Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act

An Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts

This bill was last introduced in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in September 2013.

Sponsor

Vic Toews  Conservative

Status

Second reading (House), as of Feb. 14, 2012
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

Part 1 enacts the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act, which requires telecommunications service providers to put in place and maintain certain capabilities that facilitate the lawful interception of information transmitted by telecommunications and to provide basic information about their subscribers to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Commissioner of Competition and any police service constituted under the laws of a province.
Part 2 amends the Criminal Code in respect of authorizations to intercept private communications, warrants and orders and adds to that Act new investigative powers in relation to computer crime and the use of new technologies in the commission of crimes. Among other things, it
(a) provides that if an authorization is given under certain provisions of Part VI, the judge may at the same time issue a warrant or make an order that relates to the investigation in respect of which the authorization is given;
(b) provides that the rules respecting confidentiality that apply in respect of a request for an authorization to intercept private communications also apply in respect of a request for a related warrant or order;
(c) requires the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to report on the interceptions of private communications made without authorizations;
(d) provides that a person who has been the object of an interception made without an authorization must be notified of the interception within a specified period;
(e) permits a peace officer or a public officer, in certain circumstances, to install and make use of a number recorder without a warrant;
(f) extends to one year the maximum period of validity of a warrant for a tracking device and a number recorder if the warrant is issued in respect of a terrorism offence or an offence relating to a criminal organization;
(g) provides the power to make preservation demands and orders to compel the preservation of electronic evidence;
(h) provides new production orders to compel the production of data relating to the transmission of communications and the location of transactions, individuals or things;
(i) provides a warrant to obtain transmission data that will extend to all means of telecommunication the investigative powers that are currently restricted to data associated with telephones; and
(j) provides warrants that will enable the tracking of transactions, individuals and things and that are subject to legal thresholds appropriate to the interests at stake.
It also amends offences in the Criminal Code relating to hate propaganda and its communication over the Internet, false information, indecent communications, harassing communications, devices used to obtain telecommunication services without payment and devices used to obtain the unauthorized use of computer systems or to commit mischief.
Part 2 also amends the Competition Act to make applicable, for the purpose of enforcing certain provisions of that Act, the new provisions being added to the Criminal Code respecting demands and orders for the preservation of computer data and orders for the production of documents relating to the transmission of communications or financial data. It also modernizes the provisions of the Act relating to electronic evidence and provides for more effective enforcement in a technologically advanced environment.
Lastly, it amends the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act to make some of the new investigative powers being added to the Criminal Code available to Canadian authorities executing incoming requests for assistance and to allow the Commissioner of Competition to execute search warrants under the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act.
Part 3 contains coordinating amendments and coming-into-force provisions.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 28th, 2013 / 5:15 p.m.
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NDP

Mylène Freeman NDP Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. He mentioned an interesting contradiction.

I agree that it does not make sense. I really want to clearly emphasize the fact that the NDP will remain vigilant regarding the inclusion of clauses that might be too similar to those in Bill C-30, which contained measures that went way too far in terms of Canadians' privacy. That is a priority for us. That is a top priority for my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville, whose constituency is next to mine. I know she has been working very hard on this file. It makes no sense to ask so much of Canadians. The member really illustrated the government's double standard, depending on whether the issue pertains to the government or to Canadians.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 28th, 2013 / 5 p.m.
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NDP

Mylène Freeman NDP Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC

Mr. Speaker, I want to start my remarks on Bill C-13 by congratulating my many colleagues who work tirelessly for justice, the protection of all Canadians and respect for their rights and for individuals. It is truly high time for us to better protect ourselves from the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.

We are all shocked and saddened, and were truly heart-broken at the highly publicized suicides of teenagers who were victims of cyberbullying, including Rehtaeh Parsons, in Nova Scotia, Amanda Todd, in British Columbia, and so many others. We must prevent such tragedies from happening again, because these young girls are not the only ones to have been bullied.

Youth between 12 and 14 are most likely to be victims of cyberbullying, which can seriously affect their mental health and well-being.

According to recent studies, cyberbullying has an adverse effect on the social and emotional aspects of a young person's life and on their ability to learn. These young people suffer from anxiety, shorter attention spans, lower marks at school, feelings of despair and isolation, depression and even suicidal tendencies, as in these well-known cases, unfortunately.

I want to acknowledge that my colleague, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, brought attention to the issue of bullying in the House with his motion to create a national bullying prevention strategy. I want to thank him for taking that initiative. His hard work to fight any form of bullying is truly admirable.

Earlier this year, the NDP member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour introduced a bill to make the non-consensual distribution of sexually explicit images an offence.

Unfortunately, instead of setting partisanship aside and expediting passage of these measures, the Conservatives refused to act on the motion and bill brought forward by my colleagues and waited until it suited them to introduce Bill C-13, a bill that contains a number of provisions that have nothing to do with cyberbullying and provides nothing meaningful for its prevention.

I would like to thank the NDP justice critic, my colleague from Gatineau, for the hard work she has done on this issue. She moved that Bill C-13 be divided in order to remove the parts of the bill that do not pertain to cyberbullying and address them in another debate. She moved for the bill to be split so that the provisions related to the non-consensual distribution of intimate images could be passed quickly since everyone in the House agrees on them. This would have allowed the other provisions, which were previously set out in the now-defunct Bill C-30, to be carefully examined separately in committee.

This would have allowed us to deal with the provisions of the bill that are not related to this very sensitive issue separately. That is what we must do in order to have a healthy debate on this subject, since the Conservatives are trying to include provisions on telemarketing and other things in a bill on cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a very important issue, and we need to deal with it.

For example, I would like to share with the House what Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, had to say on this subject. She said:

We can all agree that cyberbullying is an issue that needs immediate attention but it is very troubling to see the government once again trying to enact new surveillance powers under the guise of protecting children. Regrettably, the federal government is using this pressing social issue as an opportunity to resurrect much of its former surveillance legislation, Bill C-30.

It is important to remember the work of my colleague, the hon. member for Terrebonne—Blainville, who fought hard against Bill C-30, which was a direct attack on the freedoms of Canadians and their right to privacy.

I am certain that she will ensure that the Conservatives are held accountable when the committee examines this bill, which unfortunately contains provisions that have nothing to do with cyberbullying and are of concern to many people in the digital community.

Bill C-13 covers much more ground than Bill C-540, which was introduced by my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour. Along the way, it addresses many other issues, such as the financial data of banks, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, telemarketing and the theft of a communication service. It also includes some of the provisions of Bill C-30.

The New Democrats, privacy advocates and the public rejected Bill C-30, forcing the Conservatives to abandon it earlier this year and to promise that the Criminal Code would be modernized and would not include the measures contained in Bill C-30.

Now, privacy advocates are criticizing the provisions in Bill C-13 on lawful access to personal information and stressing the need to implement measures to protect Canadians' right to privacy against abuse. They say that certain specific provisions must be examined more closely, especially clause 20, which deals with the new procedures for obtaining a warrant.

The NDP proposes that the two very different parts of the bill be separated. It is clear that the Conservative government is just playing politics to pass its controversial provisions, under the guise of doing something for our youth. At the very least, we should carefully study this bill in committee, to ensure that it will provide police with the tools they need to protect our youth and to answer important questions about the other provisions included in the bill.

I will take this opportunity to talk about what the youth centre workers in my riding know well. They know this issue very well because they too often come face to face with problems that many people would rather not see. These workers are role models and friends to the young people who so desperately need them. They are on the front lines in their work with young people. I think we have to take their views into consideration. Here is what one worker at the youth centre in Saint-Canut, in my riding, had to say about cyberbullying.

She told me that a number of young people were victims and that very few resources were available to fight against cyberbullying. She finds it hard to control this type of bullying because everything happens so fast on social networks, bullies can remain anonymous and it is everywhere.

At her youth centre there is zero tolerance. If the computers at the youth centre are used inappropriately, there are consequences. She said that it was important for them to make their teenagers aware of the repercussions that this could have and to educate them in order to prevent cyberbullying. This is about confidentiality on the Internet and being careful about the comments and photos we post.

They encourage young people to file a complaint if there are abuses, but often, unfortunately, the police do not have the resources or the time to deal with this type of problem. According to her, it would be better if the complaints were taken seriously and processed as quickly as possible. Young people who commit this type of bullying have to know that there will be consequences for their actions even from behind their computer screen. She thinks it would be important to give police officers what they need to be quick and effective. The sense of anonymity and of not being able to get caught makes young people believe that they can do whatever they want on the Internet. That is what she told me.

Prevention, raising awareness among young people and giving police forces and youth case workers the necessary resources are key to fighting cyberbullying, in addition to the provisions contained in the first part of Bill C-13, the part that truly deals with cyberbullying.

This would help reinforce the legal framework. Nonetheless, it is a national strategy, like the one proposed by my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, which might have an impact on the other aspects.

I gather from this debate and the information from young people and stakeholders in my riding that some of the pages of this bill will help in the fight against cyberbullying. However, prevention and awareness raising are even more pressing.

This bill incorporates a patchwork of measures on telemarketing, theft of telecommunication services, and terrorist activities. These are direct descendants of measures in Bill C-30, the infamous bill the Conservatives had to go back on.

In closing, it is important to move forward in the fight against cyberbullying. As my two colleagues who spoke before me said, the NDP will be very active and very vigilant on this file.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 28th, 2013 / 4:40 p.m.
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NDP

Charmaine Borg NDP Terrebonne—Blainville, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify one small point. I believe that my colleague was talking about the Privacy Commissioner, not the Information Commissioner. I think that it was important for her to be consulted.

When drafting a bill that has the potential to have very negative implications for Canadians' privacy, it seems logical that the Privacy Commissioner would be consulted. That is what she is there for. She does an excellent job of protecting Canadians' privacy. That should have been part of the government's plan.

I would like to point out that Ontario's Privacy Commissioner has raised concerns about this bill. I would like to quote her as this raises an important point in this debate:

We can all agree that cyberbullying is an issue that needs immediate attention but it is very troubling to see the government once again trying to enact new surveillance powers under the guise of protecting children. Regrettably, the federal government is using this pressing social issue as an opportunity to resurrect much of its former surveillance legislation, Bill C-30.

A number of commissioners have raised concerns about Bill C-30. If my memory serves me well, the government even said that it would consult the commissioner when dealing with this issue. It did not.

In my opinion, this really shows that privacy is clearly not a priority for this government.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 27th, 2013 / 4:40 p.m.
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Niagara Falls Ontario

Conservative

Rob Nicholson ConservativeMinister of National Defence

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly politics as usual for the Liberal Party. I will give the member this: certainly his comments are completely consistent with the Liberal approach over the last seven and a half years, which is to look for anything, any excuse, anything the Liberals can hang their hat on to oppose government legislation that would either crack down on crime or would update the Criminal Code, and in this case, go against cyberbullying. They are always looking for something, and the ironic part about it is the part that this individual is criticizing. He has got it way off base.

In terms of the bill, the old Bill C-30 that he referred to, the provisions that he and others criticized the most are not in the bill. The provisions here need judicial authorization.

I bring the hon. member's attention to one section that was actually passed by a Liberal government. He had a problem with the voluntary production of preservation orders. I would refer him to section 487.014, which says:

For greater certainty, no production order is necessary for a peace officer or a public officer enforcing or administering this or any other Act...to ask a person to voluntarily provide to the officer...

We are only adding it to preservation orders. What is this individual's problem? It is already in the Criminal Code.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 27th, 2013 / 4:20 p.m.
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Liberal

Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE

Mr. Speaker, the events over the past year have impacted all Canadians. The emergence of cyberbullying in society is troubling.

We agree with the government and victims that measures are needed to prevent and address cyberbullying. We, on this side, agree that we need action to properly provide a strong and fair response to those who perpetrate such hurtful acts against others online. It really is a tragedy to hear media reports of young people with their whole lives ahead of them believing that they have no other option than to take their lives. That is how deep and cruel cyberbullying can be. We should tackle this issue in a firm and focused manner.

Just last week, we marked Bullying Awareness Week. Indeed, there was a large summit held in my riding, an international summit, with social media companies and with young people from both sides of the border, which was organized by a well-known expert in this field Parry Aftab. Anti-bullying week and the summit to which I just referred provide us with an opportunity to reflect upon how our words and actions can sometimes have such a devastating impact upon others. This, I submit, holds true, not only for our youth but also the not so young.

As I have said in the House on a number of occasions, bullying is the reality for many people. Words do matter. Often, those words inflict great devastation upon young people. We know that what was once the sole domain of the schoolyard has now moved to the online world. The traditional bully, who typically sought out a victim at school, is now able to extend his reach online. The victim of bullying at school could, at one time, get some relief when he or she would go home, perhaps finding some respite in the confines of his or her room, a place where it was safe and away from the bullies. Not any more. The bullies can now extend that reach into that bedroom, using the Internet as a virtual schoolyard.

We know that some young people say terrible things to each other online. We can only imagine how hurtful it would be to arrive home, perhaps having an already rough day, only to go online and read something about oneself that is likely untrue or perhaps embarrassing. We can only imagine how hurtful and distressing it would be to read an online post or comment calling someone a “fag” or a “dyke” or suggesting that an individual is “weird”, “fat”, “ugly” or any number of hurtful and devastating comments.

We can only imagine how this would pierce the soul of a young person, many of whom are already vulnerable with the all too common challenges of growing up. This is the reality of Canadian youth, day in and day out. This is the ruthless side of technology and the use of the Internet.

That is why we sought to address this issue through legislation last year with a cyberbullying bill from the Liberal member for Vancouver Centre, which I will address again later.

We know that school can be tough, but bullying is not the exclusive domain of young people. I submit to my colleagues that we find bullying here, in this chamber. We often attack one another. We often do so for having a different opinion on such and such a matter. We exaggerate that which is often not worth exaggerating. We do not do a very good job of listening to each other and engaging in real debate. We seem to ignore or exclude the possibility that someone else might have a helpful solution or a proposal worthy of at least a hearing. It is possible to learn from one another.

Instead, as I have experienced in my short time here, having a different opinion is sometimes tantamount to siding with the criminals, and then we use the pretext of democracy to legitimize such behaviour. This is, frankly, the poor example we sometimes give to the public and to young people.

Earlier in my remarks, I indicated that there was an international summit held in Charlottetown on bullying. The organizers of that summit were actually invited into the House of Commons last week on the day of the announcement of this introduction of this legislation. I can say that on that day we did not exactly do our best job. When these constituents, who were here at the invitation of the Prime Minister, had a chance to observe the antics on the floor of the House of Commons, it is safe to say that as advocates against bullying, they were not impressed.

Today we are debating a bill that was supposed to address bullying and the emergence of cyberbullying specifically. However, for some reason, much of this bill has little to do with cyberbullying. I was surprised by this. I actually assumed that the Conservatives would have played this one straight and up front.

Bill C-13, we were told, was to address cyberbullying. It would appear, however, that the Conservative government knowingly used this highly emotional issue as a cover to include legislative measures that have nothing to do with cyberbullying. Conflating, for example, terrorism with cyberbullying does not make any sense. Furthermore, using the scourge of cyberbullying in order to resurrect elements of the infamous Bill C-30, a piece of legislative work wholly rejected because it was in effect an e-snooping bill, is wrong.

Members will remember that bill. It was a bill proposed just last year by Vic Toews, the former Conservative public safety minister. We are also given to understand that the former minister of justice and the current Minister of Justice sought to meet with victims of cyberbullying and their families as they prepared to introduce cyberbully legislation. I commend them for reaching out.

However, much of this bill has little to do with cyberbullying, and that is why we agree with the motion that was put forward by my colleague from Gatineau to split the bill at committee. We do so because all of us on this side had genuinely hoped that it was to be a stand-alone issue; instead, we have a bill before us full of content unrelated to cyberbullying.

We know the minister consulted victims of bullying and their families. I suggest that there will not be one member of the Conservative caucus able to coherently tell Canadians why providing, for example, big telecom companies with immunity to share private information of any Canadian to the government without a warrant has much to do with cyberbullying. There will not be one Conservative MP who could say with any sense of reliability that allowing telecom companies free range to divulge to Canada's security services anything they want at any time without any exposure to civil litigation or criminal charges is in any way tackling cyberbullying. As we heard earlier in the debate, that, in my submission, is the poison pill in this legislation.

The government seems to be using victims of cyberbullying for political and partisan reasons. That is why we agree with the proposal to split this bill at committee and deal with the cyberbullying aspects of it as a stand-alone bill.

When Vic Toews introduced his odious and unconstitutional e-snooping bill last year, a bill that would have allowed widespread government invasion into the privacy of Canadians without a warrant, he did so, to his credit, up front. He did not try to hide it—well, not too much. Faced with fierce opposition to such a massive assault on the privacy of Canadians, he famously said of the member for Lac-Saint-Louis, “He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

At least Vic Toews was up front in his effort to attack the privacy of Canadians.

Again the minister has a bill before the House, the vast majority of which has nothing to do with cyberbullying. I am not sure that I got an answer to my question, but I hope the Minister of Justice will do the right thing and allow the Conservative members of the justice committee the option to split this bill so that we can deal with cyberbullying as a stand-alone bill. Numerous measures from the old Vic Toews' e-snooping bill have no place in this bill.

I know that the minister will resist the temptation to suggest that we are on the side of the bullies when we seek to split the bill to deal with the cyberbullying as a stand-alone bill. To that point, let me be very clear: there is not one person in this House of Commons who does not want to combat cyberbullying.

As mentioned earlier, my colleague from Vancouver Centre, a person of great distinction and someone who has worked with victims of bullying and their families over the years, proposed a bill just last year on the very issue of cyberbullying. When it came time to vote on her bill, the Conservatives voted against it.

Since there was no discernible reason for the Conservatives to vote against her cyberbullying bill, we are left to speculate that they did so because the bill emanated from an opposition party, in this case the Liberal Party of Canada. Now here we are today, dealing with a bill we hoped would not be politicized. Unfortunately, it contains just five pages on cyberbullying, with the remaining 50-plus pages containing unrelated measures.

I earlier commended the minister for reaching out to victims of bullying as he prepared this legislation. As the minister was consulting victims of bullying and their families this summer, I contend that not one of those Canadians would have asked the minister to give telecoms and Internet service providers the right to share online data with Canadians without a warrant and to make it a criminal offence to steal cable signals or WiFi. I would challenge the minister to produce evidence if he could suggest otherwise.

Why, then, did the minister not simply do the right thing and introduce a stand-alone bill that tackled cyberbullying and only cyberbullying? Why did the minister include matters so disconnected to the issue of cyberbullying?

There are measures in the bill that seek to address cyberbullying. That much is not in dispute. As my colleague from Gatineau pointed out, they are in clauses 1 through 7.

The relevant section is the one that deals with the non-consensual exchange of intimate images. It belongs there. It is an issue that needed to be addressed, and we do not take issue with it. In light of the recent tragedies involving cyberbullying, we should support the creation of an offence to deter the non-consensual transfer of intimate images. This new offence would criminalize this kind of malicious photo sharing that specifically contributed to the tragic circumstances in which Rehtaeh Parsons decided to take her own life.

We know that cyberbullying is all too common among children and teenagers. As we proceed with addressing this issue, we must acknowledge that, given the immaturity of children, we should support preventative and restorative measures and not just punitive measures. We do not wish to see the imprisonment of Canadian children and teenagers in large numbers, so while supporting the intention of the creation of this offence, we should be careful to emphasize the importance of including a summary conviction option to allow for sufficient prosecutorial discretion, as is currently the case. I believe and hope the government will be open to that.

We should also assess and be open to addressing cyberbullying through restorative justice and non-legislative methods, and we should do so in conjunction with the provinces.

I mentioned earlier that most of this bill has little to do with cyberbullying. The measures that actually relate to cyberbullying amount to about five pages out of a bill that is more than 50 pages in length.

The government wonders why Canadians do not trust it to be up front and transparent with respect to its real agenda. If those provisions I just outlined had been placed in a separate bill, we could have proceeded. We could have sent a stand-alone bill immediately to the justice committee for review and provided the much-needed opportunity for victims to lend voice to the merits of such a bill. We could have then agreed to pass the bill at all remaining stages, and I would suggest that we could have it passed by Christmas.

Instead we have a government bill that reintroduces odious and unconstitutional measures that Canadians rejected last year. Here are just some of the measures currently in the bill that have absolutely nothing to do with cyberbullying. These measures are recycled from the bill put forward by the former minister of public safety, Vic Toews. We were told this would not happen again in light of the reaction of Canadians. The former justice minister, now occupying the national defence portfolio, said:

We will not be proceeding with Bill C-30 and any attempts that we will continue to have to modernize the Criminal Code will not contain the measures contained in C-30.

The new bill proposed today contradicts that promise in 37 of the 47 clauses contained in the bill. That is why we wish to have the bill separated and to place those provisions related to cyberbullying in a stand-alone bill.

Let me outline the elements contained in the old Vic Toews bill that we were promised would never rear its head again. These measures are now in the bill before us.

They include updates to technology-related offences such as theft of telecom signals and unauthorized use of computers, which has nothing to do with cyberbullying; the power to make preservation demands and orders to compel the preservation of electronic evidence, which has nothing to do with cyberbullying; new production orders to compel the production of data relating to the transmission of communications and the location of transactions, individuals, or things, which has nothing to do with cyberbullying; a warrant that will extend the current investigative power for data associated with telephones to all means of communication, which has nothing to do with cyberbullying; warrants that will enable the tracking of transactions, individuals, and things that are subject to legal thresholds appropriate to the interests at stake, including time extensions for warrants relating to organized crime and terrorism, which has nothing to do with cyberbullying; a so-called streamlined process of obtaining warrants and orders related to authorizations to intercept private communications, which has nothing to do with cyberbullying.

We reject using victims of bullying as a way to bring back the ghost of Vic Toews and his e-snooping bill. This was supposed to be a good day for young people and others who have been the subject of bullying online. This was supposed to be a day when this whole House, all of us, could stand in solidarity with victims of cyberbullying and support legislation that would help address its prevalence in Canada. Instead, we have politics as usual.

It is unfortunate that members who have a sincere interest and desire to address cyberbullying are being used as cover for the introduction of multiple items that have little or nothing to do with cyberbullying. The bill capitalizes on the tragic passing of teens victimized by cyberbullying to reinstate elements of legislation the government had previously withdrawn and had sworn not to reintroduce.

The current bill deprives members of a chance to stand in solidarity in addressing one of the problems affecting Canada's young people, namely cyberbullying, as a distinct and stand-alone bill. It includes provisions unrelated to cyberbullying that may infringe on civil liberties. It raises privacy concerns that ought to be referred to the Privacy Commissioner and legal experts, or perhaps be dealt with at committee prior to deliberation and debate in the House. The bill encourages telecommunications companies and Internet service providers to co-operate with the government in surveillance matters in a way that Canadians would find objectionable.

That is why we wish to have the bill split at the justice committee so that those measures, and those measures alone, that seek to address cyberbullying could be captured in their own legislation, free from the politics and division that this issue should avoid.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 27th, 2013 / 4:10 p.m.
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NDP

Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the Minister of Justice is reaching out. I see that one of his parliamentary secretaries is in the House. I am sure he heard the same words I did.

It is imperative that we take the time to really look at each and every one of these clauses.

There was no contradiction there. We said that the difference between 7 clauses and 47 was that it would take far less time to study the first seven clauses. That way, we could address the parents' need to see this issue debated.

Now the process will take longer. The government decided to incorporate elements that—while not necessarily the same as those that were in Bill C-30—are quite worrisome to groups other than victims of cyberbullying or parents of those who have committed suicide after being bullied online.

If there is unlimited time for hearing from various experts, then it is possible to split this into two. I hope that this will not be forgotten. I will take his words to committee with me, that is for sure.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 27th, 2013 / 3:50 p.m.
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Independent

Bruce Hyer Independent Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON

Mr. Speaker, I certainly support legislation to stop cyberbullying, and I think many of the provisions on cyberbullying in this bill are good and necessary.

However, like the member for Charlottetown, I am worried about whether the government is using this issue as a Trojan horse to increase our risk of being a surveillance state. I and many others feel that the government is trying to bring back Bill C-30.

My question is this. Yesterday, the United Nations human rights committee unanimously passed a resolution to protect individuals from unlawful surveillance. It happened to be a resolution on which the government worked with the U.S. to water down.

Does the member not think that, just as victims of cyberbullying deserve protection, people's privacy rights also deserve protection?

October 24th, 2013 / 12:40 p.m.
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NDP

Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON

Sure.

Thank you for that question. I think it's an important one. My point on this is that what sparked this reaction were the deliberations under Bill C-60, Bill C-45, and...what was the first one? Bill C-30, was it?

Combating Counterfeit Products ActGovernment Orders

June 12th, 2013 / 11:40 p.m.
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NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, the enthusiasm is overwhelming. I am moved. Especially considering that we are coming to the midnight hour, the enthusiasm New Democrats have for the House of Commons, for democracy and even for debate is stirring and important, because there has been a certain lack of enthusiasm for debate coming from the Conservatives.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons will know the actual number. I think we are at 47 or so time allocation motions. On all of these bills, and this is one of those bills, we seek to find some comfort for the Conservatives, who are often looking for comfort, particularly when there is a lot of turmoil in their lives, much of it self-inflicted. They want these kinds of things to move at an orderly pace. We offer them an orderly calendar. A certain number of New Democrats will speak and allow the bill to go ahead, and they still shut down debate, even under those circumstances. One wonders what the motivation is sometimes. I think we are up to 47. Again, if the government House leader rises tonight, he will be able to remind us.

This bill is an important one. The Conservatives say that it is critically important. How critical it is in their minds begs the question, simply because it was first introduced on March 1 of this year, seven or eight years into their mandate and 27 years after the last time the bill was reviewed. My friend from the Conservatives earlier talked with some great expertise about the importance of this thing. If it were important, one would think it would be a priority, and if it were a priority, one would not think that the 11th hour of this particular sitting and session of the House of Commons would be the time they would move the bill. If this were devastating to the Canadian economy, to the intellectual property rights regime in Canada, our ability to trade with other nations and all of these things that have been talked about, it would be a priority, but it is not a priority. It is a panic. When things are panicked, mistakes are made.

It is important for my friends to realize that they cannot quite have it both ways. If they say that this is urgent and desperate and we need to move it through rapidly, then one says that there has been a majority government for two years. Other bills have been moved, some of certainly less consequence or even quality, some would argue. I am thinking of a few bills, such as Bill C-30. My friends will remember Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, which the Minister of Public Safety so eloquently justified by saying to the opposition and to all Canadians that one was either with the Conservatives or was with the child pornographers. Do members remember that classic? That was a good one. They got rid of that bill. It was a bigger priority than this piece of legislation.

However, let us talk about the bill, because it is important. We will take a look at Bill C-56 and see what it actually would do.

New Democrats have been aware of the importance of protecting intellectual property rights in Canada. It is important both for our own industry and our ability to innovate and design leading-edge technology, as Canada has so often done in the past, particularly when we used to have things like industrial development strategies, but not so much with these guys. We had export policies that said that adding value to our resources in Canada was a priority for the federal and provincial governments, but not so much with that side.

We agree with the merits of this bill and agree with sending it to committee. We believe that we need to hear from the experts. We have one or two experts in the House of Commons who maybe spent a previous life looking at the intellectual property regime in Canada and around the world. I do not claim that expertise, and I think most members of Parliament would not either. We need to rely on the experts, and not just the industry experts, and this is important for us as New Democrats. While those voices are critical to the design and implementation of legislation, we need to hear from the border guards, who are the folks who are going to be potentially seizing some of these products. We will have a very challenging time distinguishing between the bootlegged products people have talked about and other products that would offer serious harm or threats to Canadians' safety and health.

My friend talked about toothbrushes and toothpaste that caused people harm, but it gets even more serious than that. There is medical equipment that is improperly made. It is counterfeit, and Canadians are exposed to this, because they trust the label on the brand. It is not about buying a sweater for a child and hoping that it is the actual brand. Some of these things are quite important. When buying brake pads for one's car, one wants to ensure that they are actually brake pads that will stop the car.

The problem with counterfeit is that it can so often appear as something that is solid and consistent and legitimate. The reason it is so effective is that it looks good.

We have been having a bit of a debate. I do not want to say that it has been a nerd fight, but we have been arguing about the numbers. The numbers do not really help out the government's case in terms of providing help for the border officials who are meant to guard our borders, not just from counterfeit products, which is important, but even more important, from illegal contraband and weapons. They come into this country, some would argue, through our ports, where 2% to 3% of all containers are inspected. That is not a lot, and with those types of odds, some smugglers will just take the chance of getting caught, because the ability to make money is so great.

We have heard from the CBSA itself in this year's report. This is not a report produced by the official opposition. This report is produced by the border agency. We have heard that the government has cut $145 million from the border agency this year. Excuse me, I want to get the number right. It is $143 million. I exaggerated. It is not $145 million but $143 million. I want to make sure the number is right. I do not want to upset anyone on the other side.

The CBSA's report on plans and priorities indicates a loss, not a gain of 1,000 and a loss. It indicates a net loss of 549 full-time-equivalent positions. If the CBSA is not telling the truth or has its numbers wrong, I would encourage those on the government side to help it out a little. The Conservatives are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The facts of the matter are that there are 549 fewer full-time-equivalent positions. If we are going to ask them to do more with fewer staff, is the law worth the paper it is written on?

We need two things, of course. We need the tools. This is an update of the legislation, and New Democrats support the updated legislation. Things have changed since the last time we looked at these intellectual property regimes that are so important for businesses that are looking to innovate and trade. If we do not look at legislation often, we want to get it right. To the Conservatives who say that one hour of debate is good enough, that we can zip it through committee and get it back out the door and then wait 30 years to correct the errors we make, I say that it is not right.

Nearly 100% of the amendments the opposition moved were based on testimony from experts, from border officials, from those in industry and those who deal with intellectual property. We hope that there is some sort of new openness, because the Conservatives have rejected virtually everything we have offered before, because they can, not because they have any counter-argument.

I have been at the committee hearings where we quote witnesses everybody agreed with when they testified. We move the change the witness suggested. There is no debate or counter-argument from the Conservatives. There is a vote, they kill it and they move on. We just do it over and over again.

A number of pieces of legislation have moved through the House completely unamended. Some of these bills are hundreds of pages in length. They are technical bills amending other acts. Sometimes as many as 60 other acts of Parliament are amended by one bill. The government does not change anything based on the testimony it hears. The testimony we hear, in very specific and technical ways, offers another viewpoint.

It raises the question of what is going on. Why would a government claim to have a keen interest in helping manufacturers and innovators in this country protect their intellectual property and a keen interest in helping consumers, yet not allow border officials to have the tools and services they need?

If we hear from border officials that we should change something in the legislation and New Democrats happen to be the party offering the amendment to the bill, for goodness sake, I hope the Conservatives change some of their patterns and hubris and say that it does not matter which political party moves it. What matters is whether it is a good amendment and whether it is a good improvement. Going through hundreds of pages of laws without any changes smacks of a certain unfortunate level of arrogance.

On this legislation, let us make sure that the tools we are offering our border officials also match up with the planning priorities—not the stated planning priorities of the government, not the stated spending priorities, but the real priorities, with real money and training.

We have talked about giving border security officers new powers to play a discerning and defining role in investigating the products to make sure that they are contraband, or not. That requires new training. We all admit it, but we do not see in any spending priorities from the government actual resources for training. CBSA has to take it from something else.

To the government, to all members of the House, let us do what the House of Commons is built to do: study legislation, look at it, take our time and get it right. If we are only going to do this once every generation, and if it is so important for our industry, then let us make sure we get it right.

Second ReadingNot Criminally Responsible Reform ActGovernment Orders

May 27th, 2013 / 6:20 p.m.
See context

Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe New Brunswick

Conservative

Robert Goguen ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-54, the not criminally responsible reform act. This is a legal policy issue that has preoccupied many Canadians, not only today but over the years.

Recent high profile cases in many parts of Canada have caused Canadians to question whether our laws in this area are strong enough or clear enough to ensure that the public is adequately protected when a risk to public safety exists.

In my remarks, I plan to outline the key milestones of Parliaments consideration of this issue. It is important to canvass the legislative history of the Criminal Code mental disorder regime in order to put today's debate into context, essentially to have a clear understanding of how Bill C-54 seeks to build on and improve the existing law.

What used to be referred to as the “insanity defence” was included in Canada's first Criminal Code, which was enacted in 1892. Even before then the defence existed at common law. It stemmed from a decision rendered in 1843 from the British House of Lords. The common law principle was known as the M'Naghten Rules, which stated:

—every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.

The text of the first Criminal Code stated:

No person shall be convicted of an offence by reason of an act done or omitted by him when labouring under natural imbecility, or disease of the mind, to such an extent as to render him incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission, and of knowing that such act or omission was wrong.

This legislation continued to apply relatively unchanged and without much public debate for the first half of the 20th century.

In 1977, the Law Reform Commission of Canada produced a report to Parliament on mental disorder in the criminal process, which made 44 recommendations about procedures and dispositions for the mentally disordered offender. In order to consider and respond to the recommendations, the Department of Justice launched the mental disorder project in 1978. The review process led to the release of a discussion paper in 1983, exploring over 100 issues in the area of psychiatric remand, fitness to stand trial, the defence of insanity and criminal responsibility, just to name a few. A final report was produced in 1985, followed shortly thereafter by a draft bill that was introduced in the House of Commons by the then minister of justice John Crosbie.

The proposed amendments to the Criminal Code and the draft bill were the first formulation of what would eventually become the new Criminal Code mental disorder regime.

The proposed amendments sought to modernize and clarify the criminal law on mental disorder, strengthen due process and ensure the continued protection of the public. It proposed to change the law in a number of respects.

Under the law at the time, insane or unfit accused were held in strict custody under the pleasure of the lieutenant-governor of the province was known. There was not a requirement to hold a hearing and the lieutenant-governor's decisions, essentially the provincial cabinets, were not subject to appeal. Therefore, there were many gaps with respect to due process that needed to be remedied.

In 1986, the draft bill proposed to remove the role of lieutenant-governors in the process and to establish review boards in all jurisdictions, with uniform procedures to follow across the country. Another significant change in the draft bill was to replace the defence of insanity with the verdict of “not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder”. I will have more to say about that amendment in a moment.

Discussions and consultations with the provinces and territories on the draft bill and other intervening events resulted in the bill not being introduced until 1991 as Bill C-30. It proposed much of what was contained in the 1986 draft bill.

With respect to the previous defence of “not guilty by reason of insanity”, it is noteworthy to highlight the remarks of Kim Campbell, the then minister of justice, about that amendment. She said that a number of psychiatrists had indicated that persons found not guilty by reason of insanity deluded themselves into thinking that they had done nothing wrong and this presented an obstacle to therapy. She also explained that the previous wording was difficult for the public to understand how the accused could be found not guilty despite proof that he committed the offence. The “not guilty by reason of insanity” defence was therefore replaced with a verdict of “not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder”.

However, I think it fair to say that the public still has difficulty understanding a “not criminally responsible” verdict. I believe it is part of our job as parliamentarians to talk about the verdict and to help explain it to the public. Therefore, I would like to reiterate that the verdict of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder is not an acquittal; nor is it a conviction; it is a special verdict that the court makes when it has been established that a person committed an act or made an omission that constitutes a criminal offence. What has also to be established as a legal issue for the court to determine is whether the person suffered from a mental disorder at the time of the commission of the act, or the omission, that rendered the person incapable of appreciating what he or she did or of knowing that it was wrong.

When the court enters a verdict of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, it does not release the accused. The accused is referred to a provincial or territorial review board that is responsible for making orders to govern how the accused will be dealt with.

Bill C-30 introduced three possible orders that could be put into place, depending on the level of risk posed by the person. Only if the person did not pose a significant threat to the public safety would the person be discharged without conditions. If the person posed a significant threat to the safety of the public, the person would be kept in custody in a hospital or discharged with conditions. The choice between custody or a conditional discharge is determined in accordance with the level of risk posed to the public safety.

Bill C-30 also introduced the factors that must be taken into consideration in deciding which order should be put in place. The section provides that the court or review board shall take into consideration the need to protect the public from dangerous persons, the mental condition of the accused, the reintegration of the accused into society and the other needs of the accused. This is a key provision of the Criminal Code mental disorder regime, as it guides the courts and review boards in their decision-making. It was introduced in 1991 by Bill C-30 to provide criteria and factors that did not previously exist in the legislation.

As I mentioned in the beginning of my remarks, I want to take some time to canvass the legislative history of the Criminal Code mental disorder regime in order to put Bill C-54 in context and to better understand how it seeks to build on and improve the existing law.

With respect to this key decision-making process, Bill C-54 proposes to clarify that among the existing listed factors that the courts and review boards must consider when they make decisions with respect to the mentally disordered accused, public safety is the paramount consideration.

In clause 9, it says:

When a court or Review Board makes a disposition... it shall, taking into account the safety of the public, which is the paramount consideration, the mental condition of the accused, the reintegration of the accused into society and the other needs of the accused, make...[the disposition] that is necessary and appropriate in the circumstances....

Bill C-54 would also clarify what is meant by the phrase “significant threat to the safety of the public”. In 1999, the case of Winko v. British Columbia (Forensic Psychiatric Institute), the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted that phrase to mean a risk of serious physical or psychological harm to members of the public resulting from conduct that is criminal in nature but not necessarily violent. Bill C-54 would codify the Supreme Court's interpretation.

The mental disorder regime that was introduced in 1992 included new rules and procedures with respect to appeals. I mentioned earlier that the previous law did not provide either party with a right of appeal of a lieutenant-governor's decision. Last year, the Court of Appeal for Ontario identified a problem with one of the appeal provisions in this part of the code. The Criminal Code currently states that when an absolute discharge is appealed, the absolute discharge is automatically suspended. In R. v. Kobzar, the Court of Appeal for Ontario found this automatic suspension to be in violation of sections 7 and 9 of the Charter, but suspended its order to allow Parliament to pass an amendment to correct the defect. The proposed reforms would eliminate the automatic suspension of the absolute discharge and instead would grant the Court of Appeal the discretionary power to suspend the absolute discharge if the mental condition of the accused justifies it.

I support the effort to clarify this area of the criminal law. The reform seeks to improve the existing legislative framework that guides decision-making when courts and review boards hear matters involving mentally disordered accused persons. Bill C-54 would help ensure more consistent interpretation and application of the law across the country. That is a valuable goal.

In my view, the proposed reforms are reasonable measures to take into consideration the protection of the public and to ensure confidence in our justice system. Mentally disordered accused will continue to receive treatment and have their cases overseen by the courts and review boards.

I encourage all members to support passage at second reading of Bill C-54. This would mean that it would be referred to committee for further study.

Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents ActPrivate Members' Business

May 23rd, 2013 / 6:15 p.m.
See context

NDP

Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC

Before I begin, Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the members opposite that Bill C-475 does not represent a comprehensive review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and for that reason, it cannot be compared with the government’s Bill C-12, which does in fact constitute a thorough review and is much broader in scope. Therefore I would invite the members to learn more about this bill before criticizing it.

I am especially pleased today to speak to this bill which was introduced by my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville. Since being elected she has worked tirelessly on various issues related to the digital world. In particular, she fought against Bill C-30 and forced the Conservative government to kill its online spying bill. She also held public consultations on the North Shore on personal information protection as it relates to her bill.

Today, with Bill C-475, my colleague is calling for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to be modernized to take into account the new digital reality. It is hard to believe that this legislation has not been modernized since it was first passed 13 years ago in 2000. Back then, there were no iPods, smart phones, Facebook or Twitter, and I did not even have an email address. It is time for the government to blow the cobwebs away and modernize this legislation to better protect Canadians’ personal information.

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is based on the ombudsman model. The primary duty of the privacy commissioner is to investigate complaints concerning privacy breaches. The privacy commissioner has the power to investigate, to file complaints, to conduct audits and to publicly report on an organization’s personal information management practices. However, the act does not give the commissioner the power to make compliance orders, or in other words, to order organizations to amend their practices or face a fine if they fail to do so.

To clearly grasp the issue here, I would like to give a few examples that illustrate the need to give the Privacy Commissioner more powers. The commissioner recalled that in 2010, the retailer Staples had failed to delete all of the client data stored on devices such as laptops or USB hard drives that had been returned to their stores and were slated for resale. What is most disturbing is that this retailer had been investigated twice before and was still not complying with the commissioner’s orders.

Let us be honest here. The government created a watchdog who in essence has been muzzled. This watchdog does not have the power to enforce the act. This initiative by my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville would give the Privacy Commissioner the means to do her job.

Another example is Google Street View, which collected personal information such as email addresses, emails, usernames, passwords, telephone numbers and street addresses. The commissioner found that this practice constituted a serious breach of Canadians’ right to privacy. In this instance, the outcome was a little more positive. Google appears to have accepted the recommendations of the commissioner, who observed that the company was on the right track to resolving these major problems.

I should also like to mention the Edmonton-based site Nexopia, which describes itself as the largest social networking site for young Canadians. The site has over 1.6 million registered users, 80% of whom live in Canada. Nexopia.com users create profiles, engage in blogging, create photo galleries and post articles, artwork, music, poems and videos. The problem is that Nexopia does not have any kind of system in place to block public searches of the profiles of young users, and the website does not allow users to shield their profile from the public. You can see the problem.

These facts are troubling, considering that young people are often careless when it comes to their personal information and that they are targeted by many companies and some offenders. The commissioner conducted a thorough investigation, found that this organization was not in compliance with the legislation in a number of areas and issued 24 recommendations.

Following the release of her report, the federal Privacy Commissioner was forced to ask the Federal Court to make an order compelling Nexopia to stop retaining personal information. Since this action was launched, Nexopia has changed hands, and we are still waiting for the new owner to follow up on all of the commissioner’s recommendations.

Bill C-475 introduced by my colleague attempts to resolve much of the problem by amending the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act in two ways. First, it would give the Privacy Commissioner enforcement powers, the power to order an organization that has failed to comply with the act to take the necessary steps to comply. Any organization that refused to take action within the timeframe set by the commissioner would risk a fine of up to $500,000.

As well, the bill makes it mandatory to signal any data breaches that could harm an individual. If an individual's personal information has been compromised in a way that could harm that individual, the organization responsible must inform the privacy commissioner of the violation. The commissioner can then determine if the violation could harm the individual and may force the organization responsible to inform the individual that their personal information has been compromised. Non-compliance could result in a fine of up to $500,000.

We believe that this will help increase compliance with the law, reduce the cost of the current process, and reduce delays. It will also establish solid case law that will allow individuals and organizations to better understand their rights and responsibilities.

I would like to point out that three provinces already have laws that are basically similar to the federal law concerning privacy in the private sector. Unlike Ottawa, the provinces of Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia empower their commissioner to make binding decisions in certain circumstances.

As my colleague mentioned when she introduced the bill, it seems that there is a consensus among the public to increase fines for offenders. As the Commissioner said, it is important to note that Canadians are the heaviest Internet users worldwide, spending an average of 45 hours a month online.

We are also among the most avid users of networking websites in the world. I was not surprised to hear that half of Canadians are on Facebook. In light of those statistics, it is not surprising that privacy is an ongoing concern for Canadians.

The 2011 Canadians and Privacy Survey found that the vast majority of respondents are in favour of stiff penalties for organizations that fail to protect peoples' privacy. More than 8 out of 10 respondents want to see measures passed to name offending organizations, impose fines or take the organizations to court.

The Commissioner herself is calling for more power to fulfill her mandate. In her 2011 report, she said:

In recent years, we have seen very serious, large-scale data breaches. Data breach notification, in itself, may not be sufficient to create the kind of incentives necessary to ensure that organizations take security issues more seriously in the current environment. Many other countries are taking a harder line on breaches. For example, the United States has been a leader in this area and virtually all states have data breach laws. Meanwhile, a European Commission Regulation proposed in early 2012 included data breach provisions and very significant fining powers for European data protection authorities. Commissioner Stoddart has encouraged the federal government to explore strengthened enforcement options that would create stronger incentives for organizations to ensure personal information is adequately protected.

The report could not have been any clearer.

Why are the Conservatives so soft on those whose business practices are compromising Canadians' personal data?

As a final point, it is important to understand that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and this bill apply to the use of personal information only in the private sector. Ideally, the proposed measures would also apply to government organizations.

I know in the past my hon. colleague has asked the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to examine the possibility of opening up the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to resolve this issue.

In closing, it is unfortunate that the Conservatives oppose this, and I hope we can come up with a solution to this serious problem.

Extension of Sitting HoursGovernment Orders

May 21st, 2013 / 1 p.m.
See context

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am not very happy about being here. However, I am here because we need to stand up to this government, which believes that Parliament exists only for its benefit and that it is just a place concerned with the government's problems and accountability.

It is almost as if a new party came into the House today, as we listen to the Conservative House leader speak. It certainly is not the party that moved prorogation and killed legislation time and again. This new Conservative Party is suddenly interested in not defeating legislation. It could not be the same Conservative Party that has shut down debate in the House of Commons more than any party in Canadian history. It could not be a member of the same party who was speaking here today, talking about opening up debate. The Conservatives have invented a new world for themselves that is fascinating.

I am reflecting on my friend from Langley, who sought to speak in this House on what they call an S. O. 31 statement, which happens just before question period. It is a statement that lasts for about a minute. Usually members of Parliament get up and make a statement about their ridings about some issue that is important to them. My friend from Langley, who sits in the Conservative Party, was a parliamentary secretary, I remember, for the Minister of the Environment, a chair, a well-respected member of Parliament, and a friend. He sought to stand up and speak to something he thought was important to his constituents.

It was the old Conservative Party that shut down that member of Parliament and every other one who tried to get up and speak, because this new Conservative Party talks about wanting people to speak in the House and wanting to have debate.

While it is refreshing to hear it, I do not believe it, and I do not think Canadians are going to believe that suddenly accountability and democracy have broken out within the Prime Minister's Office. It is the office of this particular Prime Minister who, rather than face any uncomfortable questions from the media or the official opposition members today, or for the rest of this week, has decided that going to South America to sit with other trading partners from other countries we already have established trade deals with to talk about trade deals that already exist is much more important than asking questions about the Senate.

It must be a new Conservative Party that suddenly has on its agenda a legislative directive that the members need to sit longer hours and work hard on something that might be quite topical today, something such as the reform of Canada's Senate, which has been long overdue and long called for by Canadians and New Democrats who said that the place was fundamentally broken. There is no accountability. Unelected and under investigation is the new Senate.

I remember the old Reform Party. You probably do as well, Mr. Speaker. It came in riding from the west, from my part of the world.

I see a member across the way, who was one of the founding members of the Reform Party, calling it a beautiful thing. While I disagreed fundamentally with many of its positions, certainly its social positions, there was something on which I could see some common ground. That was to make Parliament more accountable and to reform the Senate.

The current government has now been in power almost seven long years. Is that right? The time goes slowly. In those six or seven years, the Prime Minister made a promise as one of his fundamental commitments to Canadians. Commitments should be treated sacredly, I believe.

We all get up at elections. We have party platforms and promises we make to Canadians. If we win, that platform and those promises become our agenda. That is what we would seek to do in office. It is simple. One of his promises, one of his agendas, one of his reforms was on the Senate. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they would see those Liberal senators down there taking their money, not really representing anybody, going on trips and maybe even defrauding taxpayers. Who knows? The Reform movement came in and said it was wrong and anti-democratic.

For a party that decided to put “democratic” right in the middle of our name, we take these questions seriously. We feel that it is accountability to the people we on the orange team represent. In a sense, we are watching this Prime Minister now play victim to what is going on in the Senate with senators he appointed exclusively and explicitly to raise money for the Conservative Party of Canada. Now this same Prime Minister claims victimhood and wonders how this happened. How did his chief of staff, who sits to his immediate left every day and knows his deepest, darkest secrets, whom he put in charge of major trade files and negotiations with other countries, cut a $90,000 cheque to a senator he appointed? However, obviously, the Prime Minister's hands are clean, and he has nothing to say about this. He believes that his hands are so clean that he is not going to answer any questions about it. He is going to go to South America to be in trade talks with countries we already have trade deals with. That is the new Conservative Party, which is the old one, the same one that has forgotten its roots.

Dear Mr. Manning is still with us, so he is not spinning in his grave, but he is definitely spinning. He was asked recently whether the Conservatives have lost their principles. He said, no, they have maintained their priorities. It is an interesting dodge of a question. Mr. Speaker, you have been around politics a bit. You know when a question is put directly and someone answers it indirectly.

I find it incredible that we have before us a motion that continues to abuse Parliament. This motion is designed simply to restrict debate and demonstrate to members of the House of Commons that the only reason Parliament exists is so that the government can do what it wants.

I remember a comment made by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. When we were debating a time allocation motion, he said that their intention was not to put an end to debate or to censure it, but just to control Parliament.

It is incredible that a minister is admitting that the Conservatives just want to control the Parliament of Canada. It also reflects the Conservatives' esprit de corps. They want to control everything, not just the opposition and Parliament, but their members, as well as the media and the public.

The current vision of the Prime Minister and the government leaves the public with no choice and no voice. It is all about the kind of country that the Prime Minister wants to build.

We see a government moving this extraordinary thing, which will see, big deal, members of Parliament sitting until midnight.

New Democrats have been known, sometimes to our detriment, to be willing to force the calendar to the very last minute and sit all night, such as when the government moved anti-worker legislation against a very profitable Canada Post, which, I might add, in a parenthetical way, then lost money.

After the lockout by Canada Post, the government imposed wage contracts on those workers that were less than what the company was willing to offer. Then it said that it needed to shut down Canada Post offices around the country, as Canada Post was losing money because of the lockout it allowed them to do. The logic is inherently twisted on that side.

Remember the omnibus debates and the voting we had. I remember my friend from the Green Party moving a certain number of amendments to the bill, which forced the House to sit all night and vote, hour after hour. I remember some of my friends from Surrey who stayed in their seats for 22 hours.

No one has ever accused New Democrats of not being willing to come to work and work on behalf of our constituents. We may do some things wrong. We may sometimes fall short in some areas, but hard work has not ever been one of those things.

There is such irony in hearing a Conservative House leader who, with his Prime Minister, has prorogued Parliament, shut it down, and killed their government's own legislation time and time again, say to the Speaker that the problem is that they cannot get their legislation through.

It had been there for 12 months. After eight months, they killed it themselves and prorogued the House.

One prorogation was quite notable. The government looked to be in a bit of trouble. It was in a minority position. The world was entering into a very deep recession. The Minister of Finance, who claims to be the best in the world, ignored the recession and introduced what the Conservatives called an austerity budget at the very moment when the rest of the world, realizing that the economy was coming to a virtual standstill, was introducing budgets that did the opposite.

The finance genius we have sitting in the chair said, “Never mind what the rest of the world thinks about what is going on in the global economy; we know that Canada is not going into recession”, even as we were in the midst of a recession. He introduced an austerity budget to cut back billions in job creation, in grants and in all the things the Conservatives take credit for, such as unemployment insurance for a bunch of Canadians who were just being thrown out of work.

The opposition said that it was not a very good budget and suggested that we vote against that budget. The government panicked and prorogued. Canadians got a civil lesson in how Parliament works. They had never heard the word “prorogation” before. Then we got to learn.

The Prime Minister had to go to the Governor General. He sat there for a number of hours, perhaps being lectured about how undemocratic it was, when facing a non-confidence vote, to head down the road to the Queen's representative to ask for permission to shut it all down before he was thrown out of office. He was more worried about his job that day than about Canadians. That is for sure.

That is a government that killed its legislation in order to save itself, and did it time and time again.

Here is the trend that we worry about with today's motion. For a government that has broken the record by shutting down debate more times than any government in Canadian history, it has refused 99.3% of all the amendments that the opposition has brought to its legislation.

Let us look at that for a moment. The way a bill is supposed to work is it comes into the House and gets debated. There is a pro and con and the real coming together or clash of ideas to improve the legislation because no one is perfect. The drafters of legislation do not get it right. They are sometimes hundreds of pages long and very complicated. The House is meant to debate that. Then we send it to committee and hear from experts, not just members of Parliament who are not often experts in these areas, but people who work in the field. They are the social workers, the financial experts, the crime experts and the police. We hear those suggestions and write amendments based on those ideas. That is the way this place is supposed to work.

However, the government is saying that in 99.3% of those cases those experts are wrong and the government is right. It will not change a period, a comma, not a word in any of the legislation. Then lo and behold, time and time again, the legislation is challenged in the courts successfully. The legislation does not fix the problems identified and costs Canada and Canadians billions.

We all remember well Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill that would allow the state to look in on the Internet searches and emails of Canadians without any warrant. The government decided in its vigour for its tough on crime agenda that it would pass a law that said that at any point, at any time, Canadians anywhere could have their BlackBerrys and iPhones tapped by the government, that web searches on home computers could be looked at by the government and the police. There is no country in the world, outside of Iran and North Korea, that would even consider doing this. The Conservative government thought it was a fantastic idea. In trying to argue the case, it said that if we were not into exposing our Internet searches and our emails then we must be in support of child pornography.

Has any more offensive or stupid an argument ever been made on the floor of the House of Commons? It is offensive to basic civil liberties and decency, to the role of members of Parliament trying to do our jobs and to the Canadians who said that they were not sure they wanted the government looking at their email?

I look at the member for Yukon right now. I do not know what he is searching and I do not want to know. It is his privacy to look on his computer and do as he sees fit. That is a civil liberty I am sure he defends as well, but not his government.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, was the flagship. The government rammed it all into one bill and said that it was such important legislation it would shut down debate on it too. Then whole sections of the bill were taken out. Why? It was because they were unconstitutional.

Now we know where that all comes from. Canadians actually pay for a service. Many members of Parliament may not know this, but when a government introduces a bill it goes to constitutional legal experts to determine if the new legislation goes against our constitution, our foundation as a country? If it does, it is a good idea to modify the law to ensure it does not get challenged in the courts, which costs upwards of $3 million to $5 million to taxpayers every time there is one of those challenges. The government did not check on Bill C-10. We know that because the people who work for the Government of Canada, who do this work, are no longer receiving references from the government.

The government is not even asking anymore. It is choosing ignorance. This is incredible. It is saying that it does not want to know whether the laws it writes are constitutional, whether the laws it writes as a government are for or against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is incredible. This is not a mistake. It is by intention. Therefore, we have these lawyers sitting in their offices, being paid every day, waiting for the government to refer the bills it introduces here to ensure they can survive a constitutional challenge. The government does not ask anymore.

Bill C-38, the first omnibus bill and Bill C-45, the second omnibus bill, were both challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. First nations are challenging it. I need to address this because the government House leader mentioned two bills that are being moved, so-called, on behalf of first nations. They are Bill S-2 and Bill S-8. One is matrimonial property rights. It sounds pretty innocuous. Most Canadians would say that matrimonial property rights for first nations women on reserve maybe protects their rights. Who is opposed to it? It is not just us in the opposition, but aboriginal women, every first nation women's group in the country. My friend across the way shakes his head, but I can show him the testimony that says the bill is no good for aboriginal women.

However, the Conservatives know better. With their shameful record on aboriginal rights and title in the country, suddenly they know better than aboriginal women, than first nations women. Bill S-8 is a bill to help first nations have clean drinking water because the record has been shameful.

Government after government has failed first nations communities. Thirty-five per cent of the people I represent in northern British Columbia are in first nations communities. The water conditions there are incredibly bad. We have to do something about it. There are fixes and there are ideas coming from those communities.

Instead the government moves the bill, handing all responsibility down to first nations in terms of cleaning up their own water mess, but none of the resources to do it. Are first nations supportive of it? No. Nor would any municipality or any province in Canada be supportive of legislation that rams down responsibility without any of the support, money or help to get that done.

Most of these first nations communities are living in abject poverty. Where does the government think they are going to get the money from? The government will not settle treaty with them in the west. First nations are having mining, oil and gas exploration and pipelines put everywhere and are receiving none of the royalties, none of the compensation and the government will not move treaty forward.

I was just in Gitxsan territory, speaking with the Gitxsan and the Wet'suwet'en, talking about basic child services, kids who are being abused in their homes and setting up a program that the federal government said that we should enact 20 years ago to allow first nations more rights and responsibilities to rescue those kids and help them kids integrate back into their communities.

Who is not coming to the table? The Conservative government. This is the government that on Bill S-2 and Bill S-8 suddenly said that it had first nations rights and title and priorities at heart, when it did not.

The place can work. Members can sense a certain amount of frustration in my voice, because Parliament can work. It is actually designed to work. I love our system. It is so superior to many other systems I have studied around the world, that have consistent congressional gridlock on legislation and on budgets. We can make things happen here.

However, with the power that is afforded a majority government, which is a lot, comes a certain amount of responsibility to use the power wisely and not abuse it. Yet time and again we have seen the government House leader and other ministers get up and say that they are not looking to limit the debate; they just want to control it. They reject virtually 100% of all the amendments and all the changes and suggestions they hear at committee because they know better and they have the votes to push it forward.

It is at such a point that the control has extended deeply into the government's caucus. Some of the more socially conservative members of the Conservative caucus are no longer free to speak, or are only free to speak on certain things, in certain ways, if the Prime Minister's Office allows for it.

In a small program that we run in northern B.C., initiated a number of years ago, I hold a conference call with all the detachment commanders from all the RCMP outposts that exist in my riding. It is a very large riding facing a lot of tough, difficult situations with policing. Once every two or three months I get on the phone with 12 detachment commanders and we talk about what is going on. We talk about what is happening in crime, what the drug use is like, what legislation is moving through the House that will help or hinder these hard-working, hard-serving officers.

I am not allowed to have that conversation with these RCMP officers anymore. I am not supposed to talk to them. As a sitting member of Parliament, I am not supposed to go to them. A number of them have come to me because they are friends and we have known each other for years. They offer good, on-the-ground advice about what is happening.

They say that they are sorry, that they cannot talk to me. They tell me that I have to phone the Prime Minister's Office in order for them to talk to me about what is going on in Prince Rupert, or what is going on in Dease Lake or Bella Coola.

It is insane. This is wrong. Government officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who I have known for years and who I phone just for an update to see what is going on with our fish on the west coast, tell me that I am a member of Parliament from the opposition and that I need to phone the people in the Prime Minister's Office and that they will give me permission as to whether they can tell me what is going on in Canada's fishery.

This is not their government. This is not a Conservative government. This is Canada's government. We pay for these civil servants. We pay their salaries to do work on behalf of Canadians. Whether it is silencing scientists, shutting down access for members of Parliament to basic conversations, or shutting down debate in Parliament, the consistent voice from the government is that it will not be held to account.

This is bad. This is not just about the privilege all members of the House need to do their job. The government says there is some urgency, but there is not. There is no urgency when it comes to the government's mandate or agenda.

It is very strange for the government to say it is very open, when we see what is going on in the Senate.

We have senators like Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau. All current senators have potentially stolen money from Canadians. These are the same senators that the Prime Minister says are very good people. These are the same senators using money from the Canadian people to travel during an election and raise money for the Conservative Party. That is the new Conservative Party. I do not understand.

I remember the Reform Party of Canada and some reforms that Mr. Manning wanted to make. With the current party, it is the same story as with the Liberal Party and the Gomery commission and all the rest. I am both angry and sad.

The majority of Canadians did not vote for this government, which has a majority, but does not have the majority support of Canadians. Close to 60% of Canadians voted against this agenda, against this sort of arrogance. They voted not to have the kind of government that now uses brutal tactics, not against the New Democratic Party, but against Parliament.

Lastly, I think we need to have a referendum, which may not happen until the next election.

It bears some comment, not only with respect to the Senate scandal but even the motion today.

I watched the government House leader and the Prime Minister on television earlier. He actually allowed the media into his caucus room for a second, which was bizarre. The bully turns into the victim, that somehow this is put upon them, that they are somehow being victimized here.

What frustrates me is not just the work that we have to do as parliamentarians that is constantly thwarted by the government at committee stage, and my friend laughs, but how can it be possible that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected? The evidence is clear.

My friend can shake his head and laugh and treat this with disdain treat this with disdain or heckle out what seems to be a favourite tactic of some of my friends who cannot win the debate, but can simply sit in their seats and heckle, yell and try to put down a comment that hurts a little too much, that being that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected, that the witnesses were all wrong, that the government was always right and that the courts must be wrong too. Soon the Conservatives will call them activist courts like the Republicans do in the states. Members should watch for it because it is coming.

We believe this motion is fundamentally flawed in its abuse of this place and of all members. I do not speak just for the New Democrats or the folks down the way. I speak for the backbenchers who have been rubbing up against some of the limitations. What is sad about most of it and is most concerning is those who are not agitating against the Conservative government's control over its backbench and accepting it. I lament the most for those who are so comfortable reading the script from the Prime Minister's Office and repeating it like robots, feeling that is their work and whose expectations of what it is to be a member of Parliament are so diminished that they simply accept it, not those the media have called rebels who have stood up and stated that they want to have their own statement but the Prime Minister's Office has shut them down. They run under the blue banner, which is their choice.

I lament for those who seem so happy to get up and repeat the mindless dribble that is put to them by the Prime Minister's Office day after day. When they first ran for office, I wonder if they said that they wanted to be a member of Parliament to represent people and get to Parliament to speak with a strong voice of conviction on behalf of the people they represent and that in order to do they would read whatever was put in front of them by the Prime Minister's Office, written by a 24-year old intern who types out some sort of nonsense and makes up policies that the NDP does not have, making personal attacks on a regular basis as a substitute for honest and sincere debate? Was that really their expectation?

I wish I had some video evidence from some of those early debates because I know that is not what those members ran on. I know their nomination meetings did not look like that, nor did any of the debates they attended during the campaign. That is not what they said. They said that they would speak on behalf of their constituents, fight for them and still raise their voice, even if that meant it was contrary to what their government suggested.

I am sure that is what my friends across the way said. They are very nice people. I know a lot of these folks, as we have spent some time together. I know some of their inner thoughts about the way Parliament ought to be, and some of them lament it. However, it is the ones who do not who worry me. They are the ones who so comfortably slip into that straitjacket day after day. Maybe they just get used to it, but they are able to rationalize that there is some larger agenda that is more important than their having an independent and free voice.

They can keep yelling and you can allow them to if you wish, Mr. Speaker, but the truth often hurts, and the truth of the matter is that with a majority government, this member and his colleagues have chosen to vote for closure more than any government in Canadian history. With a majority, the Conservative government has refused the evidence, has refused the science time and time again, and that government is bad government.

The Conservative government appointed senators, and I am sure some fundraising went on for some of my friends. Maybe Ms. Wallin, Mr. Duffy or Mr. Brazeau came by and raised a few dollars, shook a few hands and got a few votes for my friends. Maybe there is a little bit of a tarnish on my colleagues, which is why they are calling out and why they are worried. It is because their base hates this. They hate the idea of entitlement and of an insider's game that goes on in Ottawa all the time, and that friends of the Prime Minister's Office get some sort of special treatment.

Talking about special treatment, how about a $90,000 personal cheque just cut off the back and handed over to somebody who may have defrauded taxpayers? Where is the Reform Party now? Where are the original Conservative intentions now? They are gone, bit by bit, eroded piece by piece. That is where it has gone, and it has all been subjugated to some idea that there is a better and bigger cause, that this grand scheme they are involved in somehow makes all of it justifiable.

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, what these guys would sound like if the roles were reversed? If it were a Liberal government with senators getting cheques from the Prime Minister's chief of staff or a New Democratic government acting the way the Conservatives act, could you imagine the hue and cry and the calls for resignations every second minute? They would be losing their minds.

Now the Conservatives play the victim, saying that these senators were put upon them, that they didn't know what they were doing, that it is terrible. They only have a majority, both here and there. The Prime Minister has appointed more senators than any Prime Minister in Canadian history. How many did he say he would appoint? None, but he had to appoint some, and then it had to be justified. These are small and slow slippages, and this motion is a continuation of that.

This motion says that Parliament matters less and that those Canadians who have grown cynical about the role of MPs are justified in their cynicism. We say that is wrong. How do we turn to the young voters coming up? How do we turn to people who come to us and say that they might want to run for office one day? How can we say that their voices will matter when the government moves motions like this time and time again, shutting down debate?

As my friend the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development said, the Conservatives do not want to shut down debate; they just want to control it. Is this is how one entices people into a life of politics? Is this how one encourages young people to vote? Do we say, “Welcome to Parliament, where we are going to control debate and shut it down time and time again”? This is the Conservatives' call to action.

It is not a call to action, but a call to inaction. It is a call to cynicism. It is calling to people, “Do not look over here; nothing is happening here in government. Go on with your lives and other things that are more important and distracting.” The government is counting on people to have an attention deficit rather than realize that the decisions we make here in Parliament every day affect Canadians in every way.

If members of Parliament cannot do their work, as this motion suggests, and hold the government to account, it is bad government. It is bad government when it cannot find $3 billion that may be under a mattress or in a banana stand or wherever it happens to be, and when senators rip off taxpayers with no consequence whatsoever. We think the RCMP might have a role to play here.

What would happen if any of the Canadians in our gallery today or watching on TV defrauded the Canadian government of $500? They would get charged. However, if it is a Conservative senator, what happens? Oh, they just recuse themselves from caucus. Wow. They still get paid, they still have all of their privileges, but they cannot go to caucus meetings on Wednesday mornings.

Mr. Speaker, do you think that maybe that punishment is a little severe? I mean, having to recuse oneself from a two-hour meeting on Wednesday morning for defrauding taxpayers—boy, that seems pretty harsh.

Why the double standard? We used to call that the culture of entitlement. I remember a colleague of mine in this place, Ed Broadbent, asking a former Liberal minister who became head of the mint and was claiming packets of gum and coffee on his receipts, “Are you entitled to your entitlements, sir?” This person took a moment of authenticity and said, “Yes, I am entitled to my entitlements.”

The Conservatives railed at the Liberal entitlement, the culture of entitlement, the Gomery inquiry and all those terrible things that went down.

History repeats itself if one is not a student of history, and it seems that the Conservative Party has not looked at the history of this place or of other parliaments.

The fact of the matter is that debate in and of itself is not a bad thing. The exchange of ideas is not in and of itself a bad thing. Being wrong from time to time is not of itself a bad thing; learning happens in those moments, and the government needs to learn, because I can read off the list of the bills it had so fundamentally wrong that it had to withdraw them. The Conservatives had to say that they got it so badly wrong because they listened to none of the amendments that they have to fix it now, at the very last minute, or wait until it gets to the Senate and let the unaccountable, unelected and under investigation senators deal with it. That is no form of democracy worth defending, and the Conservatives know it. They know it better than most.

I will move that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after “Fridays” and replacing them with the following: “(b) when oral questions are to be taken up pursuant”—

Extension of Sitting HoursGovernment Orders

May 21st, 2013 / 12:05 p.m.
See context

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for interrupting my colleague just at the beginning of his speech on the justification for the motion that he has just presented to the House, but we have a point of order that we need to raise because I think it establishes a couple of important things for you, as Speaker, to determine before we get into the context and the particulars of this motion.

Specifically, I will be citing Standing Order 13, which says:

Whenever the Speaker is of the opinion that a motion offered to the House is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament, the Speaker shall apprise the House thereof immediately, before putting the question thereon, and quote the Standing Order or authority applicable to the case.

This is the standing order that we cite, because we have looked at the motion the government has presented here today with some notice given last week.

This motion goes against the Standing Orders and certainly the spirit of Parliament. The government is not allowed to break the rules of Parliament that protect the rights of the minority, the opposition and all members of the House of Commons who have to do their jobs for the people they represent. This motion is very clearly contrary to the existing Standing Orders.

I have some good examples to illustrate this. In my opinion, there is no urgency that would justify the government's heavy-handed tactics to prevent members from holding a reasonable debate on its agenda. I say “agenda”, but for a long time now it has been difficult to pin down what this government's agenda is exactly. This is nothing new.

The motion comes to us today at a difficult time, but just because the government held a brief caucus meeting and is facing numerous problems and a few scandals, it is not justified in violating the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. No one would accept those excuses. There is no historical basis for the government to use the Standing Orders in this way. That does not work.

There are a few important things we need to point out. One is that it behooves us to have some explanation of what this motion actually does. For those of us who do not intimately follow the rules and history of Parliament, it can be quite confusing not in terms of the intention of what the government has read but certainly in the implications. It needs some translation, not French to English or English to French, but translation as to what it actually means for the House of Commons. That is why we believe a point of order exists for this motion.

The motion essentially would immediately begin something that would ordinarily begin in a couple of weeks, which is for the House to sit until midnight to review legislation. This is somewhat ironic from a government that has a bad history with respect to moving legislation correctly through the process and allowing us to do our work, which is what we are here to do on behalf of Canadians.

I am not alone in seeing that the government has shown the intention of having some urgency with respect to 23 bills, 14 of which have not even been introduced since the last election. Suddenly there is great urgency, when in fact it is the government that has set the agenda. The urgency is so great that it has to fundamentally change the rules of how we conduct ourselves in this place in response to an urgency that did not exist until this moment.

One has to question the need. Why the panic? Why now, and why over these pieces of legislation? Are they crucial to Canada's economic well-being? Is it to restore the social safety net that the government has brutalized over the last number of years? What is the panic and what is the urgency?

Context sets everything in politics, and the context that the government exists under right now is quite telling. Every time I have had to stand in this place raising points of order and countering the closure and time allocation motions that the government uses, I am often stating and citing that this is a new low standard for Parliament. I have thought at times that there was not much more it could do to this place to further erode the confidence of Canadians or further erode the opportunity for members of Parliament to speak, yet it has again invented something new, and here we are today debating that motion.

That is why we believe that Standing Order 13 needs to be called. It is because it is very clear that when a motion is moved that is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament—which is what I would underline, as it is the important part—the Speaker must involve himself or herself in the debate and ask that the debate no longer proceed.

The privileges of members of Parliament are not the privileges that are being talked about by our friends down the hall to falsely claim money that did not exist or privileges of limo rides and trips around the world. The privileges of Parliament that speak constitutionally to the need for Parliament are that members of Parliament have the opportunity to scrutinized and debate government bills.

Just before the riding week, we saw the government introduce another time allocation on a bill that had received exactly 60 minutes of debate. Somehow the Conservatives felt that had exhausted the conversation on a bill they had sat on for years, and suddenly the panic was on. We are seeing this pattern again and again with a government that is facing more scandal.

I was looking through the news today. Every morning I start my day with the news and we consider what we should ask the government in question period. There are some days when the focus can be difficult and one may not be sure what the most important issue of the day is. However, the challenge for us today as the official opposition is that, as there are so many scandals on so many fronts, how do we address them all within the short time we have during question period or in debate on bills.

I listened to my friend for Langley, who has been somewhat in the news of late on his attempt to speak on issues he felt were important to his constituents. We saw him move a new private member's bill today. He withdrew the former bill, and now he is moving one again. The New Democrats will support the bill going to committee for study because we think there are some options and availability for us to look at the legislation and do our job.

Whether it is muzzling of their own MPs and the Conservatives' attempt to muzzle all MPs in the House of Commons, or using private members' bills to avoid the scrutiny that is applied to government legislation, and one important piece of that scrutiny is the charter defence of the legislation and so, in a sense, the Conservatives are using the back door to get government legislation through and move their agenda in another way, or the omnibus legislation, which has received so much controversy in Canada as the government has increasingly abused the use of omnibus legislation, or the F-35 fiasco, or the recent Auditor General's report, or the former parliamentary budget officer who was under much abuse and the new Parliamentary Budget Officer who has asked for the same things he did, or infamously, prorogation, time and time again the pattern is the same. The government has complete disdain for the House.

Whether it be the scandals in the Senate, or the China FIPA accord, or the recent problems with the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, or the employment insurance scandals, or the $3 billion missing, or the 300,000 jobs that have not been replaced, the government keeps trying to avoid proper scrutiny out of embarrassment. However, the House of Commons exists for one thing and one thing alone, which is to hold the government to account.

The government will make some claims that the urgency right now is because there has not been enough progress on legislation. Therefore, the Conservatives have to hit the panic button and would have the House sit until midnight, which has consequences beyond just being a late night, and I will get into those consequences in a moment because they support our notion that it infringes upon the entitlements of members of Parliament to debate legislation properly.

The Conservatives' record shows, and this is not speculation or conspiracy, that when they ram legislation through, they more often than not get it wrong. That is not just expensive for the process of law making, but it is expensive for Canadians. These things often end up in court costing millions and millions of dollars and with victims of their own making. The scandal that exists in the Senate is absolutely one of their own making. The Prime Minister can point the finger where he likes, but he appointed those senators.

Specific to the point of order I am raising, this motion would lower the amount of scrutiny paid to legislation. It would allow the government extended sittings, which are coming in the second week of June anyway, as the Standing Orders currently exist, to allow the government to do that, but the Conservatives want to move the clock up and have more legislation rammed through the House.

Also, as you would know, Mr. Speaker, the order of our day includes concurrence reports from committee, which allow the House to debate something that happened in committee which can sometimes be very critical, and many are moved from all sides. However, they would not get started until midnight under the Conservatives' new rules. Therefore, we would study and give scrutiny on what happened at committee from midnight until two or three o'clock in the morning.

As well, emergency debates would not start until midnight. Just recently we had a debate, Mr. Speaker, that your office agreed to allow happen, which was quite important to those implicated. We were talking about peace and war and Canada's role in the world. It was a critical emergency debate that certainly went into the night. However, the idea is that we would take emergency debates that the Speaker's office and members of Parliament felt were important and start them at midnight and somehow they would be of the same quality as those started at seven o'clock in the evening.

The scrutiny of legislation has become much less important than the government moving its agenda through, which is an infringement on our privilege as members of Parliament. The Conservative's so-called urgency, their panic, is not a justification for overriding the privileges that members of Parliament hold dear.

As for progress, just recently we moved the nuclear terrorism bill through, Bill S-9.

We also had much debate but an improvement on Bill C-15, the military justice bill, to better serve our men and women in the Forces. The original drafting was bad. The Conservatives wanted to force it forward and we resisted. My friend from St. John's worked hard and got an amendment through that would help those in the military who found themselves in front of a tribunal.

We have the divorce in civil marriages act, which has been sitting and sitting. It would allow people in same-sex marriages to file for and seek divorce. All we have offered to the government is one vote and one speaker each. The government refuses to bring the bill forward and I suspect it is because it would require a vote. It is a shame when a government resists the idea that a vote would be a good thing for members of Parliament to declare their intentions on, certainly something as important as civil liberties and rights for gay men and women.

I mentioned earlier why, in the infringement of this privilege, it causes great harm and distress not just to Parliament but to the country.

I asked my team to pull up the list of bills that were so badly written that they had to be either withdrawn or completely rewritten at committee and even in the Senate which, God knows, is a terrible strategy for any legislation.

There was the infamous or famous Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, which the Minister of Public Safety said something to the effect that either people were with the government or they were with child pornographers, which may be an example of the worst framing in Canadian political history. There has probably been worse, but that was pretty bad. The Conservatives had to kill the bill.

We have also seen Bill C-10, Bill C-31, Bill C-38 and Bill C-42, all of these bills were so badly written that oftentimes the government had to amend them after having voted for them. After saying they were perfect and ramming them through, invoking closure and shutting down debate, the Conservatives got to committee and heard from people who actually understood the issue and realized the law they had written would be illegal and would not work or fix the problem that was identified, and so they had to rewrite it. That is the point of Parliament. That is the point of the work we do.

We have also seen bills that have been challenged at great expense before the courts. Former Bill C-2, the tackling violent crime act, with huge sections of the government's main anti-crime agenda, was challenged and defeated in court.

Bill C-38, arbitrarily eliminating backlog for skilled workers, was challenged and defeated.

Bill C-7, Senate term limits, was after years just now deferred to the Supreme Court. It is called “kicking it down the road”.

Also, there are Bill C-6, Bill C-33 and others, and there are those that are being crafted and debated right now that are going to have serious problems.

The essential thrust of our intention is in identifying the rules that govern us, and specifically Standing Order 13. The government has time and again talked about accountability before the Canadian people and talked about doing things better than its predecessors in the Liberal Party, the government that became so arrogant and so unaccountable to Canadians that the Conservatives threw it out of office. History repeats itself if one does not learn true lessons from history.

As I mentioned, Standing Order 27(1) already exists, and it allows the government to do exactly what we are talking about, but not starting until the last 10 sitting days. The Conservatives have said that there is so much on their so-called agenda that they have to do this early, allowing for less scrutiny, allowing for emergency debates to start at midnight, allowing for concurrence debates that come from committees to start at midnight and go until two, three or four o'clock in the morning.

This is contrary to the work of parliamentarians. If the Conservatives are in such a rush, why do they not negotiate? Why do they not actually come to the table and do what parliamentarians have done throughout time, which is offer the to and fro of any proper negotiation between reasonable people?

We have moved legislation forward. My friend across the way was moving an important motion commemorating war heroes. We worked with that member and other members to ensure the bill, which came from the Senate, made it through speedy passage.

Parliament can work if the Conservatives let it work, but it cannot work if they keep abusing it. Canadians continue to lose faith and trust in the vigour of our work and the ability to hold government to account. We see it time and again, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you have as well, in talking to constituents who say that they are not sure what goes on here anymore, that it just seems like government will not answer questions, that everyday they ask sincere and thoughtful questions and the Conservatives do not answer. Bills get shut down with motions of closure.

Let us look at the current government's record.

Thirty-three times, the Conservatives have moved allocation on legislation, an all-time high for any government in Canadian history. Through war and peace, through good and bad, no government has shut down debate in Parliaments more than the current one.

Ninety-nine point three per cent of all amendments moved by the opposition have been rejected by the government. Let us take a look at that stat for a moment. That suggests that virtually 100% of the time, the government has been perfectly right on the legislation it moves. All the testimony from witnesses and experts, comments from average Canadians, when moving amendments to the legislation before us, 99.3% of the time the government rejects it out of hand. It ends up in court. It ends up not doing what it was meant to do.

Ten Conservative MPs have never spoken to legislation at all. I will note one in particular. The Minister of Finance, who has not bothered to speak to his own bills, including the omnibus legislation, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which caused so much controversy. He did not bother to stand and justify his actions. I find it deplorable and it is not just me, Canadians as well, increasingly so.

This is my final argument. We cannot allow this abuse to continue. This pattern has consequences, not just for what happens here today or tomorrow, but in the days, weeks, months and years to come and the Parliaments to come. If we keep allowing for and not standing up in opposition to bad ideas and draconian measures, we in a sense condone them.

We say that Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think that is wrong. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong. It is not right and left; it is right and wrong. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We built this place out of bricks and mortar to do one thing: to allow the voice of Canadians to be represented, to speak on behalf of those who did not have a voice and to hold the government of the day to account. Lord knows the government needs that more than anything. It needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history and shutting down debate more than any government in history and using what it is today, it speaks to weakness not strength. The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.

Opposition Motion — 2013 Spring Report of the Auditor General of CanadaBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

May 9th, 2013 / 12:55 p.m.
See context

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, as always it is a great honour to rise in this House and represent the people of Timmins—James Bay. I will be sharing my time with the member for Welland.

We are here today to make the simple request that the government admit that it lost track of $3.1 billion and work with us by bringing forward the documents so we can find out what happened to the money. We have heard a number of fascinating euphemisms, such as the money is not lost, it just has not been found, and that the money is horizontal. Perhaps that means it is under someone's bed. We heard that it will materialize. Is the government just expecting it to appear at some given time? What that speaks to is the sheer level of defiant incompetence within the government.

I remember when the Conservatives replaced the Liberal Party in 2006 and made a promise to Canadians. At that time, Canadians were frustrated by the years of arrogance coming from the Liberal Party and the numerous scandals. The Conservative government at the time made a promise that it would come in and clean up Ottawa. It was a simple promise that it would bring a standard of ethics back to Ottawa.

That is not what has happened. What we have seen is a level of defiant immaturity on the most basic issues of public policy. It is like the government created this carnival circus of spite and mediocrity and has attacked all of the existing standards of transparent accountability essential to ensuring democratic foundations.

At the centre of a lot of these scandals, we see the present Treasury Board president who bragged about destroying Canada's long form census. At the committee hearings he said that if one person in the country objected, that would be enough to destroy this system that was a gold standard around the world for gathering information. Then the government came out with Bill C-30, which shows that it is more than willing to intrude on the privacy of Canadians. In fact, it thought it was perfectly fine to spy on Canadians. Again we see that its decision on the long form census shows a level of managerial incompetence that is staggering.

As well, the member took $50 million of border infrastructure money and blew it on the most outrageous and needless projects, such as building gazebos, investing money in a sunken boat, and putting a lighthouse in a forest in northern Ontario, while telling senior citizens living in poverty that he was sorry but the cupboard was bare and these are tough times. However, the member took money that was meant for border infrastructure security and blew it in his riding. We now find out there is $2.1 billion of secret contracts being shovelled out the back door, again happening under the Treasury Board watch. The government is not even meeting the basic guidelines. It is taking money without any sense of accountability.

Now $3.1 billion has gone missing and the Conservatives are saying not to worry because it was spent well, but cannot tell us where it was spent. That is not a standard for accountability.

Canadians watching the government wonder what is happening in this nation. People do not expect government to do everything. They expect the government to play a role at times when people need it, such as with respect to pensions, infrastructure and health care. The role of government is to maintain a good standard of public policy that is accountable, transparent and can meet international norms.

Canadians expect government to unify and bring people across this great country together. However, what we have seen in this carnival circus of spite and mediocrity is that sneering has replaced leadership and that the 140-character attack has replaced debate. We are seeing this sense of political mendacity being moved throughout every level of the government, including its committees and backbenches. I have not even mentioned the fact that it is spending millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars to keep tabs on its own backbenchers. The level of suspicion and wastefulness is staggering.

We also see attacks by the Conservatives on science and international institutions. Canada once had a reputation as a country that was the model of openness and decency. Under the current government, Canada is now becoming a stranger to the world, a place where the government responds with suspicion and distrust, and representatives of the United Nations are being ridiculed.

We see the Conservative backbench ridiculing members of the United Nations who are dealing with the fact that in the far North, in the riding of the Minister of Health, for example, people cannot afford food.

The government attacks. It attacks international institutions. It has shut down Rights and Democracy. It has shut down the Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. It has attacked, relentlessly, the role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose primary job is to provide documents to Parliament.

The Conservatives have turned this House of Commons into a place where the role of the MP to hold the government to account has been shut down through efforts to shut down debate time and time again. What we are left with is this culture of arrogance where the Conservatives believe they are entitled to their entitlement. They believe that their friends, like Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau, can get away with things because they are Conservatives.

It is a level of arrogance that even outstrips something the Liberals had, and I think that is staggering. It is an insult to the Canadian people who were promised that the Conservatives would do government differently.

Now $3.1 billion is missing. That is incompetence. It is incompetent management when the President of the Treasury Board says that he does not know where the money is but that it is okay, and that we should trust them. That is not what should be done in accountable government. In any western nation that would be considered an abomination. The Conservatives have taken the Berlusconi model and just made it meaner. It is not an acceptable standard.

We are asking the Conservatives what happened to the money, and they cannot explain it but they tell us all the good stuff they are doing. Meanwhile, they continue with their cuts. They continue wasting money on their ads. They continue wasting money spying on their own members.

They continue wasting money going after civil rights activists, like Cindy Blackstock, spying on her, going to court to fight basic things that most Canadians would consider issues of decency and fairness. Those are words that do not belong in this government's lexicon. It makes me think of Andrew O'Hagan's recent article on Maggie Thatcher, where he said that her legacy was to make England a seedier and greedier place. The kind of attitude that we are seeing from the government, where it has taken the level of partisanship to the level of almost psychosis, is dividing Canadians to change the channel on the fact of basic incompetent mismanagement.

I would suggest that if we were to go into any Tim Hortons in any place in this country, and we asked people if it was okay that the government cannot find $3.1 billion and whether they trusted the government, I do not think we would find a single Canadian who would answer, “Yes.”

The contempt that the Conservatives have for Canadian taxpayers' dollars, with their friends like Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau and with their attitude of their secret contracts, refusing to say whether it is tendered, refusing to come forward and produce documents showing how money is spent, is an example of why the government has lost touch with the Canadian people.

What we are asking for in the motion is fairly straightforward. We want to know where the documents are. Is it a case like that of the President of the Treasury Board, who took $50 million from the border infrastructure and funnelled it through his constituency office, burying the paperwork, and got away with it? He buried the paperwork. He hid the paperwork. He said, “Sorry, there is no paperwork.” That was not true. There was paperwork. He did it on homemade forms.

Were the Conservatives filling out homemade forms? They can blame the former Liberals for being part of it, but they should have changed the system. If there was a problem when the Liberals were doing it, they could have changed it but they did not.

Now we see this level of mendacity and this level of incompetence being shown to the Canadian people in a level of arrogance that shows they do not believe they are accountable or need to explain what happened to $3.1 billion. It is simply not acceptable.

April 29th, 2013 / 4:55 p.m.
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Conservative

Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB

It's pretty obvious that in this day and age a lot of the illegal activity takes place on the Internet. You've talked about the web, etc. In the past this government tried to put in Bill C-30, which gave some important tools. That has been pulled back. There were some concerns.

Are there certain tools that would be useful to you in countering this type of illegal activity in the way of Internet surveillance, etc.?

That is something that can't be answered in the time that's left, but I'll throw it out for thought.