need the act in place, and we should also be very wary about electing certain Conservatives.
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- Mar/19/24 5:52:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's remarks and the amendment. It follows from the debate we had at second reading. I was clear at second reading when I said that the core of this bill is the plan. We need legislation passed in this House to ensure that all future governments take every step possible to prepare for the next pandemic and, ideally, take steps to reduce pandemic risks to prevent the next pandemic.
The review body, the advisory body, was not intended to have some searching, backward-looking accountability function. It was intended to ensure that experts come together to learn lessons and inform the plan.
In conversations with colleagues subsequently and even at second reading debate, I was clear that this was not a hill I was going to die on. The core of this is accountability to Parliament for every future government to ensure that every three to five years, which I said I was open to as an amendment too, the government comes back and tables the plan and improves the plan. This would ensure we are doing everything we can, knowing that the costs of prevention and preparedness pale in comparison to the human and economic costs, the costs we just lived through and the costs that our kids are likely to live through in relation to the next pandemic.
To be clear, I do not subscribe to all that my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway has said. I do not suggest that this is a whitewash. The idea was for experts to come together to inform a plan. However, I am nothing if not pragmatic, and I would like this bill to pass. I think it is incredibly important that the core of it passes and that we see serious thought go into a whole-of-government approach. We talked about that.
This bill sets out specific ministerial responsibilities to inform the plan. The bill is informed by and worked on by the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystems and its report on preventing the next pandemic. It is informed by UNEP's report on preventing the next pandemic. It is informed by the Independent Panel's report on pandemic preparedness.
The core of this, the most important part of it, is that there is a plan in place, tabled in Parliament, to prepare for and prevent the next pandemic, that future governments ensure that plans are tabled to improve upon those efforts and that there be accountability to this House. It is not that PHAC and the government would do this work separately. There would be accountability to the Canadian public on an ongoing basis.
We know, having seen what took place post-SARS, that there was a lot of good work to make recommendations and some good work to implement those recommendations, although not fully and by no means completely, and then the public lost interest. We moved on to other things and were not as prepared as we could and should have been. This bill would remedy that. It would ensure that every future government takes these serious obligations as seriously as they should.
I certainly accept the amendment. I do not accept the characterization of the advisory body, but if removing the advisory body and that particular review is what it takes to get the core of the bill passed, that accountability to Parliament on a pandemic preparedness and prevention plan, then so be it. Let us get the amendment passed and let us get this bill to the Senate.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that question drives at something really important, which is that we cannot move ahead until we have learned the lessons of what is behind us. We are still living with COVID, but much of the government's response, at all levels, frankly, has been seen through in a serious way, so there are still serious public health conversations to be had. There are major crises in Ontario with respect to our health care capacity, as a result, in part, of the flu, but certainly still because of the pandemic. To that core question, though, of how we put ourselves on the best footing going forward, unquestionably we need to look at the past.
I would also emphasize, and I hope this holds true for all of us, that this should not be a points-scoring exercise. If there were missteps, if there were things that were done right or things that were done wrong, it is not a matter of us getting up and patting ourselves on the back or of those across the aisle scoring points. The goal of this bill is to say, in a very serious way, let us scrutinize what went right and what went wrong to inform what should come next.
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moved that Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, as of today, we have lost over 45,000 Canadians to COVID, and millions of people around the world have died as a result of COVID. It has upended our lives in so many different ways, from isolation to school closures. It has upended businesses and caused major economic disruptions, reverberations that we still feel with difficult inflation and interest rate hikes that are challenging many households. The global impact on poverty rates and the upending of education around the world will have long-lasting and negative effects.
There was the increasing debt that governments around the world rightly took on to address this crisis in many respects. Both public and private debt also come with consequences. Fifty-seven per cent of Canadians whose debt increased attributed the increase to COVID. As a parliamentary intern in my office put it, even having just lived it first-hand, it is hard to wrap our heads around what we just experienced.
What can and should we do about all of that? What lessons should we learn? We have to be specific and clear, and put a framework in place to make sure we do not lose these lessons. Simply put, the message of this bill is that we need to learn the lessons from this pandemic in order to prevent and prepare for the next one. No, we are not done with COVID, but we have also lived through enough to learn from our pandemic response across all levels of government, and those lessons should inform our plans going forward.
What does the pandemic prevention and preparedness bill do? It does three things. First, it establishes a review of our COVID response, not just from the federal government's perspective but across all levels of government. The goal is to be comprehensive. Just to comment briefly on the scope of the review, the bill notes:
In conducting its review, the advisory committee is, among other things, to
(a) assess the capability of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Department of Health to respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic before and during the pandemic;
(b) in collaboration with provincial and municipal governments, assess the public health and pandemic response capabilities of those governments;
(c) assess the effectiveness of the exercise of powers under any applicable federal laws before, during and after the pandemic and of the coordination of measures taken under those laws; and
Importantly, and this is the broad element to bring to bear on lessons learned:
(d) analyse the health, economic and social factors relevant to the impact of the pandemic in Canada.
There has to be a review if we are going to learn the lessons of our government's response and the response of all governments.
How do we take those lessons and put them into a framework where we are going to see accountability, transparency and action on a going-forward basis? The second thing the bill does is it requires the Minister of Health to establish a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan. It is modelled on climate accountability legislation.
To my knowledge the first piece of climate accountability legislation that I reviewed was from a Conservative government in the U.K. in 2006, and we now have such a framework in place here in Canada. This bill takes a similar approach to say there has to be a transparent and accountable framework by which a government is obligated to table a plan to Parliament, to the Canadian public, and then update that plan on a regular basis. The bill suggests every three years. I went back and forth between three and five years. I think five years would be appropriate as well.
It obligates the Minister of the Health to establish a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan and to table a report. The bill sets out a long list of factors. This is where it was quite difficult actually, because I was drawing from a great amount of expertise out there, from the United Nations Environment Programme's report on preventing future pandemics, from IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and their workshop reports in relation to pandemic risk and how we prevent future pandemics, and certainly from the independent panel. It has a series of reports now on preparedness and response at the national level and also at the global level, and how we could strengthen those responses at all levels.
Taking those expert reports, and in consultation with some of the researchers behind those reports and certainly with Canadian health experts as well, the bill sets out a series of factors that the Minister of Health must consider in developing a plan. I am sure I missed some elements, which is partly why it is so important to get a bill like this to committee. The committee could, I hope in a non-partisan way, say what does not make sense or whether something was missed or how we could get it to the best place possible as a matter of what should be in or out of a plan as the health minister considers it.
As a starting point, obviously enough, what the health minister should do is identify the key drivers of pandemic risk and describe how Canadian activities, domestic and abroad, contribute to the risk.
We focus a lot in this House and, frankly, in the Canadian public around preparedness strategies, and that is part of what this bill would do as well. We do not talk enough about prevention, but we know that the costs of prevention are a small fraction of the significant human and economic costs of living through a pandemic. Therefore, there has to be a real strong focus on prevention.
There also has to be a commitment to ensure collaboration at all levels of government, because it is not enough in our federation for the federal government to take action on its own. Similar to climate action, and certainly with respect to mitigating pandemic risk and to preparing for pandemics, it cannot all be on the federal government, and we have learned that. It is unquestionably a lesson we have learned in the course of the response to COVID. Therefore, the bill would require the Minister of Health to ensure sustained collaboration between the Minister of Health, provincial governments and indigenous communities in the development of the plan, in order to align approaches and address any jurisdictional challenges.
Now, I probably could have been a little clearer with the language here, but the bill would also provide for training programs, including collaborative activities with other levels of government. What I had in mind there, and I think a committee could improve this, was simulation and table-talking exercises. It is not enough to have a piece of paper with a plan written down. We have to put that plan into action and learn where there are gaps in the plan. Where jurisdictional challenges arise, they can be addressed through a simulation exercise rather than as we live through a real-life pandemic.
Now, a critical element here, when we draw from the literature, is that the plan has to be based on a “one health” approach. For those who do not know what a “one health” approach is, it is a relatively simple idea, although it can be a challenge sometimes in how we apply it, because of how holistic it is. It is this idea that we cannot pull apart human health, animal health and environmental health, that these are interconnected ideas and we have to think of them as one health.
We know this, and if we read the literature from the United Nations Environment Programme, from IPBES or from any number of experts, including Canadian experts in zoonotic diseases, they will tell us that zoonosis presents the greatest risk in relation to pandemics. Taking deforestation as an example, the spillover risk that can occur when humans are obviously going to come into closer contact with animals as a result of that deforestation creates not only a challenge to the environment, as it is a question of environmental health, but also then a question of human health, because of that spillover risk. When we run down a list of factors, and there are different reports on this, overwhelmingly the focus has to be on a “one health” approach.
I will read from the United Nations Environment Programme, which states:
This report confirms and builds on the conclusions of the FAO-OIE-WHO Tripartite Alliance and many other expert groups that a One Health approach is the optimal method for preventing as well as responding to zoonotic disease outbreaks and pandemics.
Therefore, there has to be a focus on a “one health” approach.
There also, of course, has to be a whole-of-government approach. It is not enough for the Minister of Health to work up a plan. The Minister of Health has to work with other ministers, break down silos in the federal government and ensure that we are putting ourselves on the best footing we possibly can to prevent and respond to future pandemics. The Minister of Industry has a role to play in terms of ensuring that we have vaccine manufacturing capacity and manufacturing capacity for essential treatments and tests. There is a role for the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Transport to play with respect to border controls. There is obviously a role for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to play with respect to global health equity, which is an issue that, unfortunately, we have, as wealthier countries, utterly failed on in a serious way in the course of this pandemic. There also ought to be collaboration, and this is in keeping with that idea of a “one health” approach, with the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Environment.
Therefore, if we think of a framework that already exists within the Government of Canada, a “one health” approach with respect to antimicrobial resistance, it is a partnership between the Department and the Minister of Health and the Department and the Minister of Agriculture, because we know, certainly in other countries around the world, that the increase and overuse of antibiotics can create the risk of superbugs. There are researchers at McMaster who call it the “silent pandemic”, referring to the number of lives that have already been taken by AMR. As I have said, it is a whole-of-government approach.
I will say that this has to be a focus of the committee when it looks at the series of factors, ensuring that it gets sustained collaboration with the provinces, because we need to make sure, for example, that there are preparedness strategies for public health services, including the protection of vulnerable and marginalized populations. That will be as much a provincial question as it is a federal question. The working conditions of essential workers across all sectors is as much a provincial issue as it is a federal issue.
The availability management of relevant stockpiles, including testing equipment and PPE, is more of a federal issue, but we have seen challenges at times at the provincial level as well.
There is the search capacity of the human resources required for testing and contact tracing, because we cannot have the human resources at the ready at all times. We need to be able to stand them up to meet the surge, and again the provinces and the federal government will need to work hand in hand on this.
There are a series of other factors, and I will not go into all of them. I want to mention the seven key disease drivers identified by the United Nations Environment Programme.
First is an increasing demand for animal protein, because we understand the spillover risk and lack of biosecurity, especially with increased demand in low and middle-income countries. It is a real challenge that needs to be addressed.
Second is unsustainable agricultural intensification.
Third is the increased use and exploitation of wildlife. If we look at the live animal markets around the world, they have presented challenges, including likely in the course of the crisis we have just lived through.
Fourth is the unsustainable utilization of natural resources, accelerated by urbanization and land-use change.
Fifth is travel and transportation.
Sixth is changes in the food supply chains. Traceability challenges are the issue there.
Seventh is climate change.
These are major twin risks. Climate change is an existential risk in and of itself, but it also drives pandemic risk. That is not to say we can eliminate travel, and we are not going to eliminate agriculture, but how do we look at these industries to find best efforts to reduce and mitigate pandemic risk to prevent a future pandemic? How do we make sure there are regulations in place so we can prepare for future pandemics as well?
I suppose the last item that I want to close off with is that there needs to be accountability in any particular role here.
One, the bill establishes a review, the lessons learned.
Two, it requires some detail about what ought to be in that plan. I have gone into this in some detail, and there is greater detail in the bill. I hope it can be a collaborative exercise at committee, because I want this to be a non-partisan exercise in getting it right.
Three, we need to make sure that we appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator to oversee and implement the plans, so there is proper accountability and an office for seeing this through.
Lastly, I want to close with this idea, because I think it is a relevant one. We forget crises in politics. We deal with them and then forget about them. Over time we saw this with SARS. We cannot go through another situation where 20 years from now we look back at a debate like this one or a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan that we developed in the year 2022 or 2023 that has been sitting on a shelf and has not been updated or implemented. The idea here, very much as a matter of accountability, is to ensure that all future governments, regardless of political stripe, take this seriously, renew their focus on pandemic prevention and preparedness, and make sure we do not lose sight of the lessons learned and do not live through something like this ever again as a society. I cannot overemphasize this: The costs of a pandemic like the one we have just lived through are so incredibly significant, and the costs of prevention and preparedness are a very small fraction of that.
I hope there is all-party support for getting this to committee to improve it, to bring amendments to it and to see it through.
I appreciate being given this time today.
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.
He said: Madam Speaker, I am introducing the pandemic prevention and preparedness act because the last two years have been impossibly hard for all of us. The costs of prevention and preparedness are insignificant in comparison with the significant human and economic costs of a pandemic. The purpose of this act is to prevent the risk of, and prepare for, future pandemics and to promote transparency and accountability toward that goal.
Specifically, the bill would require the health minister to collaborate with other ministers, other levels of government and indigenous communities to develop a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan and table an updated plan in Parliament on a regular basis. There are factors that the minister would have to consider in the course of that plan, and those factors are informed by UNEP, IPIS, the independent panel and other experts. The minister would also have to establish an advisory committee to review and learn the lessons of our COVID response, and appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator.
We need to do all that we can to prevent and prepare for future pandemics, and this bill would ensure that this obligation remains in focus for any future government in the years ahead.
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- Feb/21/22 1:26:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the question before us is whether we ought to confirm the government's declaration of an emergency pursuant to section 58 of the Emergencies Act. I have really struggled with the answer to that question, and I will get to that.
The first question we should all reflect on is a more basic one: How did it even come to this? Some Conservative colleagues have made the case that we could have ended the illegal blockades if only we had ended federal vaccine mandates, a Neville Chamberlain approach to pandemic management. Appeasing illegality is an affront to the rule of law, and we should put public health before politics.
Mandates will not be with us forever, and yes, we need to re-evaluate their use. However, it is also true that NACI has yet to confirm whether a third dose is properly a booster dose or should be considered part of the primary series. We should proceed cautiously as we lift measures that helped save lives.
Of course people are tired of pandemic rules. I was furious when Ontario's schools closed yet again to in-person learning in January. Protest is to be expected, and everyone has the right to peaceful protest, but that right does not extend to blocking highways and bridges. It does not extend to the intimidation, harassment, threats and the endless and deafening noise we have seen in our national capital. These are crimes, and they are quite obviously crimes.
We cannot paint every protester with the same brush, but we can judge people by the company they keep and we should never platform the language of treason, medical experiments, the Nuremberg Code or support for white supremacy, all of which we saw on our democracy's doorstep.
My genuine plea for those listening, for those who dislike the Prime Minister, for those who dislike public health measures and especially for those who sit in the Conservative caucus is to just remember that democracies are fragile. Encouraging lawlessness and emboldening anti-government, anti-democratic voices is a disservice to our country, no matter how much hatred they have for their opponents. If they do not stop fanning the flames, I am not certain we will be able to put out the fire.
Reflecting on my own side of the House, if we are so fearful of polarization, then we ought to be especially careful not to contribute to it ourselves. We are each sent here to represent our constituents, of course, but our obligations extend beyond any parochial interest. We are the trustees of our democracy; the rule of law; civil liberties; and peace, order and good government.
The illegal blockades represented an attack on these core ideas. The greatest criticism of how the blockades were removed is that they were not removed more quickly. The failure to enforce the law in Ottawa and the acquiescence to occupation emboldened similar blockades across the country at Emerson, Coutts and the Ambassador Bridge. Against a failed municipal and provincial response, a strong federal response was warranted. Therefore, I suffer no sympathy for those who shut down our border crossings and inflicted harm on the residents of Ottawa.
However, in the interest of disappointing everyone in my audience, I do have concerns with the invocation of the Emergencies Act in the circumstances. One constituent I trust a great deal wrote to me that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. She is unquestionably right, but the law also remains the law, so let us turn to it for a moment.
Section 16 of the act defines a public order emergency as “an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada and that is so serious as to be a national emergency”. The shoe arguably fits, with this general definition in mind, but the act goes on to define two terms with great specificity.
First, and again in keeping with section 16, “threats to the security of Canada has the meaning assigned by section 2 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act.” In turning to the CSIS Act, we see four possible meanings: espionage, foreign influenced activities, activities akin to terrorism, and the violent overthrow of the government. These are incredibly high standards.
In the order in council, the OIC, the government relies on activities akin to terrorism or, as the Minister of Justice said in the House, “We took measures that had been applied to terrorism and applied them to other illegal activity”. The specific section requires that there be activities in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective. It is obvious enough that the latter element is met, as warped as the ideological objectives may be, but have there been threats or acts of serious violence that themselves amount to a national emergency?
We know that dangerous and extremist elements are embedded within these protests and blockades. In Coutts, for example, we saw conspiracy to commit murder charges, with two of the accused connected to a far-right extremist group. We also saw the police seize a cache of guns and body armour, and in Ottawa we saw major intimidation of local residents and threats against the police if they enforced the law. As a parliamentarian, I acknowledge I am not privy to all of the information in the hands of the executive, and there may well be even more dangerous and coordinated elements at play.
It also strikes me that these serious threats are ancillary to the blockades, and it is the blockades that constituted the emergency. A national emergency, after all, is also a defined term within the act. It means:
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.
There is an additional requirement that no other federal law be sufficient to meet the emergency as well. It is frustrating that the government has not clearly articulated which ground it relies on here, and it appears that it likes to rely on both. When we look at the illegal blockades and the negative impact they wrought on so many lives, I do think there is a fair argument that they meet the definition of a national emergency as long as we understand “capacity” to mean both whether a province could act in theory as well as the reality of their action.
Again, if the blockade is at issue, when we look at the threats of serious violence, the violence that must itself constitute the national emergency at issue, it is unclear how the definition is met. To meet the act's requirements, it seems apparent to me that we need to re-interpret “serious violence to persons or property” to mean economic harm. I am often in support of large and liberal interpretations of the law, but I am not convinced we want economic harm to trigger the act, unless we would be comfortable with the act being used in other instances of economic harm, the most recent one in memory being the railway blockades in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en.
This is all perhaps too lawyerly, too technical an objection. Other levels of government had failed to act or acted too slowly. Legal gaps certainly exist in addressing foreign funding and foreign influence operations and crowdfunding for illegal domestic activities, and the emergency measures seem to have worked.
It is also true, as I say, that I do not have all of the intelligence information that the executive has. My answer to that is a simple one, and I know many will find it inadequate, but contorting the application of the law in order to defend the rule of law is not a position I find comfort in.
Expert Wesley Wark wrote recently that the Emergencies Act was unusable because of the high threshold in section 2 of the CSIS Act. However, he subsequently came around to the idea of shoehorning the law to fit, because of his perception of the nature of the threat and the missing response from other levels of government.
Expert Leah West recently wrote:
As someone who fervently believes in the rule of law, I’m desolated by what we’ve witnessed this month: a failure to enforce the law by 2 levels of government created a crisis that the 3rd had to contort the law to end.
That is a fair summation.
Now, whatever one thinks of the legal contortion, and the ends may well justify the means and the courts will weigh in on the law, let us return to the role of Parliament.
In the coming months, we will need to address the shortcomings in the laws, perhaps to better protect critical infrastructure and most certainly to better follow the money of foreign influence operations and crowdfunding for illegal activities, but with proper due process. Assuming the threshold question is met here, it is still not at all clear to me whether the government continues to need the ability to freeze bank accounts without due process, if it ever did. Usefulness and effectiveness are very different standards as compared with necessity and proportionality.
Now, where does it leave us for tonight’s vote on the invocation of the Emergencies Act and section 58?
Putting aside my concerns around the threshold or due process, the effect of section 58 is that a yea vote extends emergency measures while a nay vote simply revokes the powers as of the day of the negative vote. A nay vote need not mean impugning the actions of the government over the last week. Whatever one thinks of the necessity and proportionality of the emergency powers at the time they were invoked, whatever one thinks of the threshold that triggers the act in the first place, the question before us is whether the powers remain necessary and proportionate to the circumstances today.
I appreciate the federal leadership over the last week. This is not the War Measures Act, as this particular legislation highlights the role of the charter and provides for a significant amount of independent and parliamentary scrutiny. However, I am skeptical that the strict legal test was met for the act's invocation, and I am not convinced that the emergency measures should continue to exist beyond today.
I would vote accordingly but for the fact that it is now a confidence vote. My disagreement, the disagreement I have expressed here, does not amount to non-confidence, and I have no interest in an election at this time.
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