Bill C-51 (Historical)

Anti-terrorism Act, 2015

An Act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 enacts the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which authorizes Government of Canada institutions to disclose information to Government of Canada institutions that have jurisdiction or responsibilities in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada. It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Part 2 enacts the Secure Air Travel Act in order to provide a new legislative framework for identifying and responding to persons who may engage in an act that poses a threat to transportation security or who may travel by air for the purpose of committing a terrorism offence. That Act authorizes the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to establish a list of such persons and to direct air carriers to take a specific action to prevent the commission of such acts. In addition, that Act establishes powers and prohibitions governing the collection, use and disclosure of information in support of its administration and enforcement. That Act includes an administrative recourse process for listed persons who have been denied transportation in accordance with a direction from the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and provides appeal procedures for persons affected by any decision or action taken under that Act. That Act also specifies punishment for contraventions of listed provisions and authorizes the Minister of Transport to conduct inspections and issue compliance orders. Finally, this Part makes consequential amendments to the Aeronautics Act and the Canada Evidence Act.
Part 3 amends the Criminal Code to, with respect to recognizances to keep the peace relating to a terrorist activity or a terrorism offence, extend their duration, provide for new thresholds, authorize a judge to impose sureties and require a judge to consider whether it is desirable to include in a recognizance conditions regarding passports and specified geographic areas. With respect to all recognizances to keep the peace, the amendments also allow hearings to be conducted by video conference and orders to be transferred to a judge in a territorial division other than the one in which the order was made and increase the maximum sentences for breach of those recognizances.
It further amends the Criminal Code to provide for an offence of knowingly advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general. It also provides a judge with the power to order the seizure of terrorist propaganda or, if the propaganda is in electronic form, to order the deletion of the propaganda from a computer system.
Finally, it amends the Criminal Code to provide for the increased protection of witnesses, in particular of persons who play a role in respect of proceedings involving security information or criminal intelligence information, and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to permit the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to take, within and outside Canada, measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada, including measures that are authorized by the Federal Court. It authorizes the Federal Court to make an assistance order to give effect to a warrant issued under that Act. It also creates new reporting requirements for the Service and requires the Security Intelligence Review Committee to review the Service’s performance in taking measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada.
Part 5 amends Divisions 8 and 9 of Part 1 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) define obligations related to the provision of information in proceedings under that Division 9;
(b) authorize the judge, on the request of the Minister, to exempt the Minister from providing the special advocate with certain relevant information that has not been filed with the Federal Court, if the judge is satisfied that the information does not enable the person named in a certificate to be reasonably informed of the case made by the Minister, and authorize the judge to ask the special advocate to make submissions with respect to the exemption; and
(c) allow the Minister to appeal, or to apply for judicial review of, any decision requiring the disclosure of information or other evidence if, in the Minister’s opinion, the disclosure would be injurious to national security or endanger the safety of any person.

Indian Affairs and Northern Development--Main Estimates, 2015-2016

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Chair, as the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, do you believe that indigenous groups should have been consulted or have you consulted with any indigenous groups or organizations on the content of Bill C-51?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Chair, I heard that there is no commitment to a full renewal of the urban aboriginal strategy from the minister.

Let us move to Bill C-51.

As Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, do you have reason to believe that an aboriginal group might represent a threat to the security of Canada?

Communications Security Establishment Review Committee Act

[Brent Rathgeber, Independent, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-679, An Act to Establish the Communications Security Establishment Review Committee and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and introduce the communications security establishment review committee act.

The proposed legislation would establish a five-person civilian committee to review the activities of Canada's signals intelligence agency. It would be a technical committee comprised of a full-time chairperson, an information technology expert, a security expert, a privacy expert and a lawyer with expertise in civil procedure.

The committee would conduct statutory reviews but would also investigate complaints made by Canadians and would report any violations to the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions for further investigation.

The committee may also conduct joint reviews with the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the RCMP Complaints Committee. The committee would be empowered to compel persons and documents, and also to take evidence under oath.

We know that Canada's electronic spy agency works collaboratively with the NSA, farms in metadata, and sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online.

Given that Bill C-51 would increase the reach of Canada's entire spy agency establishment without any additional oversight, I encourage all hon. members to support this legislation and defend the privacy rights of all law-abiding Canadians.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Public Safety

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it appears that the RCMP scheduled the release of the video of the October 22 shooting to coincide with the political timetable for Bill C-51. That is quite disturbing. The idea that the RCMP could be coordinating its work with the Conservatives' partisan political timetable raises quite a few questions.

My question is very simple. Did the minister personally have anything to do with the RCMP's decision, yes or no?

Taxation

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives continue to abuse taxpayer funds with a massive partisan advertising campaign, yet it is the Liberals who tell us they will stand up for the taxpayer.

Wait, is that not the same party that blew $1 billion on self-promotion when it was in government? Have the Liberals turned over a new leaf? Hardly. If we look at the report of the Ontario auditor general, it says that the Liberals will gut the law to create a flood of dumbed-down, partisan advertising for the Liberals, all at the cost of the taxpayer.

Such is Liberal policy. The Liberals are for partisan advertising when it is Liberal advertising. That is the party that promised open, democratic nominations, but let us not go there. That is the party that supports the charter, except when it guts it with Bill C-51. The party is now attacking journalists who have the temerity to point out that the Liberal leader cannot do arithmetic.

Canadians see through this. This fall they will be like the people of Alberta. They will vote for the change they want, and this time actually get it.

Motions in Amendment

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

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

I completely understand why my colleague was so shocked when she saw the provisions allowing companies that disclose personal information to manage and discipline themselves.

It is quite surprising that, ultimately, the Conservatives are refusing to be guided by the most informed, most qualified experts on the matter. One example is Daniel Therrien, the Privacy Commissioner.

With Bill C-51, once again, the Conservatives tried to take evasive action by not inviting the commissioner. However, in the case of the committee work on this bill, the commissioner was able to have his say.

Can my colleague comment on the fact that the very reasonable amendments brought forward by the NDP, which were inspired by the commissioner's comments, were flat out refused by the government, without any discussion?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to make it relevant to this particular bill. I appreciate the question from the member. Maybe I can assist him by indicating that in debating Bill C-51, because I did get the opportunity to talk about it, we needed to recognize that there was some value to the passage of the bill in the context of time. Through that value, we could provide security for Canadians.

We did have concerns, and we still have concerns regarding Bill C-51. I would suggest that the member need only reflect on what the leader of the NDP and even some of his colleagues said inside the chamber, that if they were in government, they would not repeal the legislation that Bill C-51 brought in, but rather make changes to it. They recognized that there was some value to Bill C-51.

That is not necessarily the same case here. It is nowhere near as time sensitive, and there is no reason why a more all-encompassing piece of legislation dealing with the issues of online commerce and privacy could not be addressed by having a more thorough piece of legislation. If I had more time—

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to the member for Winnipeg North as he intervened on this bill. I was certainly convinced by his arguments. He talked about the fact that there were many witnesses who raised significant concerns about this legislation. He talked about the dangers of not being careful and how we could deal with these privacy issues on the Internet.

Given his strong feelings, I can understand why he would not support this piece of legislation, but I have to tell him that I was a bit flummoxed when I considered the Liberals' response and the response of this member to Bill C-51. We heard the same arguments. The government would not listen to amendments. It would not listen to the experts. The impact of Bill C-51 was going to be extraordinarily significant, but in that case, they turned around and voted for it.

In this case, there are similar arguments and similar positions and they are voting against it. I wonder if the member for Winnipeg North would try to square that circle for me?

Public Safety

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand today to present a petition signed by hundreds of my constituents against Bill C-51. They are calling on the House of Commons to stop this attack on civil liberties by joining the official opposition to stop Bill C-51.

Privacy

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during the debate on Bill C-51, the Conservatives' draconian attack on our rights and freedoms, a number of my colleagues expressed concern about sweeping new powers to share information among government departments and agencies on almost anything, not just terrorism and violence. We heard that the Privacy Commissioner is concerned that the bill would allow information on law-abiding Canadians to be collected and shared without reasonable cause and that it could allow the government to build personal profiles on each and every one of us.

In Scarborough and in Toronto, we have heard this story before. For the past 10 years, Toronto police have been engaged in carding. Carding allows police to stop anyone without cause and collect personal information and enter it into a database. This practice has been widely criticized, with many people seeing little difference between carding and racial profiling. Will the information in the carding database be subject to the sharing provisions of Bill C-51?

We should all be very concerned. As Tom Mulcair said, we cannot protect our freedoms by sacrificing them.

Missing Aboriginal Women

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have been debating this issue in the House for quite some time. We would not have to debate it continually if the government actually took proper steps to address this issue.

I have spoken about this issue on a number of occasions in the House, among other first nation issues, whether it is education, housing, or infrastructure, and the government has turned a blind eye to what is really happening in first nations communities. When it comes to women, the issue is that much more important.

I will be reiterating some of the words that I have said in the past, because nothing has really changed in the position that the government has taken. I want to recognize that this particular motion is similar to Motion No. 444, which my colleague from Churchill has tabled. The difference between the motions is that the NDP motion is more in-depth and is what we think needs to move forward.

I will speak to Motion No. 411 for a minute and indicate that a national inquiry is actually an essential step in confronting the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada and realizing justice for the families who have lost their loved ones. The Conservative government has been standing alone among governments and the majority of indigenous communities in opposing a national inquiry. That should tell us a lot.

The member on the Conservative side talked about the round table. The national round table started on February 26. It was supposed to offer testimony to find answers and solutions to end the violence. Families were looking to the government to finally change its rhetoric and come together with its provincial and territorial counterparts to act upon coordinated solutions and finally call a national inquiry. As one can imagine, keeping to the way that it has been going down the line, the government did not listen to the plea for a national inquiry.

We have to also consider that families of the over 1,200 women and girls who have disappeared or been murdered in Canada have raised the issue over and over again and actually deserve much better from the government. They deserve a real action plan that would get answers. They deserve a genuine consultation process. That is what a national inquiry would do. They certainly do not deserve the Conservative government's action plan that offers nothing but the status quo. The member on the Liberal side will attest to the fact that that is basically what the government has been offering over and over again.

Statistics actually show that every year in Canada, violence drives 100,000 women and children out of their homes and into shelters, but I have to stress that it is where those shelters actually exist. The government has said that it has invested more money into shelters on reserve, but let me stress that they do not exist in every first nations community. We have to take into consideration that there are a lot of remote and rural areas which do not have shelters. There needs to be much more done.

In northern Canada, the problem is extreme, with more women facing abuse and fewer safe houses and shelters. That all plays a role in this. Despite quantifiably greater rates of violence, 70% of northern and remote communities do not have safe houses or emergency shelters. That justifies the fact that the government has not been taking action. A lot of the dollars the government talks about are just re-announcements.

When we look at the skewed statistics, the government continues to minimize its responsibility and refuses to call for an inquiry. The Conservatives claim to take the problem seriously, but their words do not match their actions, and women are forced to remain in the homes of their attackers as a result. We have seen that the issue is not just in the homes, but the issue is in the communities, as well. There is a lot of discrimination out there still to this day. That is unbelievable.

In spite of the government's claims that it is doing a lot for victims of crime, statistics show that just 53% of homicides involving aboriginal women are solved, compared to a solve rate of 84% for all murders in this country.

These statistics seem quite acceptable to this government, even though they show that the government does not treat all victims of crime equally. Abuse crime rates are similarly skewed for women in the north, who are primarily aboriginal women.

Statistics Canada shows that aboriginal women are vastly overrepresented among homicide victims. Statistics also show that the rate of abuse against aboriginal women is also higher, and if we consider the lack of housing in northern communities, the statistics point to a perfect storm, where women cannot get away from their abusers, which is the most basic step in escaping from a domestic violence situation.

A few years ago, I went to Maniwaki. A young woman from the aboriginal community had disappeared and has never been found. Very little was done to find that young woman compared to what was done to find a young woman from another community who had just disappeared. As I said a few minutes ago, discrimination is alive and well in our country.

A national action plan to address violence against women and girls is urgently needed. Rates of violence against women in Canada are shockingly high, especially against indigenous, racialized, disabled, and LGBTTQ women.

The current response to violence against women and girls has failed to significantly lower the level of violence they experience and cuts by both the Liberal and Conservative governments have exacerbated the situation. I have to mention that it is not just under the Conservatives that we have seen cuts. We actually saw cuts as well when the Liberals were in power. During the Liberal majority government in the late 1990s and early 2000s, funding for anti-violence initiatives and services began to be cut. Social housing initiatives, including shelters, secondary and tertiary housing were gutted by Chrétien's Liberals. Much of the responsibility to prevent violence against women was downloaded onto the provinces, for example, legal aid. The Liberal austerity budgets cut deeply into the social services that women were reliant on. Poverty can be seen through a gender lens and high poverty rates for women coincide with higher rates of violence against women.

There has been a blind eye turned to first nation issues for far too long under the Liberals and the Conservatives. It was not until my colleague from Timmins—James Bay raised the issue of the living conditions at Attawapiskat that finally some action was taken.

Even this weekend in Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing there was a rally. The issues are quite noticed, even in Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing. The United Urban Warrior Society held a rally on Saturday not only on Bill C-51, but mostly on the need for a national inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women.

In conclusion, we certainly support the motion, but the one that we have put forward is much more in-depth. We need action. We need to ensure that this House comes together to recognize the injustices being done and to ensure that the families can have closure.

Aboriginal Affairs

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, again, the misinformation about Bill C-51 from the opposition party, the NDP, is absolutely unacceptable. At the very heart of that particular bill, which I am very proud to say passed through this House this week, is the national security of this country and the protection of all Canadians.

Unfortunately for the NDP, the only measures it would support is if the RCMP had handcuffs on and CSIS was blindfolded.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I suggest that the parliamentary secretary look at the documents that have come forward and recognize the severity of this situation. These words are discriminatory and only serve to further damage the relationship between the RCMP, the current government, and first nations. This is on top of ramming through Bill C-51, a dangerous bill that would limit Canadians' rights and freedoms, and target first nations for simply defending their rights.

The question, again, is, what will the minister do to ensure that the RCMP clears the record and treats first nations with respect instead of hostility?

Public Safety

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am being bombarded in my office in Toronto by my constituents from Parkdale—High Park with messages of opposition to Bill C-51.

I am pleased to once again present petitions on behalf of about 150 people in my riding of Parkdale—High Park. They are very concerned that our rights and freedoms would be threatened by giving sweeping new powers to CSIS without adequate oversight.

They are calling on every member in the House of Commons to join together and defeat Bill C-51.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today New Democrats are joining over 100,000 Canadians who are calling on Liberals and Conservatives to do the right thing and stop Bill C-51.

Tonight this House will take a final vote on this dangerous bill. It is the last chance for Liberal and Conservative members to stand up for our rights and freedoms and vote against a bill that we all know is fatally flawed.

Will the government take this last opportunity to change course? Will it listen to so many experts and so many Canadians and scrap this dangerous bill?