Matthew Dubé

[Criminal Code, October 27th, 2017]

It is certainly an important point, Madam Speaker. Again, this is the failing of the approach that the Liberals have taken. This is a complicated issue. It requires many people around the table, many of whom feel that they were either not at the table or not there long enough to properly execute what needs to be done.

I will go back to what we heard from police. They said that they need more training, that they want to be able to do the job they need to do. The reason why that is so important is because it is two-pronged. On the one hand, it goes without saying that better police training will go a long way to ensuring public safety. At the same time, if we also want to protect people's rights and make sure we are not getting these false positives and things, that is another reason for why training is so important.

There are all of these issues, whether money, education programs, training, consultations with the provinces, how it is going to be sold, etc. This has been one of the biggest issues with the Liberals plan, and it is unfortunate that the provinces have been stuck with picking up the pieces. In most cases that we have seen so far, they are doing their darndest, if I can say it that way. At the same time, it certainly shows a failed approach by the Liberal government, something it said it would do better.

[Criminal Code, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I also take this opportunity to congratulate her on her work on this issue. She has had the opportunity to ask the government a number of questions in the House of Commons on this very topic. However, the responses have been less than convincing, not only in terms of figures, as I mentioned in my speech, but also regarding taxation.

After all, the government could have committed to dedicating a certain percentage of the proceeds to education and prevention. It could have discussed and negotiated with the provinces to ensure that they do the same on their end. I know that the various ministries involved in the Quebec government have talked about the importance of education and prevention, and have spoken out about this shortcoming regarding legalization more broadly.

This is directly related to Bill C-46, because anything we do to try to tackle the scourge of impaired driving must include education and prevention; I want to reiterate that. After all, we do not want to be left only to deal with the consequences; rather, we want to prevent them altogether.

[Criminal Code, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I absolutely share that concern. As I said at the outset of my speech, one of the criticisms we have had with this plan is on the inadequate consultations that have taken place with the provinces. We see how some of them are reacting, particularly when I look at my home province of Quebec, for example.

That point is even more important when we consider that, both in Quebec and Ontario, with such large populations, we have provincial police forces that are obviously going to be ensuring road safety and doing roadside stops. They need to be working with their provincial ministries, which the government seems to have left twisting in the wind.

I also believe that police officers will be the first ones to talk about the virtues of education and prevention. Police officers do not want to make these arrests. They, as we do, want to see prevention, so that we do not see lives lost in the first place.

How will education happen? It is hard to say right now. Certainly the provinces will bear a big load of that burden, which is part of the failure that the Liberal government has had on this front, despite our support, more broadly speaking, of legalization.

[Criminal Code, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I would like to pick up where I left off at the beginning of question period. I was talking about educating the public. At the risk of repeating myself, for those who are just tuning in, we can all see that the Liberals failed to really work with the provinces to ensure they have the planning time and resources they need to implement public education programs. These programs are so important to make sure people are educated about both marijuana use and, as we have been discussing, impaired driving.

I will move on to something else for now, but before I do, I think it is very important to emphasize something. Despite some of the comments I heard in this morning's debate that practically insinuated the opposite, all members in the House, across party lines, agree that impaired driving, whether involving drugs or alcohol, is a scourge. We want to eradicate it. There is no doubt about that.

As is the case with illness, these tragedies do not discriminate. Everyone here, across party lines, has been affected, or knows someone who has been affected, by the horrible consequences of someone making the tragic mistake of driving while impaired. It is important to acknowledge that, because we might not agree on how to go about, on the one hand, dealing with the new reality of legalized marijuana, and on the other hand, keeping our roads safe.

One of the big issues with the bill is this notion of mandatory stops and testing. This came up during the public safety committee hearings on a private member's bill that was tabled by a Conservative member, which sought to do something quite similar. Nothing in life is random, particularly, and unfortunately, in some of the work that is done in policing.

If we call for random mandatory testing, the odds increase exponentially for things like profiling, people of a specific socio-economic background being targeted. The New Democrats cannot accept that. I know my party's leader, Jagmeet Singh, considers this extremely important. It was central to the work he did in his leadership campaign, but also the work he now wants to do as leader of the New Democratic Party. He has said, much more eloquently than I can say in this place, that as a person of colour, he has been a victim of this.

When we put laws in place to ensure public safety, it always needs to be done in a way that ensures we will not be unfairly discriminating against certain segments of the population. I am not pulling this out of a hat. This was shared with the public safety committee by experts, although not on the specific line of study of this bill, even though that comment was raised by different members of civil society, notably the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and others. It was raised when other bills were tabled, both private members' bills and Conservative government bills that were discussed in the previous Parliament.

When we take this approach, we have to ensure we do not increase the risk of a problem that, let us face it, already exists, which is the problem of racial profiling. The is one of our concerns.

Another concern we have has to do with the THC levels that must be detected in a driver's blood before the driver can be charged with an offence. The bill barely mentions this, which is very troubling. How can police determine if an offence has been committed, or a crime in this case, if the law does not specify the precise quantity of THC that must be detected in the blood? That is extremely troubling.

In the United States, the various states that have legalized marijuana each take a different approach. Colorado and Washington state, for instance, have set a blood THC limit that must be detected before a driver can be charged with a traffic or criminal offence. Oregon, which has also legalized marijuana, decided to be more flexible and use the same test used for suspected alcohol-impaired drivers, that is, a test based on visual markers.

The lack of a fixed THC limit is compounded by the lack of police training. This is not to insult our men and women in uniform. It is something they themselves have said. This is yet another example of how the Liberals' planning fell short. Although we support the legalization plan in principle, we would have thought it was obvious that the consultation with police should have been much more thorough. The Liberals should have realized that police officers would need additional training, for example, to recognize the symptoms of marijuana impairment in drivers or to make proper use of roadside screening devices. They should have sat down with police to set a blood THC limit, something this bill does not cover. These are things they could have done in collaboration with police.

To go back to a question asked earlier by a Conservative MP, this also seems to be a case of too many players involved. There are the municipal police forces in some big cities, the Sûreté du Québec and the Ontario Provincial Police, some cities' own police services, and of course the RCMP, which serves outlying regions in the other provinces.

I am not questioning the hierarchy or the division of powers within Canada's different police forces, but there seem to be a lot of players at the table. There are many voices that still need to be heard, and these people think there is a lot of work left to be done, something that has not happened so far.

The importance of that training was brought up in committee. Also, the importance of training police officers to recognize the symptoms and use these technologies goes in two directions. First, it is obviously essential for public safety so they can do their jobs properly. It goes without saying they need to properly identify people who are driving under the influence. However, they must also know who is not driving under the influence, who has not reached the legal limit of what they are allowed to either drink or smoke, depending on which substance they are dealing with. It is not only a question of public safety; it is also a question of protecting and ensuring the rights of Canadians, which police officers are willing to do, but require the proper training to do that, as the representatives of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police mentioned.

The issue of training also extends to the technology used. When we hear the experts and look at different jurisdictions throughout the world, the jury is still out as to the efficacy of certain tools that can be used, particularly when it comes to marijuana, to measure someone's physical state after consuming marijuana. One great example of that, as we heard in committee and as has been mentioned in other platforms over the course of the debate, both here in the House and throughout civil society, is the issue of how long traces of marijuana can be found in someone's system. Traces of THC can still be found in someone's blood for days, even weeks in some cases.

It is difficult for me to fathom a situation where someone might use marijuana recreationally, in what will then be a legal and appropriate way in the privacy of their own home, make the responsible decision to save lives and not go behind the wheel. Then a couple of days later, while driving into work, could potentially be found as having a false positive, even though he or she is no longer under the influence and is at 100% of his or her mental faculties and physical abilities to drive a vehicle without putting anyone's life in danger. That is extremely problematic, particularly when we connect that with some of the issues and concerns we have with regard to certain types of profiling that might happen with these random mandatory tests. We are extremely concerned about that.

I heard the Minister of Justice talk about that this morning, when she said that there would be rigorous evaluation of the various technologies and that law enforcement would be properly informed and would participate in the process. The problem is that this is all happening very quickly, without the necessary consultations, and we are very concerned about how effective these technologies will be to ensure that the tests are viable.

For example, after a person provides an oral fluid sample, he or she could go to the police station and have to provide a blood sample. We are then talking about several types of tests, which shows a certain inefficiency and uncertainty relative to the samples taken for determining a driver's state and the levels of various substances in the person's blood. A number of experts have raised this serious concern, which the bill does nothing to address.

As I said, this is directly connected to our concerns about profiling. If someone who had allegedly consumed a substance long before being stopped, according to the proposed criteria, this individual could be be caught and suffer some serious lifelong consequences, even if he or she is a responsible citizen. This person could end up with a criminal record and could even go to prison. This could even lead to some very complicated legal proceedings that will have an impact on the legal system.

In Quebec, with the Jordan case and the shortage of judges, a number of violence and murder cases were thrown out because of delays in the legal system. We could draw a link between this reality and the challenges that could arise from this bill. We have to take that into account.

The Conservatives are talking a lot about mandatory minimum sentencing, a public policy that failed under their watch here in Canada, as well as elsewhere in the world. Judges are appointed to use their judgment on a case-by-case basis. Taking that discretion away from them is not one of the values we promote in our justice system and it is not something we want to promote as legislators. Mandatory minimum sentencing goes completely against those principles.

I mention that because the Conservatives keep bringing up this argument and, if I understand correctly, it is one of the reasons why they are opposed to Bill C-46. Meanwhile, a bill on random breath testing was introduced by a Conservative MP. The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security heard not only from legal experts, but also from psychologists, who explained to us the way of thinking of those who make the reckless decision to get behind the wheel when impaired, something that often proves to have tragic consequences.

Those experts shared something extremely interesting with us. They explained to us that the key thing we needed to look at as parliamentarians when it came to this issue was dissuading people. After all, that has to be the objective. If we are not dissuading people, then we already are dealing with the tragic consequences of driving under the influence. If we do not want to live with those kinds of consequences, then we need to dissuade people in the first place.

The argument is that punishment is one way of doing it. However, these experts told us that the magnitude of the punishment was not the disincentive to driving under the influence. The true disincentive was the likelihood of getting caught. That requires resources to the communities, to policing, and to education. This would allow us to teach fellow citizens that getting behind the wheel under the influence would not only be putting their own lives in danger, but they would be putting the lives of others in danger as well. This point is extremely important. Dissuasion and prevention are the objectives here. We do not want to see any more lives lost because of driving under the influence.

That is why we must invest in education. That is why we must ensure that our police have the resources they need to make arrests over the holidays, for example. Not every police force is able to do that because it takes human and financial resources. The numbers speak for themselves. We could work with organizations, such as Operation Red Nose, and support them. We know that, by putting these measures in place, we can reduce this alarming statistic, the scourge on our society that is impaired driving.

Let me conclude by saying that we will oppose Bill C-46 for the reasons I explained, because of the risks of profiling, because we feel these technologies are unreliable in measuring the level of THC in someone's blood, and because of the lack of a clear number of what the level of THC in someone's blood has to be in order to consider it a criminal offence.

However, let me be clear. That does not take away from the fact that no matter which party we may be in, we all agree that this is an alarming situation that needs to be dealt with.

We think that the government needs to focus on education and on giving the police the resources they need to eliminate this problem once and for all. I think everyone can agree on that.

[Canadian Security Intelligence Service, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the minister on the seriousness of the allegations, but the issue here is that there is clearly a cultural problem, and one third-party report is not enough.

We are asking the minister to launch a full investigation into this type of discrimination, these allegations of homophobia and Islamophobia, and also to investigate to make sure it is not affecting the work CSIS does with regard to the people it targets. More importantly, will the minister undertake to make sure that the managers responsible for this behaviour are held directly responsible, and if necessary, fired?

[Canadian Security Intelligence Service, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, an independent review of the CSIS regional office in Toronto has been released.

The review found that a majority of employees do not trust management to ensure a healthy workplace that is free of discrimination. This comes on top of a lawsuit filed by former CSIS employees who have made some extremely serious and troubling allegations.

Will the minister take action to fix CSIS's toxic culture and immediately launch an investigation into this behaviour?

[Criminal Code, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, today we are debating the other part of the Liberal government's marijuana legalization plan, the impaired driving bill, which not only covers marijuana, but also makes changes to the laws governing alcohol-impaired driving.

We support this legislative proposal in principle. However, I just want to remind the House and everyone tuning in that the government's approach so far has been a miserable failure. I am, of course, talking about the consultations or lack thereof with the provinces, which will be saddled with the lion's share of this burden. The matter before us today, impaired driving, is no exception. As a member from Quebec, I have heard a lot from the Government of Quebec and my constituents about how the lack of consultation is seriously affecting their ability to plan adequately and to deal with the repercussions of this plan.

For example, the issue of education and public awareness, especially for youth, is very important. Obviously, it would be vitally important to launch a public awareness and education campaign with a view to preventing impaired driving. After all, there are already similar campaigns for alcohol, and we have to believe that there will be similar campaigns for marijuana. We are, however, assuming that the provinces and various provincial ministries will be the ones in charge of implementing these education and awareness programs. This is then very important, especially when we are talking about impaired driving.

Although we are not debating this today, we could also talk about sale, taxation, and all these issues. Furthermore, when we talk about impaired driving, I believe that sale and taxation are major elements. One point we have been hearing about since the beginning—

[Criminal Code, October 27th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives once again are advocating for mandatory minimums, as they always do, despite the fact the statistics show a rising number of people driving under the influence, as the member recognized in his speech. Some of the experts we heard at the public safety committee on a similar bill for mandatory Breathalyzer tests said that the psychological impact of a mandatory minimum on a person would not affect their decision whether or not to get behind the wheel when they are obviously unable to do so, thereby putting others' lives at risk. What really matters is whether they believe they will or will not get caught.

The Conservatives and the government should instead focus on providing police with resources for roadblocks and such things. The sentencing itself is not what dissuades someone, but the likelihood of their getting caught. Does my colleague not agree that the important thing to focus on is not sentencing but making sure that the police have the proper resources and that we have proper education programs in place so that people will not put others' lives at risk by making this kind of horrifying mistake?

[Criminal Code, October 24th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my speech by thanking the member for Richmond—Arthabaska, who sponsored this bill from the Senate. I had the opportunity to sit with him on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I also know his history as a school principal. Regardless of the political or ideological disagreements that we may have from time to time, I believe in his sincere efforts to improve public safety and national security.

First, we need to be clear: regardless of our opinion or our approach to eliminating the scourge of impaired driving, we agree in the House that it is something that must be done. It is particularly important and we all recognize that. Statistics show that there is an increase in impaired driving, particularly from marijuana.

For that reason, I support sending the bill to committee so we can hear more about it, because my past experience has not been very convincing. I refer here to another bill that we studied, but I forget the number; I apologize. I refer to the bill regarding random breath testing sponsored by a Conservative member. Many testimonies that we heard during the study of that bill can apply to the discussion of the bill before us today, in addition to other factors that we must consider.

First of all, one of the problems the parliamentary secretary just spoke of is that the bill only mentions the criteria already specified in the Criminal Code relating to alcohol-impaired driving and applies them to drugs. This is about the signs that police officers pick up on. Nothing much would change in that respect.

The maximum allowed blood alcohol concentration in the Criminal Code is .08, and in some provinces, it is set at .05 in matters of traffic safety. There is no mention in the bill, however, of a THC concentration that would allow us to determine how much marijuana a person has actually consumed. That is a major flaw in the bill. Why? Because we would need to rely on a person's behaviour, on what visual and physical cues might be present.

It is problematic because it is clearly a lack of training. We certainly believe that the men and women in uniform who ensure our safety are able to do this work. However, according to the study of the legalization bill and the government’s plan for impaired driving, we know that there is a lot of work to do to offer more training to the men and women in uniform to ensure that they can properly recognize the physical symptoms—if I can use that term—to properly detect cases of drug-impaired driving. That is certainly something that is extremely important in this case.

As well, the bill refers to a saliva test. The problem is that experts tell us that the presence of THC can be detected in bodily fluids several days and even several weeks after the drugs in question have been consumed, particularly marijuana.

The problem with that is that, without a fixed limit set out in the law, we could see situations where the presence of THC could be detected in the blood of someone who had, for example, smoked marijuana several weeks earlier—or several days, maybe; I am not sure about the scientific issues surrounding that, but that is a problem that we will face. So the presence of THC could be detected in someone’s blood, but the concentration would not be high enough to deem someone to be a criminal. For example, the state of Colorado has set a specific limit for the THC levels in people driving while impaired. That is a problem in itself because we could end up in a situation where someone is arrested who is actually not impaired, but who simply used marijuana at some point in the past. That is very concerning.

The other element that I refer to is the ability of these tools to properly measure what we want to measure, namely the level of THC in a person’s body. In the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security’s study of the bill regarding random breath testing, some members raised this question, knowing that the government was preparing a plan for the legalization of marijuana. Several experts, including police representatives, told us that a lot of discussion was still needed and that, at this time, no method was more reliable than another in measuring what we want to measure to ensure that drivers are arrested who are truly impaired.

If we want to solve a problem, we have to do it properly. That is why I want to talk about one of the shortcomings of Bill S-230, which is the same one that was raised in our debate on the bill I mentioned about random breath tests. The issue is that this approach is not comprehensive; it does not address all aspects of the problem. When the committee studied this bill, important stakeholders such as MADD pointed out that it has the same shortcoming.

We have been trying to figure out whether all these tests should be random, and we have talked about the burden that places on the law enforcement agencies responsible for keeping our roads safe, but each of those elements addresses just one aspect of the problem. If we really want to keep our roads safe, we have to look at a broader set of elements.

People often talk about education, for example. Some have suggested that we can figure out the best approach by looking at how things are handled by other countries with more all-encompassing marijuana legislation and some of the U.S. states that have already legalized marijuana.

Washington State and Colorado have rules about exact THC concentrations in blood, which must be measured before an individual can be arrested. Oregon does things differently. There, an officer who stops a driver uses visual cues to determine whether the driver is impaired before proceeding to other tests like the ones the parliamentary secretary listed. Other countries, such as Great Britain, have more specific measures related to blood THC concentration.

Again, I want to congratulate my colleague for sponsoring this bill in the House of Commons. What I said from the outset bears repeating. There is no doubt that every member of the House wants to eradicate this scourge. Too many lives have been lost to impaired driving. We need to do more to raise awareness. We need to give our police forces the tools they need to keep the public safe and do their job properly in order to improve the ever more staggering statistics. However, this needs to be done in a comprehensive manner. We cannot simply rely on meaningless indicators. We must set a very specific and discernible concentration level. That will be even more important in the context of legalizing marijuana.

Finally, I would remind hon. members that we need to have private members' bills from senators or members. Even so, the Liberals have had a hard time with the legalization bill. Even though we are in favour of legalization, the fact remains that the Liberals have botched this process in a number of ways, including when it comes to consulting the provinces. That speaks to the complexity and scope of such a bill. A lot of work remains to be done to ensure that everything is done properly. Nevertheless, I will vote in favour of this bill so that we may study it in committee. I look forward to seeing the end result.

Again, I will vote in favour of the bill to ensure that we can study it in committee, and I look forward to seeing the end result.

[Committees of the House, October 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his interesting question. It reminds me of what we saw with the Conservative government's Bill C-51 and what we are still seeing with Bill C-59. Bill C-59 is supposedly going to repair the damage caused by Bill C-51, which jeopardizes the right of activists to protest for the environment.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is currently in court because the CSIS watchdog refuses to release documents that would show whether these people were spied on. This is sowing division and keeping people from speaking out and making sure the country and the government are on the right track with regard to the environment and sustainable development. We find that unacceptable.