House of Commons Hansard #166 of the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was c-15.

Topics

Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan

Conservative

Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

Is that agreed?

Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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3:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

When this matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca had completed his remarks but had not done questions and comments. Therefore, we have five minutes of questions and comments.

The hon. member for Gatineau.

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NDP

Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, our public safety critic, who is doing a great job on Bill S-7. The Conservative government is describing this bill as extremely important to public safety, with an angle related to terrorism.

I would like to ask my colleague a question that I like to ask almost everyone, since I have yet to receive a satisfactory response, before this bill is sent to committee. It has to do with how long it took this government to introduce a bill—and not even in this House, but as I said in my speech, in the Senate—a bill that, according to the government, is fundamental to the safety and security of Canadians. Yet this government took years to bring it before this House.

Does my colleague believe that the exisiting provisions in the Criminal Code are adequate?

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NDP

Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC

Mr. Speaker, we have many contradictory messages going back and forth from the government. It says that it is extremely urgent but took forever to get it back before the House.

The other contradictory message that is very important, which I did not mention in my remarks, is the message it sends when the two main measures in the bill, preventive detention and investigatory hearings, were not used by the police and prosecutors for the entire five years it was in force. If these are such wonderful tools that are so necessary, why were they not used by police and prosecutors?

I will be very interested, when we actually get this bill to one committee or another, to hear what the police and prosecutors might have to say about this issue. For me, it seems quite obvious that we have had convictions for terrorism in the 10 years since the Anti-Terrorism Act was adopted and these did not use preventive detention or investigatory hearings. Obviously, the provisions of existing legislation were adequate for those cases.

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3:15 p.m.

NDP

Pierre-Luc Dusseault NDP Sherbrooke, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to ask a question of my colleague who gave a speech a little earlier.

Earlier, we had some discussion on whether the Conservatives were being a bit paradoxical—I do not think that is the right word, but it is the first one that comes to mind—in their tough on crime agenda. There are several measures and budget cuts that suggest the opposite.

The bill from the Senate is a bit of a smokescreen in the fight against crime. The bill does not really contain concrete measures. There are many other things that could be done.

Could he mention some other measures that the Conservatives did not implement but should have implemented instead of debating this bill today?

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NDP

Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC

Mr. Speaker, the member raises a very important point, which was also addressed by the member for Alfred-Pellan in her speech. The government does say that we need to do more in this area but it then cuts the public safety budget by 10%. It takes more than just putting a bunch of words on a piece of paper. It takes more that just some speeches or answers to questions in the House of Commons. It takes resources to be given to those people who actually do the hard work of investigating terrorism, the law enforcement agencies.

The government likes to say that since 2006 the budgets have increased. Yes, they have increased but then they have decreased. The government likes to take credit for when it increases the budgets but it fails to acknowledge that in the last budget it made some very serious cuts to funding for national security matters.

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3:20 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Kellway NDP Beaches—East York, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand today in the House to speak against Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act. The genealogy of Bill S-7 takes us back to Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act, which was tabled by the Liberal government in 2001. The original intent of the Anti-terrorism Act was to provide the Canadian legislative response to the events of September 11, 2001, 9/11 as we now know it.

There is no question that day should not and indeed cannot be forgotten. The images of passenger planes flying into those iconic towers repeat themselves over and over again in news, television and film, and undoubtedly in the mind as the memories of the many who were personally impacted by that act of terror.

I note with sadness that my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and his partner have such memories to bear.

As these images repeat themselves, we witness the deaths of nearly 3,000 innocents, including 24 Canadians over and over again. That day we awoke to a new kind of threat and a new level of threat. Most importantly, we awoke to a new and profound sense of vulnerability, so we responded.

Several provisions of Bill C-36 became permanently enshrined in other legislation such as the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act, the Criminal Code and the Access to Information Act. However, several parts of the Anti-terrorism Act had sunset clauses expiring in February 2007. These provisions concerned investigative hearings and recognizance with conditions or preventive arrest provisions.

These measures were largely without precedence in Canadian law and for good reason. We believe that these provisions run contrary to fundamental principles, rights and liberties enshrined in Canadian law. The rights and liberties violated include the right to remain silent and the right not to be imprisoned without first having a fair trial. We believe that these are important restrictions on the authority of the state because in their absence there is not sufficient protection of an individual's freedom.

As per the terms of the Anti-terrorism Act, these provisions, in order to be extended, had to be adopted by way of resolution by both Houses of Parliament. However, the resolution was defeated soundly, 159:124 in this House, and these controversial provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act sunsetted.

We know that the efforts did not end there. Similar bills were proposed in 2008, 2009 and 2010 in the forms of Bill S-3, Bill C-19 and Bill C-17 respectively. It seems this is an annual, or almost annual rite. Now they are back.

Time has passed in the interim, a decade roughly since Bill C-36 was brought before the House, and time has been instructive. Since the passage of the Anti-terrorism Act, the recognizance with conditions or preventive arrest provision has never been used. The investigative hearing provision has been used once in the Air India case. Many consider that exercise to have had no positive effect, in fact quite the opposite.

Paul Copeland, a highly experienced and respected lawyer representing the Law Union of Ontario, speaking about this sole experience with the investigative hearing provision, said to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in 2010 that the Law Union characterized this episode “as a fiasco, and I think that's an appropriate description”. He went on to say about all the provisions examined:

The provisions you are looking at here, in my submission, change the Canadian legal landscape.... They should not be passed, and in my view they are not needed. There are other provisions of the code that allow for various ways of dealing with these people.

This seems to be the nub of the issue. Without such extreme provisions, without changing the legal landscape of Canada, without breaching the rights and civil liberties of Canadian citizens, we have successfully protected the safety and security of Canada and Canadians from terrorist attack. These provisions have proven over the course of time to constitute an unnecessary and ineffective infringement.

As the former NDP justice critic said in the House in 2010:

When facing a crisis, we as political leaders feel that we have to do something even when all the evidence shows that the structures we have, the strength of our society, the strength of our laws, are enough to deal with it. We passed legislation in early 2002 to deal with terrorism when we panicked. We have learned in the last eight years that there was no need for that legislation.

The only thing to add to that summation is that in the past decade we have learned that we did not need this act.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. As Denis Barrette, spokesperson for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, noted before the standing committee on Bill C-17 in 2011:

Since 2007, police investigations have succeeded in dismantling terrorist conspiracies using neither one of the provisions we are talking about today.

He concluded:

We believe that Canadians will be better served and better protected under the usual provisions of the Criminal Code, rather than others that are completely unnecessary. Reliance on arbitrary powers and a lower standard of evidence can never replace good, effective police work. On the contrary, these powers open the door to a denial of justice and a greater probability that the reputation of innocent individuals...will be tarnished.

We have borne witness to that in this country.

While these provisions have proven to have no effect on the fight against terror, they have had a profound social impact on Canada and many Canadians. On the eve of 9/11 this year, I showed a film at my local review theatre, the Fox in the Beach. The film is called Change Your Name Ousama. It was produced and directed by local filmmaker Fuad Chowdhury and focuses on a community in my riding of Beaches—East York called Crescent Town. Crescent Town is a very densely populated and diverse community, which is largely made up of Bangladeshi Canadians, most of whom are Muslim.

The film is not a point of view film. It was made for television and screened at the Montreal film festival. It includes significant interview footage, for example, of the assistant director of CSIS. It also includes footage of our Prime Minister in a fairly recent CBC interview telling Canadians that the major threat to Canada is still Islamicism. The film also tells the story of what it feels like to be one of about a million Muslim Canadians living in a political climate where their religion has been held to be a threat to the security of their country.

It is noted in the film by a University of Toronto academic that governments, through their actions, have the power to create stigmas and to marginalize communities. Of this we need, in this place, to be very mindful and sensitive. This is where the film gets its title. It was the advice, amidst the political fallout of 9/11, of a Muslim leader of Crescent Town to members of his community, “Change your name Ousama. Shave your beard. Do not wear your kufi”. In essence, “change or disguise your identity”.

Motivated as they have been, bills such as that introduced in 2001 by the Liberals and its partial reprisal today in the form of Bill S-7 have had that impact. They have left so many across this country and in my riding feeling like they have something to apologize for, as if the onus rests on them to demonstrate somehow that they are not terrorists.

Herein lies a great tragedy. In Bill S-7, as with Bill C-36 before it, we have before us a bill that contradicts not just the legal heritage of this country but a fundamental social and political heritage that takes us back decades at least, a heritage of which we should be proud and protective. The heritage I speak of is the opportunity to maintain and exercise one's culture and religion in Canada freely and still be and feel fully Canadian. This social and political heritage is one that has made us a great place, a place where so many around the world long to come to live.

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3:30 p.m.

NDP

Andrew Cash NDP Davenport, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his dissertation and intervention in this debate. He referenced one of the communities in his riding.

This anti-terrorism legislation, which was enacted after September 11, 2001, has by some estimations cost Canadian taxpayers about $92 billion.

My colleague will know that for the folks in Crescent Town and other communities in Toronto who try to get government subsidies and grants to do community projects, every single dime and nickel of that has to be accounted for and the government puts onerous systems in place to guarantee that. Yet here we have a piece of legislation that comes with no price tag at all.

I wonder if my colleague would comment on the juxtaposition of those two realities.

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3:30 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Kellway NDP Beaches—East York, ON

Mr. Speaker, there is a contradiction here that one cannot ignore. The community of Crescent Town is what we call in Toronto a priority community. It is a place that has been designated as having structural poverty and is in need of extra intervention, yet that intervention does not come easily.

As my colleague notes, the social services that these communities rely on, such as settlement services for recent immigrants, have been cut and are very difficult to come by. We have a federal government that has become absent from cities in this country and does not support them. The policing that this community needs to deal with crime is not available when it needs it.

We note too, in terms of the contradictions here, that there have been a number of cuts on the security front. On the front line of border crossings, 325 jobs have been cut. These are very important jobs for the safety and security of these communities because they stop the import of guns into the community and the forms of violence that follow, which are so prevalent.

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3:30 p.m.

NDP

Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's argument that we were all in shock during the events of September 11, 2001, rang true for me. Another NDP colleague was saying in his speech the other day that this was one event that we will all remember. We will all remember where we were at that exact moment and what we were doing.

I remember that I was trying to interview someone on the radio who must have thought that I was the world's most impolite person because she was talking to me, but I was no longer listening. I was too mesmerized by the image on the screen in front of me, the image of that plane hitting one of the towers.

Obviously, we are all a bit thin-skinned when it comes to the issue of terrorism, but we must still find that perfect balance between protecting the public and ensuring that people's fundamental rights are not violated because of a very dramatic moment in time. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

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3:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

We have time for one answer.

The hon. member for Beaches—East York.

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3:30 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Kellway NDP Beaches—East York, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Gatineau for her leadership and wisdom on this particular issue.

What is interesting is that if it were only so complicated, what we would need to do here would be to find a balance between national security and our rights and freedoms and the protection of civil liberties. However, what history has shown us over the last decade, which is a long time to have a look at this question, is that these provisions that were brought forward in Bill C-36, and now are being reprised in Bill S-7, were fundamentally ineffective and unnecessary. Therefore, it is not really a matter of finding the balance here.

What we have found is that our current laws, criminal justice system and security arrangements have been sufficient to protect Canadians from acts of terrorism in this country.

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3:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

Is the House ready for the question?

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Some hon. members

Question.

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Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

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Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

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3:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

All those in favour will please say yea.

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3:35 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

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Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

All those opposed will please say nay.

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Some hon. members

Nay.

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3:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

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3:35 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the vote be deferred until tomorrow at the end of government orders.