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Member of Parliament

Larry Brock

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Brantford—Brant
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 63%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $129,861.80

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 82 - Jun/6/22
Mr. Larry Brock (Brantford—Brant, CPC)
  • Jun/6/22 6:48:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am proud to be one of the members of Parliament who, along with four Senators, are working on the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency. This committee is one of very few that requires all its members and staff to take an oath of secrecy in order to allow them to work with sensitive information and secret documents. After a couple of meetings, the media started reporting that the Liberal government will nor reveal what information led it to use the Emergencies Act to end the protests this winter, citing cabinet confidentiality in its response to legal challenges. After discussing this issue during the committee meetings, it became obvious that the Liberal members of the committee were not prepared to permit the release of any government documents either. My Conservative colleague, the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, moved a motion that asked to throw light on the security assessments and legal opinions the government relied on when deciding to invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history. Members think that sounds reasonable, right? A committee that has to get to the bottom of the decision chain and find out why the Emergencies Act was invoked and how its powers were used has the right to review all the documents that the government possesses. This is how a democracy works. Unfortunately, not in this country under the rule of the Prime Minister. Most of the witnesses who appeared before our committee did not want to answer our relevant and reasonable questions. They hid behind lawyer-client privilege and cabinet confidentiality. When I brought this issue to the House of Commons chamber and asked the Minister of Emergency Preparedness what the Prime Minister was hiding this time from Canadians, he repeated the same mantra, “there is certain information, such as lawyer-client privilege, which is respected and well established in the law in this country.” Who is the client here? My constituents email and call my office daily. They share their concerns related to the study of the declaration of emergency committee. The Prime Minister, who promised to run the government open by default, must respect the public will and produce the documents that led him to believe that our police forces were not able to handle the situation without the invocation of the act. The PM and his government have been weakened by the changing narratives. To date, the RCMP commissioner, OPP commissioner, and the interim and former Ottawa police chiefs have confirmed that they have never asked the government to invoke the act. The mayor of Gatineau also confirmed that neither she nor the Gatineau police requested the use of the act. These statements directly contradict the statements made by the government, which continues to justify the use of overreaching powers. Ultimately, the question to put to the government is as follows: Now that we have a study that will prove how misinformed the public was by the government when the Prime Minister decided to use the act for his political benefit, what is the government hiding?
520 words
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  • Rabble!
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