Rosane Doré Lefebvre

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, October 23rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his comments and question.

I want to come back to the first point, which caught my attention. It is a little sad to hear that my colleague opposite thinks that no New Democrat has the requisite experience to speak about national defence, especially since we have members of the Canadian Forces on this side of the House.

I am in no way suggesting that I am an expert in national defence, but I find it a little opportunistic that the Conservatives would paint themselves as being more expert in the field. It is important to stress that we rely on experts to provide us with information. I am not an expert in every field. That would probably make me an extremely pretentious and unpleasant person, but I appreciate it when witnesses share their points of view.

Regarding the amendment introduced by the NDP—I am going to be very quick, Mr. Speaker—it is not that we do not trust the Canadian Forces, far from it. We are proposing that at least 60% of members of the committee be independent from the armed forces. It is extremely important to bear this point in mind.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, October 23rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-15, An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

This morning, I had the opportunity to hear speeches by a number of my NDP colleagues. Some points they raised were very interesting. I also noticed that a number of members on the other side of the House were interested in the debate, including the parliamentary secretary with his questions. After this morning's discussions, I have a better understanding of the bill.

I would like to take a moment to mention that all of the parties agree that the Canadian Forces are important and that they deserve our respect. These men and women put their lives on the line to protect our freedoms. They go all over the world to protect us and to promote freedom for everyone. It is with a tremendous amount of respect that I rise today to very humbly speak to Bill C-15.

It is often very hard for these people to be away from their families. That is something that many of us do not understand. I have friends in the Canadian Forces. Some of my friends' parents were also members of the Canadian Forces for decades. I have heard all kinds of stories, each more incredible than the next. They are always very proud to talk about their experience in the Canadian Forces. Sometimes it can be difficult. That is something to think about, because it is a whole other world.

It is worth taking a moment to talk about this. I talk about it often with people at the Canadian Legion in Laval, which is in my riding. For example, I have coffee with Jocelyn and Marcel, who served in the Canadian Forces. Some people have never been members of the Canadian Forces, but have a great deal of respect for our military personnel and want to give of their time to them. When they return to their communities, our military men and women try to help out civilians.

For example, at the beginning of the year, Marcel from my riding went over the 500 mark for blood donations. This is very important to him, and he continues to donate blood every two weeks. These people always go above and beyond, and we owe them a great deal of respect. We have to do things the right way for them, especially when it comes to a bill about very important issues such as summary trials, which most of my colleagues have spoken about in the House.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that not all the recommendations in the Lamer report were included, as my colleague just mentioned. The report contained 88 recommendations. From what I understand, the number of recommendations accepted by the government will increase from 27 to 43. Thus, 29 recommendations are already in place and a total of 43 recommendations will be accepted.

After all the work that was put into this report, why not accept all 88 recommendations? I am not an expert, but I did look over the recommendations. I really wonder why the government did not accept more. I would like to have the opportunity to ask some of the members opposite, if they speak to the bill, if there is a particular reason why more recommendations were not accepted.

We are pleased that several recommendations were included, but we feel that they do not go far enough.

I feel that Bill C-15 lacks balance because the reforms it proposes are a travesty of justice.

By that, I am referring to summary trials, which I mentioned earlier and my colleagues discussed at length. I expressed my concern about how people could easily end up with a criminal record, which is both troubling and hard to believe because these men and women give their time and, in some cases, many years of service.

It is appalling to see that a criminal record could be so easy to get. Moreover, summary trials are not transcribed. That worries me because the accused cannot appeal. I am concerned that this violates the rights of the men and women who go through a summary trial, because the proceedings are not transcribed and the individual has no recourse.

In the civilian world, accused persons can appeal. I do not understand why people who are members of the Canadian Forces cannot. Somebody on the other side should clarify this matter for me and tell me why things should be this way. I do not see why people in the armed forces should not have the same rights. These people sacrifice everything in service to their country, so why should they not have the right to appeal?

I think that this is a serious flaw. Perhaps the bill was drafted too quickly or the government did not give it enough thought. Are the Conservatives really serious about putting this bill before the House? Honestly, I have my doubts.

This morning, many members talked about studying this bill in committee.

I have a great deal of respect for our parliamentary institutions, and I believe that every parliamentarian tries to do good work in committee. However, it can be extremely difficult to suggest amendments in committee and discuss them properly because there is rarely enough time to talk about all of the bills.

I am currently a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety, but I used to be a member of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, and I served as a substitute member for several committees. We often hear the same line over and over and see the same kind of thing in how committees operate. I do not wish to minimize the importance of Bill C-15, but I do have some doubts about how the bill will be examined in committee.

I have faith in my colleagues, regardless of their party affiliation. I know they will ensure a job well done. However, if this bill makes it to committee—which is likely, since the government has a majority—I want to be sure that all of my colleagues will take the examination of this bill very seriously.

After hearing from witnesses, committee members will propose amendments in order to ensure that Bill C-15 is as fair as possible when this government passes it. I simply want to be sure that this will be taken seriously. It is our duty as parliamentarians to introduce the best legislation possible. Unfortunately, this bill contains a number of flaws, as pointed out by many people who are not members of the official opposition.

For instance, Colonel Drapeau, a retired Canadian Forces colonel, said that the issue of summary trials needs to be reviewed. Personally, I think we need to listen to those who are asking us to review our procedures, such as the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and Mr. Drapeau. These people have experience that others probably do not have. I will trust our parliamentary system.

However, because of the flaws that appear in Bill C-15, I have no choice but to vote against it and explore in greater detail why more recommendations from the Lamer report were not included in the bill.

[National Defence, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, “enormous consequences” and “astronomical proportions” are the terms being used by security experts in the Jeffrey Delisle cyber espionage scandal.

He has irreversibly damaged our relations with our closest allies. He spied for Russia over a 50-month period. In fact, during that time, he went in and out of an ultra-secure building with a USB device potentially containing top secret information about Five Eyes.

How could the Conservatives have allowed this fiasco to occur under their watch?

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Davenport for his very interesting question.

Once again, this goes back to what the member for Gatineau said earlier. The government must answer these questions and tell us what is going on. It must also tell us why it introduced Bill S-7 in the Senate. Why does it want to change laws that are working very well? Why is it eliminating things that are essential to our security?

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for his question. He also works very hard on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is interesting to have different viewpoints on an issue as important as our national security. We do not always agree, but it is very important to have this debate today and to bring different ideas to the fore.

I would like to go back to many things my colleague just said. It is very important that I make it clear that I am not attacking the existing Anti-terrorism Act. However, I find it very intriguing that Bill S-7 is being brought forward. Our existing legislation is sufficient, and all the provisions we need are already in the Criminal Code.

I will come back to the increase in the number of border agents. I am glad that my colleague mentioned that in the House, since that gives me the opportunity to talk about it. In some places, part-time staff were hired to work at night to improve things, but the hours have still been cut at border crossings. So this changes absolutely nothing. Furthermore, there will be over $140 million in budget cuts to border services. In Quebec alone, 260 border agents received notice that they would lose their jobs, and there were another 1,351 in the rest of Canada. This has yet to happen. When these positions disappear, what happens in the coming years will be catastrophic.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Québec, who has raised some very important points in today's debate.

All members of the House, no matter what their affiliation, agree that national security is extremely important. We must protect our country and our people. No one is opposed to showing goodwill, but what I find unfortunate are the means used by the other side to achieve its objectives.

The Minister of Public Safety constantly says that the government is tough on crime. Allowing people to cross the border illegally is not being tough on crime. Double-bunking inmates in our prisons and making inmate populations and our employees vulnerable is not being tough on crime. Abolishing the gun registry is not being tough on crime. The government is not taking the action needed to prove to the international community that we are ready to defend ourselves and to tackle terrorism effectively. On the weekend we saw that there are problems at our borders, and the government is missing out on a really good opportunity.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to thank my colleague from Gatineau for her very wise and interesting comments on this matter.

Indeed, the Conservative government has never before tried to legislate against terrorism as it is now with Bill S-7. As my colleague pointed out, the Criminal Code already covers all of this. Most experts agree that there is no need to initiate all of this or stir things up to change anything, since we already have the standards and legislation we need.

I have to wonder about the government's real motives for amending the Criminal Code and the Anti-terrorism Act. That is one of the big questions I have right now. Once again, I invite the government to reread the technical guides used by the counter-terrorism committee to determine whether the government knows the basics and what laws are needed.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I was interrupted the last time we were in the House because the time allocated to this bill ran out. I will therefore continue my speech.

I took the time to review the content of Bill S-7 and the text of our international agreements, as I mentioned the last time I rose to comment on Bill S-7.

As I pointed out then, I delved deeper into our stance on terrorism, particularly at the international level, and into the international agreements that Canada signed or agreed to in principle. I believe it was important to do that in order to get to the heart of the issue of terrorism and examine what has and has not been done about it.

I looked at the Counter-Terrorism Committee and what it was introducing. The members of that committee have a very interesting guide called the “Technical Guide to the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001)”. The resolution was unanimously adopted by the United Nations on September 28, 2001, if I am not mistaken, following the attacks on September 11, 2001. The events required an immediate response and an international consensus, and that is what was achieved.

It is interesting to note how quickly it was adopted, and unanimously at that, by all the countries represented at the United Nations, including Canada. I looked at chapter 2 of that technical guide, a chapter that deals with two very interesting points. The second point talks about eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists and point number 10 talks about effective border controls.

I began by exploring the issue of effective border controls, an extremely important aspect of combatting terrorism. It is interesting that we are talking about these things now. On the weekend, some of my colleagues and I went to the Canada-U.S. border at Stanstead, which is about a two-hour drive south of Montreal. I learned some very surprising things, along with my colleagues, the member for Compton—Stanstead, the member for Brome—Missisquoi and the member for Sherbrooke, who is also affected by this, since his riding is only 30 minutes away.

Many surrounding communities are affected. Unfortunately, Stanstead is known as a porous border crossing. In 2006-07, there were about 42 illegal entries. This number has gone up every year. By August of this year, there had been over 300 illegal entries at that border crossing. This is a growing problem.

I know the mayor of Stanstead has tried to mitigate the problem in several ways, for instance, by closing Church Street to traffic. Unfortunately, this only moved the problem elsewhere. People are going around the barriers, simply not stopping at all at the border and continuing straight ahead.

People caught recently were mostly refugee claimants. There are international treaties to deal with such cases. Canada welcomes immigrants, and the case of every individual who claims refugee status must be examined.

I completely agree that we must examine the case of every refugee claimant. However, what I found troubling—although oddly enough, a Conservative senator said yesterday that it was not all that troubling—is the fact that the people who entered the country illegally then phoned the police when they reached Magog. They phoned the police to inform them that they had arrived and to ask them to come and get them. As soon as they cross into Canada, they are the ones who contact the police. Honestly, I find that a little troubling.

Why have we not caught these people ourselves, questioned them ourselves or discovered that they have crossed the border?

These illegal immigrants are the ones who contact us to inform us that they are here and are claiming refugee status. That is troubling.

The Conservative senator believes that this is not troubling and that they are simply people claiming refugee status. I agree that we must examine refugee status claims. The NDP filed access to information requests and discovered that human trafficking was taking place through Stanstead. That is very serious. It seems that clandestine networks are being set up, especially at this border crossing. This is a very serious problem that we must deal with.

What is the connection to terrorism? Those people are able to cross the border, reach Magog and then telephone police to announce their presence without anyone going after them or trying to stop them. However, if people enter Canada illegally, not to claim refugee status but to illegally transport weapons, drugs or tobacco, for instance, they will not call the police to inform them of their whereabouts and ask to be arrested. They will probably continue on their way in a truck carrying weapons. They will not stop.

The fact that the government is not taking action in this regard is of serious concern. What is even more worrisome is that the Conservatives are boasting about attacking the problem of terrorism through Bill S-7 when, in the last budget, they cut funding for Canada's border services by over $140 million.

In Quebec, the border services officers' union indicated that 260 jobs were in jeopardy, which means that 260 people would have received a notice telling them that they were going to lose their jobs. For all of Canada, that number was 1,351. That is a lot of staff when other more practical solutions could have been found.

This measure is completely unrealistic, and the government should be increasing the staff when our country is facing such problems. Officers could be mobile so that they could leave their posts to pursue people who cross the border in this manner.

The Government of Canada website clearly indicates that “[The Government of] Canada supports action by the Security Council on international terrorism.” I think that we should focus more on effective border control than on passing a bill that, as we can see, will clearly not make a very big difference when it comes to terrorism.

The second thing that I found interesting in this technical guide is the proposal to eliminate the supply of weapons to terrorists. I considered this issue a little more carefully and wondered exactly what was being referred to in this chapter. I therefore checked the exact definitions that are found on page 16 of the technical guide against terrorism, where it talks a little bit about arms brokering. It says:

(iii) With respect to brokering: regulate brokers and sellers of SALW...

We are talking here about small arms and light weapons, and the point just before that says:

(ii) With respect to possession: set rules and regulations governing civilian acquisition, possession, transportation, licensing of dealers, record-keeping, and tracing of the various categories of SALW, and rules requiring the reporting of lost or stolen SALW...

That made my hair stand on end. Last year, the firearms registry was abolished here in the House. We fought against it on this side. My colleague from Gatineau and I fought tooth and nail to save the registry. Quebec recently won a court case regarding the data from Quebec, which will not be destroyed. I have also heard that the government will unfortunately appeal that decision.

The Conservatives will not give up. I cannot believe it. This government proudly adopted a resolution condemning the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and it has since supported the anti-terrorism measures taken by the Security Council.

This guide calls for tracing or a firearms registry. But what did the government do the first chance it got as a majority government? It abolished the registry.

That is not a good way of doing things. It is demagogic to think that it can introduce a nice little bill coming from the Senate that will not change much at the end of the day, when we already had practical solutions.

The firearms registry may not have been perfect, but it was a tool that could be used. We could have improved it so that it would be more robust, more relevant, more interactive and less expensive. The parties here could have come to a consensus. We missed out on a great opportunity to work together on this. What is more, the government has signed agreements with other countries, but it does not even honour these commitments. It is very disappointing to see this.

Also—and I have often mentioned this in the House—I am a hunter and I come from a family of hunters. We had no objection to registering our guns. In fact, we feel safer. Many people I know and many members of my family find that it is safer and that it makes sense to register guns. Personally, I completely agree with the United Nations resolutions. I find it sad that those resolutions are not being honoured here.

Why not deal with the real problem? I think it is sad that with this bill, the government is missing an excellent opportunity to work with the other parties. This bill will make unnecessary amendments to the Anti-terrorism Act. In fact, many experts, including the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, Mr. Copeland of the Law Union of Ontario, the Canadian Islamic Congress and plenty of other individuals, agree with us that the measures in Bill S-7 are not necessary.

I agree that we must take all threats of terrorism seriously. Members on this side of the House feel that we must do anything but take these threats lightly. Indeed, we must tackle terrorism more efficiently, but unfortunately, with Bill S-7, I do not see how we can tackle international terrorism efficiently. I find that terribly sad.

I would like my colleagues opposite to consider the fact that our very own land borders are becoming porous. We have serious problems at borders in many of our communities, not just in Quebec. I would suggest that the government talk to Canada Border Services Agency officers to see what the people on the ground think of the situation.

As for gun control, as noted in the Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism's technical guide, it is time to deal with this issue, not to turn a blind eye to it. We have to do this because it is extremely important.

As an expectant mother, I am very worried that the government is not taking this issue seriously enough. I am extremely disappointed that the government is turning terrorism into an extremely political issue. The government should focus on national security, it has to honour our international agreements, and it is really missing an excellent opportunity to work with all parties in the House.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start my speech by thanking my NDP colleagues who have given excellent speeches before me today about Bill S-7.

I was not very familiar with this bill and so I took the time to do some in-depth research yesterday in order to better understand its objective. I spent some time learning about the UN counter-terrorism committee and researched its activities. We are a member of this committee and work a great deal with it. On its Internet site, I found the Technical Guide to the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1373, adopted in 2001 following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. This guide was prepared by the counter-terrorism committee executive directorate. It is an extremely interesting and substantial document that contains a number of suggestions for member countries on how to effectively fight terrorism throughout the world.

I examined the most effective means of fighting terrorism. I am repeating this term because it stands out the most in this document.

In reviewing chapter 2, I was struck by two points which I found to be very important and which the government has unfortunately not addressed. I am referring to section 2 on eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists and section 10 on effective border controls. My colleague from Brome—Missisquoi will probably agree with me that we currently have a serious problem with border control.

This week there was a very serious incident in British Columbia during which a border services officer was shot at our border. That is very serious. In Brome—Missisquoi, Compton—Stanstead and Montreal's entire south shore, which borders the United States, there have been reports of many illegal crossings lately. I heard that last night, 11 people crossed this border illegally. This is a rather glaring problem that could be very serious for our national security. Refugees enter our country. We are here to welcome them and we must treat them in accordance with the international treaties we have signed.

There is something that worries me more—my colleagues have talked about this at length—and that is the smuggling of drugs, tobacco products and illegal firearms. This is very serious. Like many of my colleagues, I have met with border services officers, including those near Sherbrooke. They told me things that are extremely difficult to hear. They told me that they do not have time to search everyone and that they have to work quite quickly sometimes because they are understaffed and do not have enough resources to do their jobs properly.

That is sad to hear. We are currently debating a bill to combat terrorism when, according to the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee's technical guide, we have other problems that require our immediate attention. If our border is porous, then we face a very serious threat of terrorism.

I would suggest to the government across the way that it re-examine its priorities and address the existing problem with our border security. That is my first point. A number of my colleagues could elaborate on what is happening on the ground.

The government across the way cut the border services' budget by $146 million. That is extremely serious for our national security. The union said that 260 front-line jobs would be cut in Quebec alone. That is extremely serious because it has a direct impact on our national security and our fight against terrorism.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her excellent speech. She touched on some extremely important points in this bill.

I noted several of the things she said, including her comment about the lack of respect the Conservatives have for Canadians by introducing a bill that will violate our fundamental rights.

Can the hon. member elaborate on the fundamental rights that are being totally violated with Bill S-7?