Bill C-21 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Customs Act

This enactment amends the Customs Act to authorize the Canada Border Services Agency to collect, from prescribed persons and prescribed sources, personal information on all persons who are leaving or have left Canada. It also amends the Act to authorize an officer, as defined in that Act, to require that goods that are to be exported from Canada are to be reported despite any exemption under that Act. In addition, it amends the Act to provide officers with the power to examine any goods that are to be exported. Finally, it amends the Act to authorize the disclosure of information collected under the Customs Act to an official of the Department of Employment and Social Development for the purposes of administering or enforcing the Old Age Security Act.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege, as always, to rise in the House and speak to legislation. As we near the end of this parliamentary session, one that precedes an election, we really should be wrapping up work rather than starting new work, as we all know.

Bill C-98 proposes to repurpose and rename the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP to the “Public Complaints and Review Commission” and expand its mandate to review both the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency.

In 2017, I began working as a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. In studies on the border agency and when the agency came up in discussions on another bill, Bill C-21, the issue of oversight and complaints was discussed. Professor Wesley Wark, from the University of Ottawa, who was previously a special adviser to the president of the Canadian border security agency said:

[T] he committee should encourage the government to finalize its plans for an independent complaints mechanism for CBSA. There have been discussions under way about this for some considerable time now.

We were told that the minister already had a plan back then, was already dealing with it and that we did not need to. During his appearance at the Senate committee regarding the border security's oversight, the minister said:

The CBSA, however, does not have independent review of officer conduct, and that is a gap that definitely needs to be addressed....

Mr. Chair, while I agree absolutely with the spirit behind Bill S-205, I cannot support its detail at this time for—

National Security Act, 2017

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today.

I ask for the indulgence of the House and I hope no one will get up on a point of order on this, but because I am making a speech on a specific day, I did want to shout out to two of my biggest supporters.

The first is to my wife Chantale, whose birthday is today. I want to wish her a happy birthday. Even bigger news is that we are expecting a baby at the end of July. I want to shout out the fact that she has been working very hard at her own job, which is obviously a very exhausting thing, and so the patience she has for my uncomparable fatigue certainly is something that I really do thank her for and love her very much for.

I do not want to create any jealousy in the household, so I certainly want to give a shout-out to her daughter and our daughter Lydia, who is also a big supporter of mine. We are a threesome, and as I said at my wedding last year, I had the luck of falling in love twice. I wanted to take this opportunity, not knowing whether I will have another one before the election, to shout out to them and tell them how much I love them.

I thank my colleagues for their warm thoughts that they have shared with me.

On a more serious note, I would like to talk about the Senate amendments to Bill C-59. More specifically, I would like to talk about the process per se and then come back to certain aspects of Bill C-59, particularly those about which I raised questions with the minister—questions that have yet to be answered properly, if at all.

I want to begin by touching on a more timely issue related to a bill that is currently before the House, Bill C-98. This bill will give more authority to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP so that it also covers the Canada Border Services Agency. That is important because we have been talking for a long time about how the CBSA, the only agency that has a role to play in our national security, still does not have a body whose sole function is to review its operations.

Of course, there is the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which was created by Bill C-22, and there will soon be a committee created by Bill C-59 that will affect the CBSA, but only with regard to its national security related activities.

I am talking about a committee whose sole responsibility would be to review the activities of the Canada Border Services Agency and to handle internal complaints, such as the allegations of harassment that have been reported in the media in recent years, or complaints that Muslim citizens may make about profiling.

It is very important that there be some oversight or further review. I will say that, as soon as an article is published, either about a problem at the border, about the union complaining about the mistreatment of workers or about problems connected to the agency, the minister comes out with great fanfare to remind everyone that he made a deep and sincere promise to create a system that would properly handle these complaints and that there would be some oversight or review of the agency.

What has happened in four whole years? Nothing at all.

For years now, every time there is a report in the news or an article comes out detailing various allegations of problems, I have just been copying and pasting the last tweet I posted. The situation keeps repeating, but the government is not doing anything.

This situation is problematic because the minister introduced a bill at the last minute, as the clock is winding down on this Parliament, and the bill has not even been referred yet to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

I have a hard time believing that we will pass this bill in the House and an even harder time seeing how it is going to get through the Senate.

That is important because, in his speech, the minister himself alluded to the fact that in fall 2016, when the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, of which I am a member, travelled across the country to study the issue and make recommendations ahead of introducing Bill C-59, the recommendation to create a committee tasked with studying the specific activities of the CBSA was one of the most important recommendations. As we see in Bill C-98, the government did not take this opportunity to do any such thing.

It is certainly troubling, because Bill C-59 is an omnibus piece of legislation. I pleaded with the House, the minister and indeed even the Senate, when it reached the Senate, through different procedural mechanisms, to consider parts of the bill separately, because, as the minister correctly pointed out, this is a huge overhaul of our national security apparatus. The concern with that is not only the consideration that is required, but also the fact that some of these elements, which I will come back to in a moment, were not even part of the national security consultations that both his department and the committee, through the study it did, actually took the time to examine.

More specifically, coming back to and concluding the point on Bill C-98, the minister does not seem to have acted in a prompt way, considering his commitments when it comes to oversight and/or a review of the CBSA. He said in his answer to my earlier question on his speech that it was not within the scope of this bill. That is interesting, not only because this is omnibus legislation, but also because the government specifically referred the legislation to committee prior to second reading with the goal of allowing amendments that were beyond the scope of the bill on the understanding that it did want this to be a large overhaul.

I have a hard time understanding why, with all the indicators being there that it wanted this to be a large, broad-reaching thing and wanted to have things beyond the scope, it would not have allowed for this type of mechanism. Instead, we find we have a bill, Bill C-98, arriving at the 11th hour, without a proper opportunity to make its way through Parliament before the next election.

I talked about how this is an omnibus bill, which makes it problematic in several ways. I wrote a letter to some senators about children whose names are on the no-fly list and the No Fly List Kids group, which the minister talked about. I know the group very well. I would like to congratulate the parents for their tireless efforts on their children's behalf.

Some of the children are on the list simply because the list is racist. Basically, the fact that the names appear multiple times is actually a kind of profiling. We could certainly have a debate about how effective the list is. This list is totally outdated and flawed because so many people share similar names. It is absurd that there was nothing around this list that made it possible for airlines and the agents who managed the list and enforced the rules before the bill was passed to distinguish between a terrorist threat and a very young child.

Again, I thank the parents for their tireless efforts and for the work they did in a non-partisan spirit. They may not be partisan, but I certainly am. I will therefore take this opportunity to say that I am appalled at the way the government has taken these families and children hostage for the sake of passing an omnibus bill.

The minister said that the changes to the no-fly list would have repercussions on a recourse mechanism that would stop these children from being harassed every time they go to the airport. This part of the bill alone accounted for several hundred pages.

I asked the government why it did not split this part from the rest of the bill so it would pass sooner, if it really believed it would deliver justice to these families and their kids. We object to certain components or aspects of the list. We are even prepared to challenge the usefulness of the list and the flaws it may have. If there are any worthy objectives, we are willing to consider them. However, again, our hands were tied by the use of omnibus legislation. During the election campaign, the Liberals promised to make omnibus bills a thing of the past.

I know parents will not say that, and I do not expect them to do so. I commend them again for their non-partisan approach. However, it is appalling and unacceptable that they have been taken hostage.

Moreover, there is also Bill C-21.

I will digress here for a moment. Bill C-21, which we opposed, was a very troubling piece of legislation that dealt with the sharing of border information with the Americans, among others. This involved information on citizens travelling between Canada and the United States. Bill C-59 stalled in the Senate, much like Bill C-21.

As the Minister of Public Safety's press secretary was responding to the concerns of parents who have children on the no-fly list, he suddenly started talking about Bill C-21 as a solution for implementing the redress system for people who want to file a complaint or do not want to be delayed at the airport for a name on the list, when it is not the individual identified. I think it is absolutely awful that these families are being used as bargaining chips to push through a bill that contains many points that have nothing to do with them and warrant further study. In my view, those aspects have not been examined thoroughly enough to move the bill forward.

I thank the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness for recognizing the work I did in committee, even though it took two attempts when he responded to my questions earlier today. In committee, I presented almost 200 amendments. Very few of them were accepted, which was not a surprise.

I would like to focus specifically on one of the Senate's amendments that the government agreed to. This amendment is important and quite simple, I would say even unremarkable. It proposes to add a provision enabling us to review the bill after three years, rather than five, and make amendments if required. That is important because we are proposing significant and far-reaching changes to our national security system. What I find intriguing is that I proposed the same amendment in committee, which I substantiated with the help of expert testimony, and the Liberals rejected my amendment. Now, all of a sudden, the Senate is proposing the same amendment and the government is agreeing to it in the motion we are debating today.

I asked the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness why the Liberals were not willing to put partisanship aside in a parliamentary committee and accept an opposition amendment that proposed a very simple measure but are agreeing to it today. He answered that they had taken the time to reflect and changed their minds when the bill was in the Senate. I am not going to spend too much of my precious time on that, but I find it somewhat difficult to accept because nothing has changed. Experts appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and it was very clear, simple and reasonable. Having said that, I thank the minister for finally recognizing this morning that I contributed to this process.

I also want to talk about some of what concerns us about the bill. There are two pieces specifically with regard to what was Bill C-51 under the previous government, and a few aspects new to this bill that have been brought forward that cause us some concern and consternation.

There are two pieces in Bill C-51 that raised the biggest concerns at the time of debate in the previous Parliament and raised the biggest concerns on the part of Canadians as well, leading to protests outside our committee hearings when we travelled the country to five major cities in five days in October 2016. The first has to do with threat disruption, and the second is the information-sharing regime that was brought in by Bill C-51. Both of those things are concerning, for different reasons.

The threat disruption powers offered to CSIS are of concern because at the end of the day, the reason CSIS was created in the first place was that there was an understanding and consensus in Canada that there had to be a separation between the RCMP's role in law enforcement, which is making arrests and the work that revolves around that, and intelligence gathering, which is the work our intelligence service has to do, so they were separated.

However, bringing us back closer to the point where we start to lose that distinction with regard to the threat disruption powers means that a concern about constitutionality will remain. In fact, the experts at committee did say that Bill C-59, while less unconstitutional than what the Conservatives brought forward in the previous Parliament, had yet to be tested, and there was still some uncertainty about it.

We still believe it is not necessary for CSIS to have these powers. That distinction remains important if we want to be in keeping with the events that led to the separation in the first place, namely the barn burnings, the Macdonald Commission and all those things that folks who have followed this debate know full well, but which we do not have time to get into today.

The other point is the sharing of information, which we are all familiar with. We opened the door to more liberal sharing of information, no pun intended, between the various government departments. That is worrisome. In Canada, one of the most highly publicized cases of human rights violations was the situation of Maher Arar while he was abroad, which led to the Arar commission. In such cases, we know that the sharing of information with other administrations is one of the factors that can lead to the violation of human rights or torture. There are places in the world where human rights are almost or completely non-existent. We find that the sharing of information between Canadian departments can exacerbate such situations, particularly when information is shared between the police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

There is an individual who was tortured abroad who is currently suing the government. His name escapes me at the moment. I hope he will forgive me. Global Affairs Canada tried to get him a passport to bring him back to Canada, regardless of whether the accusations against him were true, because he was still a Canadian citizen. However, overwhelming evidence suggests that CSIS and the RCMP worked together with foreign authorities to keep him abroad.

More information sharing can exacerbate that type of problem because, in the government, the left hand does not always know what the right hand is doing. Some information can fall into the wrong hands. If the Department of Foreign Affairs is trying to get a passport for someone and is obligated by law to share that information with CSIS, whose interests are completely different than those of our diplomats, this could put us on a slippery slope.

The much-criticized information sharing system will remain in place with Bill C-59. I do not have the time to list all the experts and civil society groups that criticized this system, but I will mention Amnesty International, which is a well-known organization that does excellent work. This organization is among those critical of allowing the information sharing to continue, in light of the human rights impact it can have, especially in other countries.

Since the bill was sent back to committee before second reading, we had the advantage of being able to propose amendments that went beyond the scope of the bill. We realized that this was a missed opportunity. It was a two-step process, and I urge those watching and those interested in the debates to go take a look at how it went down. There were several votes and we called for a recorded division. Votes can sometimes be faster in committee, but this time we took the time to do a recorded division.

There were two proposals. The Liberals were proposing an amendment to the legislation. We were pleased to support the amendment, since it was high time we had an act stating that we do not support torture in another country as a result of the actions of our national security agencies or police forces. Nevertheless, since this amendment still relies on a ministerial directive, the bill is far from being perfect.

I also proposed amendments to make it illegal to share any information that would lead to the torture of an individual in another country. The amendments were rejected.

I urge my colleagues to read about them, because I am running out of time. As you can see, 20 minutes is not enough, but I would be happy to take questions and comments.

Bill C-21. Second reading and concurrence in Senate amendment

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in the House to talk again to Bill C-21. I thought yesterday would be the last time I would have a chance to speak, but it turns out I will have another chance today.

One of the things we understand when we look at a bill like Bill C-21 is the close relationship we have with our neighbours south of the border and the fact that geography has us joined. This is one of these things that helps goods flow back and forth in a way that people understand what the expectations are and how they work.

First, we do support the bill. It is important that our border services have the tools they need to keep Canadians safe. The legislation addresses the long-standing Conservative priorities regarding border security and ensuring entitlement programs are not abused.

On this side of the House, we will continue to hold the Liberals to account and ensure that this program is implemented in a way that does not infringe on the rights of Canadians.

Bill C-21 would allow the Canada Border Services Agency to collect and receive biographic information on travellers exiting Canada. It would authorize officers to acquire goods exported from Canada to be reported, despite exemptions, and would give them the power to examine goods being exported.

The Prime Minister first announced the agreement with the United States to fully implement a system to exchange basic biographic information in March 2016, following his first official visit to the United States. Currently, as part of the beyond the borders action plan, the two countries collect and exchange biographic entry information at land ports on third country nationals and lawful permanent residents. Entry information into one country is considered exit information from the other.

As we look at initiatives like beyond the borders, these are the things I hear at round tables. We need to continue to work on ways to ease the flow of goods, services and people. Some of the challenges our companies have are getting goods to market.

We can look at the automotive facilities in Windsor, where I visited this past summer. One of the things Chrysler told me was that based on just-in-time inventory, and automotive manufacturers experience and require the same thing, that any delays such as traffic, caused delays in its production, which was problematic as it worked very hard to get goods to market in a timely fashion.

On November 21, the Senate committee heard from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada who spoke on the general intent of the bill and its amendment, which was passed by the House of Commons. This is related to the data retention period. The Privacy Commissioner said, “I am generally satisfied that this border management initiative is based on important public policy objectives and the personal information in question is not particularly sensitive.”

For the amendment, Mr. Therrien indicated that in order to achieve greater legal certainty, subsection 93.1 should be amended to clarify that the data collected under sections 92 and 93 should be retained by the agency for a period of no more than 15 years.

The legislation will not have any incremental costs for new systems as it will leverage those already in use. It will, however, save an estimated $20 million per year from those who are unduly receiving entitlement programs while out of the country for extended periods. This includes those who are receiving employment insurance from outside of Canada.

Speaking of financial implications at borders, it is important to bring up the issue our country is grappling with right now, and that is the issue of steel and aluminum tariffs that still remain in place. The Prime Minister was supposed to have steel and aluminum tariffs lifted before the G20 summit about two weeks ago. Unfortunately, he failed to do so when he signed the USMCA without assurances that tariffs would be lifted. This is causing major problems with our manufacturers.

I have talked with small and medium-size enterprises. I have talked with steel and aluminum producers. I have talked with automotive, tool and dye and moulding companies. I have talked with a whole host of people who use steel and aluminum in their production and they are dealing with these issues. They tell me that every day these tariffs remain in place, workers will continue to face more uncertainty.

Businesses, especially small businesses, are struggling to pay the surtaxes on the materials they need. Jobs are at risk of being moved south of the border. Some companies are saying they are not sure they can continue to operate the way they are. For smaller companies, moving is not an option and larger companies are certainly reassessing some of the options they have.

I spent some time this summer criss-crossing the country and talking to small manufacturers who depend on stable markets for aluminum and steel. I talked to over 150 stakeholders in three different provinces. I had 26 meetings in 18 cities and talked to a variety of stakeholders. There were business owners, chambers of commerce and trade associations. I heard that U.S. tariffs are killing businesses. We have a 25% tariff on steel, a 10% tariff on aluminum and businesses are having a hard time planning. Not only are they not able to plan for the future, say two or three years down the road, they are also having a hard time planning for the next three to six months. That kind of uncertainty is a challenge.

I have talked to small boat wholesalers and retailers of boats who are trying to buy inventory now. They say the next season is coming up and they are not sure what they are going to do in terms of how many boats to order or what they need to do, because people refuse to pay some of the taxes. Small and medium-sized enterprises form an essential part of our local economies and their loss would be keenly felt if the tariff situation is not resolved in an expeditious way.

Last week, in the international trade committee, Conservatives introduced a motion asking the Prime Minister to attend and present his plan for the immediate removal of tariffs on steel and aluminum products. The Liberals voted against that motion. Canadians have the right to know exactly how the Liberals and the Prime Minister are going to address this growing negative impact of tariffs on steel and aluminum for our workers and the economy. When the Prime Minister signed the new NAFTA, he failed to ensure that the tariffs would be removed from Canadian steel and aluminum products. Canadians are still facing even more uncertainty given the recent announcement that the United States will terminate the existing trade agreement if the new NAFTA is not ratified in six months.

Conservatives spent months travelling across Canada speaking with over 200 businesses, owners, labour groups and stakeholders and heard that same message over and over again. Local businesses are being hindered by red tape and proposed higher taxes by the Prime Minister and the Liberal government and they are unable to access relief. They need to stay afloat during difficult periods, with no end in sight. Businesses have had to cut orders, reduce shifts and, in some cases, have been forced to lay off workers.

Conservatives will continue to fight to protect Canadian workers and our economy and will call on the Prime Minister to also do the same. The Prime Minister must take immediate action and tell Canadians exactly what his plan is to remove the tariffs from our steel and aluminum products and ensure that our workers and our economy will remain competitive.

Speaking of competitiveness, the global competitiveness index has Canada in 14th place. The U.S. has risen to first place out of 140 countries. We are in 53rd place when it comes to regulatory burden. Our corporate tax rate is now close to 27%, which is one of the higher ones of other developed countries in the OECD. We are close to having the highest corporate tax rate. The real tax rate for corporate income is also creeping toward 30%. Canada also has a high personal income tax rate. We spoke with companies trying to attract talent from all over the world and they said it is tough because of the high personal taxes that individuals pay in this country. For entrepreneurs, this is a challenge.

The personal tax rate in most provinces and in Ontario exceeds 50%, and that is certainly a challenge for businesses. Other provinces are getting dangerously close. The U.S. tax rate has been reduced from 35% to 21%, with additional incentives to invest and relocate there. This is our biggest trading partner where over 76% of our exports go. The government must recognize the importance of tax rates, our competitiveness and the importance of a strong business environment for our economic stability. Right now, there is no reason to be confident in our economic prospects. There are issues with capital flight and onerous regulations.

In Alberta right now, there are obviously many challenges. We see that Alberta just mandated an 8.7% cut in oil production to combat low prices. Thousands of jobs and several companies are in jeopardy. Canadian oil is selling at an $80-million discount every single day. Texas oil is going for around $50 a barrel, while Western Canadian Select, I believe, has gone to $14 and below. Why has that happened? One of the reasons is that Alberta cannot get its oil to global markets.

This is a direct result of the Prime Minister's failure to approve three different pipeline projects of over $100 billion. Northern gateway was vetoed. Energy east was killed by shifting regulatory goalposts. The Trans Mountain pipeline was subject to delays and obstruction. We, as a country, now own that pipeline for just a little over $4.5 billion. Bill C-69 would make the problem even worse. This bill would bury any chance at future pipelines, under the mountain of new ever-changing regulations. This is all part of the Liberal plan to phase out the oil sands without a thought for the workers and families who depend on them for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, with such a high degree of uncertainty surrounding resource development in Canada, investors have taken notice. Canada is no longer seen as a safe bet for economic growth.

Problems are not just in our resource sector. Most people are aware that recently over 2,500 workers at GM in Oshawa were told that their plant would be closing. This is very unfortunate. Other manufacturers are worried as well. A carbon tax increases the price of everything, including energy, industrial inputs and shipping products to global markets. If Canadian companies are tied to a carbon tax that other countries, especially the United States, are not, we are going to be in serious trouble.

Recently, Canada has taken steps to diversify its trading relationship, and I will give the government kudos for that. It is good to see that we have just passed a modernized Canada-Israel agreement. It is good to see that we passed the TPP, or the new CPTPP, and of course the CETA. These are all agreements that our Conservative government previously had done the negotiating on and worked through, and it is great to see that the current government was able to move some of these through.

We cannot lose sight of how international trade really works, though. We still need a strong business environment to compete. That is a serious problem with tax hikes and onerous regulations, especially the carbon tax, which will impact Canadian firms' ability to compete on the basis of price. The government focuses a lot on the Canada brand in promoting global trade, but if our businesses cannot compete, they are not going to be able to engage successfully.

I want to talk about some other jurisdictions as it relates to Bill C-21 and how that has worked, just to show that there are other countries working on similar things as the legislation is here.

We know that the Australian government uses movement records to track arrivals and departures at its borders. Movement records may include name, date of birth, gender, relationship status, country of birth, departure and arrival dates, travel document information and travel itinerary. Collecting this information seems reasonable.

In 1998, the U.K. government ended its collection of paper-based exit controls and in 2004 introduced a more sophisticated approach of collecting advance passenger information for inbound and outbound air passengers. It also added checks in 2015 for those who are leaving.

The Government of New Zealand has implemented a passenger departure card system for outgoing travellers. Since updating legislation in 2009, travellers have been required to fill out a departure card with some basic biographical information before entering passport control.

In the United States, while an entry-exit control system to collect data on arrivals and departures has been legislated several times since 1996, no such system has yet been developed. The U.S. has tested several data collection and sharing programs, two of which are currently running.

The Americans largely rely on information sharing agreements with air and sea carriers for their exit records. One of the two programs still in place is the U.S.-Canada information sharing agreement in which the land entry record in one country establishes an exit record for the other.

Since 2008, under the advance passenger information system program, air and sea carriers are required to provide border police with electronic copies of passenger and crew manifests before departure of all international flights or voyages. This data must be provided before departure so that the manifest can be vetted against terrorist watch lists and so data can be added to the database.

In the spring of 2018, Bill C-21 passed and the Conservatives' supported it. The bill has now been returned to the House with an amendment suggested by the Privacy Commissioner to limit data retention to no more than 15 years. Conservatives will continue to support the initiative started by the previous Conservative government in the beyond the border agreement. It uses existing infrastructure to share basic biographical information between CBSA and U.S. law enforcement.

Once enacted, Bill C-21 would create an entry-exit program and allow the Canadian government to keep track of when individual Canadians enter and leave the country. Most countries in the world have already implemented entry and exit programs. Right now, the Canada Border Services Agency only knows when someone enters the country. The bill would allow the government to keep tabs on high-risk travellers for national security purposes. Knowing who enters and leaves the country is part of the government's responsibility to keep Canadians safe.

As I wrap up, I cannot overestimate the challenges that small and medium-size businesses are struggling with in this country in terms of tariffs. We look at what they are dealing with on an ongoing basis. The U.S. is our closest trading partner and we do things like beyond the border and Bill C-21 to increase co-operation, because the U.S. is a strong neighbour and a friend. As this issue continues to be unresolved, I fear that it puts our future in manufacturing, that it puts the future for our small and medium-size industries that are dealing with tariffs in steel and aluminum in jeopardy.

One of the challenges businesses have as they are trying to plan for the future is how they are going to pay for the steel and aluminum tariffs over the coming weeks and months. We talked to them this summer. Mr. Speaker, I understand you had round tables and were able to talk to some of these very people. We heard that this uncertainty means they may have to lay people off as we move forward. Small and medium-size enterprises are the backbone of Canadian society. They continue to make sure we have jobs in small towns and they employ vast numbers of people. We need to continue to work on trying to remove these tariffs.

Just as Bill C-21 would make it more efficient and we would be able to keep track of people moving back and forth, measures like beyond the border are things we heard about as we talked to people this summer. They said that we need to continue to work on ways to make sure there is less regulation and less red tape at the borders, so they are able to move forward in a strategic way.

I cannot implore the government enough to consider the issues around the steel and aluminum tariffs. We missed great opportunities. The first opportunity was when we originally signed on that one rushed weekend when there was a lot of activity, and we agreed to terms around a new NAFTA deal. The second opportunity was at the signing just a week or two ago in Argentina.

Quite frankly, we continue to hear from small and medium-size enterprises and they are very concerned about what the future holds for them. Who is going to pay the tariffs? A lot of these companies are eating the tariffs themselves right now. They say that if they are going to pass it on, there are suppliers saying they cannot afford to do that.

As we move forward to vote on Bill C-21, which our opposition team supports, there are many other things that need to be done to make sure our borders become more efficient and easier to move through.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, nothing quite like listening to a speech in the House of Commons about efficiency that takes 20 minutes to agree with the government. One would think efficiency would just be to say that she agrees with the bill and sit down. Instead, what we were treated to was a very long lecture, one which moved into some pretty disturbing space.

The UN pact on migration is not binding on this country. We know that. Anyone who has ever dealt with the UN or with migration issues around the UN knows that. However, I was here on the weekend, and I saw the demonstration by the white supremacists on the front lawn of Parliament Hill as they walked down past the Justice Building shouting their horrific slogans.

When I hear white supremacists chanting the very same slogans members opposite speak with soft voices in this House, what is the difference between the position the white supremacists took on the UN migration pact and the position the party opposite is taking? It has raised this issue. It has nothing to do with Bill C-21, but members opposite keep coming back to it speech after speech. This notion that there is some globalist conspiracy to overrule Canada's sovereignty on immigration is exactly what the white supremacists were saying on the lawns of Parliament this week. What is the difference between that and what the Conservatives are saying here today? Quite frankly, it is a little scary.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this will probably be one of the last times I rise to speak in this building, as we are moving to West Block in the new year. Like many fellow members, I have been reflecting on this place, its beauty and history. I do not know the route the Usher of the Black Rod will take from the new chamber to the Senate, but it will be interesting to see how the logistics and details are worked out.

That said, I am here today to talk about Bill C-21. I will start by explaining, for those who are not aware, what this bill would do. Essentially, it would allow for the exchange of biographical information between the U.S. and Canada. This will be important for a number of reasons.

When the bill was tabled in June 2016, we were co-operating with the United States in trying to make it easier for goods, services and people to flow across the border. One of the problems is that we often only have information about when Canadians leave the country, not on when they return. It is important to know how many days Canadians spend outside the country, because a lot of the benefits people qualify for are dependent on that time and a lot of the immigration requirements for residency depend on being in Canada for a required amount of time and not outside the country for too long.

With that in mind, Bill C-21 would allow the kind of data exchange that would be useful to keep track of these kinds of things. Some people will embrace that, but of course there are always those who may not be as enthusiastic. A lot of Canadians like to spend their winters in the south, in Florida, etc. They go for six months. People in my town, which is a border town, also go to the U.S. for the day to shop or have a meal or whatever, so all of those days would count as days away from Canada.

We are concerned that some of those people may find themselves losing the benefits they have, or having difficulty receiving them. There are also people who accidentally spend too much time out of the country for their residency requirements for their immigration and permanent resident cards. That may be of some concern as well.

Most stakeholders are very supportive of sharing the information and having a closer relationship with the United States of America, but an amendment to the bill was proposed by the Privacy Commissioner. Canadians are always concerned about the privacy of their information, and in this case the amendment stipulates that the data not be retained for more than 15 years. I am supportive of the bill and of that amendment.

I will look to some of the issues the government has not addressed. When it comes to the border, there are a number of really critical issues, and this bill addresses just a small portion of them. This is a bit disappointing, because there are a couple of larger issues the government has dropped the ball on, to be frank.

The first one has to do with the border and the legalization of marijuana. Liberals ran on a platform of legalizing it. They know it is still illegal at the federal level in the United States, so it should not have been a surprise to them that there were confrontations about that. Although many of the states along the border between the U.S. and Canada are either in the process of legalizing it or have already legalized it, the borders are controlled federally, so there should have been some negotiation between the United States and Canada for some kind of understanding.

That was not done, and there have been incidents across the country where travelling Canadians are being turned back at the border and not being allowed to go into the U.S. In one case, a gentleman was given a lifetime ban. He was a worker in the cannabis industry on his way to a cannabis convention in Las Vegas. He was given a lifetime ban, and the people travelling with him were turned back and delayed.

Therefore, there is something still to be done there, and that is a critical issue for everyone who lives in a border town and for people who would be crossing back and forth.

The other subject that comes to mind has been touched on quite often during the debate today. That is the illegal immigration that we are seeing in Manitoba and Quebec, mainly at Roxham Road. We have had 38,000 individuals come over from upper-state New York and cross into our country. The problem with this is not just the huge cost that is related to feeding and housing them and providing medical services and their legal services. In most cases they are crossing into those provinces because they will provide those services. This is a huge cost. We are hearing it is a $1.1-billion cost to taxpayers for people whom Canadians did not choose to have come to the country.

Even more alarming than that are the statistics associated with the people who are coming, where 60% of them already have legal status in the U.S. so they are actually not eligible to claim asylum. For those who have had their claims processed, 70% to 80% of them are having their claims rejected but only a handful have been deported from the country. Therefore, people who do not have a valid claim and have already been processed are still here in Canada and we are continuing to have to pay to support them. I do not think that is right.

Even more alarming is that the queue is now supposedly so long that it will take three to four years to finish processing the people who have already come across, so that will escalate those costs again and again. It is not just the federal costs we are talking about. There are costs to the provinces: $200 million in Ontario; $300 million in Quebec. There are costs for the municipalities. From Toronto to London in my province, all of the social services and shelters for the homeless are being taken up by illegal asylum seekers.

This is an issue that needs to be dealt with, and it is a lack of leadership on the part of the Prime Minister that he has not dealt with it. It would not take much more than for him to say that if people do not use our fair legal immigration process and cross at a point of entry that is designated, we are not going to process their claims and pay for their food, shelter, legal aid and all those different things. If that were said, not many people would come. There is an opportunity for the current government to address that but I do not think there is political will because the sentiment in the government is toward open migration.

My colleague who spoke before me talked about the global compact for migration. When it was first discussed that the Prime Minister was going to sign on to this UN agreement, immediately I had a flurry of emails and phone calls to my office from people who were opposed. The things they objected to in this global compact were, first, that they felt Canada would be giving up its sovereignty, our ability to determine who is able to immigrate here.

We want to choose immigrants who are going to fill economic skills gaps that we have. We want people who are going to be reunited with their families. Canadians are a compassionate bunch. We are going to see places in the world where people are experiencing war and torture and genocide and rape, and we want to rescue those kinds of people. We have people coming from upper-state New York where there is no war and no hardship. Those people are not under persecution and they are not being tortured. That is definitely a different situation.

The other concerning thing in the global compact for migration is the freedom of the press. There is language in there that talks about training the media to correctly speak about immigration. That does not sound like freedom of the press and I am a bit concerned. With the current government and the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, when people criticized spending by the government on illegal asylum seekers, they were called un-Canadian. There was a whole sentiment that we should not be able to criticize and talk about these things. That is not the country I grew up in. We have a democracy where we have the right to our opinion, the right to express our beliefs and our views; we have freedom of the press and we do not want anything to come against that.

It has been said that this agreement is non-binding, but I have conferred with our former justice minister who was a former attorney general. He told me that the Supreme Court uses these agreements that Canada has signed with the UN to interpret the law, to hold up the standard that Canada should be behaving to. These things do become binding and that is very concerning as well.

In terms of the border and the exchange of information, I said there were a number of issues and I have talked about a couple of them. There is one issue that is probably specific to my riding that I am really disappointed the government did not address and that has to do with the border crossing at Sombra. For those who do not remember the circumstances surrounding this, the situation is this. In January of this year, the Coast Guard did not shut down the channel when the ice became thick. That is normally what happens, but they allowed several icebreakers to go through at quite a speed and as a result, the ice was pushed and crushed the crossing to the Sombra Ferry. That border crossing is relied on by my constituents, by people on the U.S. side and we called out to the government for help.

The Minister of Public Safety's department CBSA collects $3 million a year of duties off this crossing, but it refused to provide the dollars that were needed to repair, even though the amount needed was less than what they would make in a year off the crossing. The minister of Fisheries and Oceans at the time, whom the Coast Guard reports to, would do nothing as well, even though it was its icebreakers that pushed the ice and caused the situation.

I was told by the former minister of transport that there was a contingency fund just for this sort of thing and if I approached the Minister of Transport, he would be able to apply that contingency fund to restore the border crossing. This was at a time when we were in the middle of the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations and we heard outcries from the mayor, senators, congressmen in the U.S., up through the ambassador from the U.S. to Canada, calling for restoration of this border crossing, which is the contingency border crossing for the Bluewater Bridge, another border crossing within my riding. This is the only other crossing where trucks of an industrial nature can be diverted to. I was disappointed in the extreme that the Minister of Transport claimed there was not such a contingency fund, which the former transport minister said there was.

Combat engineers in my riding told me that the Minister of National Defence, if he decided it was in the public interest, could tell them to repair the border crossing, as they fix bridges all over the place. They had just finished one in Laval and another one in Guelph, certainly they would be happy to see this restored because time was marching on and there is only a certain season where construction can take place. In the St. Clair River there is fish spawning season, so there are regulations about when construction can be done. The Minister of National Defence decided to do nothing as well.

We then escalated to the Prime Minister's Office, which received calls from the ambassador from the U.S. to Canada, calls from the Marine City mayor, calls from me, and nothing was done. Again, we talk about border crossing and we talk about the relationship with our neighbours in the U.S. and here is an example where the Prime Minister and five of his cabinet ministers totally let down the United States as well as my riding. The Minister of Infrastructure was equally unwilling to help, so all the way around it is a border issue that I would have liked to have seen addressed under the government that was an absolute failure.

When we talk about Bill C-21, I notice that the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Conservatives are all standing up to say that we support the legislation and we support the amendments. I am all about efficiency. There is something I find very frustrating as an engineer. There is nothing more concerning than having a limited amount of time to talk about things in this House. There are all kinds of issues that need to be addressed, and we start at the beginning of a debate with Liberals, Conservatives and NDP agreeing but things will continue to press on. Things go to committee even if we agree, and they then come back from committee, and so that is a concern to me in terms of efficiency. I would prefer to see us change the Standing Orders, and perhaps when we move to the new place we will have an opportunity to do that.

The other issue I have here on my list to talk about is the amount of time this bill has taken to get here. It was introduced in June of 2016 and is just coming now. That also highlights one of the difficulties the Liberal government has had with managing the legislation in the House. There have not been that many bills passed compared to previous governments, and again, we see bills that are less meaningful.

I was speaking yesterday about a justice bill. Again it was one of these situations where, if we look at all the things that need to happen in Canada from a justice point of view, we are not too sure why the bills coming forward are the ones that have been selected. There was a bill on solitary confinement and not allowing people to be kept in solitary confinement. It only impacts about 340 Canadians, but quite a number of days were spent on that.

I am coming to the summary about this bill. It is important we continue to have good relations with the U.S. I am a bit concerned about the state of our relations with the U.S. There are a number of things exacerbating the situation. With the free trade agreement that just came through, although I am happy to have a deal, it was a terrible one and could have been negotiated much better if it had been done quickly. As well, I am extremely concerned about the remaining tariffs we have on steel, aluminum and softwood lumber. This is not good. We are claiming that these are illegal tariffs and pursuing action on that, which makes the relationship more fractious.

Now we have this Huawei situation, where the Liberal government has been warned that many countries are not willing to do business with Huawei because of the nature of the way it spies for the Chinese government. The government has been warned not to let it into our 5G network and knows this is a significant issue with the U.S. It has a very confrontational relationship with China, and the U.S. is not going to see our forays with China as improving our national security in any way.

I am concerned all of the actions the Prime Minister is taking, the things he calls out when goes abroad at the G20, as well as the virtue signals, are all things he knows will inflame the President of the United States and cause those kinds of fractious relationships.

It is important we build on the goodwill in this bill. We are starting to exchange data. We should work with the U.S. to find a resolution to border crossing and the marijuana issue. We should protect our borders and be vigilant to make sure we are controlling who comes into the country, and ensure the security of Canadians. If we do that, then we will be moving in the right direction. We know we need to have those borders processing goods and services in an expedient way. Many of our jobs and much of our economy depend on the U.S., so it behooves us to keep moving in the direction of good.

Being that it is the holiday season, I want to wish all the residents of Sarnia—Lambton a very merry Christmas, a happy holiday and a happy new year. To everyone in this House as well, I thank them. It has been an honour to serve with them in this building, and I look forward to serving with them in the new one.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have probably broken my own record, as I have stood up four times to ask questions about this important legislation, Bill C-21.

It was important for me to stand and ask questions, because Vancouver International Airport is in my riding and is actually considered a border city.

It was also important for me to stand up because I received something important from one of my constituents. He asked whether, after the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has signed the United Nations agreement, we should start flying the flag of the United Nations instead of Canada's national flag with the maple leaf on it. That is the question he asked me today.

In my own riding, there are legal immigrants who have been waiting for a long time. There are also legal refugees who did not get the right kind of support.

What would my colleague suggest the government do to solve all the problems in my riding?

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21, an act to amend the Customs Act. Once enacted, this legislation would create an entry/exit program to keep track of when Canadians enter and leave the country. It is a measure I support. In fact, it was our previous Conservative government that negotiated the beyond the border agreement, which included a provision to share entry and exit information with our close friend and ally, the United States.

It is important that our border services have the tools they need to keep Canadians safe, and this legislation would provide one of those tools. It is extremely unfortunate that while Bill C-21 would provide for added security at our borders, that security is being negatively impacted by the influx of illegal immigrants at our borders.

Canadians expect our refugee system to be safe, orderly and compassionate. Unfortunately, what we have seen under the Liberal government is insecurity, chaos and a lack of sincere empathy. Thousands of illegal, or irregular, as Liberals call them, border crossings have occurred since the Prime Minister irresponsibly tweeted “#WelcomeToCanada” in January 2017. As a direct result of that, twice as many refugees are being admitted into Canada as the system was designed to handle.

While I do not want to cast blanket aspersions, some of those coming into our country may very well have criminal records. Without proper background checks, which cannot be done before one crosses illegally, persons who pose a safety risk to our citizens may be slipping into Canada.

The newly appointed Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction certainly has his hands full taking on the huge task of trying to stem the tide. Only time will tell if this new minister can, in fact, effectively take control of this illegal and dangerous situation. He has not so far.

This queue jumping we are seeing has also created an unfair situation, whereby those waiting in refugee camps or facing persecution in dangerous places around the world must wait longer as more and more scarce resources are being spent processing people who are just jumping across the border with the United States. This two-tiered system is compromising the integrity of our entire immigration system while putting those patiently waiting to be legally approved to come to Canada at even further risk.

It is not compassionate, nor fair, when individuals who have been brought here on humanitarian grounds are forced to live in homeless shelters, university dormitories and tent cities, because this country is ill-prepared to handle such volumes of asylum seekers.

The Syrian refugees, who a majority of Canadians overwhelming supported being brought here, have faced housing shortages, particularly in Toronto and Montreal. The mayors of these two large cities recognize that, as well as the newly elected Ontario Conservative government, and they have been requesting federal financial assistance to redress this situation. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have also asked for some additional funding.

To date, the Liberal government's only solution, as it is with so many other issues, has been to use more taxpayers' dollars to manage the crisis instead of resolving the issue with a fully costed plan. Just last week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed that if left unaddressed, this crisis will cost Canadian taxpayers $1.1 billion by 2020, not including the hundreds of millions of dollars incurred by the provinces.

My Conservative colleagues and I will continue to call for policy solutions that go beyond simply spending more money and adding new ministers to the fold. We want to see our immigration system run on a safe, orderly and compassionate basis that prioritizes the world's most vulnerable and ensures that when refugees are brought to this country, we indeed have the ability to help support them.

We do not, and will not, support the newly signed United Nations global compact on migration. While the immigration minister has tried to defend this compact, calling it an effective way to address migration challenges worldwide, Canadians really would not know, as the Liberal government did not bother to consult or brief them at all in regard to the United Nations global compact. In fact, if it had not been for this side of the House, this compact would have been quietly signed by the Liberals, and Canadians would have been left completely in the dark.

As a direct result, many questions and concerns remain, such as whether Canada is surrendering our sovereignty. That is a good question. What are the costs associated with this compact? What exactly does some of the language found in the compact mean, such as “sensitizing and educating” Canadian journalists on how they should report on migration issues?

Conservatives believe that Canadian journalists should be free to scrutinize the government on immigration policy without influence from an international body and without being bought out, to the tune of $600 million, which is the Liberal government's other plan.

Canadians, rightfully, deserve answers to these questions. I know that the constituents in my riding of Battle River—Crowfoot expect and deserve those answers. I have been receiving letters, emails and telephone calls ever since this issue was brought to the front.

I would like to read a portion of an email that I know all members received:

“I am a 58-year-old female born and raised in Canada. I spent over two decades travelling across this great country, from Newfoundland to B.C. and north to Yellowknife. For my work, I spent weeks in towns, cities and rural areas meeting people of different faiths, races and creeds. Nowhere did I see the kind of racism and hate the Prime Minister thinks he needs to 'quell'....

“My only concern is the U.N.'s global migration pact. This agreement is the most destructive piece of literature I have ever read. It will be the end of our great country and the last nail in the coffin of free speech in Canada. This has been hidden on purpose, and after I read this rambling strait jacket of so-called agreement, I understood why. Something so divisive, damaging and horrendous to the future of Canada and it citizens should have been on the front page of every newspaper and magazine in the country.... If it wasn't so sad, I would give a round of applause to our Prime Minister for hiding it so well....

The letter goes on:

“...stunned that there was no vote for us to voice our objections, and they were against signing Canada to it!.... The PM of course, was voted to represent the people of this country, but more and more he decides what this country should look like.”

While time has not allowed me to read this email in its entirety, I would like to finish by quoting a few last words:

“Canada has had decades of peaceful and orderly immigration. Allowing our borders to be open and under the control of the U.N., and not our own government, is the death of our country. What is a country without a border to stop people that may do us harm? We should be the ones to say who, what and why people and things may cross into our country. And this document says that the government will quell or silence any disagreement or negative comments....”

If members on all sides of this House have not yet read the email from Ms. Lori Gagne and Mr. Gunter Retzer sent to them on December 6, I urge them to do so and to please really listen to what they have said, because their sentiments are being expressed by many Canadians.

In closing, I would like to once again state my support for Bill C-21, because I agree with Lori and Gunter that our borders should be under the control of our government.

I would also like to take just a moment to express, as the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman did earlier, the overwhelming sense of loss I am experiencing right now as I stand in this place for the last time until the renovations are done, which is expected to take 10 to 12 years. I have had renovations done in our home that I thought would last six months, and they lasted way longer. I know that when governments do renovations, it typically takes even longer than they expect.

I have spent 18 wonderful years in this amazing chamber, both as part of the government and as part of the opposition. Whichever side of the House I have been on, it has been a real honour and privilege to have been granted the opportunity to rise in this place, time and time again, to debate, to question and to provide answers to questions. I have tried to do so with the utmost respect for this institution and with the sole purpose of trying, to the best of my ability, to represent the constituents of Battle River—Crowfoot.

While I look forward to coming back after Christmas and going into our new chamber in West Block, it is not going to be the same without the amazing architecture, the history and the debates that have taken place in this chamber. I will forever carry with me the memories and the nostalgia of rising in this place to utter the words, “Mr. Speaker”, although I will do it in the other chamber.

I thank the House for the privilege of being able to stand here and speak to Bill C-21, and for the opportunity to just be nostalgic about this beautiful chamber.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when Bill C-21 was first tabled in June of 2016, the relationship we had with the United States was a very close one, so sharing data made sense at that time.

I am increasingly concerned about the tariffs the U.S. has put on us, claiming national security issues. I wonder if the member could comment on how he thinks that is going.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be rising today on Bill C-21 and the amendment proposed by the Senate. I will be splitting my time with my friend, the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.

This could likely be the last time I get to speak in this chamber, and I do so with great emotion. I am very fond of this place. There is so much history here. This building is so beautiful. There have been so many great speeches delivered in this chamber over the past century. Unfortunately, we need to renovate this building. We need to upgrade it, and we will be moving into the new chamber over in the West Block.

As much as I would like to consider this as the House of Commons, the House of Commons is a body of people. It is us, as commoners, gathered together, and wherever we are is where the House of Commons shall be. A lot of people may not realize it, but the green rug and the green decor we have in here represent the fields and the grass where the early House of Commons in Britain used to meet. They would gather in the common lands and pass bills to hold the government to account. Therefore, it is important that as members of Parliament, regardless of partisanship, we remember that principle. First and foremost, we are commoners elected to serve the people and wherever we gather, whether in this beautiful chamber or the temporary chamber being created in the West Block, we will get the business of the country done, with those of us in opposition holding the government to account and, of course, the government bringing forward legislation. As private members we have that opportunity as well.

It is my pleasure to be speaking to Bill C-21. The bill is very similar to legislation that was brought forward by our previous Conservative government. The Liberals, at that time the third party, actually opposed that legislation. They did not believe we needed to improve our relationship on security matters across the border with our friends in the United States.

This is part of the beyond the border action plan, and I appreciate that Daniel Therrien, the Privacy Commissioner, brought forward the amendment that was accepted in the Senate and that we are accepting here. It would ensure that any data that is collected on individuals is only retained for 15 years as part of the public record. It is important that we address that need.

We have to make sure that people understand that Bill C-21 is not only tracking people who arrive here in Canada, but that it would also enable us to track them as they leave. This is of major concern to our security partners, particularly in the United States. It is an obvious national security matter, and it helps us track those dangerous persons who may be entering our country and then leaving. It actually helps us deal with things like the Magnitsky law that we passed last year. The Magnitsky law provides us with the opportunity to enforce sanctions against those who are committing human rights abuses or are corrupt foreign officials. If they are coming to Canada and then leaving, we need to know. They could be trying to launder money or to hide persons because they may be in trouble back in their home country, for example, in the Russian Federation, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia for that matter.

If we are going to have this information, we have to be able to access it and use it for investigations. Some of those investigations involve criminal activity, like fraud, including identity theft. It could even include the fraudulent use of one's identity to come to the country. We also know that this would help us make sure that permanent residents here are actually in compliance with the rules for permanent residency. We know that some permanent residents come here, get their applications done, get accepted into Canada and then leave. No one seems to know they have left and have returned to their homeland, and yet they are in the process and on track to becoming citizens.

This system needs this tool to ensure that the Canada Border Services Agency has the tools to do its job, and make sure that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has the tools to do its job.

We have a system that is backlogged with criminal cases and often victimized by fraudsters. This will enable us to get that documentation and information into the refugee and immigration court processes so we can hold those individuals to account.

The theme for 2018 when looking at the government is that it has failed. The Liberal government has failed on so many different fronts. When talking about border security and national security, it has failed. We know that with border protection, we have an issue with ISIS terrorists who have returned to Canada. We just heard that in question period. Terrorists left this country to wage war on Canada and are allies and to commit mass atrocities and genocide against individuals and communities, and yet instead of stopping them from coming to Canada or arresting them at the scene, they have come back into our country.

All I have to do is to say the name Abu Huzaifa. He has been bragging about coming back to Canada and saying he is untouchable by unbelievers. He openly discussed with the media, whether CBC or the New York Times, all of the atrocities he has committed. He has done podcasts and interviews on television documenting and confessing to the crimes he has committed against the people ISIS has been waging war against and committing human rights abuses against.

When we talk about national security and the reason we want to have Bill C-21 pass, it is because we want to build a strong relationship with the United States. We want to build a stronger relationship with our security partners under the Five Eyes partnership, they being the five nations of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, with whom we share security information to keep our countries safe and secure.

How can we be a trusted security partner when we have a government that is prepared to allow Huawei, a Chinese corporation, to infiltrate our 5G network? It is a corporation that is beholden to the communist government of China. How can we allow them to take data they come into contact with through their information and technology networks like 5G through smart phones and computer systems, and share that with the Communist Party of China?

Why would anyone in the Five Eyes trust the Liberal government when it has not shut down Huawei from accessing our new 5G spectrum? The United States has stopped them from selling smart phones and accessing their networks. Australia and New Zealand have stopped them. Orders have been given by the U.K. now to stop Huawei from selling their phones to government organizations, including their military, never mind participating in their 5G networks. We need to make sure that we can see the government taking national security and border control seriously, although it turns a blind eye when it comes to Huawei.

Talking about border controls, the government likes to brag about all of the Syrian refugees it has brought in. It deeply concerns me when I talk to refugees from the Yazidi community on the streets of Canada, whether in London, Ontario or Winnipeg, Manitoba, who ran away from being sex slaves and from the mass killings of the genocidal network of ISIS. After arriving in Canada, Yazidi refugees have seen their ISIS captors here, the people who sold them into the sex trade. Luckily they have reported them to the RCMP and to the Ontario Provincial Police and now those individuals are being apprehended.

It is disturbing that we are supposed to trust the Liberal government on border security and our American allies are supposed to trust them, and yet we have all of these ISIS terrorists who have returned to Canada. We have had Syrian refugees infiltrated by ISIS, which has snuck into our country that way. How are we supposed to know what the information is when the government cannot get it right? We are supposed to be collecting this information on non-citizens and non-permanent residents who are coming and going from Canada, yet we are allowing in people who have belonged to a terrorist organization like ISIS.

Of course, then all we have to do is look at the illegal border crossers. In Manitoba, we see them coming across at Emerson from Minnesota and North Dakota. In Quebec, of course, they are crossing from New York. That has cost the government $1.1 billion. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has provided that information, and we know that it has caused a great backlog.

We need to have a good relationship with the United States. However, we do not trust the current Liberal government, because it continues to fail on national security matters, to fail on immigration and to fail on managing our border with the United States and with our other allies.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Customs Act.

Consideration of Senate Amendment

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is always interesting to listen to my colleague across the way. Entertaining is probably a more appropriate word.

We are talking about Bill C-21. The Conservatives supported it at first reading, at second reading, at committee and at third reading. They supported it in the Senate. They support the amendment. That is all clear.

The other thing that is clear is this. If the Conservatives could, they would spend the rest of the year, this year and next year, talking about Bill C-21.

The member across the way wants to talk about trade. Let us talk about trade. This is a government that got a trade agreement, when a year ago the Conservatives were capitulating because they were concerned we would not be able to get a trade agreement. Not only do we now have a trade agreement with the U.S., we also have trade agreements with the European Union and Ukraine.

This is a government that understands the importance of trade, because we understand the importance of Canada's middle class and those aspiring to be a part of it. This is a government that has delivered hundreds of thousands of jobs in the last three years by working with industry and Canadians in every region of this country.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to speak after my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill. Her work on the Canada-U.S. file and the border, in particular, has been very important.

I am also very happy to stand in this place. As many MPs have said this week, this is likely my last speech here. Many of my friends, including my friend from Winnipeg North, are probably happy about that. However, I can guarantee him that I will resume my speaking pace in the new chamber, as I know he will.

We all respect this institution, this chamber and the history it represents. Whether I agree with my friends on the other side or not, I respect their ability and freedom to make their case to Canadians, often a bad one, because this is their chamber. My constituents and Canadians who may be watching at home or online should know that we may disagree, but we try to do it without being disagreeable. Even though the member for Winnipeg North will ask me a question full of bombast after my remarks, I respect him, nonetheless.

This is a unique occasion, given the frequency of the Senate to send back amendments. This is probably the first time I have spoken to a bill for the third time. That is probably quite normal for the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, but this is the third time I am speaking on Bill C-21, which was introduced in June of 2016, with its companion bill, Bill C-23, the pre-clearance act. I have spoken to both.

I worked on cross-border trade as a lawyer in the private sector and I was the public safety critic when this Parliament began. I have a raised a number of concerns with respect to the legislation, but have indicated that there is general support by the Conservatives of the entry and exit sharing of information with the U.S. that is represented in the Customs Act.

The amendment from the Senate, which brings us to debate this before the end of session, relates to something I raised in my September 2017 speech on Bill C-21. I was concerned about the information sharing and the storage of the information that would be collected about Canadians leaving and returning to the country and the implications of that vast amount of personal data. Therefore, I am quite happy the Senate has proposed more with respect to the retention of that data, limiting it to 15 years. This is why I support the Senate amendment and I am happy to speak to it today. It is an example of both Houses of Parliament working the way they can, making the bill better.

This is a rare occasion where I am supportive of both the original legislation and the amendment from the Senate.

I have been a representative in this chamber for six years. In fact, tomorrow marks six years to the day since I was escorted into this chamber as a by-election winner. I am getting the golf clap from a few of my Liberal friends, and I will take that over heckles any day. It is a very special day for me. I spoke about that on the radio last week.

On the 12th day of the 12th month of 2012, Prime Minister Harper and Jim Flaherty, a close friend of our family, led me into the House as a new by-election winner. I took my seat in the rump, and I have tried to make a difference ever since. To be true to form in my last speech, especially a 20-minute speech, in the chamber, and I am sorry to inform my Liberal friends of that fact, I would be remiss if I were not somewhat partisan and point to wider issues that should concern Canadians with respect to the Customs Act changes.

As I said, Bill C-21 and Bill C-23, its companion bill, have been with us since June 2016. The Liberals are rushing it through with time allocation on debate and pushing it through in the final days. We are almost in 2019. For almost two and a half years, this legislation has sort of languished in Ottawa. That shows there are efficiency problems with the government.

I will devote my remarks to what Canadians should ask when it comes to our border. Bill C-21 and Bill C-23 would make profound changes to the way Canada and the U.S. operate the borders.

Bill C-23 is the pre-clearance bill, which would allow American ICE officials, immigration and customs enforcement officers to search Canadians on Canadian soil. It probably would shock a lot of Canadians if they had to do a pre-clearance. That will work in a lot of cases to speed up time at the border, which is why we supported it.

Bill C-21 has entry and exit sharing of information, which is also something that is quite unparalleled. That is why data protection measures are bringing this debate back to the floor of the House of Commons. They are the most substantial additions to the relationship between the United States in a generation and a slight erosion of sovereignty. That can be a good thing if Canada is getting more in return in response to this, but it can also be something about which we pause.

Those elements were part of the beyond the border initiative, which I worked on in the former Harper government as the parliamentary secretary for international trade, so I support these measures. However, let us see how the Liberals have allowed the Canada-U.S. relationship to atrophy terribly in the three years of the Liberal government.

The Minister of Public Safety, then the MP for Regina—Wascana, in February 2011, with his appropriate degree of outrage, asked Prime Minister Harper, “Could the Prime Minister at least guarantee minimum gains for Canada? For example, will he get rid of U.S. country of origin labelling?” He went on to to ask if we would get softwood protections and have the Americans eliminate buy American. What was the minister of public safety demanding at that time? He wanted some clear wins for Canada if we were to give up the entry and exit information.

During debate on the exact elements of Bill C-21, when this was being contemplated by the Harper government, the Liberals said that before we acceded to the American request, they wanted to know what Canada would get in return. That is what their most senior member of the cabinet said.

Diplomatic relations even with our closest friend, trading partner and ally are a give and take. It is not just to take or give, give and nothing in return. At the time, the member for Regina—Wascana wanted to see Canada gain, whether it was with the unfair country of origin labelling or other elements of our complex trade relationship.

Bill C-21 and Bill C-23 would allow the Americans to inspect and search Canadians on our own soil. What have we gained? Absolutely nothing. In fact, under the Prime Minister's watch, our relationship with the U.S. has atrophied beyond all recognition. It is not just because of the current occupant of the White House.

Therefore, I will spend a few minutes exploring that and what the former public safety minister demanded. Where are the wins for Canada as we allow more and more American intrusion on decisions related to customs and the border?

In November 2015, President Obama, with a new Liberal Prime Minister in office, cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline was one of the reasons that former prime minister Harper was reticent to pass entry and exit information sharing. We wanted that quid pro quo. We wanted the Americans to approve a pipeline to once again try to get better market prices, more market access for our resources, which is something we are struggling with as a country right now.

We withheld that element of what was a priority for the U.S. in terms of foreign policy to try and secure a win. The prime minister caved within months. He said that he was disappointed. Later he introduced President Obama in this chamber as his “bromance” and he said it was a relationship of “dudeplomacy”. It was a one-way relationship. He did get a state dinner on March 11, 2016. At that dinner, the prime minister said they were closer than friends.

What else did our Prime Minister announce the same day in Washington? With zero consultation with indigenous and territorial leaders, he agreed to ban future development on 17% of Arctic lands and 10% of Arctic waters. It was pure surrender to what President Obama wanted to do in his final months in office. Once again, it was a one-way relationship.

Let us see what the longest-serving Inuk Liberal senator said about that. When I asked retired senator Charlie Watt about the Prime Minister's unilateral action, he said, “There have never been clear consultations.” He went on to say that the federal government said, “This is what's going to happen.”

Is that consultation when a respected Inuk leader and a former Senate colleague of some of the Liberal MPs is basically told by the government what is going to happen? Territorial premiers said they were given an hour or so heads-up on the announcement by Canada's Prime Minister in Washington.

Under President Obama, the Prime Minister was giving up the entry and exit priority which for years the Americans had been asking for and bringing in Bill C-23 on pre-clearance. We lost Keystone and we eroded our own sovereignty and that of our Inuit and Inuk people in our north, which are two huge losses under the first president's relationship with the Prime Minister.

The same day I questioned retired Senator Watt, there was an aboriginal law expert at committee. I asked her if the Prime Minister had violated the country's duty to consult indigenous Canadians as dictated by the Supreme Court of Canada. Robin Campbell's answer was, “The simple answer is yes.” He also breached this duty to consult when he cancelled the northern gateway pipeline.

There are many instances when the Prime Minister's posturing and kind words on reconciliation are not matched by his actions. I would like to see more accountability for that. In fact, I invite Canadians to look at at Chief Fox's column in yesterday's Globe and Mail which says on Bill C-69, the anti-pipeline bill, that there have been no consultations.

There is really nice language but bad actions. Those are the first two elements of the declining Canada–U.S. relationship under President Obama.

What has it been since? We now have the legalization of cannabis, which really is the only promise the Liberals have kept from their 2015 election platform. The Prime Minister, despite the state dinner and despite acceding to many Canadian demands, could not even get the Americans to remove one question, the marijuana question, from the pre-clearance screening on that side of the border. A lot of Canadians should be concerned. If they are asked that question, they could lose the ability to travel to the United States. This could impact people's economic ability to pursue a job or go to the United States because of work. It could impair their freedom of movement. All we needed to do was to get assurance from the U.S. federal government that immigration and custom enforcement, ICE, would not ask that question. We could not even get the U.S. to remove one question from a list.

With Bill C-23, the companion bill, we are allowing Americans to search Canadians on Canadian soil. It is a one-way relationship that Canadians should be concerned about. That issue was under both President Obama and now under President Trump because it took some time for the Liberals to complete their legalization of cannabis. That was one of the concerns the Conservatives held out from day one: Make sure the border issue is resolved with the Americans. We could not get that assurance.

Let us look at NORAD. The Conservatives urged the Liberals to complete our full NORAD security partnership making sure that we are a partner on ballistic missile defence. Had we started talking about security at the time there was missile testing by North Korea, that would have, in the early days of President Trump's time in the White House, shown Canada as the only trade and security partner with the United States, period. Through NORAD, we have a North American defence and have had since the 1950s. Since the 1965 Auto Pact, only Canada has had a trade and integrated security relationship with the United States, which is why we could have been able to avoid section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, which I will get into later. However, we missed an opportunity to actually show partnership to the United States at a time that was critical.

What did we do instead? The Liberals postured in front of the new U.S. president, putting up non-binding criteria for the negotiation of NAFTA, the progressive agenda, to play politics rather than to get down to business with the Americans. With the border, the cannabis question and NORAD are issues three and four where the relationship has declined.

I would also mention the safe third country agreement. My colleague from Calgary Nose Hill talked about the 40,000 people who have illegally crossed the border in Manitoba and Quebec claiming asylum when the government knows that the vast majority of them have no substantive asylum claim. They actually have status in the United States. The minister did not even, for the first year or more, talk to the U.S. about amendments to close the loophole in the safe third country agreement, which is an agreement that was negotiated by the previous Liberal government of Jean Chrétien. Once again, the Liberals did not want to interfere with the Prime Minister's tweet rather than fix the system.

It is interesting, because the current Minister of Public Safety in February 2011 called the entry and exit system with the Americans a surrender of sovereignty. He said, “If we have a common entry and exit system, does it not follow that Canada no longer has sovereign Canadian control over immigration and refugees?” This is a Liberal, now a minister, who was saying that when the Conservative government was considering entry and exit visas.

The Liberal government's inaction and incompetence at the border has surrendered our sovereign control at a time when the Liberals are also going around the world saying that their model should be a best practice used by the world. Canadian confidence in their handling of our system has eroded terribly. That is probably the worst of their failures in our time, and it is allowing Canadian confidence to go down through the Liberals' own inaction.

Finally, with respect to tariffs and NAFTA in general, we were given a one-way, take-it-or-leave-it deal. For two months, the United States and Mexico were at the negotiation table and Canada was not. Mexico played the relationship and the negotiation much more strategically than we did. There was too much politics by the Prime Minister and his minister, and we were given a take-it-or-leave-it deal where we lost on all fronts. There is no win in NAFTA.

When it comes to tariffs, when I spoke to the bill for the second time in May 2018, I warned the Prime Minister that tariffs were on the way. In fact, when Canada was granted a temporary reprieve from steel and aluminum tariffs, on March 11, the Prime Minister said when he was touring steel communities, “as long as there is a free trade deal in North America there won't be tariffs”. Well, I guess he broke that one. He went on to say, “We had your backs last week and we always will.” That was in March.

In May, in debate on Bill C-21, I warned the Prime Minister that tariffs were coming, because the Americans did not take our security considerations over supply of steel from China seriously. Sadly, in June, the U.S. unfairly applied tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, sending our economy into a tailspin in manufacturing in southern Ontario, leading eventually to what we saw with GM and a crisis of confidence in manufacturing. In part, it is because the retaliatory tariffs we brought in were not hurting the Americans but they are hurting many of our suppliers. As I said, Bill C-21 and Bill C-23 were a wholesale surrender to U.S. demands with respect to customs and pre-clearance.

The current Minister of Public Safety demanded in 2011 that Canada, for giving up these elements, should gain something. We have not gained. I will review this for Canadians: Keystone, the Arctic ban, the cannabis question for the border, NORAD partnerships, the safe third country loophole, steel and aluminum tariffs and a take-it-or-leave-it NAFTA.

As I said at the outset, while I support Bill C-21 and the amendment, Canadians need to know that the Canada-U.S. relationship which is critical is not a one-way street where the Americans get what they want and we get nothing. It is about time we see the Prime Minister and his minister stand up for Canadian interests in return for Bill C-21.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect Bill C-21 is being fast-tracked by the government right now. I would surmise that this came up as part of the NAFTA renegotiation agreement. I would like to see what the government actually received for making some of these concessions, but I digress. The reality is that Canadians picked the government based on the assumption that it would put forward legislation that is in the best interests of Canadians. I would encourage Canadians to evaluate the success of the government's choices in doing so in the upcoming election.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her reflections on the many important things that have happened over the last 15 years. It is important for government, when there is a plethora of important things to address, to actually pick the things that are important and take action on them.

With respect to Bill C-21, how important a piece of legislation does the member think this is, in the plethora of important issues facing Canada today?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the amendment before us today would change Bill C-21 by amending proposed subsection 93(1) to clarify that the data collected under proposed sections 92 and 93 would be retained by the agency for a period of no more of 15 years maximum.

I would like to spend the remainder of my time discussing the implications of a 15-year period, given that this is the amendment that we are discussing today and the fact that in a few short days this chamber that we are currently in will likely be closed for a period of 15 years or so. For many of us, this will be the last time we get a chance to speak in this place. In assessing the impact of a 15-year period, let us review how much has changed since parliamentarians rose in this place in 2003.

The member for Calgary Forest Lawn was only in his second term. Many of our colleagues did not carry smart phones; they actually had go back to their offices to check their messages and email and to make some phone calls perhaps. Google still competed with AltaVista as a search engine and, Mr. Speaker, I believe if you looked at the faces of the pages right now in front of you, they would be slightly confused as to what we were talking about. YouTube did not exist, Facebook did not exist, and Twitter did not exist. For our colleagues 15 years ago, responding to news cycles involved reading headlines and watching the morning news, consulting with experts and thought leaders during the day for a few hours, and sending a written statement before a deadline. Fifteen years ago this month, I wrote my last exam for my undergraduate degree.

Therefore, what words of wisdom do I have for parliamentarians who will occupy this place 15 years hence, and what do we need to do to keep this place relevant over the next 15 years? When we look at the things I have just talked about, our world has fundamentally changed in a 15-year period, and across different flavours of government we in this place have a propensity to move way too slowly. In preparation for this speech, I was looking at the Hansard from November 2003, and what was really startling to see was that a lot of the issues we are debating today are very similar in form and concept to those that were being debated in 2003. Now the news cycle does not move in nine-hour increments, but in one-second increments. The economy has fundamentally changed and I want to talk about that in a second too.

When I look at where we need to be in 15 years, we are almost 15 years behind. We need to start looking in Parliament, and do this across party lines, at things like data and privacy in a much more robust way, which I am not even sure we have political lines to discuss yet. I look at things like China's social credit system and the fact that a government like it is using a ubiquitous form of technology to give scores to its citizens that will determine if they can be employed or travel. Then I look at my own smart phone and I wonder how much of my privacy I give up daily. We are advertized to because we give consent to release our data in ways that we often do not realize. It is not just about advertising. It is about knowing where we are and knowing what we might do in our spare time and using that for advertizing or for other nefarious purposes.

We have not, as a Parliament, really started to think about the implications of that for our pluralistic society. Indeed, we might not be able to regulate these issues because things change so quickly. How can Parliament address this over the next 15 years? I am concerned about that. As parliamentarians, we probably need to start talking about the value of data rather than just looking at a regulatory approach. That does tie into this bill as well, but what concerns me is that as a Parliament we are just not there.

I watched the U.S. congressional hearing of Mark Zuckerberg some time ago, where, in one of the questions, he was asked about email. There was just no connection between the reality of the data breach that was alleged to have occurred and legislators' knowledge of the context in which we are operating. Therefore, I hope that in a 15-year period we would start getting this right, because data and the transfer of data and how it is used is affecting every aspect of Canada.

That brings me to the next point. I hope we can get our act together on the economy in Canada. The way the economy is operating is fundamentally changing. Someone who is entering the workforce is not going to have the same paradigm that you and I, Mr. Speaker, did when we entered the economy. For a lot of people 18 and under, the reality is that full-time work in one job might not be available to them. Many people today work in the gig economy, driving Ubers, doing a little stint with Instacart during the day, or small contract work as opposed to sustained long-term work over time.

What does this mean for home ownership? What will home ownership even look like in 15 years? Does it exist in Canada? How do we ensure that people have opportunities to participate in the economy and that we are do not see income disparity growing over time? How do we sustain a middle class as the economy changes? These are things that deficit spending and small tweaks to the tax code are not going to address, because the economy has fundamentally changed and is fundamentally shifting. That reality is something I never hear us talk about here.

In 15 years, I hope we will have started to take this issue seriously and will not be looking at it with a regulatory approach, with government becoming even more onerous and ubiquitous and more entrenched in society. Rather, we need to focus on how we can allow people to prosper and innovate as the economy changes, which we should not necessarily see as either a good or bad thing, but just something that is happening that we need to adapt to in order to make sure that people can still prosper as we go forward. This is something we have not spent a lot of time discussing in this place, and I hope that we do in the future.

I also hope that we start looking pretty seriously at Canada's role in the world. Times have changed. Our relationship with the United States is not what it once was. We are seeing the heads of major global powers rearing, which could lead to some pretty serious instability over time. We have to ask a very difficult question: How do we maintain our country's sovereignty? We have to start taking that question very seriously. I do not think we are equipped to defend ourselves as a country. We need to do a better job in this place at really taking that seriously, understanding that procurement of military assets is not something that can be led by bureaucrats over a 20-year period who fail to deliver results when there are very real threats to our sovereignty, including in the north, with regard to trading relationships, and getting caught in the middle of disputes between large powers.

If in 15 years time we have not figured that out, we are going to have a major problem on our hands. I do see the world changing in that dynamic, and it is not for the better. We have to be prepared to stand strong and true if we are going to stand strong and free. That means that we really have to think about that. It also means that if we do believe in multilateralism, we do not allow these multilateral organizations around the world to dictate our policy without their being tasked for reform.

Many of our multilateral organizations 15 years ago were starting to their efficacy fall away from their original purposes when they were put into place after the great wars. I am concerned about where our country will be in 15 years time if we do not start pushing the status quo and some of the sacred cows associated with the United Nations, the European Union, NATO and other groups that have served the world in the past but now have questionable roles, given perhaps nebulous mandates or efficacy, and which do not, as Parliament does, stand up and realize that questioning dogma is something we are supposed to do in here from time to time.

I worry about where our country will be in 15 years. I have spoken to some issues here in the House. Why can we not talk about how the United Nations selects refugees, when we do not see them referring genocide victims to host countries, or about why the United Nations will not condemn Hamas?

Why can we not talk about how we interact with our allies in terms of military objectives, or about the role of multilateral organizations? Are they supposed to be giant bureaucracies that sometimes just provide contracts for management consultants and cocktail parties, or are they supposed to do something? What is that something, and what is Canada's role in that change over time? Is Canada's role sometimes to maybe say that everything is not working and that we need to tweak stuff? Is it our role to just stand idly by and say, “Nothing to see here”?

I would hope that in 15 years' time this chamber would become a place where we can question dogma, where although we might not agree on the policy instrument or outcome, we could at least agree that in order to move forward and to make progress, we cannot simply say there is nothing to see and nothing to change, when there is.

The other thing that I think we have to think about over a 15-year time period is the people we represent. That goes without saying in any instance, but we have seen movements around the world bringing governments to power for different reasons, but each reflective of the fact that there are a large number of people around the world who do not feel they are listened to or that they have a place in here, or who feel they are not represented by the people who might occupy this place in 15 years' time.

There are a lot of people around the world who have fought, and especially in our country, who have gone overseas to fight in missions, and who now question how they are treated at home. There are a lot of people whose skills are becoming out of date, as manufacturing processes and industries change, and they are asking, “What about me?” The response they often get from us is that, “You're wrong. You're not experiencing anything wrong. What you're feeling, what you're saying is wrong.” When we ignore the cries of people, we are failing in our job as parliamentarians.

That is something to keep in mind. Over a 15-year period, we cannot just listen to a certain group of privileged people when we are making our policy decisions. I would hope that over a 15-year time period we would start reinserting people's voices back into some of our policies that we bring forward, and that people's concerns would not be dismissed by labelling them, as certain people in this place are wont to do from time to time. Instead, we should actually reflect in our policies both the best data and the best outcomes, while also reflecting the challenges of the people we represent.

The reality is that we are paid to be here on behalf of those people. We are paid to serve them, not ourselves. If we fail to put their voices in our policies and to think about that over time, I think we will fail them. I am concerned about some of the choices we have made over the last 15 years. The state is ubiquitous. Very rarely in this place do we question the role of the state. We often talk about how we have added bureaucracy or regulation, or have increased the state, but we often do not talk about what we managing.

What concerns me is that time after time I see colleagues of all stripes walk in to read speeches prepared by government bureaucrats, without even reading them beforehand, or without even talking to their constituents about how they feel about a certain bill. When we allow our public service to dictate policy and direction, we fail in our role as parliamentarians. Even parliamentarians with a role in the government have a role to question what the government is doing, and the role of the state, be it around the cabinet table, in our caucuses and certainly here in this place.

I would hope that in 15 years we realize that it is not a sin to question dogma. I have seen that to be perhaps one of the most challenging things with respect to what has changed in this place over the last 15 years. We each have a responsibility to go back to the voices of people and reflect them in our policies and in the context of a changing economy.

I could spend lot of time talking about artificial intelligence. Maybe in 15 years we will not have jobs in here. We do not know. We have the tools to have a direct democracy. Maybe that is something the people of Canada will start talking about in a short period of time.

What do we need to do? Parliamentarians and all Canadians need to value critical thinking. When we talk about the changes in news, how news is consumed, what is news and what is true, I do not understand why we would support failed media business models or why we would talk about the fact that the government has to prop up or determine what is right and what is wrong. In a democracy and in a pluralism, it is up to us to critically evaluate with our own skill sets what is true, what is right, what everybody's agenda is. Those are our responsibilities in a democracy, condensed and coagulated and focused. As parliamentarians, they are even more so.

In 15 years' time, I would hope that we are not having conversations in here about the Speaker's role, Question Period or whose job it is to regulate the content of ministers. We are taking that responsibility on ourselves and we are coming up with what is right and true.

I hope that we also protect our pluralism. I hope that we protect our sovereignty. I hope that we do not cede the rights that we have as parliamentarians and as Canadians to other agencies or organizations around the world, that we do not cede our philosophies and our democracies to ideals that are not that, around the world. I hope that we reverse this path that we have been on of increasing the role of the state and go back to a role that is more free.

I would hope that people who follow us here above all come into this place and challenge dogma, that they challenge the status quo within their own parties, even when it is difficult, across the aisle when it is not so much so, and that they are receptive to different schools of thought.

The rights that we have in Canada are not static. We are the exception; we are not the rule around the world. We have to constantly protect our rights and assume that they are under threat, because they are, and our actions and our words in this place should reflect that.

In 15 years, I hope there is one thing that does not change and that is that the people in this place respect and love the people who love them, who stand behind them and make them better people, even in the day-to-day grind, the sausage making of this place, in the light of public scrutiny those who love us, who protect us, and who are there for us even on dark days.

In the dying minutes of my speech I would like to thank a few people who make my life easier. They are the engine behind the hood ornament. I would like to thank Sean Schnell, Julia Parsons, Bari Miller, Kim Tyres and Jillian Montalbetti for working like slaves over the last many years for the people of Calgary Nose Hill, and Paul Frank as well. I would also like to thank Jeff, Tori, Kori and Kepi for teaching me that there is more to life than this place from time to time.

In 15 years, I hope that we still remember how special it is and what a privilege it is to stand and serve people in this beautiful, wonderful free country. I hope that we continue to understand that what we have here is something that we have to fight for, even when it is amongst ourselves, and that it is indeed worth fighting for.