Matthew Dubé

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

It is interesting, because one of the things he emphasized was the idea of combining this with other information to help intercept someone who is known to authorities. That would be just another piece of the puzzle. However, there is a problem with that. When we look at some of the human rights violations created by the Government of Canada, for example, in cases such as that of Maher Arar, the sharing of information was often one of the problems. In fact, sharing information, in certain situations where profiling occurs, can insinuate something about an individual and lead to horrible and tragic situations like the one that Mr. Arar went through.

When we look at the proposed system, to allow more information to be shared, I wonder whether the hon. member realizes how little we can trust the process, especially in light of the current administration. Simply increasing the sharing of information without really putting in place adequate accountability procedures, is a problem.

For example, the Canada Border Services Agency is one of the only agencies responsible for dealing with national security, and before Bill C-22 was passed, it did not have a review mechanism, let alone any oversight, because no real-time monitoring was being conducted. Obviously, we have complete confidence in the men and women working on the Canadian side of the border, but what is happening on the American side is a different story, considering the racial profiling that is going on there.

Is the member not worried about this exchange of information? Before he tells me that the Privacy Commissioner was involved in this work, let us remember that, in the speech the minister gave about this bill, he said that the Privacy Commissioner should conduct further assessments after the bill was passed. That hardly inspires confidence.

Does the member not agree that the most important thing is protecting human rights? The government does not have a great track record in that regard when it comes to information sharing.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Since he knows a lot about how Parliament and the legislative process work, I would like to ask him a question. There have been a number of bills on important issues such as national security. Most recently, we examined Bill C-23 on preclearance at the border. Like Bill C-23, Bill C-21 contains provisions that give the minister a lot of discretionary power over regulatory changes that will be made after the bill is passed. Looking back, when Bill C-23 was being examined in committee, public officials were asked for a list of regulatory changes that would be made to implement the provisions of an agreement with the United States. However, they were unable to provide us with a comprehensive or even a definitive list.

Does my colleague agree that the legislative process requires accountability and transparency, and that this is an unacceptable way of doing things? We understand the need for regulations, but when they are used to circumvent the legislative process, that can cause problems.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to come back to the matter of the information that will be shared.

A problem that we are seeing more and more of, and not just with this bill, is that the Liberal government has a tendency to legislate using regulations. For example, in the bill currently before us, the government gives the minister a certain amount of discretion through regulation. That allows the minister to change not only the type of information that is collected but also the manner in which that information is obtained, the parties from whom it is obtained, and the circumstances under which is it obtained. That is a serious problem.

In committee, we asked Public Safety officials about Bill C-23, which is essentially a companion to the bill in question. They said that they were unable to tell us what type of regulations would be changed because of this bill.

Is the member not worried that the government is making legislative changes, while leaving a big asterisk next to some parts saying that it will make more changes later, at the minister's discretion, through regulation? Is that what accountability and transparency are all about?

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister first met with President Trump after the U.S. election, there was a lot of talk in the press release about further integration at the border. One of the things that was even floated was housing American and Canadian border agents in the same building and having common systems.

When the public safety committee went to Washington in May, we had an opportunity to hear some of the long-term plans of this entry-exit program. If the member and members of the Liberal caucus are not concerned, something is seriously wrong. We are in a situation now where accountability is at its lowest when it comes to national security agencies. Unfortunately, that includes CBSA, which as of now, until the creation of this committee of parliamentarians, is one of the only agencies that has no proper review, much less real time oversight. That is a whole other matter.

I want to understand from the member why, in that context, he would feel comfortable with this sharing of information. President Trump is signing executive orders saying that privacy protection laws no longer apply to people who are not American citizens. We see a situation that almost condones, implicitly and explicitly, potentially the use of torture, with a new ministerial directive that does nothing to alleviate that issue. Therefore, I want to understand why the member could feel comfortable with sharing more information and this further integration, given there is a president who has no respect for the rule of law of his own constitution, much less the constitutions of other countries.

[Parks Canada, September 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, no decision has been made, except for the tender notice on Buyandsell.gc.ca . Therefore, we have to really wonder what the government's intention is here.

This is another example of the Liberals trying to keep their plans to privatize our public infrastructure under wraps. This issue was never raised during the election campaign, apart from the infrastructure bank, which, once again, is more about pleasing their Bay Street friends than really investing in our public infrastructure.

Why are the Liberals so determined to hand our public assets over to their friends on Bay Street?

[International Trade, September 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we want to uphold NAFTA's track record, but that record shows that Canada is the most sued country under NAFTA's investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

Private corporations can sue Canada just because our environmental or health regulations do not suit them, for example. Everyone knows the Liberals tend to favour corporations over Canadians, so can they tell us how having this type of provision in a free trade agreement helps promote democracy, protect Canadians, and keep our environment safe?

[Public Services and Procurement, September 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, in addition to having to deal with the botched Phoenix pay system, public servants have now learned that their privacy was breached because of the glitches in this system.

Commissioner Therrien found at least 11 privacy breaches, including leaked names, employee numbers and salaries. Enough is enough.

The Liberals have mismanaged this file from start to finish. When will the problems with the Phoenix pay system finally be fixed?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it brings me no pleasure to have to speak to this bill, because it has to do with a crisis Canada is currently facing, the opioid crisis. The United States is also grappling with the same crisis, which has been the subject of many discussions.

Unfortunatley, Bill C-338 fails miserably in its approach. As the NDP public safety critic, I want to point out that the opioid crisis is not so much a public safety issue as it is a public health issue. It is important to make that distinction with respect to Bill C-338, since all it does is propose heavier penalties, like the infamous mandatory minimum sentences we saw so often when the Conservatives were in power. So far, anywhere you look around the world, mandatory minimums have failed completely in terms of their intended objective, that is, to put an end to the scourge facing our society.

Every policy, medical, and legal expert tells us the same thing: the solution to this crisis is to provide more mental health and addiction treatment services and more resources to the hardest-hit communities that are dealing with the consequences daily. For example, the mayor of Vancouver has had a lot to say about this, since the statistics coming out of British Columbia on the number of deaths caused by this crisis are terrifying, especially for a province in a country like Canada.

For nine years we had a Conservative government that said that the solution to drug trafficking and public health problems was to impose harsher sentences, the infamous mandatory minimums. Even in the American states that are commonly referred to as “red states”, where Republicans share many of the ideological opinions of our Conservative colleagues, it was determined that such sentences were a failure. This approach does not work, and it does not prevent the tragedies we are currently seeing.

To see why this is more a public health issue than a public safety one, we can look at supervised injection sites. All across Canada, especially in big cities that are grappling with this crisis and that want to protect citizens struggling with addiction issues, people have pushed for supervised injections sites and other solutions.

During the previous Parliament, the federal government kept plugging its community consultation line as an excuse to pass legislation making supervised injection sites even harder to set up, even though municipal and provincial elected officials representing those very communities were asking it to authorize them. Rather than solve the problem, the government created conditions that endangered public safety. People's lives were put at risk because they did not have the resources to get help if they were dying of an overdose in some alleyway. I do not want to get into too much detail here.

The Liberal government took way too long to move on this, but at least it moved, and while that is commendable, there is still more work to do. The member for Vancouver Kingsway, our health critic, represents one of the first provinces to face this problem, a region with some of the most terrifying opioid statistics of all.

He asked the question again today: when will this government recognize that this is a national health crisis and declare this to be a pan-Canadian crisis? This has yet to be done, even though it is such an easy step to take so as to ensure that governments could begin taking appropriate action to protect Canadians.

I would go so far as to say that for 30, 40, or even 50 years, the approach taken by the right in the war against drugs has always been to take aim at the criminal element. In the meantime, the ones who were truly forgotten were the Canadians who unfortunately are among these statistics and who lost their lives because we, the legislators, were unable to help them.

Having considered Bill C-388, we oppose it, because we believe that the solution does not lie in putting more resources into fighting crime and putting people in jail. The solution is to help them. We must help these people face their substance abuse problems. We must help those who suffer from a mental illness by ensuring that we provide the care they need and want. We must help protect these citizens.

If we want to discuss public safety, we must first discuss public health. That is what the crisis is about. That is what is being neglected in the approach set out in this bill, which, unfortunately, is similar to the approach that prevailed for many years, especially in the years when there was a majority Conservative government. It was a failure.

We are not the ones saying so. The statistics on recidivism and substance abuse are clear. Today's statistics on this problem indicate that this is not just happening in Vancouver, British Columbia. As people know all too well, this problem is unfortunately affecting the entire country. The problem is moving eastward and is starting to become a reality in the maritime provinces and Atlantic Canada. This should be unacceptable in a society such as ours.

Statistics aside, this is also a legal issue. The Supreme Court has found that minimum mandatory sentences are not going to help us prevent recidivism and protect Canadians. The most vulnerable victims of the opioid crisis and other crises related to drug use and drug trafficking are the users themselves.

The government says they are proposing legislation to protect victims and vulnerable populations, but in a drug crisis like this, the real victims, the real vulnerable population, are the Canadians dying from opioids before our very eyes. What this tells us is that, as I have said many times before, this is a public health issue.

Let us stop talking about how long we can put people in prison for. Let us stop thinking that rehabilitation is what is really going to help people recover from their mental health problems. Let us take their needs seriously, along with the needs identified by local authorities, such as the health and justice ministers in the provinces dealing with these tragedies, and municipal officials, such as the mayor of Vancouver, who is asking for help and more authority to develop tools like supervised injection sites to help these people start to heal. That is the approach we should be promoting.

I would like to close by saying that we have concerns about this approach. We recognize that it is a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done to eliminate this problem, which is no longer just a regional issue. It is affecting all of Canada and even North America. These problems are being raised in discussions with American counterparts and between ministers. That proves that we need to take the issue seriously. Let us declare it to be a pan-Canadian health crisis. That would allow the government to do what is necessary. I have said it many times, and the NDP will continue to repeat it, that this is first and foremost a public health issue.

Let us help and protect these individuals, for they are the victims.

[Public Safety, September 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of all talk and no action, the Minister of Finance did not include a single penny in his budget for correcting the mistakes on the no-fly list.

Fifty or so Liberal MPs, including ministers, wrote to the Minister of Finance to ask him to correct the situation. Families have to cancel trips because their children's names are on the list and business people are facing delays on their business trips.

Will the government finally keep its promise and implement and fully fund a proper redress system for the no-fly list and, once and for all, end this victimization of children and business people?

[Privacy Protection, September 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Privacy Commissioner is worried that American customs will subject Canadians to intrusive searches of their electronic devices. Searching an iPhone is not the same as searching a suitcase. It is looking directly into people's private lives.

Could the minister stand and finally confirm once and for all that Liberals will stand up for Canadians' rights at the border, rather than playing right into President Trump's hands by giving more powers to American agents on Canadian soil with bills like Bill C-23? Let us not hear this talk about respecting the law, because the law is completely silent on this issue. Maybe we can get an update on that, while we are it, to protect Canadians' privacy.