Bill C-59 (Historical)

National Security Act, 2017

An Act respecting national security matters

Part 1 enacts the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Act, which establishes the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency and sets out its composition, mandate and powers. It repeals the provisions of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act establishing the Security Intelligence Review Committee and amends that Act and other Acts in order to transfer certain powers, duties and functions to the new Agency. It also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 1.‍1 enacts the Avoiding Complicity in Mistreatment by Foreign Entities Act to authorize the issuance of directions respecting the disclosure of and request for information that would result in a substantial risk of mistreatment of an individual by a foreign entity and the use of information that is likely to have been obtained as the result of mistreatment of an individual by a foreign entity.
Part 2 enacts the Intelligence Commissioner Act, which provides that the duties and functions of the Intelligence Commissioner are to review the conclusions on the basis of which certain authorizations are issued or amended, and determinations are made, under the Communications Security Establishment Act and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and to approve those authorizations, amendments and determinations if those conclusions are reasonable. This Part also abolishes the position of the Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment, provides for that Commissioner to become the Intelligence Commissioner, transfers the employees of the former Commissioner to the office of the new Commissioner and makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 3 enacts the Communications Security Establishment Act, which establishes the Communications Security Establishment and, among other things, sets out the Establishment’s mandate as well as the regime for authorizing its activities. It also amends the National Defence Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to
(a) add a preamble to that Act and provide a mechanism to enhance the accountability of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service;
(b) add new limits on the exercise of the Service’s power to reduce threats to the security of Canada including, in particular, by setting out a list of measures that may be authorized by the Federal Court;
(c) provide a justification, subject to certain limitations, for the commission of acts or omissions that would otherwise constitute offences;
(d) exempt employees of the Service and persons acting under their direction from liability for offences related to acts committed for the sole purpose of establishing or maintaining a covert identity;
(e) create a regime for the Service to collect, retain, query and exploit datasets in the course of performing its duties and functions;
(f) make amendments to the warrant regime that are related to datasets; and
(g) implement measures for the management of datasets.
Part 5 amends the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act to, among other things,
(a) emphasize that the Act addresses only the disclosure of information and not its collection or use;
(b) clarify the definition of “activity that undermines the security of Canada”;
(c) clarify that advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression are not activities that undermine the security of Canada unless they are carried on in conjunction with an activity that undermines the security of Canada;
(d) provide that a disclosure of information is authorized only if the disclosure will contribute to the carrying out by the recipient institution of its national security responsibilities and will not affect any person’s privacy interest more than reasonably necessary;
(e) require that information disclosed be accompanied by information about the accuracy of the disclosed information and the reliability of the manner in which it was obtained; and
(f) require that records be prepared and kept in respect of every disclosure of information and that every year a copy of every record prepared in the preceding year be provided to the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.
Part 6 amends the Secure Air Travel Act to authorize the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to collect from air carriers and operators of aviation reservation systems, for the purpose of identifying listed persons, information about any individuals who are on board or expected to be on board an aircraft for any flight prescribed by regulation, and to exempt an air carrier from providing that information, or from the application of any provision of the regulations, in certain circumstances. It amends the Act to authorize that Minister to collect personal information from individuals for the purpose of issuing a unique identifier to them to assist with pre-flight verification of their identity. It also reverses the rule in relation to a deemed decision on an application for administrative recourse. Finally, it amends the Act to provide for certain other measures related to the collection, disclosure and destruction of information.
Part 7 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) make certain procedural modifications to the terrorist listing regime under section 83.‍05, such as providing for a staggered ministerial review of listed entities and granting the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness the authority to amend the names, including aliases, of listed entities;
(b) change the offence of advocating or promoting terrorism offences in general, in section 83.‍21, to one of counselling the commission of a terrorism offence, and make corresponding changes to the definition of terrorist propaganda;
(c) raise one of the thresholds for imposing a recognizance with conditions under section 83.‍3, and amend when that section is to be reviewed and, unless extended by Parliament, to cease to have effect;
(d) repeal sections 83.‍28 and 83.‍29 relating to an investigative hearing into a terrorism offence and repeal subsections 83.‍31(1) and (1.‍1), which require annual reports on such hearings;
(e) require the Attorney General of Canada to publish a report each year setting out the number of terrorism recognizances entered into under section 810.‍011 in the previous year; and
(f) authorize a court, in proceedings for recognizances under any of sections 83 and 810 to 810.‍2, to make orders for the protection of witnesses.
Part 8 amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act to, among other things, ensure that the protections that are afforded to young persons apply in respect of proceedings in relation to recognizance orders, including those related to terrorism, and give employees of a department or agency of the Government of Canada access to youth records, for the purpose of administering the Canadian Passport Order.
Part 9 requires that a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of this enactment take place during the fourth year after section 168 of this enactment comes into force. If that section 168 and section 34 of Bill C-22, introduced in the 1st session of the 42nd Parliament and entitled the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, come into force within one year of each other, the reviews required by those sections are to take place at the same time and are to be undertaken by the same committee or committees.

Electoral Participation Act

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-65 this evening in the House, the electoral participation act. As the title of this bill suggests, one of its key priorities is to encourage participation in the electoral process. We know that democratic engagement rests on trust in our electoral system, and that is why Bill C-65 proposes to enhance safeguarding measures in the Canada Elections Act.

As we all know, Canada's democracy is among the strongest and most stable in the world, thanks in large part to the Canada Elections Act, which is the fundamental legislative framework that regulates our elections in this great nation. We have every reason to be proud of this legislation, but we are not immune to the global challenges that modernized democracies face. The integrity of the electoral process in the lead-up to, during and after elections is a prerequisite for trust in our democracy. This is why it is essential that we continue to address evolving threats to our democracy through regular improvements to the Canada Elections Act. This helps ensure that our system remains robust, resilient and equipped to keep pace with the issues of our time.

It should come as no surprise that safeguarding our elections includes measures to mitigate foreign interference. Foreign interference can take many forms, including social media campaigns designed to sow disinformation. The Communications Security Establishment's latest report highlights that online foreign influence activities have become a new normal, with adversaries increasingly seeking to influence our elections. We and all Canadians have a right to be concerned about these threats. This is why the government has been proactive in taking steps to counter foreign interference.

Our government's work to protect our democracy began as early as 2016, when we tabled Bill C-22. It led to the creation of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, a committee that assembles members from both chambers of Parliament to review matters concerning national security and intelligence.

In 2018, the government put forward Bill C-59, which enacted the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Act, giving the agency the mandate to review and investigate all Government of Canada national security and intelligence activities. That same year, we also introduced Bill C-76, which modernized the Canada Elections Act and introduced a number of prohibitions, including a prohibition preventing foreigners from unduly influencing electors, a prohibition against foreign third parties from spending on election-related activities and a prohibition against third parties from using any foreign funds.

In 2019, we put in place the plan to protect Canada's democracy, which included the security and intelligence threats to elections, or SITE, task force. The plan was subsequently updated in advance of the 2021 general election.

Most recently, we introduced Bill C-70, the countering foreign interference act, which complements measures to further safeguard our federal elections and mitigate foreign influence in Bill C-65, which I am speaking to today. Finally, last September, our government launched the public inquiry into foreign interference. We look forward to receiving the commissioner's final report as well as recommendations.

These substantial government-wide initiatives demonstrate this government's commitment to remaining vigilant in our efforts to protect our electoral system. This commitment is further reflected in the safeguarding measures proposed through Bill C-65. I would like to highlight how this bill proposes to better protect our elections from foreign influence, disinformation campaigns and the misuse of technology, all of which seek to erode trust in our institutions. We do this so that Canadians can feel safe and confident when participating in our democracy.

First, we know that election interference can happen at all times and not just during elections. This is why Bill C-65 proposes to extend the application of the existing ban on undue foreign influence at all times, rather than being limited to the election period. This means, for example, that the ban on foreign entities unduly influencing voters to vote a certain way or influencing them to refrain from voting would extend to all times.

Second, Bill C-65 would create a clearer and more consistent definition of foreign entity activities under the act to close any and all gaps. For example, currently foreign entities can circumvent the law by having more than one purpose, where the ban on undue influence is limited to a foreign entity whose only purpose is to unduly influence voters. That would no longer be possible under Bill C-65. The bill proposes that foreign entities who have even just one of their primary activities as unduly influencing electors would be captured.

Third, Bill C-65 proposes important new financing rules to increase transparency and prevent anonymous foreign and dark money from entering our elections. This includes banning the use of crypto asset contributions, money orders and prepaid instruments such as prepaid credit cards or store gift cards for regulated activities by third parties and political actors.

Bill C-65 would introduce important new financing rules for third parties. Allow me to explain. Bill C-65 would allow third parties to use only contributions they have received from Canadian citizens and permanent residents to pay for regulated election expenses. This includes partisan activities, partisan advertising, election advertising and election surveys. This means that third parties would no longer be able to use funds received from any other third parties, such as corporations or businesses, for regulated expenses. For greater transparency, third parties would also need to report on the details of the individuals who contributed in total over $200, including names, addresses and amounts of each contribution.

We understand that third parties may not all receive contributions and may have their own revenue they wish to use for regulated expenses. In those instances, third parties who meet the threshold of 10% or less of their overall annual revenue and contributions would also be able to use their own revenues to pay for regulated activities. In addition, third parties would be required to provide financial statements to Elections Canada proving the revenue is their own.

The amendments to enhance transparency on the source of third party funding are important. Under the current rules, third parties are required to report only on contributions given to them for election purposes. Contributions received for other purposes may be mixed into the third party's general revenue, leaving a transparency gap as to where the funds came from.

The Chief Electoral Officer spoke to this concern in his June 2022 recommendations report tabled here in Parliament. He noted that the proportion of third party reporting on the use of their own funds for regulated expenses increased significantly, from 8% in 2011 to 37% in 2019 and 63% in 2021. This increasing trend in third party financing is concerning, which is why the government is taking action through Bill C-65. Let me reiterate, however, that third parties who do not meet the threshold would still be able to participate in regulated activities, but they would have to do so with the contributions they received as donations from Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

The next element I would like to speak on is disinformation. Disinformation, a key tactic by malign actors, aims to fuel discord and erode public trust in the electoral process. It seeks to manipulate voters and electoral processes through intentional falsehoods, often spread online, as well as, quite frankly, intimidation at times.

In 2022, the Chief Electoral Officer called disinformation about the electoral process the most important threat to Canada's election mandate. Security agencies have noted that disinformation is a persistent threat to election integrity. In the 2021 national electors study conducted by Elections Canada following the 44th general election, 71% of electors were concerned that the spread of false information online could have a moderate or major impact on the electoral outcome. This included 37% who thought it could have a major impact. As noted by the Chief Electoral Officer, intelligence officials and leading academics, the use and impact of disinformation is not limited to the election period.

Bill C-65 aims to build confidence in our electoral process and our democratic institutions through new and expanded prohibitions to address these threats. In particular, the bill would introduce a ban on false statements about the voting process that are deliberately made to disrupt the conduct or the results of an election, all while respecting the principles of free expression and open dialogue.

Amendments provide clear guidance on the type of intentional false statements that could be made or published to ensure that contraventions of the act are clear and enforceable. This includes making or publishing false or misleading statements relating to who may vote in an election; the voting registration process; when, where and how to vote; whom to vote for; the process to become a candidate; how votes are validated or counted; or the results of an election.

Another element I would like to address is the potential misuse of technology. Technology, as we all know, has helped revolutionize democracy, but it also gives rise to risks. For example, content generated by artificial intelligence is becoming harder to distinguish from reality. When paired with disinformation, artificial intelligence such as deepfakes poses a significant threat. Today, with a computer and a few keystrokes, malicious actors can generate highly realistic videos, audio and text content that can depict people saying or doing things they never said or did.

To address this emerging issue, Bill C-65 would amend existing prohibitions in the act that can lend themselves to the misuse of artificial intelligence, namely false statements, impersonation and misleading publications, to provide clarity that they apply regardless of the means used. This would mean, for example, that the prohibition on impersonating the Chief Electoral Officer, an election official, or a candidate would apply regardless of the technology that might be used now, to include deepfakes or other technologies that may evolve in the future.

Bill C-65 would also extend the scope of the existing ban on using a computer to affect the results of an election, to now apply to the use of a computer to disrupt the conduct of an election.

The last element I would like to speak about and highlight is the importance of the personal safety of those people who participate in our electoral process. As my hon. colleagues know well, the threat environment continues to evolve. There has, sadly, been a surge in vandalism at constituency offices, increasingly violent online discourse and threats made against party leaders, candidates and election officials, as witnessed during the 2021 general election.

Bill C-65 therefore seeks to address some of these concerns by providing increased privacy and safety to electoral participants. For example, returning officers' personal information would be better protected by removing the requirement for them to publish their home address in the Canada Gazette; rather, only their municipality and province of residence would be published.

We have also seen reports of or have personally experienced a growing uncivil discourse and behaviour targeting members of Parliament, including me. Members from all parties have spoken out against unacceptable harassment and threats, as well as intimidation.

Indeed, the Sergeant-at-Arms and Corporate Security Officer of the House of Commons recently noted that harassment of people elected to serve this very institution has skyrocketed, increasing 800% in the last five years. To respond to this alarming trend, Bill C-65 proposes two changes to the disclosure of requirements for regulated fundraising events over $200 that include a prominent attendee, such as a party leader. To ensure the safety of all participants, the requirement to provide five days' advance public notice of such regulated fundraising events would be repealed. To ensure ongoing transparency, precise location details for events would continue to be provided to the Chief Electoral Officer as part of the party's postevent reporting requirements under the act.

However, to protect the security of hosts of events who engage in politics or book a political event, the requirement for a public-facing postevent report 30 days later would only include the municipality and the province of the event. This approach aims to prevent bad actors from undermining the safety of participants and hosts at these events. It aims to strike an appropriate balance between the very real security threats faced and the ongoing need for transparency.

In closing, I know that safeguarding our democracy is a priority shared by all of my hon. colleagues in this House. The amendments to the Canada Elections Act proposed in Bill C-65 build on existing safeguards and propose a number of targeted but critical improvements to continue to build trust in our democratic processes.

I am confident that all members of Parliament can work together to ensure that Bill C-65 is studied and passed in time for all measures to come into force before the next fixed-date general election.

Bill C-59—Proposal to Apply Standing Order 69.1

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order pursuant to Standing Order 69.1, to ask that you treat Bill C-59, an act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, as an omnibus bill, and divide it for voting purposes at the second and third reading stages.

This argument is, of course, without prejudice to the arguments which were made last week by me in respect of the rule against anticipation and Ways and Means Motion No. 19, which preceded the introduction of Bill C-59, for which the House is still awaiting a ruling from the Speaker.

Section (1) of Standing Order 69.1 provides that “In the case where a government bill seeks to repeal, amend or enact more than one act, and where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked, the Speaker shall have the power to divide the questions, for the purposes of voting". Section (2) of the same standing order makes an exception for budget implementation bills, stating, “if the bill has as its main purpose the implementation of a budget and contains only provisions that were announced in the budget presentation”.

As Speaker Regan ruled on November 8, 2017, at page 15143 of the Debates, where a budget bill contains measures which were not part of the budget, this budget bill exemption applies only to those elements which were in the budget itself. The non-budget elements can be divided under the provisions of Standing Order 69.1(1).

In the case of Bill C-59, calling it a budget implementation bill would be exceedingly generous. While reference to the March budget can be found in the long title, the short title ignores this, calling the bill the “fall economic statement implementation act, 2023”. Not even the government House leader, the manager of the government's parliamentary program, used it as a budget implementation bill, judging by her remarks in the last two weekly business statements. On November 23, she told the House, “it is the intention of the government to commence debate next week concerning the bill relating to the fall economic statement”. This past Thursday, she said that priority will be given to the second reading of Bill C-59, an act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement. Therefore, I would argue that the evident treatment given to Bill C-59 by its own proponents, would mean that its main purpose is, indeed, not the implementation of a budget. Accordingly, it would follow that the exemption found in Standing Order 69.1(2) cannot apply here.

I would further argue that Speaker Regan's November 2017 ruling can be distinguished from the facts at hand today, namely that he dealt with a budget bill with a few extra add-ons. Here, we have a bill that is not even being treated, in the main, as a budget implementation bill and that, therefore, cannot even benefit from a partial exemption, since the main purpose of Bill C-59 is not to implement a budget.

Having addressed that matter, I now wish to turn to the matter of treating the bill as an omnibus one, “where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked”. In my respectful view, the fact that a series of measures may have been previewed in a fall economic statement does not amount to a so-called common element. Given that fall economic statements are often popularly dubbed “mini-budgets” and that the House itself recognizes that budgets often string together otherwise unrelated things by creating the budget implementation bill exemption in Standing Order 69.1, it is my submission that the mere inclusion of an item in a fall economic statement cannot be sufficient to overcome the treatment required for an omnibus bill.

Even if the Chair might be persuaded that all of the measures are, in one form or another, a matter of broad economic policy, I would refer you to Speaker Regan's March 1, 2018, ruling at page 17551 of the Debates:

In presenting arguments relating to Bill C-63, the hon. member for Calgary Shepard raised an interesting concept from the practice in the Quebec National Assembly. Quoting from page 400 of Parliamentary Procedure in Québec, he stated:

“The principle or principles contained in a bill must not be confused with the field it concerns. To frame the concept of principle in that way would prevent the division of most bills, because they apply to a specific field.”

While their procedure for dividing bills is quite different from ours, the idea of distinguishing the principles of a bill from its field has stayed with me. While each bill is different and so too each case, I believe that Standing Order 69.1 can indeed be applied to a bill where all of the initiatives relate to a specific policy area, if those initiatives are sufficiently distinct to warrant a separate decision of the House.

In this particular instance, I have no trouble agreeing that all of the measures contained in Bill C-69 relate to environmental protection. However, I believe there are distinct initiatives that are sufficiently unrelated that they warrant multiple votes.

Deputy Speaker Bruce Stanton dealt with another similar situation when he ruled on June 18, 2018, at page 21163 of the Debates, in respect of a former Bill C-59, stating it:

...does clearly contain several different initiatives. It establishes new agencies and mechanisms for oversight of national security agencies and deals with information collection and sharing as well as criminal offences relating to terrorism. That said, one could argue, as the parliamentary secretary did, that since these are all matters related to national security, there is, indeed, a common thread between them. However, the question the Chair must ask itself is whether these specific measures should be subjected to separate votes.

He goes on to state, “In this particular case, while the Chair has no trouble agreeing that all of the measures contained in Bill C-59 relate to national security, it is the Chair's view that there are distinct initiatives that are sufficiently unrelated as to warrant dividing the question.”

Therefore, I would suggest that today's bill, Bill C-59, should also be divided for voting purposes at second reading and, if necessary, at third reading.

After a brief review and analysis of the bill's contents, it seems that it could actually be divided into several groupings: clauses 1 to 95, proposing amendments to the Income Tax Act and consequential amendments to other enactments, as well as the bill's short title; clauses 96 to 128, proposing the creation of a digital services tax; clauses 129 to 136, 138 to 143 and 145 to 167, proposing amendments concerning the excise tax, other than the exemption of GST for mental health services, which is also contained in Bill C-323, a matter to which I will return later; clauses 168 to 196, proposing amendments to the laws governing financial institutions; clauses 197 to 208, proposing to create a leave entitlement related to pregnancy loss and to amend the law concerning bereavement leave; clauses 209 to 216, proposing the creation of a Canada water agency; clauses 217 and 218, proposing amendments to the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act; clauses 219 to 230, proposing amendments to the Canadian Payments Act; clauses 231 to 272 proposing various amendments to competition law; clauses 273 to 277, proposing amendments exempting post-secondary schools from the laws concerning bankruptcy and insolvency; clauses 278 to 317, proposing various legislative amendments concerning money laundering, terrorist financing and sanctions evasions; clauses 318 and 319, concerning the information which is published by the government respecting certain transfer payments to the provinces; clauses 320 to 322, proposing amendments concerning the Public Sector Pension Investment Board; and clauses 323 to 341, proposing the creation of a department of housing, infrastructure and communities.

Additionally, I would propose that clauses 137 and 144, concerning the exemption of GST for mental health services, mirroring the provisions of Bill C-323, as well as clauses 342 to 365, creating employment insurance and job protection benefits for adoptive and surrogate parents, replicating the substance of Bill C-318, should also be separated out from Bill C-59. However, in this instance, I would suggest that, instead of a separate vote, these provisions would simply not proceed further given that the House has already taken a decision on the principle of those matters when it adopted the common-sense Conservative private members' bills at second reading.

Approaching it in this fashion might be an elegant solution to squaring the circle in the ruling that remains pending on Ways and Means Motion No. 19.

In short, Bill C-59, the fall economic statement implementation bill, is an omnibus bill under Standing Order 69.1. It qualifies in no way for the budget bill exemption in that rule. It can and should be divided into separate votes, about 14 or so based on the thematic groupings of the bill's clauses. It would, if so divided, offer an elegant solution for a pending Speaker's ruling to reconcile the long-standing rules and precedents of the House respecting multiple decisions on the same question that, for reasons we are awaiting, did not apply to Ways and Means Motion No. 19 and that saw the House vote, yet again, on the principles found in two Conservative private members' bills that had already been adopted at second reading.

Opposition Motion—Public Inquiry into Allegations of Foreign Interference

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to rise today on this important topic. I found the debate earlier quite interesting. We saw the Conservatives and the NDP fight about who did what first and who is criticizing the government more.

Meanwhile, on this side of the House, we are actually getting to work to make sure that our democratic institutions are protected. While we do that, the opposition parties can stand up to fight about who did what best, whose clip came first and whose motion did what.

I think Canadians expect a government that puts partisanship aside to focus on the real issues that our country is facing. The threat of foreign interference is not a partisan issue. Every single Canadian, regardless of who they vote for or what party they support, should absolutely care about this issue. That should be reflected in the House.

The issue of foreign interference in our democratic institutions is not a new one. In fact, it is not even a unique one for Canada. We have seen instances around the world, such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We have seen efforts of foreign interference in France, Australia and New Zealand. All of these countries have been dealing with this issue.

In fact, Canada was warned by CSIS in 2013 about the threat of foreign interference. The then democratic institutions minister, now the opposition leader, did absolutely nothing about it. The leader of the official opposition said in this place that he did not do anything about it because it did not serve his partisan interests at the time. That should indicate to Canadians the absolute basics of where the opposition parties are coming from on this issue.

We now have the report by the right hon. David Johnston, and before members have even had a chance to dive into that report, the leader of the official opposition and the leader of the Bloc have said no. They are going to close their eyes to facts. They do not want to receive the secure national security briefing because they want to be able to continue to still make ignorant claims. They would like to remain blind to the facts. It should not surprise anyone that a party based on conspiracy theories and clickbait would not be a mature and responsible opposition party.

Yesterday, in this very place, the Leader of the Opposition said that he did not want a national security briefing because he did not want to be silenced. That should tell Canadians the level of maturity of the Leader of the Opposition. He is not ready to lead this country. He is barely ready to lead an official opposition of this place.

For somebody to suggest that having a national security briefing silences one on this issue is not only beyond false, but also beyond comprehension. It shows how little he knows about national security matters.

I myself have national security clearance because I was a member of the NSICOP committee, yet I have debated on this issue several times. I am leading the opposition day speech in this place. I have spoken out at PROC. I have asked witnesses serious questions. In fact, in my role in the national defence committee, I brought forward a motion that we study cybersecurity. This was all while having national security briefings, sitting on NSICOP and studying foreign interference, yet I have been able to serve my constituents by raising the issues that matter.

By taking national security seriously and by understanding that one can advocate for stronger democratic institutions, one can still advocate for stronger legislation and mechanisms while also protecting the national security information of this country.

That is what responsible members do. If I can do it, as a member of this government, certainly the Leader of the Opposition should be mature enough to understand the importance of national security while still being able to advocate for stronger mechanisms and measures. The fact that he cannot comprehend how to put the national security of this country first, instead of his partisan attacks, should tell Canadians everything they need to know about the seriousness, or lack thereof, of the Leader of the Opposition and, for that matter, the leader of the Bloc.

When it comes to the issues, I have heard many times in this debate that confidence in Canadians is being eroded. Is that not ironic given the members saying it are the ones who are closing their eyes to the facts? In the right hon. David Johnston's report, he specifically talks about the balance between wanting to make a report that everyday Canadians can read and access with better understand, while at the same time protecting the national security information we all rely on to keep this country safe. He acknowledges that.

David Johnston said that he created an annex to this report with all of the information he based his decisions on. He included this annex for leaders of all recognized parties, members of NSICOP and those with national security clearance that need to have access to it. He specifically said in this report for leaders of the opposition and members of NSICOP to please read this annex, the information that he based his decisions on. He said that they can read it and come forward if they believe that, based on the information, his recommendations were ill-informed or they have taken a different approach.

It is pretty open and transparent to say there is a balance between Canadians needing to understand the positions and the recent media leaks while protecting national security. He then went on to say to everybody who has that national security clearance, such as opposition parties and NSICOP, that all of the information, which he based his recommendations and findings on, is in one easy document, and that, if they disagree with those findings, then they can come forward and say so. However, this will be done while protecting the confidential information collected by the national security community. That is quite reasonable.

In fact, it was an incredibly readable report. I have read many reports of this nature. NSICOP has produced many reports of this nature, and one of the things NSICOP always tries to do in the public version of its reports is to take care and concern in making them as digestible as possible, so any Canadian picking up a report would understand the national security dynamics happening at any given time.

David Johnston suggested to read the information to determine on one's own if one thinks his findings were reasonable, so what happens? The Leader of the Opposition covers his eyes and his ears and says, “No, no, no. I don't want facts and information. I want to be able to stand up here and make fake innuendos, fake accusations and raise some money for my election campaign.” He wants to make personal attacks against the Prime Minister and the right hon. David Johnston.

What does the Bloc do? As my hon. colleague says, it is “blue light”, and it just follows suit. Then the NDP, with this motion, calls for the removal of the special rapporteur based on his report. Its leader has at least agreed to read the annex and get that national security briefing. However, before that has been done, to my knowledge, or at least before the leader of the NDP has made any assessment on the information the right hon. David Johnston used to come to the conclusions he did, and before NDP members have had a chance to really look at it to see if all the information is relevant, they say that they do not support the report. They do so without reading the basis of the recommendations.

When it comes to national security, there is a lot more context and information required than just a few media leaks. Therefore, for any responsible government to refuse to read the national security documentation in the briefings, to refuse to wait and, even for those who have agreed to read it but refuse to actually digest it, look at it or consider it and just throw the report out, is nothing more than partisan games with Canadians' national security and with our democratic institutions. Therefore, if anybody is suggesting that confidence is being eroded, I would suggest it is by the irresponsible behaviour of our opposition parties in not actually doing the work, considering the information and making informed decisions, which is something that, regardless of party, I think every Canadian would expect their MP to be able to do.

I have talked about why I find the opposition parties irresponsible and, in particular, why I find the Leader of the Opposition not only irresponsible but also incredibly immature and unfit to lead, even a party, in this place. However, I want to also talk about some of the things we have done since 2015 because, as I started with in my speech, this is not new.

The opposition party, as the previous Conservative government, knew about foreign interference in 2013. Let me just say, too, that this is this not new, and it is never going to be over. There is no silver bullet any government could implement to say that foreign interference is no longer an issue. A serious democracy is going to always have to be diligent to the foreign forces that would love to destabilize the democracy that Canadians have fought so hard for. Therefore, the important piece of dealing with our democratic institutions is to put the partisanship aside and continually work on how to adapt and change with the changing nature of the threat. However, again, we cannot even have those types of debates in this place because we are too busy hearing partisan and personal attacks from the opposition members, who should be bringing forward recommendations and suggestions to move forward on legislation or mechanisms that would strengthen democratic institutions. Because we cannot get past personal attacks, the government is going to keep working based on experts and those who have come forward making recommendations, and based on looking at other countries and some of the work that they have done.

Some of the things that we have done since 2015 include creating NSICOP, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which gives national security clearance to representatives from recognized parties in the House, as well as national security briefings and documents. It is a committee that I mentioned I sat on, and it was an extremely professional and serious committee that has not only produced excellent reports for Canada but also has been recognized globally for the work it has done.

We created NSIRA, which is a review of our national security community. We have also established the critical election incident public protocol, and we have created the security and intelligence threats to elections task force, often referred to as SITE.

We have established rapid response mechanisms during elections. We have also had Bill C-59 and Bill C-76, and we have created the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. That is all since 2015.

While opposition parties say that we do not take this seriously, we have right here eight examples that I have listed. I would be curious as to whether, at any point during the day, the Conservative Party will be able to name even one example of something that it did in 10 years to deal with the threats to national security and to strengthen our democratic institutions. I will wait patiently through the debate today to see if that happens.

In addition to that, I would be very curious to see whether the members opposite come forward with serious policy and a serious policy debate.

We have the Johnston report, which makes very clear recommendations, as well as criticisms, with respect to how information is being reported to those who need it. Every government needs to seriously look at and constantly review these matters. I think there has been a strong indication that we are not only taking it seriously, but that we will implement changes to make sure that, moving forward, we are constantly improving our democratic institutions and our processes, and that we are making sure that democracy is protected for Canadians. We do not own these spaces, as this is the House of Commons of Canadians, and it is our job collectively to ensure that we continue to maintain the democratic institutions in this place.

I have spoken at length about the seriousness of these issues, the fact that they are not new, and that in 2013 we had a government that did not take them seriously at all. We are now implementing several of the recommendations, as well as implementing mechanisms to constantly strengthen our democratic institutions.

I want to speak again to this, because we are going to hear personal attacks all day today on the Right Honourable David Johnston. We have already seen him referred to as a ski buddy, a neighbour, a friend, and I think it is quite interesting that Conservatives would refer to him in that way.

I would like to read a quote with respect to Mr. Johnston, which states:

Mr. Johnston has a strong record of public service, a broad base of support and an impressive list of achievements....He has extensive legal expertise, a comprehensive understanding of government and a deep appreciation of the duties and tasks now before him.

That was not the current Prime Minister, but the previous prime minister, Prime Minister Harper, who said that about David Johnston. Therefore, it is disappointing that the Conservatives use personal attacks to undermine not only his credibility, but his lifelong achievements, dedication to this country and public service. To erode all of that by saying he is just a ski buddy and that is how he was selected is an absolute insult to this place and to the people who serve their country. It is all being done for nothing more than partisan gain. He was good enough for Conservatives to make him the governor general. He was good enough for the former prime minister to speak of him in that way. His reputation and credibility have only come into question now that Conservatives are not getting their political way.

I have spoken a lot about the lack of maturity shown by the Leader of the Opposition. I know my time is wrapping up and I want to conclude by saying this. Canadians deserve opposition parties and parliamentarians who work hard for their constituents. We are not always going to agree, but at the very least this should be a place of adamant debate on policy. When the Conservative members opposite do not like the findings or the opinions of someone they have acknowledged and revered for years and decide to throw him away like he is no longer good enough for this country, it is an absolute shame. It shows how immature and ill-equipped the Leader of the Opposition is and that he should not be taken seriously in this country. He is clearly not ready now, nor probably ever, to lead this country, because he does not take national security seriously, but we will on behalf of Canadians.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, the member referenced that I was pining over the fact that the member for Carleton or the previous government had never done anything about this. However, that was just the context I was using to set the stage for telling members about all the things we did do, as well as all the things we have done since becoming elected, that Conservatives have routinely voted against, including this member.

Bill C-22 created NSICOP, which he now speaks so highly about. Conservatives voted against it. Bill C-59 created and established NSIRA. Conservatives voted against it. Bill C-76 limited foreign ability to influence elections through monetary contributions. Conservatives voted against it.

Conservatives have routinely voted against initiatives that the government has brought forward to combat foreign interference. The fact that the previous Conservative government did nothing is just the context to set in order to highlight everything that we have done.

Could the member share with the House why he and his colleagues voted against all those measures?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, foreign interference has been reported publicly through CSIS since as early as 2013, when Conservatives were in power. The member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, was then the minister responsible for receiving that report. Conservatives did nothing for two years.

Since then, we brought in Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, which tightened up rules around donations to campaigns, specifically limiting foreign donations. We brought in Bill C-59, which established NSIRA, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. We brought in NSICOP, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, to oversee national security.

Conservatives voted against all of that, everything, and at times they would not even vote to let the bills go to committee. How is it they can come in here and be so interested and speak so passionately about protecting democracy against foreign interference when they have routinely and systematically voted against every single initiative?

Democratic Institutions

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, since we continue to get the same question in a broken-record format, let me highlight exactly what we are doing to combat foreign interference.

We introduced Bill C-59 to give CSIS additional threat reduction measure powers. We introduced Bill C-76 to crack down on foreign funding. We introduced the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians so we could work across partisan lines. We finally introduced NSIRA to ensure transparency on how we do this work to Canadians.

What is the distinction? We did those things; the Conservatives opposed.

Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

The government takes the issue of foreign interference very seriously. All of our legislation demonstrates our commitment to this issue. Consider for example Bill C‑59, which granted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service new powers to reduce threats caused by foreign interference. Another example is Bill C‑76, which targeted foreign funds that could pose a threat to our democratic institutions.

My colleague is quite right to ask questions. That is the purpose of this House. The point of this place is to shed light on how we carry out these duties. At the same time, it is fair to point out that, for the government and for everyone else, partisanship is not good for debate.

I hope we can set partisanship aside as we move forward.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the opposition for this opportunity to speak to this motion. Protecting Canadians means protecting the country's institutions. It is an important responsibility for all governments, but some are trying to exploit the freedoms we enjoy as Canadians to sow division and compromise our democratic values.

It is for that reason that this motion is so important. I assure all members in the chamber that this government takes foreign interference with the utmost seriousness. The threats that it poses to our economy, to our academic and research institutions, to our critical infrastructure and, indeed, to our democratic institutions, including most especially our elections, is of paramount importance and work in which I hope all members will be united.

Although I have identified these priorities, they are indeed the pillars of our democracy. The people who work within these institutions, Canadians who contribute, is sacred.

I understand that there has been a substantial amount of heat and passion in this subject matter. At times I think it has been regrettable to see that the discourse has strayed far too much into partisanship. I do not believe any of us benefit from that. It is my sincere hope that we would be able to have a debate on this motion, on the merits, on the principles, on civility and respect, because only together united can we fight against foreign interference and protect our institutions and our democracy.

There are two primacies to this motion. One is that we need more transparency. I am going to speak to that and about the ways in which this government is raising the bar and shining a light on the way in which we protect our national security. The second is the questions around what this government is doing to fight against foreign interference.

Let me start with the latter. Since taking the reins of government, we have been very proactive in putting in place the people, the resources, the technology, the powers and the authorities to equip all of the agencies that work within our national security and public safety apparatuses to protect our institutions.

By way of example, that includes legislation like Bill C-59, which gave CSIS new threat reduction measure powers to address and mitigate; in other words, reduce threats that may be caused by foreign interference or other hostile activities that could be used to undermine our democratic institutions. We put that legislation into place.

This government also introduced Bill C-76 to crackdown on foreign funding that could be used to interfere with our elections. It has become a useful tool to deter and disrupt those efforts as a way of safeguarding our democratic institutions.

Very recently, I launched a public consultation that will see the creation of a foreign-influenced transparency registry, so we can promote legitimate diplomacy and foreign activities on Canadian soil, while at the same time deterring and stopping any efforts that go beyond legitimate diplomatic activities here at home.

Even as we have done that, this government has raised the bar on transparency. We have done that through the creation of a number of new committees and agencies.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians is there to study matters related to security and intelligence. This new committee was created by our government to increase collaboration between all recognized parties in the House of Commons and with the Senate.

Under the leadership of one of my colleagues on the government side, many recommendations were made in a unified, cohesive manner to fight foreign interference. The government is in the process of implementing some of those recommendations.

What is more, we created the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. The purpose of this agency is to review all the work that is done by our national security agencies. It has access to top secret information so that it can review our agencies' national security and public safety activities, in order to assure everyone that the work is being done properly or, if not, to provide meaningful recommendations that will benefit everyone.

By creating these bodies, we have raised the bar of transparency. We are benefiting from their work. We are doing so in a way that is bipartisan. In other words, we are finding ways to collaborate across the aisle in this chamber.

In addition to that, vis-à-vis our democratic institutions and specifically our elections, our government created the critical election incident public protocol, as well as the CEIPP panel, which is made up of our top, non-partisan, independent, professional public servants. They are there to ensure that during the course of an election that all the checks, balances and protections are doing their job to preserve the integrity of our federal elections. That is precisely what not one but two independent panels confirmed after they examined the circumstances of the federal elections in 2019 and 2021.

In short, they certified that those elections were free and fair, libres et justes, and my hope is that Canadians will take assurances in those conclusions, not to give rise to some sense of complacency but rather so we can be sure we are on the right track when it comes to putting in place the mechanisms necessary to shield our democratic institutions from foreign interference.

We need to do more. That is why, in addition to all of those mechanisms, just last week we announced the appointment of David Johnston, a former governor general appointed by Stephen Harper, a Conservative prime minister, and an individual with unimpeachable qualities and characteristics, to fulfill the role and to give us concrete advice on what the next best practical steps ought to be, given some of the questions around the 2019 and 2021 elections.

This builds on the two reports that were filed by James Judd and Morris Rosenberg, two former public servants with distinguished records, in a non-partisan, independent way, contributing to the dialogue in this important area with tangible, concrete recommendations on which the government has committed to act.

Indeed, in the case of Mr. Judd, we have acted on all but one of the recommendations. With regard to Mr. Rosenberg's report, we have heard my colleague, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who has committed to implementing those recommendations as well.

In the event that there are any questions about Mr. Johnston's qualifications, which I again believe are unimpeachable, let me quote from a number of Conservatives who have said the following.

I believe it was Fred Delorey, the former national chair of the Conservative Party campaign in 2021, who said that there was nobody better qualified. I believe it was Stephen Harper who said that David Johnston was the best of Canadians.

We can place trust and confidence that he will, without any pride or prejudice toward political parties or partisanship, put forward the best possible recommendations when it comes to the important subject matter of fighting against foreign interference.

I will say a few concluding words about the work that is being done by PROC, another forum in which the government is putting forward witnesses to again shed light on the way in which we are doing the work around foreign interference and national security.

Most recently PROC heard from the Prime Minister's national security intelligence advisor, the deputy ministers from Global Affairs and the former deputy minister from Public Safety, as well as from my colleagues, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. All of them were able to certify that the federal elections in 2019 and 2021 were free and fair, but acknowledged that foreign interference was a significant challenge that required a proactive posture, one that continues to study, very thoughtfully and carefully, the types of tools and mechanisms we need to put in place to combat against those hostile actors who would try to undermine our democracy.

Our government will continue to co-operate with that committee. It is important that we demonstrate a willingness to work with all parliamentarians so we can offer evidence and advice and put our collective minds together to navigate this challenge.

Beyond Parliament, it is important that we engage Canadians.

I want to take a moment to underline that in the conversations I have had with a number of communities around how we create new tools, including the foreign agent registry, expressions of concern have been articulated to me, concerns that we do this work in the right way, that we do it transparently, and that the ways that we draft and craft our laws are done consistent with the principles that are espoused in the law and in the charter. That has to be the bedrock of the way in which we put pen to paper when we draft our legislation. It is technical work. It is complex work.

It is challenging to define and get the parameters right for how these authorities are triggered, used and then accountable in the use of those authorities, to be sure they are exercised reasonably and then accountable thereafter in the public reporting of it all.

With respect to Bill C-59, that is precisely why, when we created the new threat reduction powers for CSIS, we did so concurrently with the creation of NSIRA, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, so we could be accountable and transparent, so if any questions were raised legitimately about how these powers were being used, we could make the necessary course corrections to maintain trust and confidence in all Canadians when it came to the way in which we did the work around national security.

The Conservatives have gone to some length at times to be political and to be partisan, and that is regrettable. I do not believe that any of us profit from trying to score political points. We are a democracy. This is a chamber that sees some vigorous debate every single day, and it is a privilege to be part of those debates. Through those debates, my hope is that we are able to refine our ideas and advance them for the national interest.

However, when it comes to foreign interference, whether from the People's Republic of China, Russia or any other hostile actor that would attempt to undermine our institutions, it is important we take a team Canada approach.

We all have a vested interest in protecting the rules, principles and values that underpin our democracy. My sincere hope is that we will be able to continue to do this work in a way where, yes, there is fierce debate but it does not stray into partisanship and into the unnecessary politicization of an issue that should transcend it, so that we can do whatever is necessary to protect our democracy from all the threats that lie on the horizon.

Democratic Institutions

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague knows well that this government takes the work of fighting against foreign interference very seriously. That is why we introduced Bill C-59, which gave CSIS the threat reduction measure powers it needed to address and mitigate that risk. That is why we introduced Bill C-76, to crack down on foreign funding that could interfere with our elections, but with the corresponding transparency to create the NSICOP and NSIRA, all of which ensures that we can be upfront with Canadians so we can defend our democratic institutions.

The Conservatives should rise above the fray and see that this is not a partisan issue—

Bill C-4—Proposal to Apply Standing Order 69.1

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Mr. Speaker, to restate the first part, it is my argument that part 3 of Bill C-4, clauses 10 to 14 in the schedule, is sufficiently different from the remainder of the bill so as to warrant the question at second reading being divided for a separate decision. Again, that is under Standing Order 69.1. While it is true that the state of the whole bill's content is associated with the response to COVID-19, that alone does not qualify as a common element for the purposes of the standing order.

The National Assembly of Quebec has similar procedures regarding omnibus bills, which are instructive. I refer the Chair to Parliamentary Procedure in Québec, third edition, which says at page 400, “The principle or principles contained in a bill must not be confused with the field it concerns. To frame the concept of principle in that way would prevent the division of most bills, because they each apply to a specific field.”

This statement of the National Assembly's practice was endorsed by your immediate predecessor, the hon. member for Halifax West, when he ruled on March 1, 2018, at page 17574 of the Debates:

While their procedure for dividing bills is quite different from ours, the idea of distinguishing the principles of a bill from its field has stayed with me. While each bill is different and so too each case, I believe that Standing Order 69.1 can indeed be applied to a bill where all of the initiatives relate to a specific policy area, if those initiatives are sufficiently distinct to warrant a separate decision of the House.

The importance of distinguishing between principles and a field was articulated by former National Assembly vice-president Fatima Houda-Pepin, on December 11, 2007, at page 2513 of the Journal des débats:

In this case, the bill contains more than one principle. Although the bill deals with road safety, the Chair cannot consider that to be the principle of Bill 42. The principle or principles of a bill should not be confused with the topic to which it pertains. Coming up with a different concept of the notion of principle would disqualify most bills from being subject to a division motion because they deal with a specific topic. In this case, the various means of ensuring road safety included in this bill could constitute distinct principles.

The 2018 ruling in our own House concerned the former Bill C-69, which was an omnibus bill with disastrous consequences for the natural resources sector in Canada. The government had argued that all of its provisions hung together on the principle of environmental protection, but the Chair ruled that the argument was not good enough to avoid dividing the question. In that case, he found there were sufficient distinctions to warrant separate votes.

A similar argument was put forward by the government for the former Bill C-59. It claimed that everything was unified by the principle of national security. As the deputy speaker ruled on June 18, 2018, at page 21196 of the Debates, “while the Chair has no trouble agreeing that all of the measures contained in Bill C- 59 relate to national security, it is the Chair's view that there are distinct initiatives that are sufficiently unrelated as to warrant dividing the question.”

Turning to Bill C-4, parts 1 and 2 concern the establishment of assorted pandemic income replacement benefits for Canadians impacted by COVID-19, together with associated labour law amendments. Part 3, meanwhile, is the government's request to spend over $17 billion on a wide array of measures, bypassing the normal estimates and appropriations procedures of Parliament. One of the considerations the Chair employed in 2018 was to look at how integrated the different provisions of the impugned bill were. In the case of Bill C-69, for example, two parts that were extensively linked with many cross-references were held to have a sufficiently common element between them. However, another part was, despite the presence of some cross-references, found to be not so deeply intertwined as to make a division impossible.

In the present case, part 3 of Bill C-4 appears to have absolutely no cross-references or drafting links to the remainder of the bill. It was simply grafted on. The various components of the bill that are part of the response to COVID-19 are really about the only thing which could even link them together. In fact, I would argue that the long title of the bill itself gives away the fact that the link is tenuous: “An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19”. If there were any stronger connection among these assorted provisions, a more descriptive long title would have been possible.

Before concluding, I will offer a couple of comments of the circumstances particular to the present case.

First, I recognize that time is of the essence in reaching a ruling, because the House is currently seized with government Motion No. 1, which would ram Bill C-4 through the House with barely any debate at all. In fact, it is possible that members are on track to be called upon to vote on the bill late tomorrow night. As noted by the Speaker's immediate predecessor's ruling of November 7, 2017, at page 15116 of the Debates, points of order calling for the exercise of Standing Order 69.1 must be raised promptly. I am rising on this matter on the same afternoon the bill was introduced. To do so earlier would, frankly, have been impossible.

Second, should the House adopt government Motion No. 1, there is nothing in the motion that, in my view, would change the application of Standing Order 69.1 to Bill C-4. The wording of paragraph (b) of the motion refers to voting on “all questions necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill”. This language certainly contemplates multiple votes at the second reading stage and, of course, would be undisturbed by the amendment proposed by the hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition. Moreover, the chapeau of the motion does not make any provision for it to operate notwithstanding any standing order, let alone that it would operate notwithstanding Standing Order 69.1.

In conclusion, it is my respectful submission that Bill C-4 is an omnibus bill and that under the provisions of the standing order, its part 3 should be separated out for a separate vote at the second reading stage.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to add my voice to the debate of Bill C-3 at second reading. This important piece of legislation would amend the Canada Border Services Agency Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act to establish a new public complaints and review commission for both organizations. This would give the CBSA its own independent review body for the first time.

Transparency and accountability are extremely important in any context. That certainly includes the public safety and national security sphere. Canadians need to have trust and confidence in the people and agencies that work so hard to protect them. Right now, among the family of organizations that make up the public safety portfolio, only the CBSA lacks a full-fledged independent review body dedicated to it.

The RCMP has had such a body since 1988, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. The CRCC reviews complaints from the public about conduct of RCMP members and conducts reviews when complainants are not satisfied with the RCMP's handling of their complaints. This process ensures public complaints are examined fairly and impartially.

Canada also has an office of the correctional investigator, which provides independent oversight of Correctional Service Canada. The correctional investigator essentially serves as an ombudsman for federal offenders. The main responsibility of the office is to investigate and try to resolve offender complaints. The office is also responsible for reviewing and making recommendations on CSC policies and procedures related to those complaints, the goal being to ensure areas of concern are identified and appropriately addressed.

The CBSA really stands out in this context.

Before I go any further, it is important to point out that a fair number of CBSA's activities are already subject to independent oversight through existing bodies. Customs-related matters, for example, are handled by the Canadian International Trade Tribunal. With the passage of Bill C-59, the CBSA's national security-related activities are now being overseen by Canada's new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. This agency is an independent, external body that can report on any national security or intelligence-related activity carried out by federal departments and agencies. It has the legal mandate and expertise to review national security activities and serves an important accountability function in our democracy.

However, a major piece is missing in the architecture of public safety and national security oversight and accountability. There is currently no mechanism for public complaints about the CBSA to be heard and considered. That is a significant oversight, given the scope of the agency's mandate and the sheer volume of its interactions with the public.

CBSA employees deal with thousands of people each day and tens of millions each year. They do so at approximately 1,200 service points across Canada and at 39 international airports and locations. In the last fiscal year alone, border officers interacted with 96 million travellers, both Canadians and foreign nationals, and that is just one aspect of its business. It is a massive, complex and impressive operation. We can all be proud of having such a professional, world-class border services agency.

In the vast majority of cases, the CBSA's interactions with the public happen without incident. Our employees work with the utmost professionalism in delivering border services to those entering the country. However, on rare occasions, and for whatever reason, things go less than smoothly. That is not unusual. People are human and we cannot expect everything they do will be perfect all the time. However, that does not mean there should not be a fair and appropriate way for people to air their grievances. If people are unhappy with the way they were treated at the border, or the level of service they received, they need to know that someone will hear their complaint in an independent manner. Needless to say, that is currently not the case.

The way things currently work is that if a member of the public makes a complaint about the CBSA, it is handled internally. In other words, the CBSA investigates itself. In recent years, a number of parliamentarians, commentators and observers have raised concerns about this problematic accountability gap. To rectify the situation, they have called for an independent review body specific to the CBSA. Bill C-3 would answer that call.

Under Bill C-3, the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP would be given new powers and remain the public complaints and review commission, or PCRC. The newly established PCRC would consider complaints related to conduct or service issues involving either CBSA or RCMP employees. Those who believe they have had a negative interaction with a CBSA employee would have the option of turning to the PCRC for remedy and would have one year to do so.

The same would continue to be the case with respect to the RCMP. This would apply to Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals. That includes people detained in CBSA's immigration holding centres, who would be able to submit complaints related to their conditions of detention or treatment while in detention.

The complaints function is just one part of the proposed new PCRC. The commission would also have an important review function. It would conduct reviews related to non-national security activities involving CBSA and the RCMP, since national security, as I noted earlier, is now in the purview of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. The findings and recommendations of the PCRC would be non-binding. However, the CBSA would be required to provide a response to those findings and recommendations for all the complaints. I believe that combining these functions into one agency is the best way forward.

The existing CRCC already performs these functions for the RCMP, and the proposals in the bill would build on the success and expertise it has developed. Combining efforts may also generate efficiencies of scale and allow for resources to be allocated to priority areas. On that note, I certainly recognize that additional resources would be required for the PCRC, given its proposed new responsibilities and what that would mean in terms of workload.

That is why I am pleased that budget 2019 included nearly $25 million over five years, starting this fiscal year, and an additional $6.83 million per year ongoing to expand the mandate of the CRCC. That funding commitment has also been positively received by stakeholders. With Bill C-3, the government is taking a major step toward enhancing CBSA independent review and accountability in a big way.

I was encouraged to see an apparent consensus of support for this bill in our debate so far. As we know, just eight months ago, the previous form of this bill, Bill C-98, received all-party support during third reading in the House during the last Parliament. In reintroducing this bill, we have taken into consideration points that were previously raised by the opposition parties, and we hope to rely on their continued support.

The changes proposed in Bill C-3 are appropriate and long overdue. They would give Canadians greater confidence in the border agencies that serve them and they would bring Canada in line with international norms in democratic countries. That includes the systems already in place with some of our closest allies, such as the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

I am proud to be supporting this important piece of legislation. I will be voting in favour of this bill at second reading and I urge all of my hon. colleagues to do the same when the time comes.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to add to the debate of Bill C-3 today.

An independent review and complaints mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency would fill an important gap for our national security agencies. This is not a new issue for parliamentarians. Members will recall that similar legislation was introduced and debated in the last session, as Bill C-98. That bill received unanimous consent just eight months ago, and since that time our government has had the benefit of considering comments made on previous legislation. With its introduction as a new bill, it is reflective of many of the comments and recommendations previously made.

CBSA oversight is not a new idea. In fact, Bill S-205, introduced by former Senator Moore in the other place a few years ago, proposed a CBSA review body. That was, in part, in response to a previous call by senators to create an oversight body through the 2015 report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Many parliamentarians, academics, experts and stakeholders have made similar calls over the years. That is largely because Canada is the only country among our closest allies not to have a dedicated review body for complaints regarding its border agency. Furthermore, the CBSA is the only organization within the public safety portfolio without such a body. Bill C-3 would change this environment.

Canadians need to be confident that their complaints are handled and addressed appropriately and independently. They deserve enhanced reporting on how border services operate, which the bill also proposes. To expand on that, under Bill C-3, the new body would be able to not only report on its finding but also make recommendations as it sees fit. Those reports would include the PCRC's findings and recommendations on everything from the CBSA's policies and procedures to its compliance with the law to the reasonableness of the use of its powers.

This is about accountability and transparency. To parse why this is so important, we must take a look at the rapidly changing context of the CBSA.

On a daily basis, CBSA officers interact with thousands of Canadians and visitors to Canada at airports, land borders, crossing ports and other locations. To put that in numbers, that is 96 million interactions per year with travellers and $32 billion per year in duties and taxes, according to the 2017-18 statistics. That is 27.3 million cars, 34.5 million air passengers and 21.4 million commercial releases. All of that happens at 13 international airports, 117 land border crossings, 27 rail sites and beyond. This will only increase. That is why the government introduced a federal budget last year proposing investments of $1.25 billion for the CBSA to help modernize some of our ports of entry and our border operations. After all, we know that business at the border never stops and is growing year after year.

As hon. members know, ensuring that business continues while protecting Canadians requires CBSA officers to have the power to arrest, detain, search and seize, and the authority to use reasonable force when required. We know that Canada's over 14,000 CBSA officers are truly world class, providing consistent and fair treatment to travellers and traders.

However, as business grows along with demands for accountability, the CBSA cannot reasonably be expected to handle all the complaints on its own, nor should Canadians expect it would. Currently, complaints about conduct and the service provided by CBSA officers are handled internally. If an individual is dissatisfied with the results of an internal CBSA investigation, there is currently no mechanism for the public to request an independent review of these complaints. Bill C-3 would neatly remedy all of this. For example, such an individual would be able to ask the PCRC to review his or her complaint. At the conclusion of a PCRC investigation, the review body would be able to report on its findings and make recommendations as it sees fit. The president of the CBSA would be required to respond in writing to the PCRC's findings and recommendations.

The PCRC would also accept complaints about the conduct and service provided by CBSA employees from detainees held in CBSA facilities. These could include complaints related to treatment and conditions in detention.

On the rare occasion that there be a serious incident involving CBSA personnel, Bill C-3 would legislate a framework to not only handle and track such incidents, but also to publicly report on them. It would in fact create an obligation for the CBSA to notify local police and the PCRC of any serious incident involving the CBSA officers or employees. As I have noted, the legislation would also allow for the PCRC to review, on its own initiative or at least at the request of the minister, any non-national security activity of the CBSA.

National security activities would be reviewed by the new national security intelligence review committee, which is the National Security Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. As colleagues know, the NSIRA is responsible for complaints and reviews relating to national security, including those relating to the RCMP and the CBSA. Members will see provisions in Bill C-3 that would facilitate information sharing and co-operation between the PCRC and NSIRA.

I would point out that the PCRC would not have the authority to review, uphold, amend or overturn enforcement, trade or national security decisions made with the CBSA, nor would it consider complaints that could be dealt with by other organizations, such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages or the Office of the Privacy Commission. What it would do is provide a reasonable, long-sought-after framework to build accountability in our public safety agencies and trust among Canadians.

As I close, I would like to point out that this is the latest in a line of recent measures to enhance accountability in our national security apparatus. The former Bill C-22 led to the creation of the now operational National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which has a broad mandate to review national security and intelligence organizations.

The former Bill C-59 led to the creation of the NSIRA. NSIRA now has the authority to review any activity carried out by CSIS or the Communications Security Establishment and any national security or intelligence-related activity carried out by federal departments and agencies.

All of this amounts to unprecedented enhancements in our national security accountability, on top of the government's creation of a national security transparency commitment, which is all about integrating Canada's democratic values into our national security activities.

These measures build on the government's broad national security consultations in 2016, which sought to engage Canadians, stakeholders and subject matter experts on issues related to national security and the protection of rights and freedoms. In those consultations, four-fifths, or 81%, of online responses called for independent review mechanisms for departments and agencies that have national security responsibilities, including the CBSA.

This outline should provide some rationale for bipartisan support for Bill C-3 by parliamentarians, academics, experts and stakeholders alike and other Canadians. Our security and intelligence communities must keep pace with evolving threats to the safety and security of Canadians and with a rapidly changing border environment. They must do so in a way that safeguards our rights and freedoms, and the people's trust in how the government works. That is why I ask the House to join me in supporting Bill C-3 today.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, if we want Canadians to trust their government, we need a government that trusts Canadians. I would add that this position has been repeated many times in the House, and not just when Bill C-98 was introduced.

On that note, I would also like to thank the senator who introduced Bill S-205 in 2015. That bill set out a number of the recommendations that we are proposing today.

Beyond the CBSA, our government's desire to improve the transparency and accountability of all our security agencies is clear.

For example, in 2013, a member proposed the creation of a national security committee of parliamentarians, but unfortunately the House rejected that proposal. The following year, a member introduced a bill that would have amended the National Defence Act in order to improve the transparency and accountability of the Communications Security Establishment.

Obviously, parliamentarians and Canadians want our intelligence and security agencies to be as accountable and transparent as possible. When our government took office in 2015, we knew we had to take action. During the government consultations on national security, experts and members of the public told us that we risked losing the trust of the public if our security agencies did not become more transparent and accountable.

After all, these measures create an effective and efficient government.

They help us oversee the exercise of authority and deliver results for Canadians.

The bill established the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, which is the heart of Bill C-59 and represents a historic change for Canada.

The creation of this agency resulted in an integrated and comprehensive review of all national security and intelligence activities, including broader access to information across the government.

The government also created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, a group tasked with reviewing Canada's national security and intelligence organizations.

As members know, this committee now has extraordinary access to classified information so that it can scrutinize security and intelligence activities.

The creation of this committee filled a significant gap and allowed us achieve two objectives: guaranteeing that our security agencies are working effectively, and protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

The government also adopted a national security transparency commitment across government to give Canadians better access to information. All of these measures will help build public confidence in our security agencies. The RCMP, CSIS and Correctional Service Canada are already subject to solid accountability measures.

We know that similar steps have to be taken for our border agency.

We need a transparent system to ensure that complaints regarding the conduct and quality of services of CBSA employees are handled appropriately.

This is what Bill C-3 aims to do.

This bill would build on all of the government reforms I mentioned earlier and would increase the accountability of our national security apparatus.

Canadians can rest assured that an independent review body would be handling complaints relating to the conduct of border officers.

Bill C-3 would expand and strengthen the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, the CRCC, which is the RCMP's review agency. This commission would become the public complaints and review commission. The new commission would be responsible for handling complaints and reviews for the Canada Border Services Agency and for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Anyone interacting with CBSA employees who wishes to file a complaint about the employee's conduct or quality of services would be able to go through this enhanced commission.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission could also conduct reviews of the Canada Border Services Agency of its own initiative or at the request of the Minister of Public Safety. However, matters of national security would be addressed by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency with help from the CRCC.

Departments and agencies within Canada's public safety community are very familiar with this new transparency and accountability model. I know that they understand that their ability to respect this model has a direct impact on public trust, their credibility and their day-to-day activities.

The government knows that with the creation of the independent mechanism proposed in Bill C-3, Canadians will be much more comfortable filing a complaint. We will thereby greatly improve the accountability of our public safety apparatus' oversight mechanism.

I encourage all members of the House to join me and support Bill C-3 at second reading.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Mississauga—Erin Mills.

As it is my first time rising in the 43rd Parliament, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the constituents of Richmond Hill, who bestowed on me the honour of representing them in the House. I thank my campaign manager, my riding association executive and the over 100 volunteers and friends who worked so hard to help me get re-elected.

I would especially like to acknowledge and thank my wife Homeira; my daughter Nickta and my son Meilaud, who have supported me in my political life over the past five years.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to rise at second reading of Bill C-3. The bill proposes to create an independent review and complaint mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA. I would like to highlight five significant components of the bill.

First, it would provide for civilian oversight.

Second, it would strengthen the accountability and transparency of the CBSA.

Third, it would ensure consistent, fair and equal treatment to all when receiving services.

Fourth, it would complement and align with other measures being taken by our government to create independent review functions for national security agencies.

Fifth, it would close a significant gap with the other Five Eyes international border agencies.

Such mechanisms help to promote public confidence by strengthening accountability. They ensure that complaints regarding employee conduct and service are dealt with transparently. CSIS, the RCMP and the Correctional Service of Canada are already subject to that kind of accountability.

Among the organizations that make up Canada's public safety portfolio, only the CBSA does not currently have a review body to handle public complaints. Bill C-3 would fill that glaring gap and build on recent accountability and transparency reforms introduced by the Government of Canada.

One of those reforms is the newly created National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. This new body addresses a long-standing need for parliamentarians to review the government's national security and intelligence activities and operations, including those involving the CBSA. Its members have unprecedented access to classified information.

As the Prime Minister has said, it “will help us ensure that our national security agencies continue to keep Canadians safe in a way that also safeguards our values, rights, and freedoms.”

The government has also brought into force a new expert review body, thanks to the passage of Bill C-59, called the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.

This new agency will greatly enhance how Canada's national security agencies are held to account. It will establish a single, independent agency authorized to conduct reviews on national security and intelligence activities carried out by departments and agencies across the Government of Canada, including the CBSA.

The legislation before us today would go one step further by establishing an independent review and complaints function for the CBSA's other activities. Those activities play a critical role in our country's security and economic prosperity. They facilitate the efficient flow of people and goods across our border to support our economy, while protecting the health and safety of Canadians.

In keeping with its sweeping mandate, the scale of the CBSA's operations and the number of people and goods it deals with are enormous. CBSA employees deliver a wide range of services at more than 1,000 locations, including 117 land border crossings, 13 international airports and 39 international offices.

The agency's employees are diligent and hard-working. In 2018-19, they interacted with more than 96 million travellers and processed more than 19 million commercial shipments and 54 million courier shipments.

The vast majority of the CBSA's interactions and transactions go off without a hitch. However, when dealing with more than a quarter of a million people each day, and nearly 100 million each year, the occasional complaint is inevitable. Each year the CBSA recourse directorate receives approximately 2,500 complaints concerning employee conduct and services.

Last summer, as I was knocking on doors in my riding of Richmond Hill, I talked to many residents, Canadian citizens and permanent residents alike, who regularly crossed the borders to and from the U.S. They shared their challenges with wait times, extensive and intrusive repeated questioning and the feeling of inferiority that it left them with. Repeatedly, they raised their concern about their inability to get answers about the way they were treated and their frustration with the lack of an independent body to raise their concerns.

However, as I noted earlier, there is currently no independent review body that people can turn to when they are unsatisfied with the level of service or the conduct of an officer at the border. That accountability gap has generated considerable public interest and been regularly raised by parliamentarians.

On that note, I would like to recognize and thank the now-retired Wilfred Moore for his advocacy on this issue with the introduction of Bill S-205 in the other place.

There have also been numerous calls by stakeholders and NGOs to improve CBSA accountability and transparency. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said that it considered “such a gap as being incompatible with democratic values and with a need for public trust in such an important agency.”

According to the late Professor Ron Atkey of York University, the lack of CBSA oversight presented “a problem in the makeup of the current security intelligence review mechanism”. He added that the creation of the committee of parliamentarians should not be considered as a substitute for independent expert review bodies, which he suggested should be extended to cover CBSA.

That is exactly what Bill C-3 would do. It proposes to establish an independent review mechanism for the CBSA by expanding and strengthening the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, or CRCC. The CRCC is currently the review agency for the RCMP.

To reflect its proposed new responsibilities under Bill C-3, it will be renamed the public complaints and review commission, or PCRC. The proposed new PCRC will be responsible for handling reviews and complaints for both the CBSA and the RCMP. The PCRC will be accessible to anyone who interacts with CBSA employees and has complaints about the conduct of CBSA officers and the quality of services.

The PCRC will also have the ability to conduct reviews of the CBSA on its own initiative or at the request of the Minister of Public Safety. Those reviews could focus on any activity conducted by the CBSA, with the exception of national security matters.

With the passage of Bill C-59, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency will be responsible for complaints and reviews relating to national security, including those involving the RCMP and CBSA. The PCRC will work in a complementary manner with the proposed new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. Provisions in Bill C-3 will facilitate information sharing and co-operation between the two bodies. If the PCRC were to receive those types of complaints, it would refer the complainants to the appropriate body.

By providing an independent arms-length mechanism for people to be heard, Bill C-3 would make them more comfortable to come forward with a complaint. That, in turn, would help ensure that Canadians would remain confident in the system of accountability for the agencies that work so hard to keep them safe.

That is why I urge hon. members of the House to join me in supporting this important legislation at second reading.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise in this House and add my voice to the debate on Bill C-3 which proposes to establish an arm's-length review and complaints function for the CBSA.

The bill before us builds on an action that our government had recently taken to strengthen accountability and transparency in the public safety and national security sphere. As members know, we passed legislation to create the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, and that committee has now been established. Following the passage of Bill C-59, we also created a new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. The goal of both of these bodies is to provide accountability for the national security work of all Government of Canada departments and agencies, including the CBSA.

Strong internal and external mechanisms are in place to address many of the CBSA's other activities. For example, certain decisions in the immigration context are subject to review by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Its customs decisions can be appealed to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal as well as to the Federal Court. However, the glaring gap that remains has to do with the public complaints related to the conduct of, and service provided by, CBSA employees.

There is simply no independent place to which people can turn when they have a grievance about the way they were treated by someone representing the CBSA. Without an independent body specifically tasked to hear complaints, it is easy to see how people can feel uncomfortable voicing any concerns. Bill C-3 would change that by establishing an independent review and complaints function for the CBSA. That new tool would be incorporated into, and benefit from the expertise and experience of, the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, or CRCC, for the RCMP.

To reflect its new CBSA responsibilities, the CRCC would be renamed the “public complaints and review commission”, or PCRC. Members of the public who deal with the CBSA would be able to submit a complaint to any officer or employee of the agency or to the PCRC. The CBSA would conduct the initial investigation into a complaint, whether it is submitted to the CBSA or to the PCRC. However, the PCRC would have the ability to investigate any complaint that is considered to be in the public interest. It could also initiate a complaint proactively. In the event that a complainant was not satisfied with the CBSA's response to a complaint, he or she could ask the PCRC to review the CBSA's response. The PCRC would also have a mandate to conduct overarching reviews of specified activities of the CBSA. All of this would bring the CBSA in line with Canada's other public safety organizations, which are currently subject to independent review, and it would allow Canada to join the ranks of peer countries with respect to adding accountability functions for their border agencies.

Recourse through the PCRC would be available to anyone who interacts with CBSA or RCMP employees. This includes Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals, including immigration detainees. Most of these detainees are held in CBSA-managed immigration holding centres. When that is not possible, CBSA detainees are placed in other facilities, including provincial correctional facilities. The CBSA has established agreements with B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia for detention purposes.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start off by saying that I will be sharing my time today with the member for Bonavista—Burin—Trinity.

I am grateful for the opportunity to add my voice to today's debate on Bill C-3, which proposes to establish an arm's-length review body for the Canada Border Services Agency.

The CBSA is already reviewed by several different independent boards, tribunals and courts. They scrutinize such things as the agency's customs and immigration decisions. However, there is no existing external review body for some of its other functions and activities.

For example, there is a gap when it comes to public complaints related to CBSA employee conduct and service. With the way things currently stand, there is also no independent review mechanism for the CBSA's non-national security activities. That makes the CBSA something of an outlier, both at home and abroad.

Other public safety organizations in Canada are subject to independent review, as are border agencies in a number of peer countries including the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and France. Addressing these accountability gaps through Bill C-3 would improve the CBSA's strength and would strengthen public confidence in the agency. It would ensure that the public could continue to expect consistent, fair and equal treatment by CBSA employees, and it would lead to opportunities for ongoing improvement in the CBSA's interactions and service delivery.

For an organization that deals with tens of millions of people each year, that is extremely important. Public complaints about the conduct of, and the service provided by, CBSA employees are currently dealt with only internally at the agency. I am sure all of my hon. colleagues would agree that this is no longer a tenable situation.

Under Bill C-3, these complaints would instead be handled by a new arm's-length public complaints and review commission, or PCRC. The new PCRC would build on and strengthen the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, CRCC for short, which is currently the review agency for the RCMP. The CRCC would thus be given an expanded role under this bill and a new name to go along with its new responsibilities for the CBSA.

The PCRC would be able to receive and investigate complaints from the public regarding the conduct of the CBSA officials and the service provided by the CBSA. Service-related complaints could be about a number of issues. They could include border wait times and processing delays; lost or damaged postal items; the level of service provided; the examination process, including damage to goods or electronic devices during a search or examination; and CBSA infrastructure, including sufficient space, poor signage or the lack of available parking.

Service-related complaints do not include enforcement actions, such as fines for failing to pay duties, nor do they include trade decisions, such as tariff classification. Those types of decisions can already be considered by existing review mechanisms.

In addition to its complaints function, the PCRC would also review non-national security activities conducted by the RCMP and the CBSA. The PCRC reports would include findings and recommendations on the adequacy, appropriateness, sufficiency or clarity of CBSA policies, procedures and guidelines; the CBSA's compliance with the law and ministerial directions; and the reasonableness and necessity of the CBSA's use of its powers. The CBSA would be required to provide a response to those findings and recommendations for all complaints.

The creation of the PCRC is overdue. It would answer long-standing calls for an independent review of public complaints involving the CBSA.

According to former parliamentarian and chair of the NATO Association of Canada at Massey College, Hugh Segal, the lack of oversight for the CBSA is not appropriate and is unacceptable.

Former CBSA president Luc Portelance also said that when a Canadian citizen or a foreign national engages with a border officer and has a negative interaction, the entire review mechanism is not public. It is internal, and it is not seen as independent. In Mr. Portelance's view, that creates a significant problem in terms of public trust.

The Government of Canada has committed to rectifying this situation by addressing gaps in the CBSA's framework for external accountability.

With the introduction of Bill C-3, the government is delivering on that commitment. It builds on recent action taken by the government to strengthen accountability on national security matters. That includes passing legislation to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. It also includes the creation, through Bill C-59, of the new expert review body, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. These two bodies are now in operation and they are doing extremely important work in terms of reviewing the national security activities of all departments and agencies, including the CBSA.

Bill C-3 would go further by establishing a review and complaints function for CBSA's other activities. In doing so, it would fill the gap in the architecture of public safety accountability in this country. It would allow for independent review of public complaints related to CBSA employee conduct, issues regarding CBSA services, and the conditions and treatment of immigration detainees. With respect to these detainees specifically, Bill C-3 would offer additional safeguards to ensure that they are treated humanely and are provided with necessary resources and services while detained.

The introduction of this bill demonstrates a commitment to keeping Canadians safe and secure while treating people fairly and respecting human rights. It is a major step forward in ensuring that Canadians are confident in the accountability system for the agencies that work so hard to keep them safe.

For all the reasons I have outlined today, I will be voting in favour of Bill C-3 at second reading. I urge all of my hon. colleagues to join me in supporting the bill.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, through you, I would like to welcome the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley to this place.

It is true that this legislation has been called for for a long time. After we were elected in 2015, we brought a robust number of bills to the public safety committee. The public safety minister at the time, Ralph Goodale, was introducing more legislation than was coming from any other department. He was fixing the previous national security framework in Bill C-59. We brought in Bill C-22 and we did introduce Bill C-98 to deal with the CBSA review agency. Unfortunately, the bill ran out of time in the Senate before it could be passed.

It is my hope that we can do this quickly and get it sent to committee and the Senate and finally get this review body in place.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-3, which seeks to establish a new, independent public complaints and review body for the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA. This represents another step forward in the government's commitment to ensuring that all of its agencies and departments are accountable to Canadians.

As a member of the public safety committee during the last Parliament, I am quite proud to have participated in legislation that made remarkable change and took the number of measures we took to ensure greater accountability of our security agencies and departments.

Two years ago, our Bill C-22 received royal assent, establishing the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. That addressed a long-standing need for parliamentarians to review the Government of Canada's activities and operations in regard to national security and intelligence. It has been in operation for some time now and is a strong addition to our system of national security review and accountability. As members will know, the committee has the power to review activities across government, including the CBSA.

To complement that, our committee studied our national security framework, as well as Bill C-59, which allowed for the creation of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. NSIRA is also authorized to conduct reviews of any national security or intelligence activity carried out by federal departments and agencies, including the CBSA. All of this is on top of existing review and oversight mechanisms in the public safety portfolio.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP investigates complaints from the public about the conduct of members in the RCMP, for example, and does so in an open, independent and objective manner. The Office of the Correctional Investigator conducts independent, thorough and timely investigations about issues related to Correctional Service Canada.

Bill C-3 would fill a gap in the review of the activities of our public safety agencies. The existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, which is responsible for complaints against members of the RCMP, would see its name change to the public complaints and review commission and its mandate expanded to include the CBSA. It would be able to consider complaints against CBSA employee conduct or service, from foreign nationals, permanent residents and Canadian citizens, regardless of whether they are within or outside of Canada. Reviews of national security activities would be carried out by NSIRA.

Here is how it would work in practice. If an individual has a complaint unrelated to national security, she or he would be able to direct it either to the commission or to the CBSA. Both bodies would notify the other of any complaint made. The CBSA would be required to investigate any complaint, except those disposed of informally. The commission would be able to conduct its own investigation of the complaint in situations where the chairperson is of the opinion that doing so would be in the public interest. If an individual is not satisfied with the CBSA's response, the commission would be able to follow up as it sees fit.

The new PCRC would also be able to produce findings on the CBSA's policies, procedures and guidelines. It would also be able to review CBSA's activities, including making findings on CBSA's compliance with the law and the reasonableness and necessity of the exercise of its powers. Indeed, the commission's findings on each review would be published in a mandatory annual public report.

Bill C-3 not only fills a gap in our review system. It answers calls from the public and Parliament for independent review of CBSA. Most significantly, the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, in its 2015 report, encouraged the creation of an oversight body. I would like to acknowledge Bill S-205 from our last Parliament, introduced in the other place not long after the government took office, which proposed a CBSA review body as well.

Certainly we have heard from academics, experts and other stakeholders of the need to create a body with the authority to review CBSA. During testimony at the public safety committee on December 5, 2017, Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International, said, “how crucial it is for the government to move rapidly to institute full, independent review of CBSA.” This was reflective of much of the testimony we heard, and I am pleased the government is acting on this advice. I would also like to acknowledge my colleague from Toronto—Danforth for her efforts and advocacy for the establishment of a CBSA review body.

The CBSA has a long and rich history of providing border services in an exemplary fashion. It does so through the collective contribution of over 14,000 dedicated professional women and men, women like Tamara Lopez from my community, who is a role model for young women looking for a career in the CBSA.

The CBSA already has robust internal and external mechanisms in place to address many of its activities. For example, certain immigration-related decisions are subject to review by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, and its customs role can be appealed all the way up to the Federal Court.

That said, when it comes to the public, the CBSA should not be the only body receiving and following up on complaints about its own activities. Indeed, some Canadians might not be inclined to say a word if they do not have the confidence that their complaint will be treated independently, objectively and thoroughly. Bill C-3 would inspire that confidence.

The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that all of its agencies and departments are accountable to Canadians. Bill C-3 would move the yardstick forward on that commitment. It would bring Canada more closely in line with the accountability bodies of border agencies in other countries, including those of our Five Eyes allies.

The accountability and transparency of our national security framework has improved greatly since we were elected in 2015. This bill would continue these efforts by providing border services that keep Canadians safe and by improving public trust and confidence. Bill C-3 would ensure that the public continues to expect consistent, fair and equal treatment by CBSA employees. That is why I am proud to stand behind Bill C-3 today.

In the last Parliament, the House of Commons unanimously passed Bill C-98, which was a bill to bring oversight to CBSA. Although that bill died in the Senate, it is my hope that all parties will again come together to pass this bill.

I listened to the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner speak earlier in this debate. He spoke at length about firearms and his petition opposing our promise to make Canadians safer by enhancing gun control. I would remind him that almost 80% of Canadians support a ban on military-style assault rifles according to an independent Angus Reid survey.

I know he and his party supported oversight of the CBSA in the last Parliament. I hope he and all members will join me in supporting oversight in this Parliament under Bill C-3 and assure the bill's passage this session.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

moved that Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Canada Border Services Agency Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in this House to begin the debate on Bill C-3, concerning an independent review for the Canada Border Services Agency.

The Canada Border Services Agency ensures Canada's security and prosperity by facilitating and overseeing international travel and trade across Canada's borders. On a daily basis, CBSA officers interact with thousands of Canadians and visitors to Canada at airports, land border crossings, ports and other locations. Ensuring the free flow of people and legitimate goods across our border while protecting Canadians requires CBSA officers to have the power to arrest, detain, search and seize, as well as the authority to use reasonable force when it is required.

Currently, complaints about the service provided by the CBSA officers and about the conduct of those officers are handled internally. If an individual is dissatisfied with the results of an internal CBSA investigation, there is no mechanism for the public to request an independent review of these complaints.

The Government of Canada recognizes that a robust accountability mechanism can help ensure public trust that Canada's public safety institutions are responsive to the law and to Canadians. That is why I am honoured today to initiate debate on Bill C-3.

I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the excellent and extraordinary work of two former parliamentarians: former senator Wilfred Moore and my predecessor, former public safety minister Ralph Goodale, who worked tirelessly to advocate for effective CBSA oversight.

This important piece of legislation that is before us today would establish an independent review and complaints mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency. This will address the significant accountability and transparency gap among our public safety agencies and departments here in Canada.

Among our allies, Canada is alone in not having a dedicated review body for complaints regarding its border agency. The CBSA is also the only organization within the public safety portfolio without its own independent review body.

The resolution of conduct complaints is critically important to maintaining public trust. We already know that many CBSA activities, such as customs and immigration decisions, are subject to independent review. Unfortunately, as of yet, there is no such mechanism for public complaints related to CBSA employee conduct and service.

I will provide some context for my colleagues and for Canadians. The agency deals with an extraordinary and staggering number of people and a huge volume of transactions each and every year. For example, in 2018-19, CBSA employees interacted with over 96 million travellers to and from Canada and collected on behalf of Canadians $32 billion in taxes and duties. Behind these extraordinary numbers is the story of all of us, Canadians in all walks of life and in all parts of our country who rely on the services of our border services agencies. Together, we expect that in the majority of cases we will receive, and do receive, a high degree of professionalism when travelling abroad for work and for leisure. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many members of the Canada Border Services Agency for their service to Canadians and for their professionalism they give their duties.

It is a fact that when dealing with that many travellers it is inevitable that some complaints may arise. That is why, in order to maintain the public trust in our system and to strengthen accountability for the important role that the border service officers perform for us, it is imperative that we have an independent review body to ensure that any negative experience is thoroughly investigated and quickly and transparently resolved.

Currently, if there are complaints from the public regarding the level of service provided by CBSA or the conduct of CBSA officials, they are handled through an internal process within the agency. Our government has taken action in recent years to rectify gaps with respect to the independent review of national security activities.

We have passed legislation to create the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians which recently published its first annual report. With the passage of Bill C-59, our government has also established the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. With these two initiatives under way, now is the time to close a significant gap in Canada's public safety and national security accountability framework. This is exactly where Bill C-3 comes in.

The existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, or CRCC as it is commonly known, is at the heart of this proposed legislation. The CRCC currently functions as the independent review and complaints body for the RCMP. Under Bill C-3, its responsibilities would be strengthened and it would be renamed the public complaints and review commission, or PCRC. The new PCRC would be responsible for the handling of complaints and conducting reviews for the CBSA in addition to its current responsibilities with respect to the RCMP.

When the PCRC receives a complaint from the public, it would notify the CBSA immediately which would undertake the initial investigation. This is an efficient approach that has proven to lead to a resolution of the overwhelming majority of complaints. In fact, in the case of the RCMP, some 90% of complaints against the conduct or service of the RCMP are resolved in this way.

The PCRC would also be able to conduct its own investigation to the complaint if, in the opinion of the chairperson, it is in the public interest to do so. In those cases, the CBSA would not initiate an investigation into the complaint. In other cases where the complainant may not be satisfied with the CBSA's initial handling of the complaint, the complainant could ask the PCRC directly to begin a review of it. When the PCRC receives such a request for review over a CBSA complaint decision, the commission could review the complaint and all relevant information, sharing its conclusions regarding the CBSA's initial decision. It could conclude that the CBSA decision was appropriate. It may instead ask that the CBSA investigate further or it can initiate its own independent investigation of the complaint.

The commission also would have the authority to hold a public hearing as part of its work. At the conclusion of a PCRC investigation, the review body would be able to report on its findings and make such recommendations as it sees fit. The CBSA would be required to provide a response in writing to the PCRC's findings and its recommendations.

In addition to the complaints function, the PCRC would be able to review on its own initiative or at the request of me or any minister any activity of the CBSA except for national security activities. These, of course, are reviewed by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency which is now in force.

PCRC reports would include findings and recommendations on the adequacy, appropriateness and clarity of CBSA policies, procedures and guidelines; the CBSA's compliance with the law and all ministerial directions; and finally, the reasonableness and necessity of CBSA's use of its authorities and powers.

With respect to both its complaint and review functions, the PCRC would have the power to summon and enforce the appearance of persons before it. It would have the authority to compel them to give oral or written evidence under oath. It would have the commensurate authority to administer oaths, to receive and accept oral and written evidence, whether or not that evidence would be admissible in a court of law.

The PCRC would also have the power to examine any records or make any inquiries that it considers necessary. It would have access to the same information that the CBSA possesses when a chairman's complaint is initiated.

Beyond its review and complaint functions, Bill C-3 would also create an obligation to the CBSA to notify local police and the PCRC of any serious incident involving CBSA employees or its officers. That includes giving the PCRC the responsibility to track and publicly report on all serious incidents such as death, serious injury, or Criminal Code violations involving members of the CBSA.

Operationally, the bill is worded in such a way as to give the PCRC flexibility to organize its internal structure as it sees fit to carry out its mandate under both the CBSA Act and the RCMP Act. The PCRC could designate members of its staff as belonging either to an RCMP unit or a CBSA unit. Common services such as corporate support could be shared between both units which would make them more efficient, but there are also several benefits to be realized by separating staff in the fashion that I have described.

For example, staff could develop a certain expertise on matters involving these two agencies, their operational procedures and other matters. Clearly identifying which staff members are responsible for which agency may also help with the clear management of information.

Bill C-3 would also make mandatory the appointment of a vice-chair for the PCRC. This would ensure that there would always be two individuals at the top, a chairperson and a vice-chair, capable of exercising key decision-making powers. Under Bill C-3, the PCRC would publish an annual report covering each of its business lines, the CBSA and the RCMP, and the resources that it has devoted to each.

The report would summarize its operations throughout the year and would include such things as the number and type of complaints, and any review activities providing information on the number, type and outcome of all serious incidents. To further promote transparency and accountability, the annual report would be tabled in Parliament.

The new public complaints and review commission proposed in Bill C-3 would close a significant gap in Canada's public safety accountability regime.

Parliamentarians, non-government organizations and stakeholders have all been calling upon successive governments to initiate such a reform for many years. For example, in June 2015, in the other place, the committee on national security and defence tabled a report which advocated for the establishment of an independent civilian review and complaints body with a mandate to conduct investigations for all CBSA activities. More recently, Amnesty International, in Canada's 2018 report card, noted that the CBSA remains the most notable agency with law enforcement and detention powers in Canada that is not subject to independent review and oversight.

National security expert and law professor Craig Forcese is quoted as saying that CBSA oversight is “the right decision”. Government expert Mel Cappe said that it is “filling the gap”. I would importantly note that the proposed legislation before the House benefited from invaluable advice proposed to the government by Mr. Cappe.

To support this legislation, we have allocated $24 million to expand the CRCC to become an independent review body for the CBSA. With the introduction of Bill C-3, proper oversight is on track to becoming a reality.

In the last Parliament, this bill received all-party support in the House in recognition of its practical contents that seek to maintain the integrity of our border services and to instill confidence in Canadians that their complaints will be heard independently and transparently. Though the bill was supported unanimously at third reading, it unfortunately did not receive royal assent by the time the last Parliament ended.

We have heard concerns from many members in this House about the date of tabling, and we are now reintroducing this bill at our very first opportunity as part of the 43rd Parliament. This will be the third consecutive Parliament to consider legislation to create an oversight body for the CBSA. It is overdue.

For all of these reasons, I proudly introduce Bill C-3. I am happy to take any questions my colleagues may have.

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

Madam Speaker, I will continue with the public safety minister's comment at committee:

[T]he government is launching, almost immediately, a public consultation process on our national security framework that will touch directly on the subject matter of this bill, and I need that consultation before I can commit to specific legislation.

Well, that was almost three years ago. To say that the bill is late would obviously be an understatement. It has taken the minister over three years to bring forward this legislation. That is quite a long time for a minister who said he was already working on something in 2016.

In keeping with his recent history on consultations, there appears to have been little or no external consultation in preparation for the bill. Hopefully, at committee, the government will be able to produce at least one group or organization outside of the government that will endorse the legislation. However, I am not holding my breath.

The government even hired a former clerk of the Privy Council to conduct an independent report. Mel Cappe conducted a review and provided his recommendations in June 2017. It was only because of an access to information request by CBC News that Parliament even knows of this report.

A CBC News article noted:

The June 2017 report by former Privy Council Office chief Mel Cappe, now a professor at the University of Toronto, was obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act....

[A] spokesman for [the] Public Safety Minister...would not comment directly on Cappe’s recommendations, but said the government is working on legislation to create an “appropriate mechanism” to review CBSA officer conduct and handle complaints.

The proposed body would roll in existing powers of the civilian review and complaints commission for the RCMP.

The government and the minister had the recommendations two years ago, yet they are bringing this forward at the last minute. It appears to be an afterthought. Again, in February of this year, the minister said that they continue to work as fast as they can to bring forward legislation on oversight for the CBSA.

Perhaps the Liberal government was just distracted by its many self-inflicted wounds. It created many challenges for Canadians, and now it is tabling legislation in the 11th hour that deals with real issues and asking parliamentarians to make up for the government's distraction and lack of focus on things that matter to Canada, Canadians and our democracy. These are things like public safety, national security, rural crime, trade, energy policies and lower taxes.

There is an impact to mismanagement and bad decision-making. The Liberals' incompetence has had a trickle-down effect that is felt at every border crossing and also across many parts of the country.

We know that RCMP officers had to be deployed and dedicated to dealing with illegal border crossings. When the Liberals set up a facility to act as a border crossing in Lacolle, Quebec, RCMP officers were there covering people entering into Canada. Those RCMP officers were not commissioned that day. They were pulled from details across the country. They were pulled from monitoring returned ISIS fighters and from monitoring and tackling organized crime. They were taken and redeployed, most likely, from rural detachments across the country. We know that in my province of Alberta, the RCMP is short-staffed by nearly 300 officers. It is not a surprise, then, that there was a rise in rural crime while this was going on. Rural crime is now rising faster than urban crime.

However, it is not just the RCMP that has been impacted by the mismanagement at the border. It is also border officers, who will have the added oversight created through Bill C-98.

CBSA officers told me and many other MPs about more shifts and about workers being transferred to Manitoba and Quebec. The media reported that students were taking the place of full-time, trained border officers at Pearson airport. This is the largest airport in Canada, and the impacts of having untrained and inexperienced officers monitoring potentially the top spot for smuggling and transfer of illegal goods are staggering.

We have a serious issue in Canada at our borders, one that is getting worse. We know from testimony given during the committee's study of Bill C-71 that the vast majority of illegal firearms come from the U.S. They are smuggled in. At the guns and gangs summit, the RCMP showed all of Canada pictures of firearms being smuggled in as part of other packages. The minister's own department is saying there is a problem with smuggled goods, contraband tobacco and drugs coming across our borders.

Rather than actually protect Canadians, we are looking into oversight. Do not get me wrong. Oversight is good, but it is not the most pressing issue of the day.

The media is now reporting that because of the Liberals' decision to lift visas, there are many harmful and potentially dangerous criminals now operating in our country. This comes on the heels of reports that there are record-high numbers of ordered deportations of people who are a security threat. There were 25 in 2017. There are also record-low removals. Deportations were about or above 12,000 to 15,000 per year from 2010 to 2015, but that is not what we are seeing now. The Liberals, even with tens of thousands of people entering Canada illegally, are averaging half of that.

We know that the CBSA is not ignoring these issues and security threats. It just lacks the resources, which are now dedicated to maintaining an illegal border crossing and monitoring tens of thousands more people.

This failure is not just my opinion. It is the opinion of many Canadians.

A Calgary Herald headline from last August read, “Confidence in [The Prime Minister's] handling of immigration is gone”. The Toronto Sun, on May 29 of this year, wrote, “AG report shows federal asylum processing system a mess”. Another reads, “Auditor General Calls out Liberal Failures”. The news headlines go on and on.

This is not something the minister did when he implemented reforms in Bill C-59, the national security reforms. Under that bill, there would be three oversight agencies for our national security and intelligence teams: the new commissioner of intelligence, with expanded oversight of CSIS and CSE; the new national security and intelligence review agency, and with Bill C-22, the new parliamentary committee. This is in addition to the Prime Minister's national security adviser and the deputy ministers of National Defence, Foreign Affairs and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

Oversight can be a good thing. Often, because of human nature, knowing it is there acts as a deterrent. From my career, knowing that police are nearby or ready to respond can deter criminals, and knowing that someone will review claims of misconduct will add credibility to an already reputable agency, the CBSA.

It is probably too bad that this was not done earlier, because it could have gone through the House and the Senate quite easily. It could have been a law for a year or two already, perhaps even more. Sadly, the late tabling of the bill seems to make it a near certainty that if it reaches the Senate, it might be caught in the backlog of legislation there.

The House and the committee can and should give the bill a great deal of scrutiny. While the idea seems sound, and the model is better than in other legislation, I am wary of anything the government does on borders. It has not managed our borders well and has not been up front with the House or Canadians about that. In 2017, the Liberals told us that there was nothing to worry about, with tens of thousands of people crossing our borders illegally. They said they did not need any new resources, security was going well and everything was fine.

Well, the reality was that security was being cut to deal with the volume, provinces and cities were drowning in costs and overflowing shelters, border and RCMP agencies were stretched and refugee screenings were backing up. According to the ministers, everything was fine. Then, in the budget, came new funding, and in the next budget, and in the one after that. Billions in spending is now on the books, including for the RCMP, the CBSA and the Immigration and Refugee Board.

What should we scrutinize? For one, I think we should make sure to hear from those people impacted by this decision, such as front-line RCMP and CBSA officers who will be subject to these evaluations.

A CBC article had this to say:

The union representing border officers has heard little about the proposal and was not consulted on the bill. Jean-Pierre Fortin, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union (CIU), said the president of the CBSA also was left in the dark and could not inform the union of any details of the legislation.

How reliable is legislation when the agency it would actually impact and involve was left out of the loop?

It seems odd that the Liberals would appoint one union, Unifor, to administer a $600-million media bailout fund just after they announce a campaign against Conservatives, and, yet, the border services officers union is not even consulted about legislation that impacts it. I would hope that consultations are not dependent on political donations and participation.

That is why Parliament should be careful about who sits on this new agency. We do not need more activists; we need experienced professionals. We need subject matter experts. We need people with management expertise. We need to make sure that the people who work on these review organizations are appropriately skilled and resourced to do their work. We need to make sure that frivolous cases do not tie up resources, and that officers do not have frivolous and vexatious claims hanging over the heads.

We need to make sure that Canadians do not need to hire lawyers to get access to the complaints commission and its process.

We need to make sure that the minister and his staff, and other staffing leaders across the public safety spectrum cannot get their hands inside the processes and decisions of these bodies. We need the agency to have transparent, clear processes and systems that are fair to applicants and defendants alike. We need to make sure that these processes do not eat away resources from two agencies that are already strapped for bodies.

I hope there is time to do this right. I hope there is the appropriate time to hear from all the relevant witnesses, that legal advice is obtained, and that we have the appropriate time to draft changes, changes that, based on the minister's track record, are almost certainly going to be needed.

As the House begins its work on this legislation, I trust the minister and his staff would not be directing the chair of the public safety committee to meet their scripted timeline, which seems a little difficult to be done now with only a week remaining. Knowing that the chair is a scrupulous and honoured individual, he certainly would not suggest that legislation needs to be finished before we can hear the appropriate testimony.

There is a lot of trust and faith needed for the House to work well on legislation like this and many other pieces, trust that is built through honest answers to legitimate questions, trust that is reinforced by following integrity and the need to get it right, rather than the need to just be right.

I hope, perhaps just once in this legislative session, we could see the government try to broker such trust on Bill C-98, but I will not hold my breath.

Motion in relation to Senate amendments

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

It being 8:02 p.m., pursuant to an order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the consideration of the Senate amendment to Bill C-59 now before the House.

The question is as follows. Shall I dispense?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is obvious that we have hit a nerve on the other side.

Let me focus on Bill C-59, which is a very important piece of legislation. If there were a part that I would highlight, it would be the national security intelligence review agency, an agency that would be more holistic in its approach. As opposed to having a review agency for the RCMP and a review agency for CSIS, we will have one review agency that ultimately has the responsibility for all of those security organizations, thereby ensuring we do not have independent silos all over the place.

This is really good stuff. I would encourage the members opposite to vote in favour of this legislation. Let us pass some legislation today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to give a little ad at the beginning of my speech. Tomorrow is an important day. June 12 is Philippines Independence Day. I want to invite all members from all sides of the House to come out after their caucus meetings and walk across the street from West Block to SJAM to participate in the Filipino heritage event.

I want to add my thoughts in regard to Bill C-59 and I will approach it in two ways. First I will speak to the process that has brought us to the bill before us today and then I will provide thoughts in regard to some of the content of the bill itself.

To say that the issue of security and freedom is a new debate in the House of Commons would be a bit of a stretch. I can recall the debates surrounding Bill C-51 several years ago when Stephen Harper was the prime minister. He brought in that piece of legislation. At the time, the Liberal Party, as the third party, actually supported that legislation.

However, we qualified that support in a very clear way. We indicated throughout the debate that there were some fundamental flaws in Bill C-51, and that if we were to ultimately win in the election of 2015, we intended to bring forward some changes that would rectify some of those fundamental flaws.

I can recall the hours of debate that took place inside the chamber by members of all political parties. I can remember some of the discussions flowing out of the committees at the time. There was a great deal of debate and a great deal of controversy with the legislation. Even while campaigning during the last federal election, it was a topical issue for many people. It dealt with issues of an individual's rights versus having that sense of security. I always made reference to the fact that Liberals understand how important individual rights are. That is one of the reasons I often highlight that we are the party that brought in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

If we take a look at the original Bill C-51, even though the principles were very admirable and we supported it and voted for it, even though at the time we received some criticism, we made it very clear that we would make changes.

This is the second piece of legislation that has attempted to make good on commitments we made to Canadians in the last election. I really enjoy is being able to stand up in this place and provide comment, especially on legislation that fulfills election commitments, starting with our very first bill, Bill C-2. That is a bill I am very proud of, and I know my caucus colleagues are very proud of that bill. It concerns the tax break for Canada's middle class. There is the bill we are debating today, Bill C-59, the second part of a commitment we made to Canadians in the last federal election, which talks about the issue of public safety and privacy rights. Yet again, we have before us another piece of legislation that ultimately fulfills another commitment we made to Canadians in the last federal election.

I mentioned that I wanted to talk a bit about the process. In bringing forward Bill C-59, I do not think we could come up with a better example of a minister who has really understood the importance of the issue, or who has gone far beyond what any other minister in the Stephen Harper era ever did, in terms of consultation.

Even before the bill was introduced, we received input from thousands of Canadians, whether in person or through the Internet. We also received input from members of Parliament, particularly from many of my Liberal caucus colleagues. We were afforded the opportunity to share with the minister and the caucus some of the issues and concerns that came out of the last election. A great deal of consultation was done. The minister on several occasions indicated that the comprehensive dialogue that took place allowed for a substantial piece of legislation at the first reading stage.

Shortly after that, the bill was sent to committee prior to second reading, which allowed for a more thorough discussion on a wider scope of issues. The bill was debated at report stage and then at third reading. It was sent to the Senate, which has sent back amendments, which is where we are today. That process indicates that we have a government, as the Prime Minister has often indicated, that thinks the roles of our standing committees and the Senate can improve legislation. We have seen many changes throughout this process. This bill is a stronger and healthier piece of legislation than it originally was at its first reading stage.

I wanted to give that bit of background and then do a comparison regarding why the government had to move closure just an hour ago. I want to make it very clear to those individuals who might be following the debate, whether it is on Bill C-59 or other pieces of legislation.

We have an official opposition party that is determined to work with the NDP, and I often refer to it as the unholy alliance of the Conservatives and the New Democrats. They work together to try to prevent any legislation from passing. They will do whatever they can to prevent legislation from passing. It does not take much to do that. At the end of the day, a few members can cause a great deal of issues to prevent legislation from passing. There is no sense of responsibility coming from the opposition side in regard to working hard for Canadians and recognizing the valuable pieces of legislation that would be for the betterment of our society. In fact, those parties will put up speaker after speaker even on non-controversial legislation, because they have no real interest in passing legislation. If it were up to the Conservative opposition, we would still be debating Bill C-2. The opposition members have many different tools, and they have no qualms about using them. Then—

The House resumed from June 7 consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, and of the amendment.

Motion That Debate Be Not Further Adjourned

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

Mr. Speaker, the minister spoke early on about two academics who supported the bill. I want to remind him of what retired Canadian Forces Lieutenant-General Michael Day said. He said he had zero confidence in Canada's ability to combat emerging threats with Bill C-59.

We know that the charter is mentioned 26 times in the legislation, but the minister should know that every bill has to meet the scrutiny of the charter. Privacy appears 88 times in the bill. We do not know why the government is so concerned about trying to police the agencies that protect Canadians rather than going after those who would appear to do us harm.

The last point I want to make is this. The bill is called undemocratic and one of the reasons for that is the rarity that the Henry VIII clause was kept in it, which means there is the ability of the Prime Minister and cabinet to unilaterally change legislation without coming through Parliament. I am curious whether the minister would care to comment on that manoeuvre in the bill.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I simply make the point that we began work on the legislation from the very first hours when the government was in office in 2015. We started with the learned judgments of Justices Iacobucci, O'Connor and Major. We started with reports that had been filed previously by Parliament, both the House of Commons and the Senate. We listened very carefully to the review reports of the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

We conducted extensive public consultations, which involved 75,000 submissions online from ordinary Canadians. We had public meetings, town hall meetings and expert panels. Never before has there ever been an opportunity for Canadians to have input and for parliamentarians to debate the subject matter around Bill C-59. There has been the largest opportunity to do that in Canadian history.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the minister and the House that, when Bill C-51 was introduced in the previous Parliament, the Liberals who were in opposition at the time voted in favour of Bill C-51, regardless of all the freedom of expression and privacy issues it might cause, not to mention other measures that endangered Canadians more than they protected them. In contrast, the official opposition New Democrats voted against Bill C-51.

Bill C-59 makes some improvements, but as civil liberties groups have said repeatedly, it fails to resolve a number of major problems related to use of data and privacy protection.

I would like to know why the government was in such a hurry to move forward without properly addressing the major issues with Bill C-51 that are still present in Bill C-59.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I do not feel, as leader of the Green Party, that I had adequate opportunity to debate what has happened with Bill C-59, particularly since it went to the Senate.

However, I want to say on the record that although it is not the perfect bill one would have wished for to completely remove the damage of Bill C-51 from the previous Parliament, I am very grateful for the progress made in this bill. What I referred to at the time as the “thought chill sections” of the language were removed. One example was the use of the words “terrorism in general” throughout Bill C-51.

The bill was tabled January 30, 2015, which was a Friday. I read it over the weekend, came back to Parliament on Monday and asked a question in question period about whether we were going to stop this bill that so heavily intruded on civil liberties.

Bill C-59 is an improvement, but I do not think I have had enough time to debate it. I wish the hon. minister could give us more time. I want to see it pass in this Parliament, but I wish there was a way to allow time for proper debate.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that Bill C-59 leaves Canada with a larger, weaker national security and intelligence apparatus and is more focused on internal processes than external results. It is unfortunate, but the reality is that Bill C-59 focuses on policing the actions of national security intelligence agencies instead of criminals and extremists and what they do and plan to do to Canadians.

There are four oversight bodies that intelligence individuals need to be subject to, but it makes no sense to me to shift the security operations that protect Canadians to administration and paperwork. This bill would do just that. It would take $100 million from operations and put it into administration. That is $100 million focused on things other than defending national security.

I am wondering if the minister could comment on the reason for moving $100 million to administration.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear in the amendments included in Bill C-59 that the right to civil protest, the right to demonstrate and the right to express one's point of view within the normal laws and procedures of Canada are all clearly protected. That was an issue under Bill C-51, and we have corrected that by virtue of this legislation.

I point out as well that both the government and parliamentary committees have consulted about this legislation with the Privacy Commissioner, and the Privacy Commissioner's advice has been taken very seriously in the crafting of this legislation. As I say, the debate has been an extensive one. Every dimension of this new law has been thoroughly ventilated through one House of Parliament or the other.

I point out that the debate has gone on for so long that certain previous provisions of national security law have expired while waiting for the new law to come into effect, so it is time to vote and to take a decision.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that I think it is a shame that the government is limiting debate on such essential issues as privacy and the fundamental rights of Canadian citizens.

For years, people like Daniel Therrien, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, have been expressing serious concern about the fact that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service collects personal information about people who have done absolutely nothing simply because it wants to conduct analyses.

In 2015, I do not think that the Liberal Party was as explicit as that. Bill C-59 states that “activity that undermines the security of Canada” could include significant or widespread interference with essential infrastructure. That is exactly the same language the Stephen Harper government used.

Could this include demonstrations against pipelines, for instance?

Can the government confirm that it indeed believes that major demonstrations against the construction of pipelines constitute activities that undermine the security of Canada?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in the last election we were very specific about the things we found inappropriate, deficient or headed in the wrong direction that had been enacted by the previous government. We enumerated those things in our platform document. Bill C-59, together with other pieces of legislation before this Parliament, has dealt very effectively with the agenda of things that needed to be corrected.

For example, we said there needed to be a committee of parliamentarians to deal with national security and intelligence issues. We created that through Bill C-22. We said we needed to protect the right to civil protest and dissent to make sure those civil rights were never impinged upon. That is dealt with in Bill C-59. We said we needed to make clear that threat reduction measures would not violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That too is dealt with in Bill C-59.

If we went through each one of the items that were enumerated during the course of the election campaign, we would find that in Bill C-59 and in other pieces of legislation that have already been adopted by the House, commitments made in 2015 have, in fact, been satisfied by legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the efforts of the minister and his staff in bringing forward what I believe is a substantial piece of legislation. It provides a sense of security for Canadians and at the same time provides rights that can be traced right back to our charter.

In the last federal election, we made some serious commitments to Canadians about making changes to Bill C-51. Bill C-59, in part, deals with Bill C-51. I look at the legislation before us as another way the government has delivered some of the tangible things it said it would.

Could the member comment regarding that aspect of the legislation, which I know is important to all Canadians? As a personal thought, it is nice to see the legislation going through this final process.

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

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-59 is the government's version of a supposedly improved national security framework. However, I am confused by what we heard from witnesses at committee and what the government continues to push forward. Therefore, I would be interested to hear from the minister why the government rejected an amendment to allow public servants across all federal governments to report information that they believe is connected or related to a national security threat. Why is the government blocking public servants from sharing information regarding threats with security forces or oversight committees? How does that improve national security?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order.

In relation to the consideration of the Senate amendments to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, I move:

That the debate be not further adjourned.

The Conservatives will do whatever they can to ensure that the government does not advance legislation, so we will use our tools.

National Security Act, 2017

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to have the opportunity to speak to such an important bill today.

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a very important turning point in the Second World War and one where Canada was overwhelmingly able to contribute and further the cause of peace and security in the world.

Why do I bring that up? This is a piece of legislation respecting national security matters and one that we must take very seriously, given the nature of the threats that are facing not only Canada here at home, but the world, at this point.

For the first time in many years, we are seeing the rise of great powers. We are seeing an increase in the number of threats that are facing our country, and those threats are not coming only in terms of troops on the ground or weapons or guns being fired. Those threats are coming from what we call non-traditional or asymmetric threats. We can be sitting at home and we find that information manipulation, cyber-threats and online instigating of violence are having a significant contribution on people who would want to commit these acts.

We must be vigilant. Democracy is fragile. Those men who sacrificed their lives 70 years ago for what we have today must be honoured. How do we honour them? Yes, we remember the incredible sacrifice they made, but we have also been entrusted with preserving the security and the values for which our nation stands going forward.

What are those values? Those values are safeguarding the freedom of individual liberty, the principles of democracy and the rule of law. Every time any one of those things is eroded, we must stand and be counted to ensure that we do honour their memory and we remember what exactly they fought for and what we must also fight for into the future.

What would Bill C-59 actually do? Bill C-59 is trying to make it appear that the Liberal government takes national security threats seriously. In a world of increasing threats, the government wants to show that it is doing something. Unfortunately, it is more about show than actual reality.

Significant parts of the bill take existing legislation and muddy the waters. They make it weaker. They make the wording so that it is more difficult to execute on. Instead of giving money to the areas that will further pointy-end national security efforts, the government is putting money into more bureaucracy and more red tape and ensuring that nothing actually gets done.

This is highly disconcerting. If Canadians do not understand what the threats are, and if our national security agencies and our law enforcement people have less ability, less legislation, weaker and more confusing legislation and more bureaucracy to execute on making sure we are safe and secure, then what exactly are we trying to accomplish?

That is one of the more fundamental reasons why Conservative members cannot support the bill. It is a lot of bureaucracy. It is a lot of smoke and mirrors. It is an attempt to make it look like the Liberals are taking national security seriously, when in fact it compounds the problem and confuses the issue.

The Liberals have combined it all into one organization, the national security and intelligence review agency, and we are not able to see what that organization is going to do and what its mandate will be.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, and of the amendment.

Notice of Closure Motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, while I am on my feet, should we not be able to find a way forward, I wish to give notice that with respect to the consideration of Senate amendments to Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters, at the next sitting of the House a minister of the Crown shall move, pursuant to Standing Order 57, that debate be not further adjourned.

Notice of time allocation motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I think the member for Durham has been quite clear that although things might not be perfect, it is important we move them ahead.

That is exactly why I would like to advise that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the consideration of certain amendments to Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of the said amendments.

National Security Act, 2017

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Madam Speaker, in the 2015 election Bill C-51 was front and centre in my riding. There were rallies held across the riding against Bill C-51. People were really angry with the Conservative government for putting it forward. They were almost equally angry with the Liberals for supporting it at that time.

Regarding this current bill, Bill C-59, I want to quote from Cara Zwibel, acting general counsel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association. She said:

All Canadian laws must comply with the Charter. Bill C-59 tries harder than its predecessor, but fails to fix some of the unconstitutional elements...contested in...Bill C-51. Troublingly, C-59 also allows intelligence agencies to engage in conduct that threatens freedom of expression, freedom of association, privacy, and public safety. The government has taken a first step, but a great deal more is needed. Canada must get it right on national security.

I am interested in my colleague's comments on this statement that Bill C-59 continues to threaten freedom of expression, freedom of association, privacy and public safety.

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

Madam Speaker, I always enjoy my friend from Winnipeg North. I know he loves my using his assault-on-democracy quote with respect to omnibus bills. The frequency of the Liberals' time allocation and closure in the last few weeks of Parliament would really make Peter Van Loan blush. He should review some of his speeches of outrage in the previous Parliament.

Let me address the member's issues. As I reminded him when he railed on about Bill C-51, he voted for it. The Prime Minister, at that time the leader of the third party, praised the preventive-arrest measures. Now the Liberals are throwing those out the window. Much like everything with this Prime Minister, it is just not as advertised. I have heard that a few times.

We generally support intelligence oversight, as the member will note from my remarks. That was difficult to do in a minority government at times. During the majority government it was not something that was looked at, but we have spoken in favour of it at times. I have spoken of it, and in fact Peter MacKay spoke in favour of it back around 2006.

The final piece the member said about rights is critical. Public safety is a balancing between our important freedoms, liberties and rights and our public safety and security, and we certainly should be very careful. However, as I said, there are legal thresholds required for preventive arrest, and baked into them are evidence, a threshold and a trust in law enforcement to follow in conjunction with the Crown.

We have the best legal system in the world. We have the best law enforcement in the world. It can always be better and we can make it better, but we cannot tie law enforcement agencies' hands. If someone is killed in a mosque or while guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, his or her rights are erased, so let us not bind the hands of law enforcement agents, who have a tough job in keeping Canadians safe. That is why we do not support the provision in Bill C-59.

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

Madam Speaker, for Canadians watching, it is not appropriate for a member of Parliament to refer to the presence or absence of a member in the House, and I certainly did not mention an individual member at all. Most of the Liberals were not here, so I certainly did not highlight anyone specifically.

Because Bill C-59 is one of the many omnibus bills we have seen in this Parliament, I am going to speak to three aspects of this bill. I need to remind Canadians and my friend, the deputy House leader of the Liberal Party, that the Liberals promised Canadians that they would never use omnibus legislation in this Parliament. I have lost count of the number of omnibus pieces of legislation, which my friend, the Liberal MP from Winnipeg, once called an assault on democracy. They have been regularly assaulting this democracy in this Parliament, and Bill C-59 is an example, because it is comprehensive. It would affect the Criminal Code, the Communications Security Establishment and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. There are multiple pieces of legislation referenced and amended. It is very comprehensive.

The Conservatives have tried to work with the government on it. There are two central concerns I have with Bill C-59, which is why I and the Conservatives cannot support it, despite the good work by opposition members and despite the good work by the Senate, which agrees with much of what I am going to say.

I am going to talk about two critical pieces where the government is falling short, from a public safety standpoint, with Bill C-59. Then I am going to talk about the great advocacy work of No Fly List Kids and people like Sulemaan Ahmed and the families that have been some of the most sincere, thoughtful and creative advocates I have seen in my six years in Parliament trying to make public policy better. I am going to make a commitment to them right at the start of this speech. Conservatives will fix the problems with the no-fly list. We will make sure that there is a redress system to have false positives addressed, and we will do that within the first two years of government. We will have a process to get it fixed.

The government throws it into an omnibus bill and claims that it is going to cost far more than it is. We need a redress system, much like the one in the United States.

When the no-fly list was created under the Conservative government, and I am not suggesting that it was not under the Conservative government, there was no idea that there would be so many false positives. Families impacted by that, many families who have children sharing a name with someone who might be on a no-fly list, have no way to distinguish that or redress that, and that is unfair. It has affected many families from across the country.

I want to thank the no-fly list kids and their families and make that personal pledge to them. I have mentioned it many times in the House and in committee. If we win the election in the fall, which we are planning to, to get Canada back on track, we will make a commitment to fix that very quickly, faster than the government that still has not fixed the Phoenix pay system in the final months of its time in government.

Here are the substantive measures we cannot support in Bill C-59. The no-fly list is part of this large omnibus bill.

The reason Conservatives cannot support it are central to public safety and security. I say this as a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, as a former minister of the Crown and as a former shadow minister for public safety. I have looked at this bill and the issues involved in great detail.

The first issue is the threat disruption threshold. The government's change is a risk to public safety. I never overstate risks. There is not a bogeyman around every corner. However, when we change the threshold for peace officers, law enforcement and our justice system from “likely to prevent” a terrorist act to “necessary to prevent” the commission of such an act, that is a threshold that will perplex police forces across this country and make it hard for them to detain risks to public safety and security.

Why is that critical? It is because, when we introduced a change to this power, following the attack on Parliament and following the attack and death of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, the Prime Minister, who was the member for Papineau and third party leader in the last Parliament, praised this preventative measure in that Parliament. In fact, he said that he “welcome[s] the measures [on] preventative arrest” that were contained in the bill. However, the Liberals are changing it, and law enforcement and security officials are telling them not to change it.

I would invite Liberal members who were not here in the last Parliament to read the committee transcripts from the last Parliament and the testimony from Patrice Vincent's sister. He was a warrant officer serving with distinction in Quebec who was run down and killed by a radicalized Canadian because of the uniform he wore. That is it. He was targeted. Police knew that the young man from Quebec was a risk, but they did not feel they had an evidentiary burden to make a preventative arrest to prevent what they thought might be the commission of a terrorist offence.

By making it “necessary to prevent”, the bill sets a high standard. As a lawyer, I worry about that standard. “Likely” does not mean that this power would allow law enforcement to willy-nilly preventatively arrest people. “Likely to prevent” the commission of an offence is an appropriate threshold. Changing this is a very poor and, quite frankly, dangerous public policy. Therefore, we have asked for that amendment, as have many Canadians and many law enforcement experts.

We, in the Conservative caucus, trust law enforcement officers. They have a difficult job to do whenever someone is caught on the way to committing an offence, as we saw in southwestern Ontario with Mr. Driver. Questions are asked by law enforcement. Look at how close we were. We have relied now two or three times in the last few years on FBI information to stop threats in our country. Therefore, this is a serious gap in Bill C-59.

The second issue is the “counselling commission of terrorism” element of the bill and the criminal standard of the offence under our Criminal Code. Many groups appeared before committee in this Parliament saying that we cannot have ambiguity on the counselling the commission of terrorism issue in the bill. The old standard was “knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism”. Therefore, there is still an evidentiary threshold that is required. This is not some draconian power that people are suggesting. There is a threshold required. Making the threshold too high or too ambiguous is a risk, and that is unnecessary. In fact, the entire Senate agrees with our position on this. “Counselling” is way too broad and unclear.

In an age when a lot of threats are now online, advocating, pushing, promoting should be something for the commission of violence on another, so that we can avoid the next attack on the Hill, so that we can avoid the next horrible attack like the one we saw at the mosque in Quebec City. That horrendous killer went into the mosque, and if law enforcement had seen that he was knowingly advocating or promoting violence against an identifiable group, that would have been enough. In fact, combined with my last point, it would have been “likely to prevent”. That could have stopped someone in that circumstance.

All communities, particularly religious communities like the Muslim and Jewish communities that face threats and see horrific things online, should not want these aspects of Bill C-59 to pass, and that is what the Conservatives have consistently been advocating in the interest of public safety, in the interest of all Canadians. The Senate agrees on the issue of counselling the commission of an offence. Most advocacy groups agree that it is too ambiguous. In a time when we are seeing these threats emerge online, we are seeing people radicalized online.

In the last Parliament, I remember one of my early votes was to make travelling abroad for training with a terrorist organization a crime under the Criminal Code. Now, with social media, technology and YouTube, people do not need to travel. They can be radicalized, promote hate and violence and actually advocate for violence against an identifiable group online.

We have to give law enforcement the tools of preventative arrest and we have to criminalize some of that terror activity at its source, trusting our law enforcement and our courts. Preventative arrest is not trial and conviction. It is law enforcement, in conjunction often with the Crown, saying that it has ascertained there is a serious risk to public safety, to Canadian citizens, to people living in Canada, to people visiting Canada, and that preventative arrest will likely prevent it. That is a reasonable standard. That was the old standard.

Changing that to arresting the person preventatively to prevent this or to stop it is too high a threshold. That could mean law enforcement would spend three more weeks looking into the suspect. In the case of Patrice Vincent, we heard that in committee in particular. I would invite Canadians to look at the committee transcripts. I will tweet his sister's testimony out later. Law enforcement knew that gentleman in Quebec. I cannot remember his name right now. He was a young Québécois who had been racialized and law enforcement knew he was a risk.

Those are the two elements why the Conservatives cannot support Bill C-59. It is bad for public safety and security. There are other elements in the bill we like. However, an omnibus bill, as my friend from Winnipeg used to say, is an assault on democracy. I have tried in my speech to commit to two key things on why the legislation is flawed.

I cannot understate enough how impressed I am by the thoughtful and informed advocacy of the no-fly list kids. I know members on all sides of the House have heard from these people and have seen their commentary.

My friend Sulemaan will laugh when he hears I am promoting going to a Montreal Canadiens game, as a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, but I am. When young people are prevented from going to a hockey game of the Montreal Canadiens because they share a name with someone who is a threat, not only is it unfair to them, it shows that our no-fly list is full of garbage. In public safety and security that is not enough. If someone has to sort through dozens, hundreds and thousands of false positives, is there really security at all?

This is a commitment from my leader and our caucus. We want to thank the no-fly list group and their families for the advocacy they have done with all the members of the House and commit to them. We are the party that delivers. We are not the hashtag party. We are not the photo ops party. We are the party that will deliver. We give our commitment that this will be a priority early in our government.

I can see a resolution. I have often said that this is not as complex as the minister of public safety has suggested. I do not even believe it is an accurate statement that it will cost $80 million to fix it.

The U.S. has a redress list. This is about data. This is about ensuring we constantly review the no-fly list . If people who are not threats are crowding out the one or two who may be, the system is not working. I think all Canadians will agree with our pledge to commit that.

I praised the government when it finally addressed the issue, after listening to the families of the no-fly list kids. However, by putting it into an omnibus bill, it prevents us from addressing it immediately. I am not suggesting bad faith on the part of the government. I think it listened to the advocacy and found this was the most appropriate bill to put it into. However, I do not think it even requires legislation. It could have been done through a ministerial directive. Most of the entries on the no-fly list are known to be false positives.

I remember when retired Senator David Smith was on the list. He was a prominent Liberal senator, or whatever those types of senators are called these days, Liberal or independent. I am not sure. How many David Smiths would there be in Canada? There would be roughly a thousand, so the list is garbage.

Then we saw that a number of young Canadians were on the list because they shared common names in certain communities. How do the hundreds of people with the same name but no biometric information redress that? How can we get the newborn babies off that list? The minister could fix that under his or her own authority. If that had been done, as I said at the time, there would have been full support for the government.

I acknowledge that when we brought this measure in, even prior to my time in Parliament we did not anticipate this false positive issue. I think we have much to learn from the redress system in the U.S., because if there are problems with their no-fly list there, we could avoid some of those pitfalls and make ours world class. That is a commitment we want to make as part of the debate on Bill C-59.

I will go on to say that we generally support other aspects of the bill, those related to security and intelligence oversight, and we have been trying to participate in that work. At various times during our time in government, we talked about a super SIRC and more coordination and oversight with respect to the agencies that collect data. However, one challenge that was faced in minority parliaments was that it was very hard to set up a committee of parliamentarians that would have been devoid of politics. So far, from what I have seen from that committee, although we have not had much in the way of reports from it, it does not seem that politics have been impacting the process. That is a good thing that has come out of this.

There are elements of Bill C-59 that we support. However, when they are included in an omnibus bill, we have to weigh the elements we support on the intelligence side, such as the redress system for the no-fly list, against the elements we do not support. During my speech, I tried to outline the two very serious ones. I cannot underscore enough the fact that preventive arrest is a rare power provided to law enforcement, but it is there because we live in a dangerous and uncertain world. Many of us will remember the day when Nathan Cirillo was killed and the gunman came into the old building, and Patrice Vincent, and the shooting in the mosque in Quebec City, and the Aaron Driver case, when law enforcement stopped this person in southwestern Ontario when he was on his way to commit an offence. We cannot set the burden so high for law enforcement officers that they know there is a risk but are debating for weeks on whether preventive arrest will stop that risk from harming Canadians.

One of our most fundamental duties as parliamentarians is to provide a safe, secure, rules-based system that respects diversity and human rights. Law enforcement officers have a tough job to do, so the last thing we can do, as this Parliament wraps up, is support a bill that will make their job harder.

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

Madam Speaker, Bill C-59 is a very important bill because it is an omnibus bill related to security and intelligence measures. I have spoken to it several times in the House, and it is critical.

It is critical for parliamentarians to understand and hear the discussion on this bill before we pass it. Therefore, Madam Speaker, I would like to ask you whether the House has quorum for my speech on Bill C-59.

And the count having been taken:

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a question on the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act within Bill C-59. Could the member comment on how effective that element is and how it will make the Canadian public more secure and more effective? I would appreciate it if the member could elaborate on this point.

[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.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Bill C-59 is an omnibus bill. That will make it easy for the government to claim that the Conservatives voted against the bill as a whole, but that is completely untrue. I made that clear in my speech. For example, we agree with part 6, which makes changes to air travel legislation to fix problems with the no-fly list. There are also other parts where certain elements were changed. The fact remains that, overall, Bill C-59 is a political document designed to attack Bill C-51. In our opinion, the primary objective of fixing things that were problematic in the eyes of the Liberals or others has not been met, or has been met in a way that caters to certain interests.

As for security, this bill makes it harder for our agencies to do their job, especially the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS. It is wrong to say that we oppose Bill C-59 as a whole, but we cannot support it, because it is an omnibus bill and the problematic provisions are simply unacceptable.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my NDP colleague.

Our visions are often very different. However, our common goal is to succeed in making things better. Bill C-59 is a 260-page omnibus bill with more than nine parts. The NDP originally suggested splitting the bill so that we could work on it in a different way. All of its requests were denied. That was the government's ideology. The Liberals had their hearts set on attacking Bill C-51, and never mind everything else. Yes, I agree with my NDP colleague that our visions were different, but our objective was the same. Sadly, the Liberals were not willing to listen.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I would like to ask him a question.

I hardly need to remind him that the NDP and the Conservatives disagree on how to address some of the issues raised by Bill C-59. However, I think that we do agree on one thing, which is how the study of this bill was handled. It was sent to committee before second reading so more amendments could be made, more witnesses could be heard from and the bill could be studied more thoroughly. I do not remember exactly how many meetings we had, but we had more for the clause-by-clause study than for the study itself.

Does my colleague agree that more time should have been allocated to studying this important bill? The House could have studied it in greater detail, especially considering how much time the Senate spent studying it.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, and of the amendment.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will continue my speech on this very serious matter.

This week the Liberals moved a motion declaring that they would accept just two of the four amendments proposed by the Senate and that they were rejecting the important amendment on terrorism. The two amendments they retained were administrative ones.

Also, we did not support this bill because it makes it harder for law enforcement and security agencies to prevent attacks on Canadian soil, since they no longer have any threat disruption powers. Furthermore, the bill creates information silos among our agencies, which creates problems. I have said this before and I will say it again: information sharing is fundamental.

The Senate's first amendment is to part 2 of the bill, which deals with the intelligence commissioner. The amendment adds a new clause under the “Foreign Intelligence Authorization” heading. This new clause would allow the intelligence commissioner to refer a matter back to the minister with a description of the condition that would have to be added to the authorization in order to make the conclusions reasonable. This amendment would affect the Communications Security Establishment in particular and was recommended by the commissioner.

We support this amendment because it improves the bill by increasing communication and feedback between the information commissioner and the minister, thus reducing administrative formalities. We also proposed this amendment at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Unfortunately, the government rejected it.

The second amendment pertains to counselling the commission of a terrorism offence—I keep bringing it up and we will talk about it again and again—under the “Criminal Code” heading. Those few words make a world of difference in these 260 pages. This amendment broadens the scope of the wording slightly, given that some of our witnesses felt that the term “counselling” was too narrow. We support that amendment because it significantly improves the wording, ensuring greater certainty regarding how counselling another person to commit a terrorism offence should be interpreted. For an offence to have been committed, there is no requirement that:

(c) the accused knows the identity of the person whom the accused counsels to carry out the terrorist activity; or

(d) the person whom the accused counsels to carry out the terrorist activity knows that it is a terrorist activity.

This amendment addresses concerns specific to online terrorist propaganda. We do not understand why the government rejected this amendment proposed by the Senate, which is dominated by independent Liberals.

Despite two positive amendments, this legislation is still flawed. Aside from our unconditional support of part 6, we cannot support Bill C-59.

I will close by mentioning a few examples of serious flaws.

Part 4 amends threat reduction powers by limiting guaranteed powers to seven types of actions, one of which raises the question of whether non-invasive actions require a warrant. That action is described as interfering with the movement of any person. That means a CSIS agent on the ground would need a warrant to give false information to someone who could help the agent meet conspirators. It would also prevent a CSIS agent from warning the parents of a child who is being radicalized unless the agent has a warrant. These changes place an additional administrative burden on our agencies, which, without additional funding, will have to take agents out of the field so they can take care of paperwork.

Information silos are another problem. Part 5 was created in response to privacy protection groups that were unhappy with the fact that government institutions may share information, of their own accord or at the request of another institution, about activities that pose a threat to Canada's security. This creates a silo effect, which national security experts decried.

When ordinary Canadians look at the government, it seems complicated to them. There are many different public servants and many different departments. They often say that people do not talk to each other. Part 5 further complicates the exchange of information that is crucial to protecting national security. People have to be able to communicate. Information silos hinder communication. Leading national security advisors expressed concerns, but the government did not want to change its approach.

The third important element is threat disruption. Part 7 raises the threshold for recognizance orders and peace bonds, making it more difficult for law enforcement to monitor problematic individuals and disrupt threats before they occur.

This clause replaces the following words from the Criminal Code, “suspects on reasonable grounds that the imposition of a recognizance with conditions on a person, or the arrest of a person, is likely to prevent the carrying out of the terrorist activity” with “suspects on reasonable grounds that the imposition of a recognizance with conditions on a person, or the arrest of a person, is necessary to prevent the carrying out of the terrorist activity”.

It all comes down to two words: “likely” is replaced by “necessary”.

Instead of having serious concerns or information about a likely terrorist activity, we now have to be sure that the arrest is necessary. This complicates things. If there is any doubt, we have to back off. Terrorist activities tend to develop quite quickly. People who plot attacks might take months to think about and plan them, but others might quickly decide that they feel like doing something on Sunday, for example. When we get information quickly we have to be able to react quickly. Bill C-59 encumbers the process.

The powers provided for in Conservative Bill C-51 were aligned with those of our allies, including Norway and Finland. We modelled our bill on other democracies that believe freedom and security go hand in hand.

In summary, Bill C-59 is a heavy bureaucratic tool that will not ensure public safety, but will undo what the Conservative government put in place to safeguard the security of Canadians.

I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“the order for the consideration of the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, be discharged and the Bill withdrawn”

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise this morning to speak to Bill C-59, an omnibus bill that is over 260 pages long and has nine major parts. I listened to the minister's speech, which addressed the Senate amendments, but I would first like to focus on Bill C-59 itself.

As I have been saying from the outset, the problem is that most parts of Bill C-59 are administrative in nature. They make changes to the various intelligence and communications agencies. That is fine, but the main goal of Bill C-59 was to respond to Bill C-51, which was implemented by the Conservatives following the attacks that took place here in Ottawa. Bill C-51 was specifically designed to counter terrorism and ensure that anyone seeking to commit terrorist acts in Canada was stopped to avert disaster.

Overall, the omnibus bill has some parts that are fine. They contain the sort of changes that need to be made from time to time. However, other parts are very administratively heavy and will be very costly for the public purse. Essentially, this is a bill on national security. The public expects the government to protect people properly and ensure that the offenders and would-be terrorists of this world are stopped.

Despite what the minister says, we believe that Bill C-59 limits CSIS's ability to reduce terrorist threats. It also limits the departments' ability to share information in order to protect national security. It removes the offence of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general and raises the threshold for obtaining terrorism peace bonds and recognizance with conditions.

At the end of the day, Bill C-59 is going to make life difficult for CSIS agents and telecommunications services people. The bill makes it harder to exchange information. It will once again clog up a system that is already burdensome. People working on the ground every day to ensure Canada's security and safety will be under even more restrictions, which will prevent them from doing their jobs.

Here is a snapshot of the nine parts. Part 1 establishes the national security and intelligence review agency.

Part 2 enacts the intelligence commissioner act. It deals with everything pertaining to the commissioner and the various tasks he or she will have, but abolishes the position of the Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment and provides for that commissioner to become the intelligence commissioner. It transfers the employees of the former commissioner to the office of the new commissioner and makes related and consequential amendments to other acts. In other words, it shuffles things around.

Part 3 enacts the Communications Security Establishment act. CSE's new mandate includes the ability to conduct preventive attacks against threats in addition to its role in signals intelligence and cyber defence. We really do not have a problem with that, provided it remains effective. That is an important point.

Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. It changes the threat reduction powers by limiting them to seven types of measures, one of which gives rise to the issue of whether non-invasive actions require a warrant. The measure in question is described as interfering with the movement of any person. This could mean that a CSIS officer requires a warrant to give misleading information to someone on the way to meeting with co-conspirators.

During operations, officers will sometimes provide individuals with false information to be passed on to those organizing terrorist or other plots. That is one of the work methods used in the field. Henceforth, warrants will have to be obtained, making the work more complicated. The officers will have to spend more time in the office doing paperwork and submitting applications instead of participating in operations.

Part 5 amends the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which was enacted by the Conservative government's Bill C-51. Individuals and privacy groups were unhappy that government institutions could, on their own initiative or at the request of another institution, share information on activities that undermine the security of Canada. Bill C-51 was criticized for permitting the sharing of citizens' personal information.

Although Bill C-59 maintains part of the departments' ability to share information, it is much more restrictive. This means that the departments operate in silos, which was harshly criticized by the national security experts who testified.

Part 6 is the most positive part, and we fully support it. This part deals with the Secure Air Travel Act and the problems with the no-fly list. When travellers have the same name as a terrorist, they encounter major problems, especially when it happens to children and they are not allowed to travel. This part will help fix this problem, and we fully support it.

Part 7 amends the Criminal Code by changing the offence of advocating or promoting terrorism offences in general to one of counselling the commission of a terrorism offence, which carries a maximum sentence of five years.

I will read the next part, which does not pose any problems:

Part 8 amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act to, among other things, ensure that the protections that are afforded to young persons apply in respect of proceedings in relation to recognizance orders, including those related to terrorism, and give employees of a department or agency of the Government of Canada access to youth records, for the purpose of administering the Canadian Passport Order.

Finally, here is the last part:

Part 9 requires that a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of this enactment take place during the sixth year after section 168 of this enactment comes into force.

These are additional administrative measures.

In short, of the nine parts of Bill C-59, we fully support part 6 on the no-fly list. The other parts contain a lot administrative provisions that will make the system more cumbersome. Part 7 is the most problematic.

We believe that the Prime Minister and the minister are weakening Canada's national security agencies and their ability to keep Canadians safe. This legislative measure will make it more difficult for law enforcement and security agencies to prevent attacks on Canadian soil because it takes away their authority to counter threats. The information silos this bill will create within our federal agencies are dangerous and foolish. Rather than countering radicalization, the Liberals are creating loopholes that could be exploited by those who want to radicalize our young people.

The Conservatives take the safety of Canadians very seriously. That is why the previous government brought Canada's national security laws into the 21st century and aligned them with those of our allies. While all of the Five Eyes allies are taking measures to strengthen national security, this government is bringing in legislation that will eliminate our intelligence service's ability to reduce terrorist threats. The Liberals' irresponsible approach will put Canadians' safety at risk.

I was pleased with the four amendments proposed by the senators, who also took the time to work on Bill C-59 and hear witnesses. We know that the independent Liberals have a majority in the the Senate, so we would not normally expect to see amendments that reflect the Conservatives' views. This time, however, we think all four amendments are excellent and deserve our support. We waited for the government's response.

Two of the amendments had been proposed by me and my Conservative colleagues on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, but the Liberals had rejected them. One of them sought to clarify the definition of the phrase “counselling commission of terrorism offence”. This short phrase really embodies the problem we have with Bill C-59. For the benefit of our viewers, I would like to quote the specific wording.

The bill would amend the Criminal Code by changing the following existing definition:

Every person who knowingly instructs, directly or indirectly, any person to carry out a terrorist activity is guilty....

The bill would change it to the following:

Every person who counsels another person to commit a terrorism offence...is guilty....

What is the Liberals' real goal here, if not to just strike out the Conservative government's Bill C-51 so they can say they made a change?

Did they make this change with the intention of improving the legislation? No. Even the senators advised the government to preserve the essence of the definition set out in the Conservatives' Bill C-51.

The minister says that in 2015, when Bill C-51 was introduced by the Conservative government, no charges were ever laid. Is it not possible that no charges were laid because people got scared and decided not to run any risks, in light of the legislation and resources that were in place, as well as the enforcement capability?

Maybe that was why nothing happened. Does watering down and changing this—

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Madam Speaker, the reason is that the subject matter is different. Any security or intelligence activities of CBSA will in fact be reviewable under the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and under the provisions of Bill C-59. What remains to be done, and this is the subject of Bill C-98, is a review mechanism for the activities of CBSA that do not relate to national security and intelligence. That is what Bill C-98 covers. The intelligence and security part of CBSA is covered by Bill C-59 and by the previous bill, Bill C-22.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Madam Speaker, on the first point, about the review period, it is critically important that the principle is being embedded in the legislation. The entire national security and intelligence architecture of the Government of Canada, from end to end, needs to be revisited again at some period after the passage of this legislation. This is groundbreaking legislation that accomplishes more change within the security and intelligence system than perhaps ever before in our history, and it is important that the set of decisions we are making in Bill C-59 be revisited periodically in the future to make sure that we continue to get it right.

The original proposal the government had made was to do this after five years. There was a discussion in the committee about maybe moving it up to three years, which is a compressed but doable time frame. However, the government maintained the view that five years would be a good frame within which to accomplish that review. The Senate came back to the same point that had been raised by the hon. gentleman, saying that three is a better figure. I am prepared to—

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Madam Speaker, the purposes of Bill C-59 are threefold.

First, it would address the deficiencies that existed in previous legislation, including not only Bill C-51 but other pieces of legislation as well. There were errors or omissions that needed to be fixed, and Bill C-59 would do that.

Second, Bill C-59 introduces a broad range of new accountability mechanisms through the new national security and intelligence review agency, the creation of the new intelligence commissioner and a number of other procedures in Bill C-59 to improve transparency and accountability throughout our national security architecture.

Third, the legislation seeks to clarify and confirm legal and constitutional authorities so our security and intelligence agencies, whether that is CSIS, or the CSE, or the RCMP, or the CBSA or any others in the Government of Canada that deal with national security and intelligence issues, know explicitly where they stand, what their authorities are, where the fences are and what they can and cannot do.

This legislation works very hard to accomplish all three of those objectives.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for his explanation.

However, I am still skeptical about part 7. I listened carefully when the minister explained the part about the commission of a terrorism offence. In the broader conversation, people are comparing Bill C-59 to Bill C-51.

Bill C-59 is 260 pages long. Many parts of it are very administrative and relate to structural changes. I will talk about that later.

Everyone agrees that the government's approach here is wrong. National security experts say so. Conservatives sent the same message with our amendments. Even the Senate's amendment confirmed that the government's approach is wrong. Despite all that, the minister insists that he has the right solution.

Is the government butting heads with everyone just because it wants to keep its election promise to change Bill C-51 at any cost?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

moved:

That a Message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours that, in relation to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, the House:

agrees with amendments 3 and 4 made by the Senate;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 1 made by the Senate because the intent of the legislation is to ensure ministerial responsibility and accountability, and the legislation provides that the Intelligence Commissioner must review whether or not the conclusions of the Minister of National Defence, when issuing a foreign intelligence authorization, are reasonable; additionally, subsection 20(1) already requires the Commissioner to provide the Minister with reasons for authorizing or rejecting a foreign intelligence authorization request;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 2 made by the Senate because it would limit the scope of subsection 83.221(1) and would create inconsistencies with the general counselling provisions contained in section 22 and paragraphs 464(a) and (b) of the Criminal Code.

Madam Speaker, as many external experts have said, Bill C-59, which is before the House once again, is of extraordinary importance to Canada and the security and intelligence agencies that work every day to keep Canadians safe.

During the 2015 election, we promised to correct certain problematic elements in the previous government's national security legislation, Bill C-51. In making that promise, we pledged that a government must be able to protect individual rights while at the same time keeping Canadians safe. This is not about striking a balance whereby rights and safety are traded off one against the other; this is about achieving and protecting both simultaneously.

Work on this legislation began very shortly after our government was first sworn into office in late 2015. The time and effort it has taken to get Bill C-59 to the point it is at today have ensured that this is the right bill at the right time for Canada.

We began by examining landmark court rulings, such as those issued by Justices Iacobucci, O'Connor and Major, as well as past reports of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the Senate and the House of Commons. We sought to implement their advice and their rulings.

We then looked at the legal authorities and powers our security and intelligence agencies have from a modern technological standpoint.

The Communications Security Establishment has been part of the Department of National Defence since the end of World War II, with its authorities embedded in the National Defence Act. In 2011, the CSE became a stand-alone agency. However, to this day, it still does not have its own enabling legislation with clear, delineated powers and authorities that reflect the necessary capabilities of signals intelligence in the modern era. Bill C-59 would fix that.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act was written in 1984, following the Macdonald Commission report. It has been largely left in its original form since that time. To put that in perspective, in 1984, the Mac computer was first introduced to the public. If one had a PC instead of a Mac, one ran it on DOS, because Bill Gates had not released the first version of Windows yet, back in 1984. If one wanted to be one of the first people to buy a cellphone, one had to pay, in today's dollars, about $10,000, back in 1984. If one wanted to go online, one used a dial-up modem to access a bulletin board system, or BBS, because the Internet, with browsers, was still a decade away.

As Federal Court Justice Noël wrote in 2016, “the CSIS Act is showing its age”. Suffice it to say, as we looked at the enabling legislation for our security and intelligence agencies, we realized that they needed a lot of updating just to catch up to technology.

In September 2016, having done our basic research and homework, we launched a national security green paper outlining the challenges and the opportunities, and we asked Canadians to share their views. As it turned out, we heard back from them in spades. Over 75,000 submissions were received, and all of them are now summarized in an open and transparent manner on the Public Safety Canada website. During that process, we held town halls and public consultations from coast to coast. The public safety committee of the House of Commons also undertook a study and submitted its recommendations to the government.

Then, on June 20, 2017, after analyzing and synthesizing all of that input, Bill C-59 was tabled in Parliament.

We put it in the public domain before the House rose for the summer so that MPs and the public could truly digest the bill's contents before debate began in Parliament later that fall.

Once the House resumed that fall, the bill was referred to the public safety committee before second reading, allowing it to have more scope for possible amendments. The committee made numerous changes, improving the legislation, including a new requirement for public ministerial directives on receiving or sharing information that may have been tainted by torture. The House passed Bill C-59 on June 19, 2018, and sent it to the Senate, where it received even greater scrutiny and several more amendments.

Among them, the Senate has amended the legislation to require parliamentary review of the legislation three years after royal assent rather than five years, as originally proposed. The original intent of the review after five years was to take into account that some of the provisions of Bill C-59 may come into force quite a bit down the road, and those parts may not have had the time to mature enough for a fulsome review after just three years. However, as I said at the outset, this is a vitally important piece of legislation, and the majority of it will be fully in force in the near term, so a review after three years, as proposed by the Senate, is just fine with me. Plus, a review this quickly would ensure that any changes that may be required as a result of the review could happen sooner.

The Senate also improved part 1.1 of the legislation, the new avoiding complicity in mistreatment by foreign entities act. While the bill lists five specific agencies involved in national security and intelligence operations that would have to comply with the provisions of the new act, the Senate added a schedule so that in future, new departments or agencies might be added by Governor in Council. This could include existing departments with a new national security component or future agencies that might be created.

I would also note that the Senate made eight observations about Bill C-59, which we will, of course, very carefully examine. I especially like the idea of the Senate undertaking a study it is proposing on converting intelligence to evidence in a court of law. This is a point that has bedevilled policy-makers for years, as well as Crown prosecutors and security and intelligence operators, and it is a topic that could benefit from detailed Senate examination.

The Senate also amended part 2 of the bill, which creates the new position and office of the intelligence commissioner. I thank the Senate for their consideration of this part, but will be asking my colleagues here in the House to respectfully decline this amendment.

The intelligence commissioner, under the new legislation, would have a vital role to play in determining whether the standard of reasonableness had been met in a foreign intelligence authorization. However, it would not be the role of the intelligence commissioner to determine how that standard should be met. There may be various methods to meet the standard, and the choice of which method is to be used would be at the discretion of the minister. There should be no confusion about ultimate accountability. It is important to ensure that the authority and accountability for a foreign intelligence operation would rest squarely with the Minister of National Defence.

My staff consulted very carefully on this point with the current Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, which will ultimately become the office of the new intelligence commissioner under Bill C-59, about this particular amendment. The office of the current commissioner indicated a very strong preference for the existing language in clause 20 of the future intelligence commissioner act.

The future clause 20 was amended by the House public safety committee to require the commissioner to provide reasons as to why he or she had approved any proposed authorization scheme or rejected it. That is the right step to take. The Minister of National Defence will consider those reasons when crafting any new authorization application. This approach allows the new commissioner to express his or her views very clearly, while the Minister of National Defence will retain the proper authority and accountability.

If, in the future, there were to be a situation where an authorization is ever challenged in court, it would be the Minister of National Defence, not the intelligence commissioner, who would be accountable to the court. The minister's argument in court should not be that the authorization scheme was explicitly what the intelligence commissioner told him to authorize in order for the CSE to undertake an important activity. In other words, the burden of responsibility should not be shifted to the intelligence commissioner; it must remain with the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of National Defence needs to account for that.

With respect to the Criminal Code amendment that has been proposed by the Senate, I very much appreciate what the senators have attempted to do here. I understand very clearly the point they are trying to make, and we have heard the same point from a number of other stakeholders that have come forward with similar questions and concerns.

However, I make this point. The courts have set an extremely high bar for convicting individuals of counselling offences, which is why the language in the Criminal Code needs to be clear and consistent. It must be just as clear for section 83, terrorism offences, as it is for section 22 and section 464, which cover the counselling of other Criminal Code offences. This will help public prosecutors when they make a decision as to whether there is a reasonable chance of conviction in order to proceed to trial.

Unfortunately, the changes made by the previous government's Bill C-51, back in 2015, had made the terrorist counselling provisions so obscure that they were never actually used. When Bill C-59 was tabled, the intent was to model the section 83, terrorism counselling offences, on the other Criminal Code counselling offences, which have been well used, successfully and are very familiar to police, prosecutors and judges alike.

The courts have already ruled that the terrorism counselling provisions in the Criminal Code, which refer to counselling “another person”, do not require the accused to have counselled a specific individual or even someone he or she knows. In practice, this broad principle will apply in section 83 as well.

If Parliament were to make the wording changes on counselling being suggested by the Senate, that could have unintended consequences for the rest of the Criminal Code's counselling provisions, such as counselling to commit a hate crime. A loophole could inadvertently be created, which I am sure some very assiduous defence attorney would attempt to exploit for a client facing a charge under section 464, for example.

Further, the use of the term “terrorist activity” in the amendment, rather than saying “terrorist offence” actually narrows the scope of what will be illegal under the terrorism counselling provisions. Terrorist activity is defined in the interpretation section of part II.1 of the Criminal Code, and that definition does not include all terrorism offences.

As an example, leaving Canada to join a terrorist group is an offence under the Criminal Code, but it is not contained within the definition of terrorist activity. As a result of the proposed amendment, it would be legal to counsel someone to travel to Syria to join Daesh. I am sure that is not what is intended by the proposed amendment, but that would be the actual consequence, and it is a consequence we need to avoid.

As I mentioned, I appreciate the spirit of the amendment and I have heard other representations to the same effect. However, what prosecutors have clearly told me is that if our goal is to have the terrorism counselling provisions used as frequently and effectively as possible, the best way to achieve that is to mirror the language used in the other counselling provisions in the Criminal Code where the notion of counselling “another person” already includes the counselling of an unknown individual.

I would like to remind all my colleagues of what Parliament is being asked to approve under Bill C-59 generally. We are looking to establish a single national security review body with a government-wide mandate to follow leads from one agency to another, such as from CSIS to the RCMP or elsewhere. This has long been recommended by experts, academics and parliamentary committees. Sometimes it is referred to as the super SIRC, and Bill C-59 does it.

We are creating a new act to govern the Communication Security Establishment, which includes a new regime for authorizing its activities for the first time ever. We are creating a closed list of threat reduction activities that CSIS may undertake so the service has clear direction from Parliament and knows what it can do, what it cannot do, and where the fences are. We are creating a justification regime for CSIS that will provide the lawful authorities it needs to perform the activities required to investigate threats and to keep Canadians safe. The same concept with respect to police officers has existed in the Criminal Code for many years.

We are also creating a dataset regime for the service that will allow it to collect, retain and query datasets subject to stringent safeguards. We are fixing the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, ensuring that it does not diminish lawful advocacy, protest and dissent. It will also have greatly improved safeguards to ensure federal departments share national security information only when it is necessary to do so, following appropriate procedures and keeping proper records.

Then there is the no-fly list, and I know we have all been lobbied on this one. Bill C-59 would enable the creation of a recourse mechanism for people whose names coincidentally match or closely resemble names that are listed in Canada's passenger protect program. This is the infamous problem of false positives, sometimes affecting small children.

I want to thank the members of the group known as the “no-fly kids”, whose tenacious efforts have kept this issue in the forefront for many parliamentarians, and Bill C-59 is part of the solution.

I can assure my colleagues that officials at Public Safety have compressed the timelines as much as humanly and physically possible. The required Treasury Board submissions and other orders in council required after royal assent of Bill C-59 will be moving as quickly as possible to get that recourse system up and running to deal with that issue for the no-fly kids.

That summary does not quite encapsulate everything that is in Bill C-59. However, as my colleagues can see, it is very comprehensive legislation that would strengthen and modernize our national security apparatus and architecture.

I want to thank all of the public servants across multiple departments who have worked on this and have appeared before many committees to provide technical answers to parliamentarians. I want to thank the tens of thousands of Canadians who participated in our green paper consultation process and the many individuals who continue to provide advice as Bill C-59 moves through the parliamentary process.

Most of all, I want to thank my parliamentary colleagues who have given this bill the thorough scrutiny that it most certainly deserves, including Senator Gold and his colleagues in the other place who have sent us the report we are dealing with at this moment and to which we are responding.

With this comprehensive legislation, we are in fact achieving our original goal and obligation to keep Canadians safe and secure, while simultaneously safeguarding their rights and freedoms and the precious democratic qualities and values that make Canada, Canada.

The House proceeded to the consideration of amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will resume debate at third reading of Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

Tomorrow we will begin debate on the Senate amendments to Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters.

Next week, priority will be given to Bill C-101, an act to amend the Customs Tariff and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act, and to bills coming back to us from the Senate.

There may be a few changes, but that is what we have for now.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to follow my friend from Scarborough—Guildwood, who has had millions of minutes in this chamber. However, I am at a loss to ascribe any real substance to those minutes, despite the fact that I hold him in great affection. He has been very helpful on some projects related to veterans, and on that matter, maybe he can help get the Afghan monument finally done.

I share the comments from a lot of people today in that I have frustration with when the bill is being put forward. I think all members of this chamber have tremendous respect for the men and women who wear the uniform of the RCMP or wear the uniform of the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA, who would be impacted by the bill. Nothing shows a lack of priority like introducing bills when the tulips are coming up here in Ottawa. This is when we are in the final weeks of the parliamentary sitting, and so when the government introduces something in this time period, it shows how much it has prioritized it. If the Liberals are doing that in the fourth year of their mandate with literally a few weeks left in the session, it actually shows disdain for the underlying issues of the bill when they have had four years related to it.

My friend from Scarborough—Guildwood was suggesting that we needed to stay in our partisan lane and was bemoaning the fact that we are decrying the lack of consultation and lack of prioritization by the government, but the Liberals have left us no choice. We do not even think, at the pace things are going, that this will be substantially looked at in committee, despite his nice offer to take phone numbers of union members who were ignored in the preparations behind the bill. We will not even be able to get time to hear from them, and that is amiss, because our job as an official opposition is to hold the government to account, critique and push for better. I should remind my friend, the Liberal deputy House leader, that better is always possible, and this is an example.

The bill was introduced on May 7, 2019, literally in the final weeks of Parliament, much like Bill C-93, another public safety bill, which was introduced in the same month. What is shocking is that these are areas the Liberals have talked about since their first weeks in government. In fact, the marijuana pledge is probably the only accomplishment of the Prime Minister in the Liberals' four years in government, and they are putting the cannabis records suspension bill to the House in the final weeks. Who have they not consulted on that? It is law enforcement, which is really quite astounding.

Canadians might remember that in the first few months of the Liberal government, back in 2015-16, the Liberals were fond of consultations, which I think my friend from Sarnia—Lambton and others have made note of. In fact, there were little vignettes created saying, “We're going to consult. We're going to have public consultation.” I guess after that the Liberals stopped doing it entirely.

My real concern in the matter of public safety and security bills is that the CBSA alone will be swept into elements of Bill C-98 and the 14,000 people in that department, including the almost 7,000 uniformed people at 1,200 locations across this country, should be consulted on a substantive piece of legislation that would impact them. They were not. In fact, the Customs and Immigration Union has been demanding to be consulted, and not at the committee stage in June, a few days before Parliament may rise and go into an election. They should have been consulted prior to drafting the legislation. That is the real problem I have with this.

It is the same with the cannabis record suspension legislation, which is another public safety bill being thrown into the mix in the final weeks. The Canadian Police Association was not consulted. Tom Stamatakis, the president, had this to say:

Were we directly consulted? Not in an extensive way. We had some exchanges, but we didn't have a specific consultation with respect to this bill.

It is the same now with Bill C-98. The underlying people impacted by it, including members of the Customs and Immigration Union, were not consulted on the bill.

We also see other important pieces of public safety legislation still lingering in the legislative process. For example, Bill C-83, legislation to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, is now at committee. That committee is already charged with other legislation from the final year of the government.

A lot of us are watching Bill C-59 as well, a quite comprehensive, almost omnibus bill on national security. It is in the Senate committee. I have been advocating on that bill with regard to the no-fly list, supporting the good work done by the families of the no-fly list kids to make sure that we can have a system to remove false positives and remove children from this list, which is ineffective in terms of public safety if it has tons of erroneous and duplicative names on it.

It is also substantially unfair to Canadians, especially young children, when they are impacted by being on the no-fly list. We need a mechanism for them to take themselves off the list. That is in Bill C-59. I am publicly urging Senate colleagues to make sure they do a proper review, but get it done quickly.

As we can see, there is already a backlog of public safety and security legislation in Parliament now, not to mention a number of other bills being introduced in May.

Stepping out of the public safety area for a moment, it should also concern Canadians that some of the signature issues for indigenous Canadians also had to wait until the final months of the government. They include child welfare legislation, which I think I spoke about in this place maybe 10 days ago, and the indigenous language bill, which was also tossed in at the end of the year when the flowers are coming up here in Ottawa.

That is a lack of respect. It shows there is a priority given to speech, imagery and photos with the Prime Minister, and a lack of priority given to action on public safety issues and on issues related to reconciliation. Governing is more than lofty language. It is delivering on the priorities for Canadians and the things they need.

To review, I would like to see substantive committee time for Bill C-98 so that the Customs and Immigration Union can be properly consulted. The same goes for the RCMP. In fact, I was the public safety critic before I took a little diversion and a national tour to get into a leadership race. We actually worked with the government on Bill C-7, which was the RCMP union bill. We have tried to work with the government, particularly when it comes to uniformed service members. In fact, we pushed for amendments to Bill C-7 so that there would not be a hodgepodge approach to workers' compensation for our RCMP men and women and so that there would not be different standards in different provinces. These are important bills, and people should be consulted.

I would also urge the former chair who spoke, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood, to make sure that adequate time is given. Despite the government's claim that it would never use time allocation and never use omnibus bills, we have seen it use these measures literally by the week. The government House leader appears to relish it now. My friend the deputy House leader wishes he could erase all the speeches of outrage he gave in opposition about the use of time allocation and omnibus legislation, because now he is part of the government House leader team that the member for Scarborough—Guildwood blamed for the delay that we have with these bills, and he uses it with relish.

Let us make sure we have the proper committee time to look at the changes to the RCMP Act and the CBSA Act to make sure we are doing a service to the people who will be impacted by them, whether it is on a public complaints process or other elements in Bill C-98. The consultation should have been done first, but to do this properly, the committee debate time cannot be rushed. We will work with them, but we want to make sure the people impacted are part of the committee review process.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have just seen a classic example of people not being able to get out of their partisan lanes.

We now know that the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP and the Green Party agree that Bill C-98 is a good bill and that it should move forward. However, what are we going to do? We are going to spend the rest of today, and possibly into the next sitting of the House, talking about a bill that we all agree is a good bill.

Every day that we talk about it here is a day we cannot talk about it in committee, which means that we cannot hear witnesses on the very issues the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands raised. We cannot deal with the issues the previous speaker raised, and we cannot bring in witnesses who have useful things to say about the operation of this bill.

This is a classic example of some dysfunctionality in this place at a level that is really quite distressing. Everyone agrees that this is a bill that needs to be passed. This is a bill that needs to hear witnesses. It is going before a committee that I have the great honour of chairing and that functions at a very high level. The member for Beloeil—Chambly is a very helpful and co-operative member, as is the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. Both are vice-chairs of the committee who help with getting legislation through. I daresay that there is not a great deal of distance between the government's position and the opposition parties' positions. The situation continues to evolve.

As the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands said, this sounds like an egregious set of facts for which there is no oversight body. That is why we are here. It is to get an oversight body put in place for the CBSA.

The CBSA apparently interacts with between 93 million and 96 million people on an annual basis. That is about three times the population of Canada on an annual basis. Some are citizen interactions, some are permanent resident interactions, some are visitor interactions and some are refugee claim interactions. I daresay that with 93 million to 96 million interactions on an annual basis, not every one will go well. That is something we are trying to correct.

There is something in the order of 117 land border crossings, some of which are fully staffed, such as at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Montréal-Trudeau International Airport or wherever, but others are simply a stake in the ground. There are about 1,000 locations across this long border over four time zones. The CBSA facilitates the efficient flow of people and goods, and it administers something in the order of 90 acts and regulations. It administers some of those acts and regulations on behalf of other levels of government.

In addition to having 93 million to 96 million interactions on an annual basis, the CBSA collects about $32 billion in taxes, levies and duties over the course of the year.

This is an enormous organization. It has enormous numbers of interactions with people, services and goods, and I dare say, not every one of them goes the way it should, as much as we would like to say otherwise. Hence the bill before us as we speak.

I heard the other speaker say that we have not had enough consultation, and the speaker before that said that all the government does is consultation. They cannot have it both ways. Either there is too much consultation or there is too little consultation.

All I know is that we have very little legislative runway left. We are speaking on a Friday afternoon about a bill that we all agree on, and by speaking on it, we are in fact preventing the bill from proceeding to committee, where it could be dealt with. I would be absolutely delighted to give up my time in order to let debate collapse and allow us to go to the vote, but there does not seem to be a huge amount of enthusiasm. Therefore, regrettably, members are going to have to listen to me talk for the next 15 minutes about a bill that we all agree on.

The unusual part of the situation in which we find ourselves is that unlike the case with the RCMP, unlike CSIS, unlike various other security services, there is no actual oversight body. That is a clear gap in the legislation.

Bill C-59, which I had the honour of shepherding through the committee, is an extraordinarily complicated piece of legislation.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that you love flow charts and appreciate the way in which legislation proceeds, and I commend you. The flow chart produced by Professor Forcese on Bill C-59 shows that Bill C-59 is extremely complicated in making sure that there are enough supervisory bodies for the various functions of CSIS, the RCMP, CSE, etc., spread over quite a number of agencies. There are at least three ministries responsible, those being defence, public safety and global affairs. It is an extraordinarily complicated piece of legislation. We anticipate and hope that it will return from the Senate and receive further debate here—though hopefully not too much—because it is really a revamping of the security architecture of our nation.

One of the gaps, as has been identified by other speakers, is the absence of an oversight body with respect to the activities of the Canada Border Services Agency. I expect to have an interaction with the Canada Border Services Agency in about two hours. Many of my colleagues will similarly be having interactions with the Canada Services Border Agency within a very short period of time, and I am rather hoping that my interaction and all of their interactions will go well, as I dare say they probably will.

The committee is now in place, and I want to talk about one further piece of legislation that has passed and is functioning, Bill C-22, which established the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. In addition to its reporting function to the Prime Minister, there is a reporting function to the public safety committee. I know you, Mr. Speaker, were present as the chair of that committee presented his first report to the public safety committee. I have to say that while listening to the interactions with the chair of that committee, I felt that the questions by the members of the public safety committee were of quite high calibre and gave very pointed and useful insight into the work of that committee.

Bill C-98 fills a gap. It is being strengthened and renamed the public complaints and review commission, or the PCRC, and will have, in effect, a joint responsibility for both the RCMP and the CBSA. If the PCRC were to receive a complaint from the public, it would notify the CBSA, which would undertake an initial investigation. I dare say that this would resolve a great percentage of the complaints the public may have. In fact, 90% of RCMP complaints are resolved in this way.

The PCRC would also be able to conduct its own investigation of a complaint if its chairperson was of the opinion that it would be in the public interest to do so. In those cases, the CBSA would not start an investigation into the complaint.

Therefore, in effect, there is an ability on the part of the CBSA to say it is not going to refer it to mediation or some further investigation, but to simply assume the jurisdiction and move forward with it. To make that request, the complaint would have to be made within 60 days of receiving notice from the CBSA about the outcome of the complaint. The idea here is that the complaint does not just languish.

When the PCRC receives a request for a review of a CBSA complaint decision, the commission would review the complaint and all relevant information and share its conclusions regarding the CBSA's initial decision. It could conclude that the CBSA's decision was appropriate, it could ask the CBSA to do a further investigation or it could assume the jurisdiction and investigate the complaint itself.

The commission can also hold public hearings as part of its work. At the conclusion of the PCRC investigation, the review body would be able to report on its findings and make recommendations as it sees fit, and the CBSA would be required to provide a response in writing to the PCRC's findings and recommendations.

In addition to its complaints function, the PCRC would be able to review, on its own initiative or at the request of the minister, any activity of the CBSA, except for national security matters. I think that is an important thing to take note of, because we do not want national security matters dealt with in an open and public forum, if at all possible. Then it would be reviewed by the national Security Intelligence Review Committee, under Bill C-59, which hopefully by then will be passed and brought into force.

PCRC reports would include findings and recommendations on the adequacy, appropriateness, sufficiency or clarity of the CBSA policies, procedures and guidelines, the CBSA's compliance with the law and ministerial directions, and the reasonableness and necessity of the CBSA's use of its power. On that latter point, the members previously have indicated instances where one would reasonably question the use, reasonableness and necessity of the CBSA's interactions with members of the public. Hopefully, with the passage of this bill and the setting up of the PCRC, those complaints would be adjudicated in a fashion that is satisfactory to both the service and members of the public.

With respect to both its complaint and review functions, the PCRC would have the power to summon and enforce the appearance of persons before it and compel them to give oral or written evidence under oath. It would have the power to administer oaths and to receive and accept oral and written evidence, whether or not the evidence would be admissible in a court of law. That provides a certain level of flexibility. As this is not a criminal case, we are not asking for a standard of beyond reasonable doubt; rather, by passing this legislation and giving these authorities, we are trying to create an environment in which issues can actually be resolved.

It would also have the power to examine any records and make any inquiries that it considers necessary. However, beyond its review and complaint functions, Bill C-98 would also create an obligation on the CBSA to notify local police and the PCRC of any serious incident involving CBSA officers or employees. That includes giving the PCRC the responsibility to track and publicly report on serious incidents, such as death, serious injury or Criminal Code violations involving the CBSA. Hopefully, we could reasonably anticipate a reduction in these incidents by virtue of just the very existence of this entity because, as has reasonably been said by speakers previously, there is nowhere to go when one has a complaint with the CBSA.

Operationally, the bill is worded in such a way as to give the PCRC the flexibility to organize its internal structure as it sees fit, and to carry out its mandate under both the CBSA Act and the RCMP Act. The PCRC could designate members of its staff as belonging either to the RCMP unit or the CBSA unit. Common services, such as corporate support, could still be shared between both units. There are several obvious benefits that can be generated by operating in this fashion. For example, expertise could be shared between the RCMP and the CBSA. Hopefully, by doing so, the agency would be strengthened. Clearly identifying which staff members are responsible would also help with the management of information.

In addition, a vice-chair and chair will be appointed to the PCRC, which would be mandatory. It would ensure that there will always be two individuals at the top who are capable of exercising decision-making powers.

Under Bill C-98, the PCRC would establish and publish an annual report covering each of its business lines, the CBSA and the RCMP, and the resources devoted to each. The report would summarize their operations throughout the year, such as the number and types of complaints and any review activities, and would provide information on the number, type and outcomes of serious incidents. I am hopeful that this will be a readily accessible report, transparent to all, so that those who follow these issues can operate from the same set of facts.

The annual report would be tabled in Parliament by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Presumably, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security would be able to review that report, call witnesses and examine the functionality of the entity.

The new public complaints and review commission proposed under Bill C-98 would close a significant gap in Canada's public safety accountability regime.

As I said earlier, the number of interactions we have with Canadians, visitors, landed folks, refugee claimants and others is quite significant, because Canada is open to receiving not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but millions of people crossing the border on an annual basis. The legislation is long overdue.

I would urge my colleagues to get out of their partisan lanes and let the bill move to committee. The complaint seems to be that the bill is last minute and will therefore never see royal assent. Well, the bill will certainly never see royal assent if the chamber holds it up. All parties are responsible for House management, and I would urge all party representatives who are responsible for House management to let the bill move to committee sooner rather than later.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly support Bill C-98. I share the views around this place that it is lamentable that it has come forward now.

I just wanted to share a brief experience, which chilled me to the bone, of how this country can treat people. This was in the 41st Parliament.

Richard Germaine is an indigenous man who was born in California and lived his whole adult life on Penelakut, in Nanaimo—Ladysmith. He is married. He is a community leader. Right before Christmas, with no warning that his citizenship papers were in any sort of disarray and that he should take steps, CBSA officials showed up at his home. They put him in leg irons. They took him away, in front of his wife, who is a residential school survivor, traumatizing her, their children and their grandchildren. In leg irons, they took him in a van to a detention centre in Vancouver, where he was ordered to be deported as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, he was working with an ethnobotanist from the University of Victoria, who contacted my office. I contacted the former minister, Chris Alexander. We stopped the deportation and got his citizenship. What was really chilling was that as Richard left there, everyone around him said, “We have never seen anyone get out of here. Everyone gets deported.”

We need a citizen overview agency for CBSA. I agree with my hon. colleague that we needed this bill sooner. It is a gap in Bill C-59, but I commend the government for fixing the gap. Let us get this bill through the House and to the Senate. If there is any way at all we can get unanimous consent to get this bill through third reading and report stage by unanimous consent, let us get it to the other place and then keep our fingers crossed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to finally have the opportunity to contribute to a long-awaited debate on an oversight body for the Canada Border Services Agency. It has been over a decade since Justice O'Connor recommended that there be an independent oversight for the CBSA. Since then, a chorus of voices have consistently and persistently called for accountability for the CBSA.

I will state very clearly that the NDP supports Bill C-98, as this is something the NDP and stakeholders have been calling on the current Liberal government to act on for a very long time.

In fact, back in 2014, the BC Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, issued a joint press release and called for an independent review of all of CBSA's national security enforcement and border policing activities.

The CBSA is the only major federal law enforcement agency without external oversight. CBSA officers have a broad range of authority. They can stop travellers for questioning. They can take breath and blood samples. They have the ability to search, detain and arrest non-citizens without a warrant. They can interrogate Canadians. They also have the authority to issue and carry out deportations on foreign nationals. Many of these authorities are carried out in an environment where charter protections are reduced in the name of national security. However, despite these sweeping powers, it is astounding that there is no independent external civilian oversight for complaints or allegations of misconduct for the CBSA.

Without a doubt, the overwhelming majority of CBSA officers carry out their duties with the utmost respect for the individuals they engage with and recognize that the authority provided to them is to be used responsibly. However, stories of horrific misconduct have also come to light, and the complaint mechanism is anything but open and accountable.

Joel Sandaluk, a Toronto immigration lawyer, said, “CBSA, for many years, has been a law unto itself.”

Mary Foster of Solidarity Across Borders said, “We have enough experience to know that making a complaint to the CBSA about the CBSA doesn't really lead anywhere.”

It is my understanding that between January 2016 and the middle of 2018, the CBSA investigated around 1,200 allegations of staff misconduct. The alleged misconducts are wide-ranging. They include things like neglect of duty, sexual assault, excessive force, use of inappropriate sexual language, criminal association and harassment.

In 2013, there was a case where a woman, reportedly fleeing domestic violence, died in the CBSA's custody. An inquest into the death concluded that there is “no independent, realistic method for immigrants to bring forward concerns or complaints.”

In 2016, two more people died in the CBSA's custody within a span of just one week.

With incidents such as these, it is vital that there is accountability and transparency to ensure that procedures are respected and that there is no abuse of power. That means it is critical that there is an independent oversight body in the event that complaints are lodged.

Right now, if there is an incident where travellers, whether Canadians or foreign nationals, feel something is not right, be it harassment or use of force, the only recourse is to submit a complaint to the CBSA, which undergoes an internal review. We must keep in mind that the nature of the power imbalance that exists between border authorities such as the CBSA, and travellers, especially those in a foreign country, makes lodging any sort of complaint very difficult. Some people elect not to file a complaint. There are real fears, especially if the process is not well known and the body looking into the complaint is not an independent body. People fear, for example, that future travel could be impacted. People are afraid that by speaking out against mistreatment, they may be punished the next time that they try to travel.

We should keep in mind that for some, such as temporary residents and visitors to Canada, they simply are not around long enough to file a complaint or to see it through. We have a responsibility, especially as a nation that welcomes millions of tourists a year, has our own citizens exploring the world and welcomes hundreds of thousands of newcomers who immigrate here each year, to ensure that people feel safe, respected and protected by our border officials. This is why it is critical that there is a public, independent, civilian oversight body for the CBSA.

The BC Civil Liberties Association has studied this issue closely and has done a report on it. From its report, “Oversight at the Border: A Model for Independent Accountability at the Canada Border Services Agency”, it has recommended “two separate accountability mechanisms for the CBSA, one charged with providing real-time oversight of CBSA’s policies and practices, and one charged with conducting investigations and resolving complaints.”

I would be very interested to hear what it and witnesses say about this proposed bill, and whether or not they feel it meets the call for independent oversight and accountability measures for the CBSA.

I must note that while we debate Bill C-98, another bill, Bill C-59, is currently moving to third reading stage at the Senate. We expect we will see that bill return here in the near future.

Bill C-59 introduces a review agency, the national security and intelligence review agency, or NSIRA. This new body would replace the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner and the Security Intelligence Review Committee, as well as the national security review and complaints investigation functions of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. This means that the new body would have jurisdiction over activities that fall under the umbrella of national security. As for what remains as the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, it will continue to have the external investigative body that reviews complaints from the public about RCMP conduct. However, the bill before us today would rename the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission to the public complaints and review commission and expand its mandate to have a similar review function to the CBSA.

As a result of these changes, depending on the nature of the complaint against the CBSA, a different body with different authorities will be the reviewer of conduct. This will undoubtedly cause confusion at times. Therefore, one wonders why this approach was taken and why it is being done in two separate bills.

However, more concerning is the lack of lack of consultation and the last-minute nature of this proposed legislation. Too often we have seen the government consult and consult, and then do nothing, but then in areas where consultation and study are vital to ensuring that the legislation is what it needs to be, the process is short-changed.

The Customs and Immigration Union, which represents over 10,000 Canadians working on our borders, was not consulted on Bill C-98. This makes no sense to me. Why would the government not be seeking out the views of those individuals on the front lines who are doing the work and who would now have a new body reviewing them and their representative organization? This is not a good way to proceed.

Sadly, as the NDP critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, I have become incredibly familiar with the Liberal government's failure to follow through on its promise on good governance.

As we have seen in Bill C-97, the budget implementation act, the Liberals have decided to ram through dangerous changes to Canada's refugee determination system and put vulnerable lives, especially women and girls fleeing violence, at risk. I suspect that the Liberals are feeling the pressure from the right and want to be seen as being tough on asylum seekers. With an election six months from now, they are jamming draconian changes through in an omnibus budget bill.

I suppose, at least in this case with Bill C-98, while the measures for the changes for the CBSA complaint process were announced in the budget, they at least are tabled in a separate stand-alone bill, Bill C-98.

That is more than I can say about the changes to the refugee determination system, which are being rammed through with minimal study in the omnibus budget bill. In a rush to look tough on borders and caving to pressure and misinformation campaigns by the Conservatives, the Liberals again, without consultation, made very sweeping changes to the asylum system in the budget. Experts immediately called for the provisions to be withdrawn or, at the very minimum, to table them as a separate stand-alone bill. The Liberal government refused.

Some 2,400 Canadians wrote to the Prime Minister calling for the same action. That too fell on deaf ears. Its advice, as recently reported by the Auditor General, was that the 1.2 million calls to the IRCC last year did not get through to the government. I will say that Bill C-98 is at least a stand-alone bill.

With that being said, it must also be recognized, given that the Liberals have failed to take action until the eleventh hour, that there is a chance this bill might not receive royal assent prior to the election. If that occurs, this would then represent yet another broken promise by the Liberal government, another broken promise through its failure to act.

I do wonder what took the government so long to table this bill. Why did it wait until there are only five weeks left in the sitting of the House to bring Bill C-98 forward? I suspect that the Liberal government would employ time allocation measures to limit debate, a tool that Liberals consistently spoke against when the Conservatives were in government. I fear that they will once again have our debate in this place limited because the government could not get its legislation in order in a timely fashion.

The risk that this represents with a bill of this magnitude cannot be ignored. The government, in the rush to table it before the session ends, has failed to properly consult the experts on what the bill should look like. Now, in a race against the clock, the Liberals, if they want to be able to claim that they followed through on their promise, will need to limit the democratic debate of this bill. That is what I expect will happen.

This is not a good recipe for good legislation. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The government has stated that in 2017 and 2018, over 96 million travellers were engaged by CBSA employees, which is over 260,000 per day. They processed more than 21 million commercial shipments, which is over 57,000 per day. They processed over 46 million courier shipments, which is over 126,000 per day. This is a serious matter and deserves thorough debate.

It is our hope that the government will allow for a thorough study of this bill at committee. I also hope that the government, upon hearing from stakeholders and experts at the committee stage, will be amenable to any amendments that expert witnesses put forward. I hope that the government will allow for that work to be done in a proper fashion and is open to input by stakeholders.

This bill has been long awaited for by the community. I regret that the government has waited this long, until the eleventh hour, with only six months until the election and only five weeks of sitting in this place, to table Bill C-98. Canadians deserve to have an independent, external civilian oversight process for the CBSA. The government should have done this work much earlier to ensure that the proper process is in place for all Canadians.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, since the fall of 2016, our government has been dramatically reshaping Canada’s security and intelligence apparatus to ensure that it has the authorities and the funding it needs in order to keep Canadians safe. At the same time, we have been ensuring that those agencies, which we trust with tremendous power, have strong and robust independent review mechanisms so that the public can be confident that they are using their powers appropriately.

These mechanisms instill confidence in the public that these agencies are using their powers appropriately. Since 2018, following the passage of Bill C-22, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, has been reviewing classified national security information. The committee, which is formed of three senators and eight elected members of Parliament, recently released its first annual report. This brings Canada into line with all four of our other Five Eyes alliance allies when it comes to parliamentary or congressional review of national security activities.

Bill C-59, which is currently awaiting third reading debate in the Senate, would create a national security and intelligence review agency. This would be a stand-alone review body that would incorporate the existing Security Intelligence Review Committee, or SIRC, which reviews the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, and the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, which reviews the Communications Security Establishment, CSE.

The agency would also have the powers and authorities to review any department with a national security function. Some academics and experts have dubbed this idea a “super SIRC“. They have argued for years that such a body is needed so that it can follow the thread of evidence from one department to another rather than ending its investigation at the boundaries of a single agency. The Federal Court has also suggested that this kind of super review agency needs to be created. We have done all of this so that Canadians can be confident that our security and intelligence community has the tools it needs to keep Canadians safe.

This brings me to Bill C-98. The one piece missing from this review architecture puzzle, should Bill C-59 pass, of course, is an independent review body for non-national security-related reviews of the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA. Bill C-98 would fill in that gap by creating PCRC, or the public complaints and review commission.

The new agency would combine the existing review body for the RCMP, known as the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, CRCC, with the yet to be created review body for the Canada Border Services Agency. It would add a mandatory new deputy chair position to the new agency. Budget 2019 has provided nearly $25 million over the next five years to ensure there is enough staff to take on this new important role.

I would now like to walk members through how the PCRC would work in practice. A Canadian who has a complaint about the actions or behaviour of a CBSA member would lodge a complaint with either the Canada Border Services Agency itself or the PCRC. Regardless of where it is filed, one agency would alert the other to the complaint. There will be no wrong door for Canadians to knock on. The system will work for them in either case.

The CBSA would then be required to investigate every complaint, much like the existing CRCC does for the RCMP. If the chair believes it would be in the public interest to do so, the PCRC can initiate its own investigation.

The vast majority of complaints to the CBSA are already handled to the satisfaction of the complainant. For those who are not satisfied, complainants would be informed that they can request a subsequent complaint review from the fully independent PCRC. The review agency would have full access to documents and the power to compel witnesses in order to ensure it can undertake a thorough investigation. If, upon review, the PCRC were not satisfied with the CBSA's investigations and conclusions, it would make a report with any findings and recommendations.

There are several areas that the CCRC would not be able to investigate because there are already existing bodies which could handle those types of complaints. For instance, officers of Parliament like the Privacy Commissioner and the Commissioner of Official Languages are best suited to deal with complaints that fall within their jurisdiction.

Should someone file a complaint with the CBSA or the CCRC that falls within those realms, either body would decline the complaint but inform that individual of the proper course of action.

The chair of the new PCRC would be able to conduct reviews of CBSA activities, behaviours, policies, procedures and guidelines not related to national security. National security reviews would, of course, be handled by NSIRA. The Minister of Public Safety could also ask the agency to undertake such a review.

In addition, the PCRC would be notified of any serious incident in which the actions of a CBSA officer may have resulted in serious injury or death. This includes immigration detainees who are being held in provincial corrections facilities on behalf of the CBSA. Further, the Minister of Public Safety or the president of the CBSA may deem that in incidents of such significance, the PCRC must investigate.

Bill C-98 would complete the review architecture for the public safety portfolio by creating a review body similar to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, or the Office of the Correctional Investigator for Correctional Service Canada. This is another important step that would ensure Canadians have confidence in our border agency. However, it is far from the only improvement that our government has made over these past four years.

Let us take, for instance, the new immigration detention framework and its focus on best rights of the child, increased resources to combat gun and opioid smuggling at the border, and new money for detector dogs that will help to ensure African swine fever-contaminated meat does not enter Canada and decimate the stock of pork producers.

There is the new entry-exit legislation, which closes a major security gap by allowing us to know when someone is leaving the country, and the new Preclearance Act, which allows for the expansion of pre-clearance sites in all four modes: air, land, marine and rail. In addition, this act provides cargo pre-clearance to reduce wait times at the border.

Our government takes the security of Canada’s border seriously and knows that it not only needs to be secure from threats that would enter, but also be open to the legitimate travel and trade that drives our economy.

The time left in the 42nd Parliament is, unfortunately, growing short, and I am convinced that this piece of legislation would be, by leaps and bounds, an improvement over the status quo. There is a reason we committed to doing this particular action. We know that having independent oversight bodies will make a difference. We have worked hard to make that happen with the RCMP, and now our other national security agencies have the same kind of mechanisms. It is all about instilling confidence in the public that the powers our national security agencies have are being used appropriately and that their privacy, rights and freedoms are being respected. At the same time, our national security agencies are working hard to keep them safe.

One of the most significant steps forward was the implementation of Bill C-22 and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, because now we have representatives from Parliament actually having access to classified security information and making judgments about where we should go, what the priorities are and what the major threats are, and the committee members can share that information among themselves in a non-partisan way.

The chair of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians went before committee and talked about the work it does. It has issued its first annual report. The chair talked about the ability of this committee of parliamentarians to act in a non-partisan nature. That is what allows it to do the kind of work we need it to do. There are three senators and eight elected members of Parliament, and it is working. The other Five Eyes alliance countries have a parliamentary or congressional review body, and now Canada does too.

Bill C-59, which we have talked about, would create the national security and intelligence review agency. This stand-alone body would incorporate the existing Security Intelligence Review Committee, which reviews CSIS, and the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, which reviews CSE. Having this review function under one single umbrella would give it the flexibility and ability to focus where it believes it needs to be done. It would also have the power and authority to review any department with a national security function.

I like the name super SIRC. I think it is representative of what we are trying to do, which is create an oversight organization that has the bandwidth and authority to review any national security agency's work to make sure that it is being done in terms of the legal authorities it has and that also has the ability to go across national security agencies if it needs to find information that pertains to a particular issue.

We have argued for years that we needed such a body that could follow a thread of evidence from one department to another, from one national security agency, across boundaries, to another. Even the Federal Court agrees that this kind of review agency needs to be created.

It comes back to having national security agencies that have the confidence of their people. I believe that now, with these independent oversight agencies that have been put in place, Canadians can be confident that our security and intelligence community has the tools to keep them safe while at the same time respecting their privacy, respecting their freedoms and respecting their rights.

The Canada Border Services Agency was the last piece. In Bill C-98, we would create the public complaints and review commission, the PCRC. This new agency would combine the existing review body for the RCMP, known as the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, with the yet to be created review body for the CBSA. It would add a mandatory new deputy chair position to the new agency.

I would like to walk the members through how the PCRC, the public complaints and review commission, would work in practice.

A Canadian who had a complaint about the actions or behaviour of a CBSA member would lodge a complaint with either the CBSA itself or with the public complaints and review commission. There would be two options to file a complaint. The system would be designed so that once a complaint was filed with one agency, it would automatically be transferred to the other agency. Both would know what was going on, and both would be responsible for addressing the particular complaint. On top of that, even if a complaint had not been issued, if the chair of the public complaints and review commission believed that it was in the public interest to do so, the public complaints and review commission could initiate its own investigation.

If one submitted a complaint to the CBSA and was not happy with the result, one could request a subsequent complaint review by the fully independent public complaints and review commission. This would give the agencies two opportunities to address complaints from the public. This review agency would have full access to documents and the power to compel witnesses to ensure that it could make a thorough investigation.

I am convinced that this piece of legislation is, by leaps and bounds, an improvement over the status quo. While some may want to improve some parts, I think most of us would agree that Canadians would be better off if this bill were to receive royal assent before we rise this summer. As we all know, Parliament can move quite expeditiously when we are all of a mind to do something in the public interest. If any of my colleagues in this chamber, on either side of the aisle, would like to discuss the prospects of this bill's passage, I would be pleased to have that conversation with them.

Department of National Defence—Main Estimates, 2019-20

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Chair, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak today.

I am pleased to spend the time allotted to me discussing the Communications Security Establishment, also known as CSE, and the important work it does in cyber-defence and cyber-protection, as well as the cyber-work performed by the Canadian Armed Forces.

CSE is one of Canada's critical security and intelligence organizations within the national defence portfolio. It is Canada's national signals intelligence agency and serves the national interest by providing foreign intelligence to inform government decision-making. CSE also has the mandate to provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies in performing their lawful duties.

However, I am here today to focus on the second part of CSE's current mandate: cyber-defence and cyber-protection.

CSE has more than 70 years of history providing advice and guidance, including more than a decade of operational experience in defending cyber-systems of importance to the Government of Canada.

We know that good cybersecurity is critical to Canada's competitiveness, economic stability and long-term prosperity. That is why we launched the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, as promised in budget 2018. This new centre will provide Canadian citizens and businesses with a trusted place for cybersecurity advice.

Through the newly established Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, we are provided with sophisticated technical expertise to help identify, prepare for and respond to the most severe cyber-threats and attacks against computer networks and systems and the important information they contain. It also provides advice and guidance so Canadians can better protect themselves.

In the short time since its launch last fall, the cyber centre has improved operational coordination, providing better cyber-protection and more efficient responses in cases of cyber-attacks. This has improved Canada's cybersecurity overall. It has also made strides in increasing public and industry awareness and engagement on all matters of cybersecurity.

Canadians can rest assured that their government is prepared to meet the cybersecurity challenges of today and tomorrow. Reliable, secure cyber-systems are vital to Canadians' daily lives. That is why, in our last two budgets, we have taken action to strengthen Canada's cybersecurity.

In budget 2018, we committed $507.7 million over five years, starting in 2018-19, and $108.8 million per year ongoing to support Canada's first comprehensive national cyber security strategy, which includes establishing the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

Budget 2019 builds on these investments, proposing $144.9 million over five years, starting in 2019-20, to help better protect Canada's critical cyber-systems. For the cyber centre, this funding will support its advice and guidance to critical infrastructure owners and operators on how to better prevent and address cyber-attacks, no matter where they might originate.

Since October 1, CSE and the cyber centre have published key public reports to inform Canadians about the threats we face, including the first-ever unclassified “National Cyber Threat Assessment 2018” and the “2019 Update on Cyber Threats to Canada's Democratic Process”.

In today's dynamic security environment, CSE's efforts to educate, protect and defend Canada and Canadians against cyber-threats are more critical than ever.

Protecting Canadians includes protecting our democratic processes from threats of foreign interference. This is why the Government of Canada has created a security and intelligence threats to elections task force, in which CSE plays an integral role. This task force also includes the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Global Affairs Canada.

The security and intelligence threats to elections task force works to counter covert, clandestine or criminal activities from influencing or interfering with the electoral process in Canada. It aims to prepare the government to assess and respond to threats to our elections.

However, CSE's work is not limited to the security and intelligence threats to elections task force. It is also working closely with Elections Canada to protect its infrastructure.

CSE, through the cyber centre, has offered cybersecurity advice and guidance to all 16 recognized federal political parties. It has also published companion resource documents for both Canadians and political campaigns on its website.

Pending the passage of Bill C-59, which is currently being studied in the other chamber, CSE would be able to provide more targeted advice, guidance and services to designated critical infrastructure owners upon their request. If passed, Bill C-59 would give CSE the mandate to conduct online operations to disrupt foreign threat attacks against Canadian systems. The same sophisticated cyber capabilities that CSE would employ could also be leveraged by the Canadian Armed Forces in support of military operations.

Cyberspace is becoming ever-more contested, and our adversaries are becoming more sophisticated. At the same time, our reliance on cyber is increasing. National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces recognize the importance of staying ahead of our adversaries in this environment. Cyber considerations must be built into everything the defence team does. Our government is ensuring that the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces have the tools and equipment they need to accomplish their important missions at home and abroad.

That is why “Strong, Secure, Engaged” includes several important initiatives to strengthen Canada's cyber capabilities, notably the new cyber mission assurance program and the creation of a new cyber operator trade within the Canadian Armed Forces.

As the nature of technological threats is evolving, using Canada's cyber talent is essential to face future challenges. We are determined to maintain a modern and agile force capable of responding to the technological challenges of today and tomorrow.

With the cyber mission assurance program, National Defence is considering cyber defence on all new equipment and technologies. That means identifying and addressing cyber-associated risks to military networks and equipment before buying. Cybersecurity is top of mind when the defence team assesses its current capabilities, fleets and infrastructure. It is deliberate and attentive in safeguarding computer networks, platforms and weapons systems, and networked equipment in key infrastructure.

I want to stress that cyber mission assurance takes place at every level, from the largest procurement projects outlined in SSE to the logistics officer overseas procuring goods for deployed personnel, to individual defence team members sitting at their computers. This is a coherent and enduring program that manages cyber-threats to ensure that the Canadian Armed Forces is always in control of its actions. All of this helps to ensure that cyber-related disruptions do not interrupt military operations or the important business of security and defence.

As I mentioned, creating the cyber operator trade within the military was another important initiative in the defence policy. That includes new cyber operator roles within the reserve force that support the newly created cyber force, a specialized team of both military and civilian personnel.

This, combined with the changes that Bill C-59 proposes, would allow CSE to support cyber operations in Canadian Armed Forces missions when required and to deploy cybersecurity tools to defend Canada's critical infrastructure upon request.

CSE is proud to play a critical role in protecting Canada and Canadians from cyber-threats. Our top priorities are to protect, defend and educate in order to secure our networks from adversaries. As the reliance of Canada and Canadians on connected technology increases, so will the need for CSE and the Canadian Armed Forces and their cyber mandate.

Those are my remarks. I will use the remainder of my time, if I may, to put some questions to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence.

Criminal Records Act

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and yes, I would ask my hon. colleague to be patient. I will get to my point forthwith.

The priorities of Canadians are not the priorities of this Liberal Prime Minister and his government, and this could not be more clear than when two former cabinet ministers were removed from their party. They were banished last week, and there was a breakdown in trust. Sadly, the fault lies clearly with the Prime Minister and his cronies, while the penalties continue to be placed on the members who were removed.

The Prime Minister has offered one falsehood after another trying to it explain away. Quite bluntly, it has been painfully obvious to the rest of the country that he put politics ahead of the best interests of Canadians.

The Liberals have tabled their bill for taxpayer-funded records suspensions. There it is; I am back on the issue. How does this align with the needs of Canadians? In general, how does it fit with public safety? The many issues facing our country in protecting our communities and ensuring a strong, fair justice system go well beyond the Prime Minister trying to interfere with the independence of the former attorney general or the director of public prosecutions.

We know where Canada is struggling with public safety. According to Statistics Canada information, Canada has a gang problem in our cities. We have a justice problem, with backlogged courts and court appointments for judges. We have a rural crime problem. We have a sentencing and recidivism problem, with revolving doors in the justice and jail system. We have evidence-lab challenges and RCMP police-resourcing challenges. Stats Canada has shown that gang-related shootings are primarily responsible for recent increases in violent crime in this country, and to date, the only Liberal response has been unfulfilled promises.

Instead of action, the Liberals' legislative changes, like Bill C-71, for example, went after licensed firearms owners instead of criminals. As the Department of Public Safety noted in its own consultation document, the vast majority of licensed firearms owners are not involved in crime. In fact, statistics provided to the public safety committee suggest that it is under 1%. The Liberals' legislative response to gang violence and illegal weapons has been to crack down on less than 1% of the problem and to ignore the 99%.

What would help? I know a number of items that could help improve public safety and reduce violent crime. First is spending the money the government promised for policing and to go after organized crime. Second is to put more resources into public prosecutions, courts and evidence labs. These have all been shown to be under-resourced, especially with the recent court decision to limit trial length. Third is to stop softening sentences for violent criminals, as proposed in Bill C-75. Serious crime needs serious punishment for reform to work, and all these ideas have evidence to show that they are needed and would have an impact.

What will not have an impact is a taxpayer-funded pot pardon. No one would be safer because of this policy. A very small number of Canadians would benefit from it. The truth, from my experience, is that most individuals likely to seek record suspensions may have a number of other convictions as well. While they may receive a single free record suspension, their other charges may not be so free. Possession might be only one of the many charges on a person's record.

Where would Bill C-93 leave this House and Canada on the constant effort to combat crime in an ever-changing and evolving world? After three and a half years of Liberal mismanagement, we have a strained legal system that sees more and more criminals going free, rather than facing charges, or pleading to significantly less-serious charges.

Prisoners will now have access to needles whenever and wherever they want in prisons. As our correctional officers have told us and have pointed out more than once, even in Europe, which the Liberals claim to be copying, the needles are never in the general population; they are in the hands of medical staff. Rather than dealing with the cause of crime, most often addiction, the Liberal plan is to continue the addiction.

Under the current Liberal government, we have seen a horrific record of protecting communities from returning ISIS fighters. When we asked the committee how many outstanding monitoring warrants were placed on the 60 ISIS terrorists who have returned, the number was zero.

While I have no doubt that teams at CSIS and the RCMP are working to keep tabs on these individuals, and are doing a great job, limited by the legislation from the government, the red tape and oversight rules proposed under Bill C-59 would no doubt make it harder to watch known radical extremists who have participated in horrific, hate-based crimes. To me and many Canadians, a desire to join ISIS is itself an admission that someone supports violence.

The Prime Minister is happy to talk about being opposed to radicals and extremists, but none of his actions suggest that he is serious about combatting the sources of radicalization or the threat of domestic terrorism. Words matter, but actions have impacts.

We have seen a radical and damaging string of policies that have increased drugs in our communities and have not helped make anyone safer. Whether it was the poorly thought-out and rushed legislation on marijuana, which ignored reasonable requests from police and medical professionals, or the unnecessary risk of drug-impaired driving, to my knowledge, we still do not have a reliable roadside mechanism to test for drug impairment or to increase supervised injection sites.

Nothing so explains the potential harm of the Liberal approach to crime as the issue of rural crime, which we are dealing with in rural Canada. My riding has a small city and an expansive rural region. Across Alberta, Saskatchewan and other parts of our country, we have heard from Canadians about the rampant, escalating crime in rural communities committed, for the most part, by urban criminals victimizing rural Canadians where police response is minimal, delayed, or in some cases, nonexistent.

Canadians have told us heartbreaking stories of violent encounters, financial hardship and trauma from repeated thefts and victimization. Canadians have spoken of fear, alienation and abandonment. That is not Canada. That is not my Canada, but it has become an unfortunate reality in the Prime Minister's Canada.

With Bill C-93, the government is proposing a no-fee, no-waiting-period record suspension without any enquiries or reviews of personal history or conduct. The reason we have a Parole Board, both the administration and the regional organization, appointed to conduct hearings is to exercise discretion in the review of individual cases. Parole hearings can uncover vital information about convictions, such as a plea deal with lesser charges despite the person having been involved in serious and violent crimes.

While there are likely to be a very limited number of cases like this, such cases may be separated from simple possession issues. Moreover, some plea deals may have been arranged with lesser charges but with specific instructions, such as an agreement to have no record suspension, as appropriate to the person's personal history.

This means that these pardons would be granted as a matter of process, and the board would take up no inquiry of the person and would have little or no opportunity to exercise discretion. This means that even in cases where it was patently obvious that the person continued a criminal lifestyle but did not have a conviction entered against him or her, a pardon would be granted.

The police in this country have raised some concerns about Bill C-93. They suggest that our officers need to feel confident that individuals who are a threat to public safety and the public order are going to be popping up on CPIC, even if they have been convicted of simple possession.

Here is a scenario as an example. There are many individuals who have been charged with more than one serious criminal drug offence, but once they have gone to court and worked out a plea deal for simple possession for a multitude of possession charges, these charges are then reduced for multiple reasons, such as to ease a court backlog, to save witnesses from testifying or to secure testimony for the conviction of a bigger criminal player, etc. The plea to a simple possession charge would be used by the Crown with the understanding, as I said previously, that the conviction would still be a permanent part of that individual's record, ensuring that any future investigation of a similar nature could be appropriately linked and applied to that person's own personal history.

This does not serve the best interests of officer safety or community safety. It does not promote the rehabilitation of those entrenched in the criminal element, the ones who threaten to be repeat offenders.

I appreciate the fact that we cannot hold unproven facts against individuals. That would be unfair. However, we cannot ignore the circumstances that would lead to the arrest, charging and conviction of individuals using the available laws and the discretion of the day, which is key. The Crown and the courts would not have accepted the lesser pleas knowing the proposal today. This itself would affect the administration of justice.

There are two very different scenarios at play here: one person who is stopped and charged for carrying a dime bag of marijuana versus a person who is caught up in a drug ring and pleads to a simple possession charge. They are two very different people, but the proposed changes would treat them the same way. One is not a danger to police or the community, and the other continues to pose a risk. That is what should be screened. There should not just be blanket pardons.

While the Liberals are happy to talk about there being discretion in our justice system, they have removed the discretion of the public service at the Parole Board as well as the discretion of the Parole Board itself. It is important to keep in context the arrest charges and plea deals, especially since many plea deals would never have considered the possibility of a future government legalizing drugs and imposing record suspensions without any review or context.

The House should consider that no individuals would benefit from this act who would be excluded otherwise, and I can see no way to make that happen without an appropriate review.

I hope that members of the committee are not prevented from making minor and common-sense amendments to the legislation that would ensure public safety. Already we have seen too many pieces of legislation from the Liberals that ignore common sense and public safety in favour of policy and division.

To be clear, I know, and I believe members know, that these are not the public safety priorities of Canadians. This bill would not help victims recover from the trauma of violent crime. It would not prevent criminals from victimizing rural Canadians. It would not stop gang violence or deter youth from joining gangs. It would not address illegal firearms in our country. It would not address the many concerns and challenges faced by prosecutors and police across the country.

I see Bill C-93 as a continuation of the Liberals' plan: more minor gestures without the requisite actions to combat addiction, crime and poverty to improve public safety. It is a plan that would provide a benefit to a select and small group of Canadians at taxpayers' expense, a plan that would double down on legalizing marijuana while ignoring real, serious and important threats to Canada's public safety. These are not the priorities of Canadians. This bill does not address the issues, and from what I have heard from police and prosecutors across the country, it does not address their concerns.

I can only assume that Liberal MPs will once again be called on to vote in blind faith with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety, because today more and more Canadians are seeing clearly that the priorities of the Liberals are not the priorities of Canadians.

Report Stage

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address Bill C-83. As we know, it is a bill that symbolizes the current government's approach to leadership in this country. It is an approach of ignoring the concerns of many, providing little in the way of moral leadership and transparency, and putting the safety of Canadians at risk for the benefit of political gain.

I have said many times in this place that it is and should be the top priority of the House to put the safety of Canadians first, ahead of any other issues or politics. With the bill, the House would fail to meet that expectation.

To paraphrase my NDP colleague from Beloeil—Chambly, I can think of no time when a bill has come before Parliament where there are no witnesses who support the legislation. That is exactly what happened with Bill C-83. The minister claimed the bill would end administrative segregation. The witnesses who refuted the bill included prisoner advocacy groups, civil liberties groups, former wardens, professors, correctional unions, the correctional investigator and a senator. The overriding sentiment was that the legislation lacked the detail and information needed to back up such a claim by the minister.

The minister claimed the bill responded to issues raised by the courts that segregation caused the death of two inmates. However, the facts are clear in these two unfortunate deaths that they were the result of operational and management failures in both circumstances.

The minister claimed safety and security of staff were the top priorities. However, correctional workers and former inmates testified that segregation is essential to managing violent and volatile inmates, and that the bill would create more risk to staff.

Civil liberties groups called the bill unconstitutional and said it would make things worse rather than better. They noted the bill lacked external oversight, a check against the authorities of Correctional Service Canada. The minister actually acknowledged this lack of oversight existed.

Senator Pate testified before the committee and indicated that Bill C-83 was a bad piece of legislation. The senator dismantled the minister's claims as to how the bill would end segregation. In a visit to a Nova Scotia Prison, Senator Pate noted that it had renamed the segregation unit, the “intensive intervention unit”. The minister will claim otherwise, of course. However, I will take the testimony of a senator and her eyewitness account over the minister's promise, especially given the minister's repeated track record of misleading Parliament and Canadians.

Perhaps the only accomplishment by the minister with respect to the bill is that he brought together the NDP, the Green Party and the Conservatives, who all oppose the legislation.

I would like to note the unexpected and very valuable contribution of written testimony from Mr. Glen Brown, someone who knows the system well. Mr. Brown is a highly experienced former warden and deputy warden, who now teaches criminal justice and criminology at Simon Fraser University and Langara College.

As someone once responsible for segregation units, he notes that the Ashley Smith and Edward Snowshoe cases were more about mismanagement of behavioural issues and neglect. These issues are not legislative problems. They are management, training and accountability issues. When in segregation, inmates should receive bolstered communication on current risks and mental health issues. They should have increased contact with officers and staff, and they should have an increased potential for services. All this should bring greater attention to an offender's rehabilitation plan.

Mr. Brown wrote:

The strength of a functioning administrative segregation process is that it should bolster all of those things: oversight is strengthened; case management should be more active; information sharing should be more robust; referral for clinical service should be prioritized and case management intervention to develop plans should be urgent.

After noting that science and research has shown that properly managed segregation units do not cause short- or long-term harm, Mr. Brown noted, “To respond to current circumstances with sweeping legislative reform is only to react ideologically, and to ignore science and evidence.”

On the minister's grand solution to segregation, which is to rename segregation units to “structured intervention units”, Mr. Brown noted that Bill C-83 described SIUs in such broad and vague language that the consequences of implementation were very uncertain, that the details were unknown and the details were the key. The current layout of many segregation units did not facilitate socialization and programming. The emphasis on programming suggested longer-term stays in SIUs, weeks or maybe months. SIUs would not be suitable for short-term management of volatile inmates, such as those under the influence. There was the inability to have specialized staff for particular subpopulations in a prison. Finally, he noted that given the current layout of many prisons, a wing may need to be deemed a structured intervention unit, meaning up to 96 inmates may be subject to 20 hours a day of confinement where before it would be only 16.

To be clear, someone who is an expert and has worked for years in prisons with segregation says that he cannot discern the minister's plan. Moreover, he says that prisons often lack the infrastructure, are inappropriate to what is needed and could have the opposite effect to what the minister claims.

Perhaps the only potential value in the legislation could come from an external review mechanism of segregation, because it could provide Canadians with greater confidence in offender management. The minister, however, told the committee that we did not have the authority to do this, an order the Liberal MPs on the committee followed, while the opposition members put forward mechanisms to provide such oversight, which were soundly rejected.

When we pushed the Liberals at committee to amend the worst parts of the legislation and pointed to the glaring issues raised by the many expert witnesses, we were told that Liberal MPs were voting with “faith in the minister”.

The role of committees is not to provide support and faith to a minister. It is to conduct detailed examinations on challenging issues, to hear from experts and impacted Canadians, to examine programs, spending and legislation to determine if it will meet the needs of Canadians or, at the very least, what the minister claims it will meet. On this, our committee has failed.

At the conclusion of committee debate on Bill C-83, my Conservative colleagues and I put our views on the record. We indicated that the committee failed in its role to review the legislation and ensure that it could make informed decisions. We also said that we believed the minister withheld information from committee that was clearly available to him at the time, namely the cost and how it would be used and implemented in the bill, which most witnesses said was essential to knowing if the bill would be useful. For the minister, it seemed more important that he withhold his plan from the committee. Half a billion dollars connected to a bill, where and how the money will be used is essential to know if the bill will work. We still do not have a plan necessarily for that money.

What was the response to the overwhelming criticism and skepticism of the bill? Government MPs stated that they were “making a leap of faith” and putting their trust in the minister. What was accomplished by the committee in reviewing this legislation? In my opinion, next to nothing. The Liberal members rejected amendments on how the money would be used. They rejected a requirement to publish the standards of the new SIUs. They rejected limits to reclassifying prisons. They rejected having the minister provide us with how he would implement this new plan.

On this legislation, the Liberals have turned their backs on Canadians. We are to trust the minister who has an extensive track record of misleading Canadians on things like the disastrous India trip, Bill C-59 and Bill C-71, failure to provide funding for police to tackle gangs, and I could go on.

We as a House can do better. We must do better. We can all rise to a higher level. Personally, I feel this committee failed its constituents, its communities and its country. Bill C-83 is yet another example of the many failures of the Liberal government.

Customs Act

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion dealing with the Senate's amendments to Bill C-21.

The story of Bill C-21 is long and highly problematic, not to say sordid. I will read some excerpts, but first I would like to say that I am naturally in favour of the Senate's amendment. I will explain why.

The story of Bill C-21 is an interesting one, because it was a bill tabled almost three years ago.

It is unfortunate. I am thinking in particular of the No Fly List Kids, a group well known to members of this house. It is a group of parents who have children on the no-fly list who are false positives, because they share a name with an individual on this list who has been flagged.

The reason I raise this issue is that when these parents originally came to Parliament Hill and asked the government to respect commitments that had been made to fix this issue, they were told by the government, and the Minister of Public Safety more specifically, that they would have to lobby the Minister of Finance, because it needed money to the redress system. They did that. They talked to the Minister of Finance. It was fantastic. The money was announced in the last budget. It was a non-partisan effort I was proud to be part of.

Then what happened? We heard that Bill C-59 needed to be adopted, an omnibus piece of legislation dealing with a whole slew of national security elements, one chapter of which, in a bill hundreds of pages long, dealt with the no-fly list. Conveniently, we were saying that the bill needed to be facilitated at the time the bill arrived in the Senate, and it was being held up there.

How does this connect to Bill C-21? Allow me to explain. The Minister of Public Safety's press secretary made one thing clear to the media: the money is there, and Bill C-59 must be passed.

As the months passed, Bill C-21, which was introduced in the House nearly three years ago, also got held up in the Senate. A month or two ago, at the same time the parents of the no-fly list kids were lobbying the Senate to quickly pass Bill C-59 and fix this horrible problem, the same spokesperson for the Minister of Public Safety said that Bill C-21 also needed to be passed more quickly. After three years, and one year in the Senate, the bill finally passed.

I do not want to cast doubt on anyone's good faith, but there is a problem, because I see nothing in Bill C-21 to address this scourge, which has been around for too long and makes life hard for these parents whenever they take their kids to the airport. This debate gives me the opportunity to say this to the House, because even though these parents are a non-partisan group, I am a partisan politician, and so I have no qualms about criticizing the government for trying to exploit this problem to rush its legislative agenda through. If it had done its work properly, the bill would not have gotten held up in the Senate the way it has.

With that point made, I want to address more specifically the amendments from the Senate. I am pleased to see that the Senate has improved on an amendment I presented at the public safety committee that was supported by all colleagues. My amendment was to actually prescribe a retention period for the data Bill C-21 would deal with at the border.

Just to give the background on this, the New Democrats opposed Bill C-21, despite some things in the media I read in June saying that the bill quietly passed in the House. No, we opposed this bill, and we raised some serious concerns about it at committee.

One of the concerns raised by the Privacy Commissioner was the fact that we would be collecting entry and exit data at the border and sharing with the Americans “tombstone“ data, as the Minister of Public Safety morbidly calls it. That data is concerning, because what we are seeing in the national security field, and CBSA is no exception, is a larger net being cast over the type of data we collect. The minister listed a bunch of laudable goals for collecting data dealing with kidnapped children in, for example, horrible custody cases, dealing with human trafficking and cracking down on people who are abusing EI and the OAS system. We will get back to that in a moment.

These goals, certainly on paper, sound laudable. However, that should not diminish the privacy concerns being raised, particularly with respect to the current administration we see in the U.S. collecting this type of information. What civil society tells us about these issues is that there is a web of inference. In this large net being cast in the national security field, data that might seem innocuous, collected for legitimate purposes, can be easily shared with other agencies through this information-sharing regime for a variety of objectives that might not necessarily be the intent of the legislation.

In that context, we heard the concerns that the Privacy Commissioner raised about the data retention period, which was essentially unlimited. The amendment I presented set a time limit of 15 years and was based on a recommendation from the commissioner himself. I read in the media that civil society felt that period was too long. I understand their concerns, but ultimately, we relied on the Privacy Commissioner's expertise.

After my amendment was adopted and the bill was passed by the House, in spite of the NDP's opposition, the Senate heard testimony from the Privacy Commissioner. He pointed out that the wording of the amendment as adopted could be interpreted to mean a minimum of 15 years rather than what we actually intended, which was a maximum of 15 years. He himself said that this might not have been the committee's intent.

The Senate therefore made a correction and improved an amendment that I was pleased to present. I was also pleased to have the support of the other parties on the committee. Obviously, we support the Senate amendment.

The amendment put forward by the government today also supports that amendment. Accordingly, although we oppose the bill, we do support today's motion to adopt the Senate's amendment.

I want to take a moment to address this. I raised some of the concerns at the time on Bill C-21. Earlier I enumerated some of the things the minister said. However, there is another piece, and that is the issue of OAS and EI.

We had the appropriate ministry representatives at committee. They talked about all the great savings they were going to see and about the abuse of the EI and OAS systems. I find it fundamentally offensive to talk about savings in systems and programs that are there to help the most vulnerable in our society. The officials at committee even acknowledged that they believe in the good faith of the people who are claiming EI and receiving OAS.

Here is the problem. I will refer to some news articles that appeared in June of this year. For example, the Canadian Snowbird Association talked about its concern about the kind of information, or lack thereof, being shared, the personal information being shared, in an effort to potentially crack down on supposed abuses. For example, a situation as innocuous as people overstaying a day in a condo they own in the U.S. could mean that they would have their OAS payments or other government programs docked when they came back to Canada, in some cases. On the flip side, with the IRS in the U.S., people are being turned away at the border when they try to return to the U.S. to visit friends or family or to stay in a secondary residence they might have there. Certainly, there are concerns being raised.

I want to open some parentheses here and say that the NDP certainly understands and agrees that we do not want to see these systems abused, because essentially that would mean money is being stolen from those who actually need it. However, we also have to understand that when we are talking about information-sharing in an effort to crack down, I think there need to be more robust parameters in place with respect to how we are communicating with those individuals who could be affected.

Another concern I have obviously has to do with the employment insurance system. I am sure my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot and my colleague from Churchill—I apologize, but I forget her riding's full name, which is long—can attest to how badly the EI system needs to be improved.

We are talking about the spring gap, the notorious 15 weeks, the problems that still have not been solved despite the government's rhetoric. What does the government do? It sends officials from the department in question to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security so they can boast about all the money being saved by sharing additional information on travellers with the Americans.

I do not mean any disrespect to our interpreters, but I am going to repeat what I said earlier in English. I completely understand that the government wants to stop the abuse of the system and make sure that the money is going to the right recipients. At the same time, I also understand that priorities seem to be a problem for this government.

It is funny that I talked about the no-fly list at the beginning of my speech. The minister was bragging about the fact that very few identifiers are shared in the system that Bill C-21 is proposing. He talked about basic information and said that that information appears on page 2 of the passport. This creates another problem, because when there are not enough identifiers, it can be very difficult to identify an individual in the context of a government program, the Canada Revenue Agency, and so on.

I need to look no further than in my own family. My younger brother's spouse has a twin sister with the same first initial, but a different social insurance number. They have the same surname, the same birth date and the same first initial, but a different SIN. What happens? They have to fight on a regular basis to have their identity recognized when undergoing a credit or background check. They have all kinds of problems with the CRA, government programs and banks. In short, they have had problems in the past. Unfortunately for them, they will continue to have these problems throughout their lives. Still, I hope they will not.

I am pointing this out because having only a few identifiers, as the minister reassures us, can create problems. For example, someone receiving EI who has not travelled to the United States, but who shares the same name and date of birth with another person who has, could be incorrectly identified by the department, which is not even the same one that receives the information. The Canada Border Services Agency receives the information, which it then passes on to the Department of Employment. As members, we work often enough with government agencies to know that mistakes can be made along the way. I say this with all due respect for our great public service.

Those mistakes are even more troubling for a variety of reasons. First, I specifically asked those representatives in committee about EI, OAS and other payments. I asked them what they would do if there was a mistake, or what if people had their EI cut off because they were told they had gone to the U.S., but they had not. The response I got, if people can believe it, was that they would need to take it up with CBSA.

What happens with CBSA? It is the only national security agency in the country that does not have a dedicated oversight body. Is that not convenient? That is extremely problematic and a far from satisfying response when the most vulnerable, who desperately need EI benefits, are cut off all because of a mistake was made in an effort to share even more information with the U.S., at its request. This whole system stems from that.

Moreover, I pointed out that there was a complaint system built into the law, but CBSA needed the proper oversight. The minister has promised that time and again over the last three years, since he has responsibility for this portfolio, and it has not happened.

Bill C-59, for example, would result in the biggest overhaul to our national security in the last 30 years. Despite all the reassurances about the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, the new oversight body, colloquially called the super-SIRC, would only deal with CBSA in the specific context of national security. CBSA is always deals with national security at our borders. However, the question could be posed whether it is an issue of national security when people have their EI cut off because of information collected by CBSA. That question remains unanswered. The fact that it is unanswered is exactly why we have a problem, among other things, with Bill C-51.

I want to raise one last point. Representatives of the Akwesasne First Nation came to both to the House committee and the Senate committee. The community lies across border. Representatives explained to us that they had children who were born in upstate New York and then lived in Canada. They had folks who sometimes worked in the U.S. Sometimes they needed to start in Canada, go through the U.S. and come back to Canada just for the commute home because of the geography of their location. I am pleased to hear they can cross those borders, because those borders should not be imposed on them as the first peoples of this land.

They already deal with certain difficulties, based on the information CBSA shares with appropriate ministries for different government benefits, with receiving the benefits to which they are entitled. Therefore, we can imagine that under a regime like that proposed in Bill C-21, those problems could be exacerbated. Unfortunately, there is no special dispensation for folks like that in the legislation, and that is also a concern.

In conclusion, I am glad I was able to reiterate the reasons for which the NDP opposes Bill C-21. We understand the desire to improve the flow at the border, work with our allies, and ensure that nobody abuses our social programs. However, we believe that Bill C-21 allows for yet more information sharing, despite inadequate protection for citizens' rights and privacy.

We should all be particularly concerned about the fact that Bill C-21 is the first stage of what could become a more extensive information sharing regime in the coming years. The Prime Minister and the U.S. President committed to enhancing border co-operation, but this is not going to make things better. This is about fingerprinting people, searching cell phones, and possibly even having our officers and theirs work in the same space. That came up during talks between the U.S. President and the Prime Minister.

All of these plans are still in their very early stages, and I do not want anyone telling me I am getting worked up and scared, but we have every reason to be concerned, especially considering how the current U.S. President behaves and how we protect our citizens at the border and on our own soil when they need social programs they are entitled to.

The bill's intentions are honourable, but the execution is poor. We support the Senate's amendment, but we still oppose Bill C-21.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in support of the legislative amendment to Bill C-21 that has been proposed by our hon. colleagues. The legislative amendment we are debating today is reflective of similar concerns expressed by the House in its consideration of the bill, namely that the personal information collected under Bill C-21 be retained for a period of 15 years. The Senate, in consultation with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, has provided additional wording to ensure that the Canada Border Services Agency would only be authorized to retain the data it collects for a period of not more than 15 years.

Privacy protection is part of the very design of the entry-exit initiative. For one, agreements would have to be established with the CBSA and other government departments for the sharing of information. Included here are requirements for the completion of privacy impact assessments to identify exactly how collected information would be used, as well as the measures taken to protect privacy before the new system becomes operational.

Importantly, when Canada's Privacy Commissioner appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the parliamentary committee that examined this bill, he noted that, “...there are important public policy objectives that this initiative is trying to address and that the personal information in question is not particularly sensitive. ” In the Senate, the Privacy Commissioner further expressed his general satisfaction with the bill and the extent to which his office had been consulted throughout the process.

Our government understands the need to provide Canadians reassurance that information-sharing initiatives have proper safeguards and review. Through Bill C-59 Canadians have seen that the government is serious about ensuring effective review of Canada's security agencies. We would be more than meeting the expectations of Canadians with this new degree of legislative review, and importantly, this scrutiny would align us with our Five Eyes counterparts that already have such measures in place. The entry-exit initiative has broad public policy benefits, as the Privacy Commissioner acknowledged. Bill C-21 would benefit Canada in many ways, the most important being that it would enhance the security and effectiveness of the Canada-U.S. border and in so doing, increase the safety of our citizens.

Let me first remind the House how information is exchanged today. Canada currently collects basic biographic information on people coming into Canada, such as who they are, where they are from and how long they are staying. This information helps our officials identify and respond to potential threats. However, when it comes to those leaving the country, we collect information on only a small subset of these people, meaning that at any given moment we have an important information gap. While we know who enters Canada, we do not have a full picture of who is leaving.

The main problem with this information gap is that we might miss the exit from our country of individuals escaping justice or seeking to join radical groups abroad, or of known high-risk travellers and their goods, such as human or drug smugglers or exporters of illicit goods.

With this in mind, I will review briefly what Bill C-21 would do. When someone enters the U.S. from Canada at a land border crossing, basic entry information such as name, date of birth, citizenship, passport number and time and place of entry, the kind of information that is already collected from everyone entering the U.S., would be transmitted from the U.S. to the CBSA. In this way, the record of a person's entry into the U.S. would become a record of the person's exit from Canada and vice versa.

This would be new. Currently, at land ports of entry the U.S. and Canada exchange exit information on only a subset of people, including third-country nationals, non-U.S. or Canadian citizens; permanent residents of Canada who are not U.S. citizens; and lawful permanent residents of the U.S. who are not Canadian citizens.

With this bill, the data collected would be expanded to include all people exiting Canada by land.

The bill would allow a similar situation for a person leaving Canada by air. When someone enters the U.S. by air, his or her basic information would need to be provided to the CBSA. This information would be transmitted from the airlines to the CBSA so that the agency has information on everyone exiting Canada by air.

The benefits of this expansion of data pertaining to individuals exiting the country are many. For example, it would help our officials to respond quickly, and sometimes pre-emptively, to the outbound movement of known high-risk travellers and goods. It would identify individuals who do not leave Canada at the end of their authorized period of stay. It would verify whether applicants for permanent residency or citizenship have complied with residency requirements and would deliver faster client services for permanent residency and citizenship applications. It would allow us to respond more effectively in time-sensitive situations, such as amber alerts. It would allow us to stop using valuable immigration enforcement resources to find people who have already left Canada. It would allow us to provide reliable information in support of those making admissibility decisions and those carrying active investigations related to national security; law enforcement; or immigration, citizenship or travel document fraud. It would allow us to better interdict the illegal export of controlled, regulated or prohibited goods from Canada.

All told, the entry-exit initiative is another example of how Canada is keeping pace with the rest of the world and living up to its emerging position as a leader in border management.

In closing, I would like to say a few words about the CBSA and how Bill C-21 would help its officers better carry out their important work.

As all members know, the CBSA plays a key role in protecting Canada's physical and economic security by detecting threats at the border. Operating 24-7 in a risk-management environment, the agency relies heavily on information, including data on who is coming, who is going and when.

Currently, border officers know who is coming into Canada but do not know who has left. This is a blind spot that could prevent officers from tracking potentially dangerous Canadians as they head overseas, such as human traffickers.

Without a doubt, for all Canadians, the men and women of the CBSA need to have the proper basic tools, and that includes information, to deliver on their mandate of maximizing our safety and security.

For this, and a host of other reasons, I encourage all hon. members to join me in supporting this amendment and this important bill.

Motions in amendment

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the Liberal government's justice reform bill, Bill C-75. If the parliamentary secretary was worked up during his presentation, I cannot wait until he hears what I have to say. Sadly, I cannot find a lot of good things to report about the bill, to report to my constituents or to Canadians at large.

Like a number of the Liberal government's legislative measures, the purpose of the bill does not always match to what the bill would actually do.

For example, recently in Bill C-71, the Minister of Public Safety used tragic shootings and a gun and gangs summit to suggest he was putting forward legislation that would tackle illegal guns, gangs and violent criminals. The sad reality was that the legislation he proposed never once mentioned gangs or organized crime. It had nothing to do with illegal weapons and crimes caused by them.

Prior to that, the Minister of Public Safety also introduced Bill C-59, a bill he claimed would strengthen our national security and protect Canadians. Again, the reality was very different, as the bill would move nearly $100 million from active security and intelligence work, which actually protects Canadians, to administrative and oversight mechanisms and functions. Worst of all, the Minister of Public Safety made full claim about moving Bill C-59 to committee before second reading to:

I would inform the House that, in the interests of transparency, we will be referring this bill to committee before second reading, which will allow for a broader scope of discussion and consideration and possible amendment of the bill in the committee when that deliberation begins.

When it came time to consider reasonable, bold or small amendments, the Liberals on that committee fought against everything to ensure the bill did not change at all its scope or scale. The results will place the security of Canadians at greater risk and for those who actually work in national security, more people will be looking over their shoulders, tougher rules, more paperwork and few, if any, benefits, as front-line efforts to protect Canadians only become more difficult.

Now, under Bill C-75, we see the same old story. The justice minister made bold claims that she would be helping address the backlog of cases created when the Supreme Court imposed a maximum time frame for them. Some of her claims included that this legislation would improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system and reduce court delays. She said that it would strengthen response to domestic violence. It would streamline bail hearings. It would provide more tools for judges. It would improve jury selection. It would free up court resources by reclassifying serious offences.

That sound fantastic. What a great bill. Streamlining the courts, strengthening the justice system, domestic violence, improving tools for judges, improving jury selection? Incredible. Sadly, the Liberals are not achieving any of these objectives according to the legal community or any of the knowledgeable leaders in the House.

Does it shorten trials and ensure that we deal with the backlog? The minister appears to make the claim that it will with the elimination of most preliminary hearings. Preliminary hearings, according to the legal community, account for just 3% of all court time. Therefore, with an overloaded court system, eliminating a huge number of these hearings will only have a minimal impact at best. Preliminary hearings often weed out the weakest cases, which means more cases will go to trial, thus increasing the court backlogs under the current legislation. What can also happen with preliminary hearings is that they create opportunity for the defence to recognize the need to seek early resolution without a trial.

Moreover, preliminary hearings can deal with issues up front and make trials more focused. Instead, under this new legislation, many cases would be longer with added procedural and legal arguments.

One member of the legal community called the bill “a solution to a problem that didn't exist”. High praise for this legislation indeed.

It is the changes to serious criminal offences that have many Canadians, not just the legal community, concerned. All members of the House could agree, or at least accept, that not all Criminal Code issues need to be treated in the same manner. Serious offences like homicide and minor offences like vandalism or property damage do not meet the same threshold for punishment. We can all agree with that.

Canadians expect that Ottawa, that government will create safe communities and that the law benefits all people, not slanted in favour of criminals.

Under Bill C-75, the Liberals have provided the option to proceed with a large number of violent offences by way of summary conviction rather than an indictable offence. This means that violent criminals may receive no more than the proposed 12 months in jail or a fine for their crimes, a slap on the wrist for things like impaired driving causing bodily harm, obstructing justice, assault with a weapon, forced marriages, abduction, participation in a criminal organization and human trafficking. There are many more, but it bears taking the time to look at these in particular. These are serious offences. Allowing these criminals back on the street, with little to no deterrents, makes even less sense. These serious criminal issues should have the full force and effect of the law.

None of these scenarios, victims or society are better served when those responsible for these offences serve only minimal jail sentences or receive fines.

The principle is that Canadians expect that their government and the courts will be there to ensure that criminals receive due punishment for their crimes and that law-abiding Canadians and those who have been victimized by these criminals are treated fairly and with respect. In short, the bill undermines the confidence of Canadians in our criminal justice system and makes it more difficult for law enforcement to ensure safe communities. As my colleagues have clearly pointed out already, there are other solutions, better solutions in fact. The minister could address the backlog with more judicial appointments, as an example.

As the former minister of justice said, there was never a shortage of qualified candidates in his six years as minister of justice. Therefore, it is not a failure of the judiciary. It is not that there are too many preliminary hearings. It is not that there are way more criminals, because crime rates overall have been declining. The problem resides almost entirely with the minister getting more people on the bench and in prosecution services.

As I have said in the House before, public safety and national security should be the top priority of the House. It should be above politics so the safety and security of Canadians are put ahead of political fortunes. While the Liberals have said that public safety is a priority, they have said that everything is their “top priority”. To have 300 top priorities, means they have no priorities at all.

Canadians expect that the government will make them its priority. Sadly, the bill fails the test to keep Canadians safe and deliver effective government. The legal community has said that the bill is deeply flawed and will hurt the legal system rather than help it. Police services will likely see themselves arresting the same people over and over again, even more so than they do today, as criminals get lighter sentences or fines. Therefore, the backlog will move from the courts to the policing community, back to the courts and then back to the policing community. How does that help the average Canadian?

Canada has been weakened by the Liberal government. Its wedge politics on the values test, pandering to terrorists, ignoring threats from China, targeting law-abiding guns owners, its lack of leadership on illegal border crossers and waffling on resource development continue to put Canadians at a disadvantage, weaken our public safety and national security and place undue strain on families and communities.

Canadians deserve better. In 2019, I suspect we will get a better justice minister, a better justice bill and a better government.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the report stage debate in support of Bill C-75, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and other acts and to make consequential amendments thereto.

As a lawyer, I am all too familiar with the effect of delays on all Canadians, particularly those involved in the criminal justice system. I am proud to be a member of a government that is taking a meaningful and significant approach to promoting efficiency in our criminal justice system, reducing case completion times and contributing to increased public confidence while respecting the rights of those involved and ensuring that public safety is maintained.

I believe that, together, all of the elements of Bill C-75 will help create the necessary change in culture and strengthen the criminal justice system's capacity to complete cases within the time frame prescribed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Jordan decision and recommended by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its report entitled “Delaying Justice is denying justice”.

I am grateful to the House Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for its hard work in studying Bill C-75.

Although there are many important aspects of this bill that I believe will contribute to a more efficient criminal justice system, I would like to focus my remarks this morning on preliminary inquiry reform, enhancing judicial case management, and facilitating remote appearances. I would also like briefly to touch on the amendments brought forward by the committee and consequential technical amendments thereto.

As the minister pointed out in her speech, Bill C-75 includes two proposals for preliminary inquiries.

First, the bill would restrict the availability of this procedure to accused adults charged with 63 of the most serious Criminal Code offences that are punishable by life imprisonment, such as kidnapping and murder.

Second, it would strengthen the powers of judges at the preliminary inquiry and limit the issues explored and the number of witnesses to be heard.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in Jordan, and the Senate legal affairs committee, in its final report on delays, recommended that preliminary inquiry reform be considered.

We acknowledge that the issue of preliminary inquiry reform has been the subject of lively debate for literally decades. Some have said that restricting preliminary inquiries would have little impact on delays, given that they are held in only 3% of cases. However, it is important to underscore that this impact would be greater in those provinces where the preliminary inquiry procedure is widely used, such as in Ontario and in the province of Quebec.

Also, we cannot overlook the cumulative impact of all of Bill C-75's proposals that seek to streamline the criminal justice system processes.

Lawyers Laurelly Dale and Michael Spratt testified before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights that limiting preliminary inquiries, as the bill proposes, could result in delays and undermine the accused's right to a fair trial. In contrast, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police indicated in its written submissions that it supported the reforms.

In addition, Daisy Kler from the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter and Elizabeth Sheehy said that these reforms were a step in the right direction and that requiring victims to testify twice, once at the preliminary inquiry and again at the trial, increases the risk of revictimization.

As stated by the Minister of Justice at the second reading of Bill C-75, the proposed preliminary inquiry amendments are the culmination of years of study and consideration in various fora, such as federal-provincial-territorial meetings. These reforms represent a balanced approach between the opposing views put forward before both committees and expressed before this very chamber. They would make this procedure more efficient and more expedient while respecting the rights of the accused to a fair trial and preventing some witnesses and victims from having to testify twice, which can have a very important impact, as I just mentioned, on women litigants in the criminal justice system.

Bill C-75 would also allow for the earlier appointment of case management judges, recognizing their unique and vital role in ensuring that the momentum of cases is maintained and that they are completed in an efficient, effective, just and timely manner.

Bill C-75 also proposes to expand the use of remote appearances provided for in the Criminal Code by enabling anyone participating in criminal cases to appear by audioconference or video conference throughout the trial, as long as the applicable criteria are met. This would include the accused, the witnesses, the lawyers, the judges or justices of the peace, the interpreters and the sureties.

Canada has allowed remote appearances for many years. These amendments seek to broaden the existing framework, with the possibility of using technology to promote access to justice where the infrastructure exists and as permitted by the rules of court.

These optional tools in Bill C-75 aim to increase access to justice, streamline processes and reduce system costs, such as the cost of the accused's transport and the cost of witness attendance, without impacting existing resources such as those through the indigenous court worker program. They also respond to the Senate committee's recommendation to increase the use of remote appearances for accused persons.

The proposals in Bill C-75 in relation to preliminary inquiries, judicial case management and remote appearances, together with all the other reforms in this bill, would ensure that our criminal justice system was efficient, just and in line with the values of our communities and all Canadians.

As a product of the extensive study of this bill and the compelling testimony from witnesses, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights amended the bill with regard to routine police evidence and some reclassification of offences. As a result of these amendments, four technical and consequential amendments must be moved to ensure coherence in the legislation. These amendments follow from the proper amendments made by the committee.

The first of the technical amendments involves the consequential amendment to clause 294 of Bill C-75. This clause deals with the admission of police officer transcripts as evidence and currently references the definition of “a police officer” in proposed section 657.01 of the Criminal Code. As proposed section 657.01 was amended and deleted at committee, an amendment is now required to clause 294 to remove the reference to that previously proposed section.

The second and third amendments being put forward today respond to the committee's intention to keep the offences of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism, under section 83.221 of the Code, as a straight indictable offence. Accordingly, the second amendment today would delete clause 22, and the third amendment would delete subclause 407(5), which is a coordinating clause in accordance with Bill C-59. Again, these are consequential technical amendments that follow from the important and extensive study by the committee of this bill.

The fourth amendment presented to the House today would correct a drafting error resulting from an amendment to clause 389, which includes a mistake in the French version of the title of Bill C-75 and describes Bill C-75 as “Loi modifiant le Code criminel, la Loi sur le système de justice pénale pour les adolescents et d'autres lois et apportant des modifications corrélatives à certaines lois”. This is again a technical amendment that follows from the important amendments made at the committee stage.

To conclude, I want to highlight what we are doing in this law. We have a situation where access to justice is critical. We have a situation where court delays are preventing justice from being rendered. We also have the Jordan decision that was presented by the Supreme Court of Canada. Following the results of the Jordan decision, the minister and the parliamentary secretary went around the country and heard from stakeholders. They heard from people in the system. They heard from federal, provincial and territorial partners. As a result of that collaboration with provincial and territorial partners, we put forward Bill C-75 in this House. The bill was then studied at committee stage and the committee, after hearing robust testimony from a number of stakeholders from around the country who were involved in the criminal justice system, properly and rightfully took the initiative to amend the bill in the right direction with respect to the key areas I have mentioned. That is the way our system is meant to work. It is meant to work collaboratively, and that is what we did with this bill.

Bill C-75 would ensure that women were not revictimized through the preliminary inquiry process. The bill would ensure that we would no longer have the overrepresentation of indigenous and other marginalized communities in our justice system by changing the way we select jurors and changing the tools judges have to ensure more diverse and representative juries in communities. Very importantly, Bill C-75 would ensure access to justice. It would treat administration of justice offences through a separate model, a different model, that would allow things to be dealt with in a more general manner, in a manner that would speed up the proceedings and would not overly criminalize people who are interacting with the justice system.

These are important initiatives. This is an important bill. It is in the right direction, and that is why I urge all members of this House to support it.

Opposition Motion—Terrorism

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

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite mentioned peace bonds in her speech, but Bill C-59 has rendered peace bonds nearly useless. The threshold now is that a peace bond would be “necessary” to stop a terror attack, rather than one that is “likely”. That is about the same as the proof necessary to lay a charge. Why is the Liberal government weakening these tools?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing to hear from Conservative members who try to give a false impression. When Harper was the prime minister, of those returning from abroad who were accused of different things, from what I understand, not one was charged by the RCMP.

We have not only better legislation through Bill C-59, and outstanding work from this government on that project, but we have also seen charges being laid by RCMP and in at least 50% of them there have been convictions. I see that as a positive thing. This government not only talks about it, but actually does something about it. Contrast that to the Conservatives, who cut almost one billion dollars that dealt with issues such as terrorism. Could the member explain the hypocrisy to me?

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

Mr. Speaker, I do not need a copy of Bill C-59 because I have read it. What it does is water down our national security and RCMP and policing agencies' ability to do exactly that, which is to fight terrorism. It makes it a lot more difficult for police to share information from one agency to another agency in Canada on terrorists, on those returning, on those activities within the country.

Bill C-75 and other acts have made it a hybrid offence to participate in these sorts of activities. For anyone to suggest that Bill C-59 is an improvement across the board over Bill C-51 has missed the swing of the pendulum when it comes to protecting Canadians and national security.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the entire debate today is premised on the narrative that there are welcoming arms for ISIS fighters in this country. I do not think that is true. The other thing that the hon. member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner said was that it is no longer the case that it is illegal to promote terrorism in Canada or join a terrorist organization. Unless I misheard him, which is why I wanted to ask the question, that is certainly not true.

I worked hard on Bill C-59 as it went through the House. I also worked on Bill C-51 in the previous Parliament. It created an offence that is unknown in law, promoting terrorism “in general”. It is not something that anyone could identify, it was basically “thought chill”. It was a dangerous provision that would actually make it harder to fight terrorism in Canada under Bill C-51, under the Harper administration.

The new bill absolutely makes it an offence to promote terrorism, not in general, but to promote terrorism. I am wondering if the member could clarify. If he genuinely believes that it is not illegal to promote terrorism in Canada, I will bring him a copy of Bill C-59.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to echo the sentiments of my colleagues in the House on the anniversary of the attack on Parliament Hill, and to pay my respects to those who lost their lives serving our country and who on that day were willing to do so to protect those in this place.

As well, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

I rise to speak to my colleague's motion on combatting violent and radical extremists, in particular, the ISIS terrorists who have fought against Canada and our allies and attempted to establish a regime based on hate, intolerance, slavery and violence.

The Liberal reintegration plan and promise of funding for these returning ISIS terrorists welcomes people back to Canada who have rejected everything we hold as values in this country, and worse, fails the victims of their violence.

This motion is based on the efforts and advocacy of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, who was enslaved, abused and raped and whose family was killed by ISIS fighters. We know her story only because of her bravery in fighting to escape and her courage to share her story. She has been an outspoken advocate against human trafficking, abuse of women and children, radicalization, murder and destruction by ISIS. As a Yazidi, she was oppressed for having religious views that conflicted with those of ISIS. Ms. Murad is the kind of person who Canada can and should welcome as a refugee, someone who is fleeing persecution and who needs support and help. Instead, we are providing refuge and support for returning ISIS terrorists who inflicted horrific and life-shattering experiences on tens of thousands.

The Prime Minister's response to rapists, murders and terrorists returning to Canada is sadly to provide funding. He announced that all returning terrorists would have counselling. Most Canadians would say they need to be locked up and that their rehabilitation should not come at the cost of Canadians. They should never be in the same area as victims who have come to Canada for safety, yet that is the exact policy of the current Liberal government.

The Minister of Public Safety repeated over and over again that the government would use all available resources to track these individuals. However, we know that this is about as accurate as its other broken promises. If every tool is to be used, I guess the question would be this. How many peace bonds and monitoring warrants does the RCMP currently have on ISIS terrorists? How many of them is it monitoring daily for spreading their radicalized views and planning violence? At last count, it was none, at least that we are aware of. There have been at least 60 terrorists who have returned to Canada, and none of them is under the full scrutiny of the law. However, just monitoring them alone is not good enough. These people should be facing justice and prosecution for their actions, for their are crimes against humanity. Allowing such people to live and continue their hateful ways only further endangers Canadians.

This Parliament looked at and debated Bill C-59, the Liberals' attempt at a national security bill that could have dealt with these issues and tackled violent extremists. We heard from security and intelligence experts who told us of the real threats. However, instead of giving tools to prosecutors, police, and security teams to go after these kinds of extreme actions, Bill C-59 further ties the hands of police and our national security agencies. It restricts information sharing, telling national security agencies that administration and privacy are more important than stopping terrorist attacks. Bill C-59 makes it harder for police to get court-approved orders like peace bonds and recognizance orders designed to ensure that police can proactively protect Canadians by stopping attacks.

The Liberals eliminated the criminal offence of advocating for terrorism. In Canada, it is no longer a criminal offence to promote a terrorist cause. ISIS terrorists can come to Canada, get government funding, and not be prosecuted for sharing their hate. Canadians believe that is shameful.

All these new rules and oversight bodies amount to a cut in security and intelligence operations of $100 million, so that our already underfunded agencies will be less able to protect Canadians and our interests.

In a bit of final irony, the Liberals rejected the idea of ensuring that information on crimes committed overseas could be used in criminal court proceedings without jeopardizing national security. When a Canadian goes overseas and fights for ISIS, there is generally limited court-admissible evidence. There are very few or no witnesses to speak to the horrors inflicted on innocent people like Nadia Murad.

All of the information would need to come from the national security and intelligence teams, but today we cannot use that information. For that evidence to come forward, it would require full disclosure of how that evidence was gathered. That could mean endangering Canadian agency operatives. It could mean endangering informants or others from an allied country.

The Conservatives sought to address this issue by allowing evidence into the courts at the discretion of a judge without jeopardizing national security, similar to what almost every other country does, including our allies. The Liberals rejected these changes outright. Making it even more absurd, they claim to be doing everything possible to bring genocidal terrorists to justice while at the same time creating barriers to police and security teams, and opposing measures to bring terrorists to justice.

The Liberal government has failed to protect Canadians at every opportunity and now, entering its last year in government, Canadians will be taking note.

What should we be doing? Let us first focus on bringing the perpetrators of genocide and terrorist acts to justice and ensure that courts have access to evidence gathered against suspected terrorists.

Let us strive to keep Canadians safe from those who are suspected of committing acts of terrorism or genocide but have returned to Canada, by ensuring that security agencies are adequately resourced to provide high levels of monitoring and surveillance of their activities in Canada.

We must encourage greater use of the tools placing conditions on those suspected of terrorist activities, such as recognizance orders and peace bonds. However, the Liberals are making it harder for security officials to do just that, to monitor our suspected terrorists.

The current processes to bring perpetrators of atrocities to justice are slow and fail victims. Canada should make immediate reforms to ensure that justice is swift. Canada should also support initiatives that take concrete action to bring justice to and treatment for women whose bodies have been used a weapon of war.

We should support initiatives such as the one proposed by Premier Doug Ford to ensure that terrorists who have returned to Canada are restricted from taking advantage of Canada's generous social programs as part of their reintegration.

The government should be listening to what Canadians want on this matter. What Canadians want is justice. They want to see these criminals face prosecution and be penalized, in Canada or at an international tribunal.

We should fix the gap in evidence by ensuring that police have the tools to act on known threats, that recognizance orders and peace bonds can be accessed by police through the courts, and that the police are properly resourced to take action. We should restore our ability to strip violent extremists of their Canadians citizenship. It is not a Canadian value to rape, murder and pillage, and we should not let anyone involved in such activities to call themself a Canadian.

The answer to ISIS terrorists who want to come to Canada should be “No, absolutely not”. My Canada, our Canada, is not a refuge for terrorism and terrorists. It should be a refuge for people like Nadia Murad. We should listen to the stories of women, children and religious minorities who have had their lives destroyed and their families killed. We should listen to Nadia Murad and her calls for justice.

All Canadians support bringing terrorists to justice and, in just under one year, many of the government benches will understand that in Canada the silent majority often wields a very strong voice.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I join with colleagues across the aisle and here on this side of the House today. My hon. colleague who just spoke mentioned Nathan Cirillo. I echo the sentiment expressed and pay homage to his memory, his service. I also wish to express gratitude for the work done in the House on the part of the Parliamentary Protective Service and certainly the RCMP. I am fortunate enough to be the member for London North Centre, where “O” Division Headquarters is based.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the motion. Members in the House do not always agree on everything, but I know we can always stand united in denouncing the depraved and barbaric acts committed by Daesh. We can salute courageous women such as Nadia Murad, who I have had the honour of meeting twice, the Yazidi Nobel Laureate who suffered unspeakable horrors under the Daesh rule and survived to tell her story. Mercifully this group's reign of terror is all but over.

Through defeats on the battlefield, it has lost the land it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, However, Daesh terrorists began returning to their countries of origin even while the so-called caliphate still existed. More of them may try to do so now that the group has been defeated.

We and our allies are well aware that our success on the battlefield has not eliminated the problem entirely. To an extent, we have only displaced it. Virtually every democratic country in the world is grappling with this issue. Some of our allies are dealing with hundreds or even thousands of potential returnees. The number we have to deal with is thankfully much smaller, but that is not cause for complacency.

In 2015, our security agencies were aware of about 60 people who had returned to Canada after engaging in terrorist activity abroad. That number has remained relatively stable since. While some of these people returned from former Daesh strongholds in Syria and Iraq, most of them were actually involved with other terrorist groups in other parts of the world.

Today, according to the most recent public report from CSIS, about 190 Canadians have left our country to join terrorist groups, Daesh or others, and remain abroad. Some of them may be dead. Some of them may not want to come back. However, we must be ready for those who do, and we are.

The professionals in Canada's national security agencies are working extremely hard to track these individuals, to bring criminal charges whenever possible and to carefully monitor them to keep us all safe. Here are a few facts. Facts are always important, but particularly in a debate such as this.

First, if extremist travellers attempt to return to Canada, there is a very high likelihood that our agencies will know about it. That is because of the information-sharing we do domestically and with our Five Eyes allies, on an ongoing basis, to identify individuals seeking to return. When Canadian authorities become aware of such travel, a process is activated to control and indeed to manage their return. Even before they are back on our soil, Canada's intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies actively assess and monitor the threat each individual poses. Threat assessments, monitoring and investigations continue for as long as necessary after their return. If evidence supports charges, terrorism charges under the Criminal Code can and will be laid upon their return. Since last year, in fact, four individuals have been charged for terrorism-related offences after their return to Canada and two have been convicted. It is also worth pointing out that under the Harper government that number was zero.

The task of collecting enough evidence about activity in a war zone on the other side of the world to support charges in a Canadian court is certainly a challenging one. While police and prosecutors go about the difficult work of collecting it, our security and intelligence agencies make full use of a broad range of tools at their disposal. For instance, they can issue peace bonds. They can cancel, revoke and refuse Canadian passports on national security grounds.

Under the passenger protect program, they use the no-fly list to ensure that people are prevented from travelling for terrorism-related purposes. They also engage in surveillance and legally authorized threat-reduction measures to keep Canadians safe.

At the same time, we should recognize that people do not travel to join a terrorist group and then become radicalized. Indeed, the radicalization happens at home. We should therefore be doing everything we can to prevent Canadians, mostly Canadian youth, from becoming radicalized in the first instance. The Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence supports community-based organizations that do this important work.

While I am on the subject, the Conservatives should stop denigrating counter-radicalization work. For example, think of parents whose teenage son has started bringing home extremist literature and visiting extremist websites. What would those parents prefer I ask? Would they rather the government have nothing to offer but handcuffs once it is too late? Or would they rather the government's support programs at their son's school, local community centre or place of worship to help extricate him from the clutches of extremism before he did something violent? I think we all know the answer to that question or ought to know it.

None of us should pretend this can only happen to other people's kids or only to Muslim kids. Counter-radicalization programs help prevent all our children from being victims or perpetrators. Of course, once someone does cross the Rubicon and engages in terrorist activity, we need a modern national security framework our agencies can use to keep us safe.

That is the purpose behind our landmark national security legislation, Bill C-59, which is currently being debated in the Senate. Bill C-59 would overhaul Canada's national security framework and bring it into the 21st century. It would modernize and enhance Canada's security and intelligence laws to ensure our agencies would have the tools they would need do their jobs. This would be achieved within a legal and constitutional framework that would be charter-compliant. For example, it would clarify definitions that are vague or overly broad. This includes the term “terrorist propaganda”.

The former Bill C-51 created a new offence of knowingly advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general. Currently, the maximum punishment for it is a five-year prison sentence, but this provision is so unclear that it has hardly been used. That is why the government is revising the definition by using the clearer and more precise legal concept of counselling the commission of terrorism offences. This change would make it more likely that charges would be laid and successfully prosecuted.

It is crucial we get all this right, the legal authorities, the counter-radicalization programs and all the work our agencies do at home and overseas, because extremism of all kinds remains a real threat to our security. That includes extremism inspired by Daesh and al Qaeda, extremism inspired by white supremacists and all the other varieties that exist in our country and around the world. Canada is, by and large, a safe and peaceful place. We should not get hyperbolic about the threat of terrorism, but we must take it seriously.

I am not entirely convinced the Conservative motion takes this seriously enough. This motion seems to me more of a political game than anything else. However, we can all support the statement in it by Nadia Murad. I join all colleagues in their desire to see the villains of Daesh brought to justice.

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

Madam Speaker, I am privileged to follow my friend from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, who raised a number of issues related to the Canadian Armed Forces. I want to also thank our colleague from Calgary Nose Hill for her long and consistent efforts in working with people like Nadia Murad, who is quoted in this opposition motion, because Canadians are concerned about a government that has no ability to act.

It is sad when I hear the rhetoric from the deputy House leader, but it is also sad to hear a distinguished veteran like the member for Kanata—Carleton suggest that the government is somehow powerless and that we are politicizing this. Protecting Canadians is probably the most fundamental aspect of what a federal government should do.

What is troubling about the Liberals is that they act as if they have no ability to act on all issues. Whether it is criminal justice and a killer going to a healing lodge, funding the PTSD treatments of a murderer or recruiting ISIS foreign fighters to come back to Canada, the Liberals make it seem like they are powerless to act. It is actually an abdication of leadership. When their departments make a mistake, leaders rectify it. If there is a risk facing Canadians, they prevent it. I see nothing of the kind from the Liberals, and that should concern Canadians less than one year away from an election, when they can get a government that is serious again.

I am going to start with a quote about ISIS, ISIL, and how dangerous it is, as an organization, and as the people who belong to it are:

ISIL threatens peace and democracy with terror and barbarism. The images are horrific, the stories are appalling, the victims are many.

The person who said that was the Prime Minister of Canada, the member for Papineau, in this House, three or four months into his government. He recognized the profound barbarism and threat of this terror force, but what did he do? Why did he say those words in this chamber? He was withdrawing Canadian participation in air strikes meant to hinder the advance of ISIS. He was stepping back at a time when France and a lot of our allies were asking Canada to step up, because our pilots are the best at targeting in those circumstances. He was pulling back at the same time he recognized that ISIS was a grave threat to Canada and our allies. That just shows how out of touch the Prime Minister of Canada is when it comes to terrorism and national security.

What is worse is that the defence minister at the time made it seem that our allies were fine with that decision, that there was no concern that we withdrew our CF-18 fighter jets from degrading and destroying ISIS and put in more training and ground troops, supplementing the ground troops, the CSOR and JTF2 people the previous Conservative government had put in with the fighter jets. The defence minister made it seem that our allies were fine with that. The trouble is that documents came out later showing that the Iraqi minister, where our troops were operating, pleaded with him not to withdraw. I still do not think the minister has addressed how he misled the House with respect to that. Documents revealed, on December 20, 2015, after he inspected a parade, that the defence minister of that country pleaded with him consistently not to withdraw our fighter jets.

That is how the Liberals started with ISIS, and now we see it continue to the point where they are almost proactively recruiting foreign fighters back to Canada, even those with tenuous links.

There are two areas where this is wrong in law. We should not be repatriating people who have gone and, to use the term of the Prime Minister, committed barbarous acts overseas. We should not be bringing them home, and historically Canadians have not. What previous governments have done is something called constructive repudiation of dual citizenship or of consular rights, meaning that we do not act on consular affairs. The Prime Minister sending people to see “Jihadi Jack”, a British national involved in terrible crimes, it is reported, and even in his own words he acknowledges that, and Canada proactively offering him consular affairs is something the government does not have to do.

In fact, our foreign affairs committee right now is confirming, witness after witness, that consular affairs are a Crown prerogative. It is the ability of the government to decide who they provide consular support to. If my Liberal friends, who I am glad to see are listening, do not take my word for it, let them take the Supreme Court of Canada's words for it.

In the Khadr decision, what is interesting about Omar Khadr is that it was that government, in previous iterations under Martin and Chrétien, that actually violated his rights by participating in investigations. The Supreme Court of Canada said that the Harper government was within its rights not to repatriate Mr. Khadr.

Here is the irony of it. Paragraph 35 of that judgment states that “The prerogative power over foreign affairs has not been displaced by s. 10 of the...Act...and continues to be exercised by the federal government.” It goes on to say, “It is for the executive and not the courts to decide whether and how to exercise its powers....”

It is for the government to decide. There is no right of consular access for terrorists, and certainly for nationals from other countries.

What has the government decided? What discretion is it exercising? It is recruiting Jihadi Jack and a number of these terrible individuals back to Canada. It does not have to do that in law. That is important to note.

What did the previous government do? We mentioned Bill S-7, which actually criminalized the activity of travelling to a foreign country for training or work with terrorists. It could have charged every single one of these people, because they were detained by the peshmerga. The peshmerga has said that those Canadians were found with ISIS fighters. The Conservative government provided a charge for that, which made it easier to seek peace bonds. Our law enforcement has degraded with Bill C-59 under this bill.

The former Conservative government also brought in the ability of victims of terrorism, like our friend Maureen Basnicki, to sue foreign terror agencies. That is what that government did. In fact, at the time, Professor Christian Leuprecht, at Queen's University, said that the Conservative Bill S-7 “prevents the foreign fighter problem”.

We actually tried to deal with the difficult decisions of governing. We did not pass them off and act like these issues were floating down the river and taken down the stream. Whether it is funding PTSD treatments for criminals or transferring child killers to a healing lodge, the Liberals act like they are powerless. They should check an org chart and realize that they are in charge.

I will also bring up how the Liberal government's current conduct is actually in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution. What is interesting is that there is a half-baked campaign under way by the government to obtain a temporary seat on the Security Council. Perhaps it should read the resolutions of the Security Council it intends to join. Resolution 2178 deals with foreign terrorist fighters and defines it.

There are two key findings I would note from this Security Council resolution. First, it states:

The massive flow of refugees and asylum seekers from conflict zones also raises the risk that FTFs will attempt to use the refugee system to escape prosecution.

It said that vigilant vetting must be a requirement for specific countries. That was the United Nations. The resolution goes on to say something that shows how disconnected the Liberal government is. It states:

Because the related challenges are by their nature international, the Council has called on Member States to enhance their international cooperation in preventing their travel.

The Security Council of the United Nations is asking Canada to prevent the travel of foreign fighters, and we have a government facilitating it.

I am wondering if the members of the Security Council, when they vote to see who they should add, will wonder if they should invite the one country swimming in the opposite direction, the one country pulling out against the fight against ISIS, the one country recruiting them back rather than preventing their travel.

Governing is about making tough decisions. There is more to being the government than just photographs and hashtags.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Of course, we do not always agree. We have had some rigorous debates in recent years, not just between him and me, but between our two parties as well.

One thing is clear, the NDP has consistently opposed the draconian measures in that legislation. We firmly believe that, with more resources for our men and women in uniform and our police forces and a robust counter-radicalization strategy, the laws that existed before Bill C-51 was passed in the previous Parliament would have been sufficient. We just need the resources to enforce them. That is why we made those requests when opposing the two bills, namely Bill C-51 in the 41st Parliament and Bill C-59 in this Parliament.

On another note, I must say that, as a progressive, it is very discouraging to see the approach the Liberals are taking. They said that they would support the bill, but that we should not worry, because they would resolve all the problems with it when they took office.

In my opinion, the final result shows that Bill C-59 falls far short of resolving the problems.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like my NDP colleague, who knows these issues well, to comment once again on the Liberal Party.

In the last election, the Liberals supported Bill C-51 but then changed it. Bill C-51 had made it easier to obtain a peace bond against someone who was a risk to public safety, like a returning terrorist fighter. However, in Bill C-59, they have made it harder to obtain a peace bond for these same individuals. As I said, in the last election the Liberals criticized Bill C-51 despite the fact they had supported its passage. They have now watered it down and made it harder to tackle terrorists.

The NDP have been consistent throughout. It must be frustrating for those members to see the Liberal Party consistently changing its position on a range of issues, even when it comes to serious issues like national security.

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

Madam Speaker, today we mark the fourth anniversary of the horrific attack here, on Parliament Hill. We lost corporal Nathan Cirillo. Two days ago was the anniversary of the attack in which Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent lost his life in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, not too far from my riding. I think this is fitting, in light of today's debate on terrorism—a difficult, complex issue that too often leads to loss of life—and on Canada's response to terrorism in order to maintain public safety. We remember these two men who served their country and who lost their lives in horrible circumstances not too long ago.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind the House that the NDP was proud to support the motion moved by the Conservatives just over a year ago to recognize that these horrific, heinous crimes committed by ISIS constitute genocide. There is no doubt about the real nature of this horrific violence perpetrated against minorities, women, the LGBT community and all other victims. We support the Conservatives' motion.

We know that all parties want the to achieve the same end. Regardless of what we say, regardless of our differences of opinion as to the means to that end, our objective is to put criminals, to put terrorists, behind bars.

The question before us today is how a democratic, law-based society should go about achieving that end. We are facing a number of challenges, which I will address during my speech. Obviously, the fact that we acknowledge those challenges and that we have no easy ways to overcome them does not mean we are being soft on the issue or that we want these individuals, who may be living in Canadian communities, to threaten public safety.

I think it is worth looking at the two key pieces here in this motion. However, before I go any further, I would be remiss to not congratulate Nadia Murad for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for the extraordinary work that she has done to bring this issue to the forefront.

The one thing I can agree on with my colleague for Calgary Nose Hill, although we do not agree on everything, is that the deafening silence that sometimes follows this kind of advocacy, that someone like Nadia Murad engages in, is troubling. We always want to do better as parliamentarians and as a country.

In that vein, I think it is also important to recognize that we cannot even begin to imagine the strength and courage required to go through the type of ordeal and horror that she has witnessed. However, it takes even more courage to relive that horror, to be an advocate and be part of the political process in seeking justice and change in the way that different countries engage in these difficult issues.

With that being said, I do want to address the two parts of this motion. I want to start with part (a) that specifically goes into this issue relating to rehabilitation.

I think the issue here is that we have to look at the fight to combat radicalization. It has been made clear by many national security experts and many experts who have worked in connected fields that one of the key challenges that is facing this era of social media, for example, where it is easy for an individual and in many cases individuals with mental health issues who are easily being manipulated through social media and other means by different individuals related to ISIS and others, is that a proper, comprehensive anti-radicalization strategy is required to tackle this issue. It is not an issue that is exclusive to ISIS. It is also when we see white supremacists or when we see other extremism that leads to violence.

I think that is the key is to counter radicalization that leads to violence. That is the key piece of how we ensure public safety with regard to these matters.

It is something the New Democrats brought up in the previous Parliament when we were debating then Bill C-51. We said to the government of the day that although there was an issue of addressing public safety, rather than adopting new, draconian legislation that does not actually address the issue and keep communities safe, why not give additional resources to the policing community, for example?

In 2012, the police recruitment fund was cut. It allowed provinces and municipalities to have additional resources to hire police and, in some cases, put together special units that could tackle, for example, organized crime and street gangs. It provided the kinds of resources that could allow police to do their work and complement the efforts being deployed by the RCMP to tackle the issue of terrorism and other forms of extremism that we unfortunately see in Canada and other countries today. We raised that issue.

We also raised the issue of radicalization and being preventative. I know sometimes “preventative” has a certain meaning, and rhetoric can be construed around it to make it mean something that it does not. The reality is that prevention is not about trying to use kid gloves with individuals who may commit heinous crimes. It is about making sure Canadians are safe and that these crimes and terrorist attacks are not being committed in the first place. After all, we can deploy all of the resources and legislative tools we can after the fact, but there is already a failure when we talk about things after the fact. How do we avoid getting to that point whenever possible? Countering radicalization is one way to do so.

Of course there are challenges. For instance, Montreal's Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence lacks funding. I will not get into detail because there is also an internal management issue related to Government of Quebec programs. However, Montreal's mayor, Valérie Plante, raised an important point in this debate. She said that Montreal's government is reluctant to provide ongoing funding to the centre because the population it serves extends well beyond the greater Montreal area. It is, after all, the only organization in North America whose mission is to prevent radicalization leading to violence.

As part of a study by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, we met with representatives of the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence. They told us they are getting calls from all across Canada and even the American east coast. For example, parents and members of a vulnerable community in New York have been calling the centre for assistance. This shows that there is a desperate need, not only in Canada but also in the U.S. and around the world. Strategies have been deployed in Europe to solve the problem, but here in Canada and North America, there is an appalling lack of initiatives.

Of course I welcome the funding allocated by the federal government to try to address the issue, but obviously, it is not enough. If that were the case, there would be more than just one centre. If I am not mistaken, the government will fund only individual projects. What we need are broad, generalized efforts.

Let us also not forget the importance of providing additional training to our police forces and especially the RCMP to support their work with communities that are vulnerable to all kinds of extremism, whether from ISIS or the far right. Right-wing extremism is a growing threat, according to an article published by the Toronto Star a few weeks ago. I encourage all my colleagues to read it.

All of this shows that we must not only do more, but also think about the types of strategies being used. This is essential to ensuring public safety. When we talk about crime and terrorism, some people and some political parties might think that the word “prevention” means being gentle with those who are about to commit the most horrendous crimes in the history of humanity. Let us be clear: prevention means ensuring public safety and avoiding the loss of more lives like that of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo, whom we lost four years ago.

The other element of course concerns the intelligence-to-evidence gap, more specifically dealing with part (b) of this motion, which is the issue of how we prosecute these individuals, particularly those who are returning to Canada. It is a huge challenge that we face, and we are not alone in facing it.

There are different reasons why this intelligence-to-evidence gap exists. One of the reason is the additional powers given to CSIS. When we look at the threat-reduction powers given to CSIS under Bill C-51, they continue to exist despite the amendments I presented at the public safety committee during debate on Bill C-59, which essentially represents the Liberals' attempt at correcting and failing to correct many of the outstanding issues. The big issue is that those threat-reduction powers are, in a word, and I am sure some lawyers will cringe hearing me say this because it is probably not the correct terminology, essentially extra-constitutional powers. CSIS is going to judges and asking them for judicial authorization to use its threat-reduction powers in a way that can contravene the charter.

What we saw in Bill C-59 is that while those powers still exist, they have become, as I like to put it, less unconstitutional than they were under Bill C-51. However, the big problem in the debate today is the issue relating to information that is gleaned through the powers CSIS is using, because at the end of the day, the RCMP, in its responsibilities as a law enforcement entity in working with Crown prosecutors to bring these returning foreign fighters to justice and making sure they find themselves behind bars, cannot use the information CSIS has. Therefore, it is deploying its own efforts. It cannot simply cherry-pick what CSIS has obtained through a whole different regime of judicial authorization than using its own powers as the RCMP under the Canada Evidence Act and, of course, nationally under the Constitution, first and foremost.

The other challenge relating to that is not just the powers being exercised by CSIS and the RCMP in their own individual silos but also how we use information obtained through international conflict, the consequences of that conflict, and how we use that in a constitutional way in fair trials. It is interesting when we say “fair trials”, because I am sure many Canadians listening to us and some members of other parties might say, “Who cares about fairness? These people have perpetrated some of the most horrible crimes known to humanity. They have committed genocide.” However, fairness is important in ensuring public safety, because it ensures the sanctity of the proceedings. Therefore, if we want successful proceedings that properly prosecute and convict these individuals, and hopefully in the cases where obviously it is appropriate and the findings are such, we need fairness, or else the proceedings will get thrown out and we will be right back to square one.

There are a few elements to that. One was brought up. Here I will refer my colleagues to the fantastic podcasts by Craig Forcese and Stephanie Carvin called “Intrepid”, where there was an interview with Solomon Friedman, a criminal defence attorney. As he put it in the interview, these people are not always the most popular individuals when it comes to considering the victims of horrible crimes. However, he brought up an important point. When we look at the fantastic reporting by Stewart Bell, for example, on what is going on with these fighters who have been detained in Kurdish facilities, we will see that those facilities have abhorrent conditions and that the RCMP cannot just walk into facilities that are potentially engaging in less-than-savoury practices, whether it is torture or other things, or where the conditions are far below the standards that Canadians would expect for incarcerated offenders in our corrections facilities. The big issue there is that it would be easy for a judge, as a result of the arguments of a defence attorney, to look at that Kurdish facility and say that there clearly is an argument to be made as to whether the information before the court is true or not, because it is a result of confessions obtained under duress. Certainly that is not for me to say, but I want to make sure, as a legislator, that we are ensuring the maximum fairness in a process to maximize the success rate so that we find ourselves in safer communities and achieve the public safety and the justice objectives of our system based on the rule of law.

I admit, that is not always what the public wants to hear.

Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that we all want the same thing. The big question is how to go about fixing this problem. It is a challenge.

A reporter asked me a question following an excellent Global News report by journalist Stuart Bell. The reporter asked me whether the government should be taking steps to bring these people back to Canada.

It is a question for which I have no answer. Obviously, as the minister mentioned, I do not want diplomats to put themselves in danger to bring back these individuals. Nor do I want individuals to come back to Canada and be a threat to public safety.

That said, we also have a responsibility towards those people who hold Canadian citizenship. If they have committed horrible crimes, we must ensure that they are prosecuted in Canada and put behind bars in Canada. Not only do we have a responsibility to protect law-abiding citizens, but we also must prosecute those who are not. It is not always a very popular concept, but it is one of the underlying principles of Canadian citizenship.

We are not just talking about the cartoonish characters the Conservatives have made up, usually frightening men in their twenties who return home and threaten our safety. There are also extremely complex cases, such as the women who went abroad. In some cases, because of their movements and activities with ISIS, they could be prosecuted.

Those kinds of cases are much more complicated, because they may involve women who have gone through rape, spousal violence, and all sorts of other, more nebulous situations abroad, which we may not have information about. These are highly complex cases. Women are, of course, one of the groups that has been victimized by ISIS. Why would we want to abdicate our responsibility towards Canadian women who have been victimized by ISIS?

I can understand how, in some cases, some women may be found guilty of certain offences under the Criminal Code provisions regarding travelling and supporting a terrorist group. However, we must not neglect the women who are victims.

The government has a job to do. It needs to use the information at its disposal to make sure everything possible is being done to protect victims who are Canadian citizens.

That goes for children as well. I think all Canadians, everyone tuning in at home and everyone here in the House, would agree that it is unacceptable for Canadian children, some under the age of five, to end up in camps in a conflict zone abroad. By failing to bring these women back to Canada, we are also leaving their children stranded in a foreign country under execrable conditions.

I will come back to the quote from Nadia Murad included in this motion. She mentions brainwashing. Children as young as five years old, sometimes younger, can be turned into child soldiers abroad, as we often see in war zones where genocide is committed. Radicalization can turn them into future threats to public safety in their own right, and we do not want that to happen.

Protecting a child and also protecting public safety are extremely commendable goals that anyone can get behind, even though this is happening in war zones where situations can become extremely tricky and difficult to handle.

In conclusion, while I certainly recognize Canadians' concerns in wanting to ensure public safety, let me be clear that while we might differ on the methods to be deployed and how we hone the tools that we have to prosecute returning foreign fighters and to counter radicalization, all in the House agree that more can be done to close the intelligence-to-evidence gap to ensure public safety. However, we do ourselves a disservice when we do so in a way that sometimes brushes aside the fact that not all of these individuals are coming from the same situation. There is a huge challenge when it comes to women and children, in particular, which cannot be ignored. For that reason, more needs to be done. We look forward to collaborating with the government as it tries to seek solutions to this issue.

It would be naive to say that this is not the most complicated public safety issue we are currently dealing with. We therefore have to tackle it head on. I am pleased to work with my colleagues from all parties to try to resolve this issue and keep the public safe.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary mentioned that in the final term of the Harper government from 2011 to 2015, it cut $1 billion from Canada's security services.

When we take the tools away from security services and yet criticize them for not doing their job, I want to ask the parliamentary secretary the role of government providing the framework, legislation such as Bill C-59 and the funding to do their jobs, the separation of politics from law enforcement and the judiciary and how important it is for us to give the tools that law enforcement and the judiciary need in order to do their jobs.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, with Bill C-59, we needed both. We needed ways to protect the safety and security of all Canadians as well as ways to protect people's rights and freedoms, and that is what we have done. This bill would do both. It would give CSIS the power to commit acts of disruption, but under judicial oversight. People will understand that those powers would be limited in scope and in time and would only be used on the rarest of occasions, when the judiciary was convinced that they were appropriate.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question about threat disruption powers. She rightly highlighted the flaws in Bill C-51, which was tabled in the last Parliament by the Conservatives. Despite my efforts to make amendments to Bill C-59 in committee, CSIS will keep its threat disruption powers. One of the major issues, besides the fact that a judge is essentially being asked to green-light unconstitutional disruption activities, is the comparison of information and evidence that would be admissible in court.

One of the problems pointed out by experts is that, with the threat disruption powers used by CSIS, which are obtained through a very specific system, with approval from a judge, the RCMP must then take its own measures to gather the same information in order for it to be admissible as evidence.

Would my colleague agree that giving this kind of power to CSIS exacerbates an existing problem with streamlining the work of intelligence agencies and the work of police forces?

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to recognize that today is the fourth anniversary of the attack on Parliament Hill and the loss of Corporal Nathan Cirillo. Today, we pay tribute to both Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who served their country with dedication and honour. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends today.

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on the motion by the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. We can all support the sentiments expressed by Nadia Murad, the Yazidi human rights activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Nadia Murad's powerful words remind us of the horrors unleashed by Daesh on the population it held captive. They remind us of the cruelty and brutality meted out by the group's violent depraved adherence. They remind us of the terrible suffering endured in particular by the Yazidi minority, and especially Yazidi women and girls. They remind us how important it is to do everything in our power to bring those responsible to justice and to prevent groups like Daesh from coming into existence in the first place.

At the height of its self-professed caliphate, tens of thousands of people from all over the world joined Daesh. They came from neighbouring Middle Eastern countries. However, they also came from places around the world, including Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada. All of these countries, Canada included, are dealing with the reality that some of these people eventually may come back.

At the time we took office, about 60 Canadian terrorist travellers had returned to our country. Over the last three years, that number, which includes people who joined Daesh as well as other terrorist groups elsewhere, has remained relatively stable. However, since the global coalition against Daesh, of which Canada is a proud member, helped bring about the group's decisive defeat late last year, we and our allies have been aware that some of these people may be on the move.

According to the 2017 public report on the terrorist threat to Canada, about 190 Canadians have travelled overseas to join terrorist groups and remain abroad. Roughly half of them are in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Some, perhaps many of them, are dead. Among those who survived, some are detained or are in hiding. They may be unable or unwilling to leave. A few may be attempting to move to Africa, Asia or Europe, and perhaps back to Canada. We are fortunate that we are only dealing with relatively small numbers compared to many of our allies. However, we have no illusions. These individuals were part of an organization that did horrific things. Many of them may have a good deal of blood on their hands and serious security risks are involved.

The good news is that Canada's security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies are well trained and well prepared to address the threat and keep us safe. Canadians can be assured that our national security and intelligence agencies are carefully monitoring these individuals and actively assessing the threat that each one poses. When our agencies learn that an individual is planning a return, a coordinated whole-of-government approach is initiated. This ensures that measures to mitigate any potential threat can be taken even before that individual sets foot in Canada.

If at all possible, arrest and prosecute are the favoured courses of action. It is a criminal offence to leave or attempt to leave Canada to commit terrorism offences. Canadian law enforcement actively pursues investigations and lays criminal charges when the evidence is there. In the last couple of years, the RCMP has been able to charge four people with terrorism-related offences after their return to Canada. Two have been convicted and two remain before the courts.

There were no such charges under the previous government. In fact, until last year, all terrorism charges in Canada had either been laid in absentia or against people whose terrorist activity took place on Canadian soil. Of course, binding evidence related to actions taken in a war zone on the other side of the world is very difficult work.

Therefore, while the RCMP and its law enforcement partners pursue that evidence, other counterterrorism tools are brought to bear. These tools include investigations, surveillance and monitoring, intelligence-gathering and lawful information-sharing, the no-fly list, revocation of passports, legally-authorized threat-reduction measures and terrorism peace bondings. Taken together, these measures help keep Canadians safe and they happen while police and prosecutors do everything they can to collect evidence and bring terrorists to justice in courts of law.

At the same time, it is important to note that terrorist travellers are only one of the serious threats that Canada faces. In general, our country is peaceful and safe, but we cannot meet the threat of domestic terrorism with complacency.

Unfortunately, there have been attempts on Canadian soil by people who were radicalized here. Some were inspired by the ideologies of groups like Daesh and al-Qaeda, while others by white supremacists. I am referring to the shooting at the mosque in Sainte-Foy, and attacks in Edmonton, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and even here, in our Parliament.

CSIS, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and all other security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies work tirelessly to know as much as we possibly can about every threat to our security. On a regular basis, they expertly assess and reassess all available data to make sure that we stay up to date as threats evolve. Our security and intelligence agencies also work in close co-operation with our allies. Those allies include NATO, our Five Eyes and G7 partners, the European Union, Interpol and others. That co-operation is crucial, given the global nature of terrorist threats today.

The Government of Canada is constantly working to strengthen its ability to manage terrorist threats. The federal terrorism response plan, for example, facilitates a coordinated and integrated response to a terrorism incident or threat.

The government is also modernizing and enhancing Canada's security and intelligence laws through Bill C-59. Among many other measures, this proposed new legislation would ensure that CSIS had the proper tools and authorities to investigate threats, including extremist travellers. For example, within well-defined legal parameters, and subject to strengthened oversight, Bill C-59 would give CSIS the ability to analyze travel-related data sets to investigate the movements and behaviours of extremist travellers. This is an important tool that our security professionals would be able to use within the clear constitutional and legal framework created by Bill C-59 to protect Canadians and Canadian interests around the world.

Just as Canada's federal terrorism response plan recognizes that responding to threats and events requires close collaboration with many players, so too do our prevention efforts. It is in that spirit that we launched the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence last year. The centre coordinates, bolsters and helps fund innovative programs and research in countering all kinds of radicalization to violence and supports local organizations on the front lines of early prevention efforts. This approach is guided by the fact that early intervention to prevent radicalization to violence can and does work.

A key part of our support for prevention efforts is the community resilience fund. This fund provides financial assistance to organizations undertaking programming and research to address radicalization to violence in Canada. It also mobilizes what we know about successful programming in Canada and around the world and shares these lessons among front-line practitioners across the country.

To date, over $16 million has been invested in community resilience funding for research and intervention projects. For the next fiscal year and beyond, the fund will have $7 million available each year for existing and new projects.

All of this represents concrete, thoughtful and responsible action to combat and prevent terrorism. Our government is being vigilant without being alarmist. We are confident, but we are not complacent. Unfortunately, part of the opposition motion we are debating today could be interpreted as an attempt to use this sober topic to score political points rather than as a serious effort to grapple with the genuine issues we are facing.

We should be able to disagree without resorting to rhetoric and hyperbole. I disagreed vehemently, for example, with the deep cuts the Harper government made, in its final term, to our national security agencies: $530 million cut from the RCMP; $390 million cut from Canada Border Services Agency; $69 million cut from CSIS; $49 million cut from the Communications Security Establishment; and $171 million cut from the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. It was over $1 billion in all.

I also disagreed with the Harper government's indifference towards prevention and counter-radicalization. According to former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski, “the previous...government had an abysmal record when it came to countering violent extremism and early detection.”

I disagree with the Conservatives' repeated refusal to strengthen accountability mechanisms for our national security agents, as we have done now with the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, created last year, and as we are doing with legislation currently before the other place. Accountability is about protecting our rights and freedoms, but it is also about making sure that our agencies operate effectively to keep us safe.

I disagreed with the way the Harper Conservatives drafted a national security bill with provisions so vague and so open-ended as to make them virtually unusable by our security agencies. That is a mistake we are correcting with Bill C-59, which will give our agencies the legal clarity they need to do their jobs.

I disagreed passionately with the Conservatives' elimination of health care for refugee claimants. It is under this very program, which we have now reinstated, that Yazidi women and girls in Canada are receiving counselling and mental health care, and health care in general, to help them deal with the unimaginable trauma they experienced at the hands of Daesh. I will remind hon. members that under our government, 1,400 women and families, 85% of them Yazidi, have come to Canada after surviving Daesh. Three Yazidi refugees were accepted by the Harper government.

In spite of all of this, I would never accuse the Conservatives of being soft on terrorism. That should be beneath us in this place. In the fight against terrorism, while we may disagree about methodology, every one in this chamber is on the same side.

In that spirit, we intend to join the opposition in support of today's motion. We do not agree with every word of it, mainly the parts the Conservatives wrote, but we wholeheartedly endorse every syllable of the quote from Nadia Murad. We are all heartbroken by what happened to Nadia and many others like her. We all want the perpetrators to face justice and for girls and boys in Canada, Syria and everywhere else to live in a world shaped by love and peace.

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

Madam Speaker, much of the processes that were put in place to bring actors of genocide and atrocity crimes to justice were put in place in the wake of World War II, when state actors were at the head of violence. That is no longer the case. ISIS is not a state actor. It is a network of terrorists who not only committed genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq, but have carried out threats to the western world. Our processes need to reflect this reality.

This is why I am deeply concerned that the government has made it harder and put roadblocks in place, for example, for the judiciary to use tools such as peace bonds to stop people who are highly suspected of terrorism. It has actually made that more difficult. Bill C-59, which is currently being considered in the other place, would reduce the powers of Canadian security agencies in many ways to information share, to act quickly to stop threats of these people when they arise. This flies in the face of testimony of experts on how we deal with this.

To me, the government is going in the opposite direction. Rather than looking at a new global context, the reality of what conflicts looks like today, it is saying that there is nothing to see here and is reducing the powers of our law enforcement agencies to keep Canadians safe and bring the perpetrators of atrocity crimes to justice.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the NDP for the question.

I believe that is the challenge. We both sit on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and we got through Bill C-59, which amended Bill C-51. Bill C-59 will make it even harder for law enforcement to lay charges.

It is certainly a challenge abroad. There are international agreements and opportunities to work on this. I believe there is nothing stopping us from sending intelligence teams and the RCMP there to find evidence and work in collaboration with the forces on the ground.

We should have the means to do this, but if we do not, then that is why we are calling on the government to take action and find legal avenues to make this happen.

It is the government's responsibility to solve this problem, but that is not what we are seeing right now. It seems like the Liberals do not feel like solving this problem.

Public Safety

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I want to reinforce what I said earlier. We have introduced national security legislation that will clarify once and for all that advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression are not activities that undermine the security of Canada.

Bill C-59 was developed with the most extensive consultation we have ever done. It will reflect the needs and desires of the Canadian people.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, we are undoing Harper's Bill C-51. We have a proposed piece of legislation that will be before this House, Bill C-59, which will make improvements that people have been demanding. We have had the most widespread consultation on this proposed piece of legislation, and we are confident that it will reflect the needs and desires of the people of Canada.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, we understand the frustration of families with no-fly kids. By definition, no children are on Canada's secure air travel list. However, worrisome adults with similar names are, and that creates the false positives.

When the system was first implemented, the previous government should have recognized this problem and provided unique identification numbers for automatic redress. However, it did not. The Conservative design failed. We now have $81 million to fix it. First and foremost, we need the legal authority to do so. That is in Bill C-59 and Bill C-21. Both bills need to be passed as quickly as possible.

Impact Assessment Act

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our colleague from Calgary Midnapore for a very heartfelt intervention. I think I have just scrapped my entire speech because of what our colleague has mentioned.

It brought me back to growing up in the Cariboo and what our thoughts and dreams were as kids. I was one of the those kids who wanted to be a hockey player and to move on. However, the reality was, we were probably going to become a logger or a farmer, because that is what we did, and that is what we do very well in the Cariboo.

Bill C-69 bring us back to yet another failed election promise of the Liberals and to some of what we have mentioned throughout this House over recent days, weeks, and months. When the member for Papineau was campaigning in 2015, he talked about letting debate reign, yet here we sit.

This is the 44th time allocation that has been imposed on this House, meaning that the members of Parliament on the opposition side, and the Canadians who elected them, have not had the full opportunity to present their feelings about what the government is doing, whether it is on Bill C-69, Bill C-59, Bill C-71, or Bill C-68.

Thank goodness that the Standing Orders dictate that private members' bills cannot be time allocated, and our late colleague, Senator Enverga's private member's bill, Bill S-218, has had the full breadth of comments and support.

Bill C-69 seeks to reverse the 2012 changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. I will bring us back again to the promise from the member for Papineau, or one of the Liberals, who said that the government would undertake a full review of laws, policies, and operational practices when it comes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

There are a number of people, groups, and organizations that have serious concerns over what Bill C-69 proposes. Our hon. colleague has mentioned, and it has been mentioned before, that most notably the legislation says it intends to decrease the timelines for both major and minor projects. Unfortunately, there are a myriad of ministerial and Governor in Council exemptions that can be exercised to slow down approvals.

What Bill C-69 represents is not a further clarification of the rules and regulations so that project proponents and those who are trying to enforce the act know where they stand, but rather it muddies the waters. What we have heard time and again, what the committee heard time and again, was that it was a wait and see. There was a lot of concern, and indeed those very groups, the environmental groups, that the Liberals campaigned to and got their vote are now saying that it does not meet the standards.

We have seen this over and over again with the government. It likes to say it has consulted with Canadians, and its Liberal members stand with their hand on their heart and talk about how important consultation is. Yet we know, time and again, as it is with the cannabis legislation, the Liberals are rushing legislation through without fully looking at some of the concerns that have been brought forward by the groups, the organizations, and the stakeholders who are going to be most impacted.

Let us talk about the Arctic surf clam in my file. I cannot stand up and do a speech nowadays without bringing up this injustice. The minister was given the authority and the discretion to go in and implement policy, without anybody checking how this would impact the stakeholders, and without the minister consulting about how that policy would impact those on the ground, the stakeholders, whose livelihoods truly depend on the Arctic surf clam fishery. These are some of the concerns that we have.

When the member for Papineau was campaigning, he said that omnibus bills were done for, and yet here we are again debating another 400-page piece of legislation.

He also talked about maybe having a small deficit of $10 billion. We now know that it will not be our children but our grandchildren who will see a balanced budget, because of the Liberal government's spending.

Bill C-69 represents more broken promises, and it does nothing to give confidence to industry. We know at this time that foreign investment is fleeing our nation at record levels. The CEO from Suncor recently spoke to Bill C-69 and said that it had absolutely put a nail in the coffin of Canadian investment in industry.

The government would like everyone to believe that it knows best and that the Ottawa-developed policies have the best intentions for Canadians, yet the Liberals are not listening when Canadians are speaking. They are not allowing members of Parliament to stand and bring the voices of Canadians to Parliament.

It would not be one of my speeches if I did not remind the House and Canadians that the House does not belong to me, and it sure as heck does not belong to those on the government side. It belongs to Canadians. All 338 members of Parliament and the Canadians who elected them deserve to have a say and to have their voices heard. When the government is forcing time allocation on pieces of legislation that fundamentally are going to have an impact on Canadians' lives, Canadians deserve to have a say.

Industry is shaken at the government's lack of consultation and lack of understanding on how we are moving forward. A good friend of mine, the hon. member for North Okanagan—Shuswap, asked our colleague from Calgary Midnapore about the industry's lack of confidence. Is it the carbon tax and the fact that the government refuses to tell Canadians how much it is going to be? Is it Bill C-69, the regulatory environment, that is shaking the confidence of the industry? Is it other legislation that is shaking the confidence of industry, or is it all of the above?

I would offer one more. The Prime Minister, in one of his earliest speeches to the world, spoke about how Canada was going to be known more for its resourcefulness than for its natural resources. The Liberals have waged war against our energy sector from day one. He said he wished the government could phase out the energy sector sooner and apologized for it.

Canadians and the energy sector, our natural resource industry, deserve a champion. The Minister of Natural Resources has said that it is about time our forestry producers and our energy producers got in line with what the world is doing in terms of technology and sustainable harvesting.

Whether it is our softwood lumber producers, our oil and gas producers, our fishermen on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, or our farmers, Canada has some of the best, if not the best, in terms of technology and harvesting. They are leading the way. They just need a champion. Guess what? They will have that in 2019, when the Conservatives regain the right side of the House.

Standing Order 69.1—Bill C-59—Speaker's Ruling

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The Chair is now prepared to rule on the point of order raised June 11, 2018 by the hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly concerning the applicability of Standing Order 69.1 to Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters.

The Chair would like to thank the hon. member for having raised this question, as well as the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons for his intervention.

The hon. member argued that Bill C-59 is an omnibus bill as he feels it contains several different initiatives which should be voted on separately. On a point of order raised on November 20, 2017, he initially asked the Chair to divide the question on the motion to refer the bill to committee before second reading. As the Speaker ruled on the same day, Standing Order 69.1 clearly indicates that the Chair only has such a power in relation to the motions for second reading and for third reading of a bill. The Speaker invited members to raise their arguments once again in relation to the motion for third reading.

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly pointed out that each of the three parts of the bill enacts a new statute. Part 1 enacts the national security and intelligence review agency act, part 2 enacts the intelligence commissioner act, while part 3 enacts the Communications Security Establishment act. He argued that since each of the first two parts establishes a new entity, with details of each entity's mandate and powers, and since the third significantly expands the mandate of the CSE, he felt they should each be voted upon separately. He also argued that each part amends a variety of other acts, though the chair notes that in most cases, these are consequential amendments to change or add the name of the entities in question in other acts.

The hon. member argued that parts 4 and 5 of the bill should be voted on together. They deal with new powers being given to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, relating to metadata collection and threat disruption, as well as with the disclosure of information relating to security matters between government departments.

As part 6 deals with the Secure Air Travel Act and what is commonly referred to as the “no-fly list”, he felt that this was a distinct matter and that it should be voted upon separately.

Finally, the hon. member proposed grouping together parts 7, 8, 9, and 10 for a single vote. Part 7 deals with changes to the Criminal Code relating to terrorism, while part 8 deals with similar concepts in relation to young offenders. Part 9 provides for a statutory review of the entire bill after six years, while part 10 contains the coming into force provisions.

In his intervention on the matter, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader indicated that the provisions of the bill are linked by a common thread that represents the enhancement of Canada’s national security, as well as the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians. In order to achieve these objectives, he mentioned that it is necessary for Bill C-59 to touch on a number of acts, and that the bill should be seen as a whole, with several parts that would not be able to achieve the overall objective of the bill on their own. He concluded that Standing Order 69.1 should not apply in this case.

Standing Order 69.1 gives the Speaker the power to divide the question on a bill where there is not a common element connecting all the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked.

Bill C-59 does clearly contain several different initiatives. It establishes new agencies and mechanisms for oversight of national security agencies and deals with information collection and sharing as well as criminal offences relating to terrorism. That said, one could argue, as the parliamentary secretary did, that since these are all matters related to national security, there is, indeed, a common thread between them. However, the question the Chair must ask itself is whether these specific measures should be subjected to separate votes.

On March 1, 2018, the Speaker delivered a ruling regarding Bill C-69 where he indicated that he believed Standing Order 69.1 could be applied to a bill with multiple initiatives, even if they all related to the same policy field. In this particular case, while the Chair has no trouble agreeing that all of the measures contained in Bill C-59 relate to national security, it is the Chair's view that there are distinct initiatives that are sufficiently unrelated as to warrant dividing the question. Therefore, the Chair is prepared to divide the question on the motion for third reading of the bill.

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly has asked for six separate votes, one on each of the first three parts, one on parts 4 and 5, one on part 6, and one on parts 7 to 10. While the Chair understands his reasoning, it does not entirely agree with his conclusions as to how the question should be divided.

As each of the first three parts of the bill does, indeed, enact a new act, the Chair can see why he would like to see each one voted upon separately. However, the Chair's reading of the bill is that these three parts establish an overall framework for oversight and national security activities. For example, the national security and intelligence review agency, which would be created by part 1, has some oversight responsibilities for the Communications Security Establishment provided for in part 3, as does the intelligence commissioner, established in part 2. Furthermore, the intelligence commissioner also has responsibilities related to datasets, provided for in part 4, as does the review agency. Given the multiple references in each of these parts to the entities established by other parts, these four parts will be voted upon together.

Part 5 deals with the disclosure of information between various government institutions in relation to security matters. While the relationship between it and the first four parts is not quite as strong, as the member indicated that he believed that parts 4 and 5 could be grouped together, the Chair is prepared to include part 5 in the vote on parts 1 to 4.

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly has not addressed the question of the new part 1.1 added to Bill C-59 by the adoption of an amendment to that effect during clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. Part 1.1 enacts the avoiding complicity in mistreatment by foreign entities act, which deals with information sharing in situations where there is a risk of mistreatment of individuals by foreign entities. Since the national security and intelligence review agency, created by part 1 of the bill, must review all directions prescribed in this new part, it is logical that this part be included in the vote on parts 1 to 5.

The Chair agrees with the hon. member that part 6 dealing with the “no-fly list” is a distinct matter and that it should be voted upon separately. The Chair also agree that parts 7 and 8 can be grouped together for a vote. Both largely deal with criminal matters, one in the Criminal Code and the other in the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The Chair has wrestled with where to place parts 9 and 10. They are, in the words of the hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly, largely procedural elements, but they apply to the entire act. Part 9 provides for a legislative review of the act, while part 10 contains the coming into force provisions for the entire act. The Chair also must ensure that the title and preamble of the bill are included in one of the groups.

There is an obvious solution for coming into force provisions in part 10. Since clauses 169 to 172 relate to the coming into force of parts 1 to 5 of the bill, they will be voted on with those parts. As clause 173 deals with the coming into force of part 6, it will be included in the vote on that part.

This leaves the title and the preamble as well as the legislative review provided for in part 9, which is clause 168. Though these apply to the entire bill, the Chair has decided to include them in the largest grouping, which contains parts 1 to 5 of the bill.

Therefore, to summarize, there will be three votes in relation to the third reading of Bill C-59. The first vote will deal with parts 1 to 5 of the bill, as well as the title, the preamble, part 9 regarding the legislative review, and clauses 169 to 172 dealing with coming into force provisions. The second vote relates to part 6 of the bill and the coming into force provisions contained in clause 173. The third vote relates to parts 7 and 8 of the bill. The Chair will remind hon. members of these divisions before the voting begins.

I thank all hon. members for their attention.

Foreign Affairs

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is the problem. Abu Huzaifa has admitted that he committed atrocities, but he is currently walking free on the streets of Toronto as though he were a respectable citizen.

The Prime Minister is telling us that Canadians should not worry, but that is misleading because the Liberals' Bill C-59 will make it much more difficult for law enforcement to arrest these criminals. The Prime Minister also believes that these murderers can be a powerful voice for our country.

Can the Prime Minister tell us whether this murderer will soon be arrested or whether he intends to give him a contract to be a powerful voice for Canadians?

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will finish debating the last opposition day motion in this supply cycle. Then, we will debate the main estimates.

Tomorrow morning, we will begin third reading of Bill C-68 on fisheries.

Next week will be a a busy one. Priority will be given to the following bills: Bill C-45 on cannabis, Bill C-59 on national security, Bill C-64 on abandoned vessels, Bill C-69 on environmental assessments, and Bill C-71 on firearms.

Standing Order 69.1—Bill C-59

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

Mr. Speaker, just very briefly I rise today to respond to a point of order raised by the hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly on June 11, with respect to the application of Standing Order 69.1 with regard to Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters.

My hon. colleague, in his statement, argued the legislation should be considered as an omnibus bill and that the bill should be split during votes at third reading. In his intervention, the hon. opposition member argued that since Bill C-59 covers matters under the purview of the public safety department as well as the Department of National Defence, it is omnibus legislation as defined by Standing Order 69.1.

These dispositions of the bill are linked together by a common thread that represents the enhancement of Canada's national security and the safeguard of Canadians' rights and freedoms. To fulfill this objective, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that Bill C-59 would touch upon multiple acts since, as the hon. member mentioned in his statement yesterday, the Communications Security Establishment of Canada falls under the umbrella of the Department of National Defence.

Modernizing and rebuilding our national security framework is a massive undertaking. To do so while enhancing accountability and transparency, strengthening security, and protecting rights, and fulfilling the government's commitments to address legislation passed under the previous government, is even more complex. To meet these objectives, the bill needs to be envisioned as a whole, with the working pieces that could not achieve the main objective on their own. This legislation works in harmony to ensure that the fundamental objective to keep Canadians safe while protecting their fundamental charter rights is in fact met.

Consequently, I respectfully submit that Standing Order 69.1 should not be applied to Bill C-59.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I will try to be brief out of respect for our Conservative colleagues because today is their opposition day. I am taking this opportunity because of the vote that took place earlier today to adopt Bill C-59 at second reading and report stage.

I will quote what the Chair said in response to a point of order I raised a while ago about applying Standing Order 69.1 to this bill.

The Speaker said:

However should the motion in fact be adopted to send the bill to committee before second reading and should the bill be concurred in at report stage and at second reading, I could certainly, as the Speaker, apply Standing Order 69.1 at third reading of the bill. At that time, one would anticipate that after it came back from committee, the bounds of the bill and its principles would be more clearly established.

For that reason, I come back with the same point of order. I would simply refer the Chair to the statements I made on November 20, 2017 to the record of that day. I made the same points. I would only add that the point is even more strongly made following the committee process. As we went clause by clause, different officials from different departments had to be present on different days as we went through different elements. That only reinforces the fact that not only under this legislation, but also where there are disparate pieces that obviously pertained to different acts in different departments, so they would be deserving of different votes.

I hope the Speaker will agree that there should be separate votes because there truly are different elements, especially concerning the Communications Security Establishment, which reports to the Minister of National Defence. The minister had to sneak into the committee at 10 to midnight to make a presentation. I think even the government acknowledges that some elements are in no way related except for some vague national security connection, which I feel is not a good enough reason for Standing Order 69.1 not to apply.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-75, the Liberal government's justice reform bill.

Sadly, I cannot find a lot of good things to report about the bill to the House, to my riding, or to Canadians at large, for that matter. Like a number of the Liberal government's legislative measures, the purpose of the bill, as presented by the Liberal front bench, does not always match what the bill actually proposes to do.

In Bill C-71, the Minister of Public Safety used tragic shootings in the United States, shootings in Canada, and a guns and gangs summit in Ottawa to suggest he was putting forward legislation that would tackle illegal guns, gangs, and violent criminals. The sad reality is that the legislation he has proposed never once mentions gangs or organized crime, and does nothing to deal with illegal weapons and crimes caused by them.

Prior to that, the Minister of Public Safety had introduced Bill C-59, a bill he claimed would strengthen our national security and protect Canadians. Again, the reality was very different, as the bill would move nearly $100 million dollars from active security and intelligence work that protects Canadians to administrative and oversight mechanisms.

Worst of all, the Minister of Public Safety made bold claims about moving the bill to committee before second reading, stating:

I would inform the House that, in the interests of transparency, we will be referring this bill to committee before second reading, which will allow for a broader scope of discussion and consideration and possible amendment of the bill in the committee when that deliberation begins.

When it came time to actually consider reasonable, bold, or even small amendments, the Liberals fought tooth and nail to ensure the bill did not change in scope or scale. The results are poor for Canadians and for those who work in national security, more people looking over shoulders, tougher rules, more paperwork, and few, if any, benefits, as front-line efforts to protect Canadians only become more difficult.

Under Bill C-75, we see the same old story. The justice minister made bold claims that she would be helping address the backlog of cases created when the Supreme Court imposed a maximum time frame for cases. The minister made these claims. The legislation would improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system and reduce court delays. It would strengthen response to domestic violence. It would streamline bail hearings. It would provide more tools to judges. It would improve jury selection. It would free up limited court resources by reclassifying serious offences. It sounds like a great bill. Streamline the courts? Strengthen response to domestic violence? Provide more tools for judges? That all sounds fantastic.

Sadly, the Liberals are not achieving any of these objectives according to the legal community nor according to many knowledgeable leaders in the House. Does it shorten trials and ensure that we deal with the backlog? No. The minister appears to make this claim on the elimination of most preliminary hearings.

Preliminary hearings, according the Canadian legal community, account for just 3% of all court time. With an overloaded court system, eliminating a huge number of these hearings will only make a small impact. That impact, unfortunately, will be offset by potentially worse results.

Preliminary hearings are used and can often weed out the weakest cases, which means that more of the weak cases will go to trial if we eliminate the preliminary hearings. That will increase court times. Moreover, preliminary trials can deal with issues up front and make trials more focused. Instead, many cases will be longer with added procedural and legal arguments.

One member of the legal community called this bill “a solution to a problem that does not exist." That is high praise indeed. However, it is the changes to serious criminal offences that have many Canadians, not just the legal community, concerned.

I think all members of the House could agree, or at least accept, that not all Criminal Code issues need to be treated the same and that threshold for punishment should also not be treated the same. However, Canadians expect that Ottawa will ensure we have safe streets, and that the law benefits all people like the law-abiding and victims, not just slanted in favour of the convicted criminals. The Liberals seem to be more focused on making life harder on the law-abiding and easier on criminals.

Under Bill C-75, the Liberals have provided the option to proceed with a large number of violent offences by way of summary conviction rather than an indictable offence. This means that violent criminals may receive no more than the proposed 12 months in jail or a fine for their crimes, crimes such as a slap on the wrist for things like participation in a terrorist organization, obstructing justice, assault with a weapon, forced marriage, abduction, advocating genocide, participation in a criminal organization, and trafficking, just to name a very few.

There are many more, but it bears looking at a few in particular. These are serious offences. Allowing these criminals back on the streets with little to no deterrence makes even less sense.

Assault with a weapon, as we know, is when someone uses a weapon that is not a firearm, such as a bat, a hammer, or any sort of item, to attack someone else. These are not minor occurrences. They are serious criminal issues that should have the full force and effect of the law. Abduction is another serious offence. It could involve children taken from parents or intimate partner violence, or it could be combined with a number of other offences for kidnapping and forced confinement.

In none of these scenarios are the victims or society better served when those responsible for these types of offences serve only a minimal jail sentence or receive a fine. The principle is that Canadians expect that our government and our courts will be there to ensure that criminals receive punishment for their crimes, and that good, law-abiding Canadians and those who have been victimized by these criminals are treated well and fairly.

However, the average Canadian cannot see how making sentences shorter on criminals would meet this basic test. The fact is that it does not meet that test. What it does is address another problem. It potentially reduces court backlogs with the promise of reduced sentences. Therefore, it solves the minister's problem. That is perhaps the part we should be looking at. The Minister of Justice is not here to solve her own problems; she is here to serve Canadians and fix their problems. As my colleagues have pointed out very clearly, there are other solutions, better solutions, in fact.

The minister has addressed the backlog with judicial appointments. I note that 20 have been made this year. However, that is not nearly enough to deal with the problems, as there are still so many more vacancies all across this land. The former minister of justice said, “in my six years as minister of justice, there was never a shortage of qualified candidates”. Therefore, it is not a failure of the judiciary. It is not that there are too many preliminary hearings. It is not that there are way more criminals, as crime rates overall have been declining. The problem resides almost entirely with the minister and the government getting more people on the bench and in the prosecutorial services.

As I have said in the House before, public safety and national security should be the top priority of the House and should be above politics, so that the safety and security of Canadians are put ahead of political fortunes. While the Liberals have said that public safety is a priority, they have said that everything else is their top priority as well. To have 300 or more top priorities is to have no priorities at all.

Canadians expect that the government will make them its top priority. Sadly, this bill fails the test to keep Canadians safe and deliver effective government. The legal community has said that this bill is deeply flawed and would hurt the legal system rather than help it. Police officers will likely see themselves arresting the same people over and over again as criminals get lighter sentences or fines on summary convictions. Therefore, the backlog will move from the courts to the policing community and back to the courts. How does that help the average Canadian?

In closing, I am of the opinion that Canada is going to be weaker after the Liberals leave office in 2019, and far weaker than when they entered office. Their wedge politics on the values test, pandering to terrorists, ignoring threats from China, targeting law-abiding gun owners, lack of leadership on illegal border crossers, and waffling on resource development continue to put Canadians at a serious disadvantage that weakens our public safety and national security and places undue strain on families and communities.

Impact Assessment Act

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comments. I was in the middle of preparing my remarks on Bill C-59 and I am planning on speaking to Bill C-69 next week. I will have a chance to talk about it at third reading. I may have lost it, I am not sure. I have already said half of what I intended to say on the matter.

At the same time, I know that our sitting hours have been extended because we cannot fit all the members who want to speak into the limited time that the House has to implement all of our legislation and amendments. It is a shame we do not have thousands of hours to speak in the House. These are the hours we have, and we have only four years to fulfill all our election promises.

Now, we are working on fulfilling our promises, and I think I will get a chance to speak on Bill C-69 next week and Bill C-59 a few minutes from now.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have just very clearly seen that members on this side of the House want to talk about bills. We want to talk about Bill C-59. We want to talk about Bill C-69. All the parliamentarians on this side of the House want to express their views. Unfortunately, the Liberals have cut parliamentarians' speaking time so much that some members have to talk about two bills at once.

I would like my colleague who spoke about both Bill C-59 and Bill C-69 in the same speech to tell me whether he sometimes feels forgotten by the government because he sits on this side of the House. The Conservatives, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, and the Green Party all represent our constituents here in the House, and they want to hear us speak about all of these bills.

I commend my colleague over here for wanting to speak about two bills, because he knows that we will not have time to talk about all of these things and that the members on the other side of the House often prevent us from speaking. I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

No, Mr. Speaker, Bill C-59.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as much as I am interested in the member's speech right now, I think we are still talking about Bill C-69. I believe the member is referring to Bill C-59 in his statement, which is not germane to the discussion we are having in the House.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise in the House today to speak in support of Bill C-59, the government's proposed legislation to update and modernize the country's national security framework.

This landmark bill covers a number of measures that were informed by the views and opinions of a broad range of Canadians during public consultations in 2016. It was in that same spirit of openness, engagement, and transparency that Bill C-59 was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security before second reading.

The committee recently finished its study of the bill. I want to thank the committee for its diligent and thorough examination of this comprehensive legislation. An even stronger bill, with over 40 adopted amendments, is now back in the House. The measures it contains would do two things at once: strengthen Canada's ability to effectively address and counter 21st-century threats, while safeguarding the rights and freedoms we cherish as Canadians—

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in response to Bill C-69, the government's environmental and regulatory bill, one that is supposed to be revolutionary. This just brings us to another long list of broken promises that the Prime Minister made when he campaigned in 2015 as the member for Papineau at the time. He made some great promises to Canadians.

We heard a lot about sowing the seeds of fear, that Canadians had lost confidence in some things like our environmental assessment plan. The groups that were promoting that had a sole purpose. There was a lot of talk about foreign-funded groups and how they had influenced elections, both on this side of the border as well as the other side of the border recently.

We know very well that during the 2015 election, and I know because I was one of the candidates who was targeted, groups were targeting Conservative members of Parliament. They were talking about how damaging Mr. Harper was to our environment. We heard people say how we were fearmongering with respect to Bill C-59. If we looked at it and followed where the dollar started, these groups started in other jurisdictions, and perhaps not in Canada.

What would be the sole purpose for those groups to sow the seed of fear or perhaps put doubt in the minds of Canadians in the industry or in the government of the day. It would be to really shake up the economy. Why would they do that? Probably because the money they get comes from big oil or big energy groups in the U.S. This is the fact. We know this. To some extent, the Prime Minister, the Liberals, and perhaps the NDP have bought into those groups. I know about the NDP candidate who I ran against in my region, the one who had probably the best photography team I have ever seen. Again, my riding was one of those targeted because ridings they thought they would win, but I proved them wrong.

Let us talk about the growing list of broken promises, and this is so relevant to Bill C-69.

The Prime Minister talked about a small deficit of $10 billion at that time, and the budget would be balanced. There is a record and a history with this. He also said that under his government, the Liberals would be the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. There is a smattering of applause on the other side, but we know it is not true. When he created the mandate letters, he said that the ministers would be more accountable and more open to Canadians. He also said that he would let the debate reign, yet today we are in the 41st closure of debate.

During the campaign, the member for Papineau said that under his government the Harper government's way of doing omnibus bills would be in the past, that it would never happen again. Today, we are speaking to a 400-page bill.

We know the Prime Minister is not really very happy. He is not a very strong champion of our energy sector. We know this from one of his very first speeches to the world, when he said that under his government Canada would be known more for our resourcefulness rather than our resources. We know he has gotten himself into a little trouble for some of the comments he made on the world stage, when he said that he wished the energy sector could be phased out a little faster. We also know he got himself into trouble when he went into Alberta, during a time when we were facing some terrible issues, to speak to the out-of-work oil workers. There is that famous clip where a gentleman asked “What am I going to do? I'm out of work. I don't know whether I'm going to have a home. I don't know how I'm going to feed my children.” What was his comment? “Hang in there.”

The Liberals hated our Navigable Protection Act. The reason I bring this up is because the fisheries, oceans and Canadian Coast Guard committee, FOPO, studies some of the changes to legislation brought forward by government. The Liberals said that Prime Minister Harper had a war on the environment, and the changes he made to the Navigable Waters Protection Act were because the Conservatives did not care.

The Liberals like to bring in academics, NGOs, and environmental groups. Witness after witness, when asked to provide proof if any of the changes from 2012 to the Fisheries Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act would cause any harmful death or damage to our waterway, not one witness could provide proof. In fact, one of our hon. colleagues was part of the group that wrote the changes to the legislation. He talked about why some of these navigable waterway regulations were changed. He said that it was because of our farmers. If farmers had a drainage ditch that had been washout and repairs had to be made, whether to accommodate their livestock or their crops, it took a lot of time, waiting to get that done. Also, if a municipality was isolated because a road had been washed out, there were a lot of challenges in getting the repairs done.

I could go on and on.

The Prime Minister and all of his ministers like to stand and with their hands on their hearts, they pledge they will consult with Canadians from coast to coast to coast. They tell us that every Canadian will have a say. We know the consultations are not true. In fact, they are shutting down debate.

As I like to do every chance I get, I want to remind folks on the other side, and all Canadians, that the House is theirs. Shutting down debate means the 338 members of Parliament who were elected to be the voices of all Canadians do not have their say. They are not able to bring their constituents' voices to Ottawa. The Prime Minister, his cabinet, the other Liberals want to bring the voice of Ottawa to those communities. We know that the only voice that seems to matter is the Prime Minister's voice.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue with the report stage debate on Bill C-69, the environmental assessment act.

Following this, we will turn to Bill C-75, the justice modernization act, and Bill C-59, the national security act.

If time permits, we shall start debate at report stage of Bill C-68, the fisheries act, and Bill C-64 on derelict vessels.

Tomorrow morning, we will begin third reading of Bill C-47 on the Arms Trade Treaty. Next Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are allotted days. Also, pursuant to the Standing Orders, we will be voting on the main estimates Thursday evening.

Next week, priority will be given to the following bills: Bill C-21, an act to amend the Customs Act; Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters; Bill C-64, the wrecked, abandoned or hazardous vessels act; Bill C-68 on fisheries; and Bill C-69 on environmental assessments.

We also know, however, that the other place should soon be voting on Bill C-45, the cannabis act. If a message is received notifying us of amendments, that will be given priority.

Bill C-59—Time Allocation Motion

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government, for the second time today and the sixth time in a week has shut down debate, doing the bare minimum on major bills that Canadians have been waiting for years. Members have just voted on time allocation for Bill C-59.

This is a quote from the previous Parliament. I invite the minister to tell me who said this, and if it was a Liberal or a Conservative. It reads:

Canadians do not like it and they are waking up to the way the government is doing things. Who would have thought that Canadians would be familiar with procedures such as prorogation or time allocation during debates or the use of in camera in committees? Slowly but surely, Canadians are beginning to understand these procedures and beginning to question what the government meant when it promised, six and a half years ago, to be open, transparent and, most of all, accountable. I believe Canadians are beginning to feel that there is a contradiction between what has been promised and what is actually being done by the government.

I want to hear the minister's guess if it was a Conservative or a Liberal who said that, because it is hard for me to tell.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, having been on the public safety committee that travelled across Canada to hear from Canadians, as well as doing a study on the national security framework before we even got to Bill C-59, and then having heard from the witnesses the minister has spoken about, I wonder if he could speak to how the amendments reflect the testimony we heard, as well as how extensive those amendments were as a result of it coming directly to committee after first reading

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have just been checking the legislative record for Bill C-59. This bill was reported back to the House on May 3. When it came up for its first bit of debate at report stage on May 28, I think we had a couple of hours of debate. However, the only person who was able to engage in debate at report stage was the minister. The minister has been a member of this place for a long time. He knows that report stage is an important process wherein this House, as a collective body, gets to consider the work of the committee. I understand that the committee's work is very important and that the committee has gone through a long process. However, equally important is that this House consider the work of the committee at report stage. Therefore, I ask the hon. Minister of Public Safety this. How is it right to limit debate at this very important stage to five hours when he is the only person in this House who has spoken to this bill at this very important stage?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister said earlier that many experts, including former security advisers, were consulted. Richard Fadden, who everyone remembers, was the national security adviser. When he appeared before the committee, he said that Bill C-59 was beginning to rival the Income Tax Act for complexity. In his opinion, some subsections were incomprehensible and he hoped that the committee would help the government improve that situation.

Furthermore, Christian Leuprecht from Queen's University and the Royal Military College indicated that he respected the suggestion that CSIS should stick to its knitting. With regard to certain issues, he said that, yes, in the best of all worlds, we would want the RCMP to take care of some things, such disruption and whatnot. However, he also went on to say that the RCMP is struggling on so many fronts already that we need to figure out where the relative advantage of different organizations lies and allow them to quickly implement this.

Why is the government not listening to the former national security adviser, Mr. Fadden, who in my opinion knows what he is talking about? Why is the government not listening to Mr. Leuprecht?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, probably the single most important change we are implementing though Bill C-59 is to create a much stronger and more comprehensive review process. Instead of having individual review agencies that only have the authority to examine a single security or police agency, which is the case now, we are creating a new, comprehensive body called the national security and intelligence review agency. It would have authority across the entire government of Canada. The silos will be gone, and the review will be able to follow the case, the issue, and the evidence wherever it may be in any department or agency of the Government of Canada.

That will be complemented by the work of the new National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. It will also be complemented by the work of the new intelligence commissioner, who will, for the first time ever, create actual oversight and not just review things after the fact.

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

Mr. Speaker, the fog of hypocrisy is so thick that it is clouding the public safety minister's memory. He cannot even remember that when he was sitting in opposition for 10 years, including a stint as a member of the third party, he used the exact same democratic and parliamentary procedural argument used today, namely the opposition's role and responsibility to hold the government to account. He stood in this place and said that our government was wrongly stifling debate, and he is now being very hypocritical. He is essentially calling the pot black when he is the kettle.

I can tell you right now that this minister has way overstepped the correct parliamentary procedures that we follow in this place. To criticize the Conservatives, in my opinion, is contempt of this place.

The minister needs to apologize for that comment and understand that we have a responsibility as the official opposition to question every piece of legislation and motion the government brings before the House, including Bill C-59, which deserves to be debated in the full context in which it was supposed to be dealt with in this place.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister's depiction was rather disingenuous about what is happening here in the House today, and I take exception to it. The people in my riding of Windsor—Tecumseh followed the issue of Bill C-51 in earnest, and all of these comments and consultations the minister is bragging about now were actually presented to all of us in this place in earnest.

Those comments were meant to foster meaningful debate in the House. No one sent comments to the minister, and I guarantee that, thinking for one minute that it would mean that he was going to cut off debate in this place on a bill like Bill C-59. We have been following this issue for a long time. The minister tabled this last year, in the dying days of our spring session. We then heard nothing, and today he is going to pull the rug out and brag about consultations. It is very disingenuous.

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for his responses so far. He elaborated on the comprehensiveness of the consultations, with about 70,000 inputs on this piece of legislation.

I am wondering if he could speak to the testimonials from key stakeholders and experts on this piece of legislation, because my constituents in Whitby would like to know what the experts say about Bill C-59.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the hon. member's interventions and her comments with respect to Bill C-59.

There has been a huge amount of input already, including ample public consultation for a full year before we even introduced the legislation in the first place.

Now, at this stage of the legislation, there will be another five hours of discussion in the House, and following that, another five hours of discussion in the House, which should be ample time for all serious proposals and propositions and comments to come forward, based upon what has already been the most extensive--

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I was unable to rise earlier tonight on time allocation on Bill C-69, I will say, parenthetically, that I find that time allocation even more offensive than this one, because we were time allocated in committee as well. I had clause-by-clause amendments on Bill C-69, and I had clause-by-clause amendments on Bill C-59. At least, to the credit of the Bill C-59 time management, we were allowed to debate all the amendments on Bill C-59, on public security, but we were stopped from debating two full bills' worth of amendments on omnibus Bill C-69.

Why is it required at this point, on a bill that has much that is good in it, to stop this place from being able to have a full debate? It is anti-democratic.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is the function of Parliament and the committees of Parliament to deliberate, debate, discuss, take legislative proposals, seek amendments, and go through that valid exercise in democracy, but it is also the function of this place and the committees of this place to ultimately, having heard all the evidence and all the information, to take a decision and actually vote on the decisions that reflect the best interests of Canadians. That certainly is happening in spades with respect to Bill C-59.

There has been extensive consultation, the largest in Canadian history. There has been a full process in Parliament, and now, as we come to the conclusion of the deliberation stage, we are getting closer to the point when it will be time to vote and take a decision.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I read in the media the other day comments from that hon. member indicating words to the effect that by and large, Conservatives support this legislation. I appreciate his support for Bill C-59.

Again, I point out that this legislation is the product of extensive consultations. Fifty-nine thousand people responded online with respect to the proposals we have now before the House of Commons. Eighteen thousand submissions were received by email. Town hall meetings were held across the country in places like Halifax, Markham, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Yellowknife. The standing committee held numerous meetings in preparation for the legislation. Social media was engaged, with Twitter and online conversations. There were 17 engagement meetings held by various members of Parliament across the country and 14 in-person sessions with experts from civil society.

All the results of that have been published so that all Canadians can see what everyone was saying to everyone about the content of this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, for his intervention and for his hard work on this file. I also want to say a proper thanks to the minister for bringing the bill forward, because it is time we updated our security arrangements with the different agencies. It is important that we bring about the ability to defend ourselves from cyber-attacks and enhance our cybersecurity so that we can go on the offensive, as well, to eliminate those threats. I think the minister would find, on the Conservative side, that we support that.

However, there were over 250 amendments brought forward at committee, and here again, we are having debate limited, and again we cannot raise the issues and concerns we have. We ask the government to kindly allow democracy to work and allow each and every one of us to raise the issues that are important on Bill C-59.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. gentleman's question, but I beg to differ with his interpretation. The fact is that the changes we are in the process of making with Bill C-59 would bring much greater clarity to the law. It would make the constitutional authorities much more clear and distinct so that our police and security agencies would have a much better sense of the scope and impact of their powers.

In consultations with those authorities, and I obviously had the opportunity to discuss these issues with them quite frequently, they said the one thing that bedevils their work is uncertainty, a lack of clarity, and doubt about what they have the authority to do and not do. In Bill C-59, clarification is brought to a great many matters with respect to CSIS and other agencies, which would make them more effective in conducting the important work they do to keep Canadians safe and to safeguard rights and freedoms.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-59 is the government's answer to our Bill C-51 on national security, which we introduced in response to attacks that took place in Canada. The Liberal government said our bill was no good, so it introduced Bill C-59.

Recently, Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi, who is known to have committed brutal crimes as an ISIS executioner, admitted to the CBC and the New York Times that he travelled for terrorist purposes. During a podcast interview, he proudly recounted what he did over there. It was from that podcast that CSIS and the RCMP learned what he did.

Can the minister tell us how Bill C-59 will improve situations like that now that these agencies have less power than before?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

moved:

That in relation to Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, not more than five further hours shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and second reading stage and five hours shall be allotted to the consideration at third reading stage of the said Bill; and

that at the expiry of the five hours provided for the consideration at report stage and second reading stage and at expiry of the five hours provided for the consideration of the third reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the Bill then under consideration shall b3 put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

Standing Orders—Notice of Time Allocation—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised earlier today by the member for Red Deer—Lacombe regarding the notice for time allocation given yesterday by the government House leader concerning Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters.

When raising the matter, the hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe contended that nothing in the Standing Orders as written allowed a time allocation motion to cover both the report stage and third reading of a bill that had been sent to committee before second reading. To support his argument, the member referred specifically to Standing Order 78(3), which stipulates that a time allocation motion is allowed for both report stage and third reading only if the bill is sent to committee after second reading pursuant to Standing Order 76.1. Therefore, he asked the Speaker to rule the notice of time allocation motion out of order.

For guidance on this matter, I would refer members to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 673, which states:

In the case of a bill referred to committee before second reading, the motion [for time allocation] can pertain to both the report stage and second reading stage as well as the third reading stage.

The member himself acknowledged that examples existed where precisely the same approach as was proposed in this time allocation motion was adopted by the House. I want to thank the hon. member for drawing the fact of these examples to my attention. Indeed, there have been at least four instances where this has occurred. I refer members to the precedents of May 6, 1996; another from November 22, 1996; one also from February 22, 2000; and, finally, one from May 28, 2015.

These precedents demonstrate that the House has seen fit to combine more than one stage in a single time allocation motion for bills that have been referred to committee prior to second reading. This forms a solid enough basis to indicate that this is now an acceptable practice with respect to time allocation motions. For this reason, I find that the government's time allocation motion is in order.

Nonetheless, I appreciate the hon. member's point. To avoid any further confusion, I would recommend that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs review the matter, with a view to clarifying Standing Order 78(3)(a) vis-à-vis our accepted practices.

I thank the House for its attention on this matter.

Standing Orders

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

Madam Speaker, I have a very quick point of order.

I rise to respond to a point of order raised earlier today by the hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe with respect to the notice of time allocation given on Bill C-59 yesterday evening.

I would like to offer that House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 673, states:

In the case of a bill referred to committee before second reading, the motion can pertain to both the report stage and second reading stage as well as the third reading stage. The amount of time allocated for any stage may not be less than one sitting day or its equivalent in hours.

A good example of this was when the previous Parliament, on May 28, 2015, adopted a motion for time allocation at report stage and second reading stage and at the third reading stage, as referenced in footnote 142 on page 673 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice.

As such, I would argue that the notice is indeed in order.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw to the attention of the House a matter concerning the notice of time allocation regarding Bill C-59. Bill C-59 was referred to committee before second reading and is now before the House at report stage.

If you read Standing Order 78(3), Mr. Speaker, it allows a time allocation motion to cover both the report and third reading of a bill provided that the bill is consistent with Standing Order 76.1(10).

Standing Order 76.1(10) refers to a bill that was sent to committee after second reading, not before second reading.

Standing Order 76.1(10) is the Standing Order that deals with the report stage of a bill that was referred to committee before second reading and Standing Order 78(3) does not refer to it.

Therefore, there is no provision in our Standing Orders that would allow a time allocation motion to cover both the report and third reading stages of a bill that was sent to committee prior to second reading.

I concede time allocation motions have covered both the report and third reading stages of some bills that were referred to committee before second reading; however, no member had ever objected to this practice nor pointed out to the Speaker that it was simply out of order. The fact that the former opposition turned a blind eye to this breach does not make it right.

Since Bill C-59 is the first in this Parliament that has been referred to committee before second reading and notice having been given to time allocate, now is the time, Mr. Speaker, for you to take a look at this matter and ensure the government begins following the House rules.

Finally, I would add one point to my submission. Standing Order 76.1(10) deems the report stage of Bill C-59 to be an integral part of second reading. We are actually talking about two stages plus third reading, another situation not anticipated by Standing Order 78(3).

Criminal Code

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

In regard to the notice I provided earlier in this place, I would like to clarify that it was concerning the proceedings at the report stage, and the second and third reading stages of Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters.

Bill C-59—Notice of time allocation motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71

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

Mr. Speaker, first, as the NDP's public safety critic, I would like to say that our thoughts go out to those who were injured in the terrible bus accident on Highway 401 in Prescott, which is not far from here. We also thank the first responders who are currently on the scene. We hope the damage will be minimal.

I would like to bring some order back to the debate, so to speak. We have reviewed the various parties' positions on the bill, but we need to look at what is really before us, and that is a Conservative motion to grant the committee the power to travel. It is a motion of instruction for the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I have the honour of sitting on that committee and of being the vice-chair.

Before I talk about a few of the points that have been made about the bill, some that I agree with and others that I do not, I want to talk about the process. I think that we have had a good demonstration of why the firearms debate in Canada is unhealthy. Let me explain. I am not blaming citizens or civil society, on the contrary. Rather, I am looking at the way certain political parties are acting in the House.

We had a marathon of votes, a filibuster, which essentially used up the entire first day of debate on Bill C-71. The Conservatives, the official opposition, triggered those votes. That is their right, and I am not disputing that. On the other hand, the Liberals then arrived the following Monday morning, after we spent the weekend in our ridings, and moved a time allocation motion. As the public safety critic for the second opposition party, the NDP, I did not even have an opportunity to speak before the Liberals tabled, moved, and debated a time allocation motion. It was completely mind-boggling.

These actions to stifle debate, coupled with all these procedural games in the House, have had a significant impact on the bill. This bill concerns the acts and regulations governing the use and acquisition of firearms in Canada. All this is problematic. Unfortunately, it poisons the dialogue from the outset, which does not help anyone strike a balance between ensuring public safety and considering the needs of law-abiding firearm owners.

We cannot disagree with the principle behind the Conservatives' motion to travel. As a parliamentarian, I am always open-minded, and I am always basically open to the possibility of studying a bill in greater detail. That being said, I have to say that this motion seems to be in bad faith. We have a committee that is working fine. I do not always agree with the government's positions, since I would prefer seeing more time spent on certain studies. We just finished studying Bill C-59, the massive national security reform bill. I would certainly have liked to see more meetings and more witnesses, but all in all, I would say we are one of the best-functioning parliamentary committees.

No offence to my colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, but he is acting in bad faith. He arrived the day before clause-by-clause review with this kind of motion without trying to work with his colleagues. I can say that I received no notice that we would be talking about this, and there was no discussion of the sort. This was presented and witnesses in committee were interrupted so that we could debate motions on extending the study instead of truly using the subcommittee or some other means, such as an informal conversation, to talk about this. Still, I think that it is important to say that, in principle, I am not opposed to what the Conservative Party is proposing.

I will try to provide a more extensive analysis of the points that were raised about the study and the bill. There is something that I find mind-boggling. Last Thursday, a representative of the Assembly of First Nations came to testify. In fact, my colleague mentioned that testimony. She had some very important points to raise. The NDP has always been very clear about this. It was very important. I remember one of the last agonizing debates on firearms in Canada.

Speaking of respect for their hunting and fishing rights, Jack Layton said that first nations occupied an important place. Respecting these laws means recognizing the importance of indigenous peoples.

On Thursday, the Conservatives said it was not true. They said first nations were not consulted and had to be respected, but just the day before they had opposed the bill introduced by my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, a bill to legally implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That conflicts with what they are saying in the House this evening about how Assembly of First Nations representatives said they were not consulted enough. The bill makes it clear that Canada's first nations must be respected. That is contradictory to say the least.

They have also been waging a misinformation campaign claiming that the government wants to reintroduce a gun registry, but that is not the case at all.

Let me go back to a debate that took place in 2012 about the Conservative government's bill to scrap the gun registry. Rick Hanson, who was Calgary's police chief at the time, testified in favour of the bill and against the gun registry. He said the Conservative members represented his point of view. I think it is safe to conclude that the Conservatives invited him to testify.

I will read what he said in English, which is the language he used in committee. Two key aspects of his testimony are related to elements of Bill C-71. First, he talked about firearms possession licences:

If a person is selling a firearm to another, the wording must be that the transferee must present a valid possession and acquisition licence and the transferor must check with the registrar to ensure that the licence is valid.

This was proposed by a chief of police who did not support the gun registry. Conservative MPs and people appearing before the committee have tried to tell us that it is a gun registry. In fact, it is simply a reference number, a simple bureaucratic gesture indicating that the licence was checked. That is all. It is not remotely close to being a gun registry. All witnesses on both sides of the debate agreed on that.

I can say, first of all, that I will be moving an amendment in committee, during clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, to address some concerns of gun owners. Instead of having a reference number for every gun sold in a transaction between two individuals, there should be a reference number to indicate that the validity of the licence has been verified for each transaction. I asked a witness in committee this question and, instead of answering, he decided to skirt the issue and talk about other aspects that he wanted to address.

I would like to point out another aspect of Mr. Hanson's evidence. He said:

[W]e must reinstate point of sale recording. This existed prior to the gun registry and was useful for two reasons. The first is that it allowed for proper auditing of gun stores to ensure that they are complying with the law requiring them to sell only to those with proper licences. That is a starting point should that gun be identified as being used in a criminal offence.

That statement is important. I agree with the parliamentary secretary that the vast majority of businesses that sell guns have substantial, appropriate, and robust business practices. Any respectable venture must maintain these types of records, and that is as it should be. However, having a law ensures that police officers can obtain this information, with an appropriate warrant, of course.

It is important to point this out because this was in the law before the gun registry was created, and it was an element of the law that was repealed because of the registry. When the registry was eliminated, many people in the public safety community said that this element of the law had to be reintroduced because it at least gives police a tool to validate and check where a gun was sold.

One thing my Conservative colleagues and I have in common is that we have questions. How will the government enforce standardized practices for retailers? How much will it cost? What kind of consultation will the Minister of Public Safety do in developing this part of the act? We have concerns.

We also have questions about the systems that will be used, online or in other ways, to obtain a permit to transport a restricted or prohibited firearm, especially in cases in which multiple applications are made at the same time. For example, when several gun owners are participating in the same activity, they will have to transport their guns and will therefore require a transport permit. How will this work? How much will it cost? These are legitimate questions that come up in committee.

The bottom line is that emotions run high when the topic of firearms comes up, for all kinds of reasons. Some people have been victims of horrible gun crimes, while others are legitimate, law-abiding gun owners who want public policies adopted in the interest of public safety to respect the fact that they are responsible in practising their hobbies. We recognize that this is not an easy balance and that this issue raises a lot of very difficult questions. We are hearing some very worrisome testimony, and we have a duty, as parliamentarians, to do our job properly.

As I said from the start, I am very open to my Conservative colleagues' proposal that the committee travel and hear from more witnesses, but that has to be done in good faith. I heard a Conservative member mention political fundraising, but the Liberals are guilty of that too. They sent out emails that included a bunch of quotes from firearms owners in order to raise money. Regardless of which side of the debate we are on, we are not going to be able to adopt sound public policies that respect all of the communities affected by this bill by doing political fundraising.

I would like to continue to work on this issue in a sound and appropriate way. I recognize that there are many challenges associated with it. There are measures that raise concerns, others that are good, and still others that should be fined-tuned because the devil is in the details. At the risk of repeating myself, I want to say that, if I can get one point across in this debate, I want it to be that we need to take this issue seriously and address it in a healthy way. That is what we need to do if we really want to show respect for those who have major concerns about this bill.

I asked the minister whether he was willing to review the definitions set out in the act, those that are within the purview of Parliament and that provide the framework for the RCMP's classification work. If there is one thing that everyone has agreed on since I have been the public safety critic, it is the need to update the definitions. I hope that the minister will do that. I invite him to do so. Clarifying some of those definitions will resolve many of the problems raised in these debates.

With regard to this evening's motion, unfortunately, we believe that it is a debate that will have to wait for another day.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to contribute to the debate on government Motion No. 22, which is an important motion. It addresses the manner in which the House will continue to work between now and when we eventually reach the summer break. It is important because it will allow us to make additional progress in advancing the agenda that Canadians have elected us to do in this place.

Motion No. 22 will also position the House to build on the good work that has already been accomplished by the committees and the work that the committees have put forward. I want to highlight that this is not just work that government members on the committees are doing; this is work that all parties and individuals on committees have been contributing to in order to get the legislation back to this place so it can be voted on before the summer break. That is really important.

A lot of the debate today has focused around government legislation, that it is only about what the government wants. Through my participation at committees and the work I have been able to do, I have seen that quite often committees have the ability to work really well together, to collaborate together, to work on a less hyper-partisan level than we seem to experience in this place, and quite often do come to compromises. I know that happens for me and my colleagues at the defence committee. We should all take great pride in that.

The problem is that if we do not have this motion, if we do not extend the sitting hours, we will be put into a situation where all the work we have done basically gets put on the table until the fall. That is why it is so important to do this.

I would like to highlight some of that important work the committees have done. Before I get to that, it is important to stress the fact that during the 2015 election, the governing party now, the Liberal Party at the time, of which I am a part of, made a commitment to strengthen parliamentary committees. In doing so, we were committing a new government's respect for the fundamental roles that parliamentarians played on committees in order to hold government to account.

This commitment included in the mandate letter of the government House leader that under the government, the parliamentary committees would be be freer and better equipped with legislation. One of the things out of a whole host of things that committees do differently now is the chairs are elected freely by the members. They are not appointed by the government. It is done with a secret ballot that allows members to freely express who they are putting forward as their selection for chair.

One of the other changes to committee recently was with respect to the addition of putting parliamentary secretaries on committees, but not in a voting capacity, in a capacity that they could be there to contribute when necessary. On the defence committee, parliamentary secretaries do not play a very active role, but they are there so they can stay informed about what the committee is doing. By not having a vote, it removes any potential interference that one might see coming from the minister's office into the committee.

The Standing Orders that enabled all this were passed in June 2017. In my opinion, and I think in the opinion of the majority of the people in the House, they have given committees the ability to genuinely act in a more open, transparent, and free manner.

I would like to quickly highlight some of the important legislation that is currently before Parliament that runs the risk of not being voted on and to be completed and enacted before the end of this session.

The first one I would like to speak to is Bill C-59, which was before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The bill, the national security act, 2017, began in November 2017 and extended to clause-by-clause review in April 2018. This committee literally spent five or six months working on this legislation.

For anybody to suggest that the government somehow does not want committees to have full participation and input is absolutely ridiculous, when we consider the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security spent up to six months on the legislation.

Bill C-59 fulfill's the government's commitment to keep Canadians safe, while safeguarding the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

Members might remember the bill that was introduced by the previous government, Bill C-51, which ended up with massive public outcry and complaints about its infringement upon the rights and freedoms of individuals. During the election, a commitment was made to ensure new legislation would come forward. Now we have seen upward of five to six months of committee deliberation on that work. It is important to note that the committee adopted over 40 amendments to bring greater clarity, transparency, and accountability to the bill.

Another bill before the same committee is Bill C-71, an act to amend certain acts and regulations in relation to firearms. We know this is another thing about which Canadians are extremely concerned. Bill C-71 would enhance background checks on those seeking to obtain firearms. It would make background checks in the existing licensing system more effective. It would also standardize best practices among retailers to maintain adequate inventory and sales records that would be accessible to police officers.

Bill C-71 would also ensure that a classification of firearms would be done in an impartial, professional, and accurate manner, consisting of resorting to a system in which Parliament would define the classes of authorities, but leave would it to experts within the RCMP to determine firearms classification specifically. The most important part of that would be leaving the political influence out of it.

As we can see, Bill C-71 is an important bill that would contribute to public safety. That is why it is so critical to ensure it has an opportunity to come back to the House to be voted on before we break for the summer.

The biggest bill, and in my opinion the most important bill that would do the most for Canadians, is Bill C-74, the budget implementation act. This bill would affect every Canadian from coast to coast. It would increase the opportunities for people to have a fair chance at success, in particular those who are struggling.

The budget implementation act would specifically introduce things like a Canada workers benefit to assist low-income workers. It would index the Canada child benefit to help nine out of 10 Canadian families. It would lower the taxes on small business. It would put in better supports for veterans. It is absolutely critical to have the bill work its way through the finance committee and the deliberations it has with Canadians throughout the country, so it can come back to the House and we can vote on it in a timely fashion.

I have so many more examples of other legislation before committee right now. However, for all of these reasons, it is so important we pass the motion now to allow us to sit later into the evenings so we can ensure we complete the work Canadians have put us here to do.

I want to take two more minutes to speak specifically to the amendments that have come forward today. I know there has been a lot of discussion about the proportion of time being spent on government business versus the proportion of time being spent on opposition motions and opposition days. This is not about proportioning of government versus opposition. This is about ensuring we can put more items on the agenda. That is why it is important to ensure we sit later into the evenings so we can do exactly that. The items I am speaking about are ones that have been collaborated on in committees by all members of all parties of the House.

That is why I personally cannot support the amendments. I do not think that they are particularly good amendments, because they are not going after what we need to do, which is to examine more pieces of legislation, as opposed to proportionally growing the amount of time that each political party gets, which is unfortunately the partisan nature that this debate has been put into.

With that, I see that we are approaching the end of the debate on this matter. I would like to leave an opportunity for people to ask questions. I am happy to entertain those at this time.

Motion that debate be not further adjourned

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

Mr. Speaker, this is truly an unparalleled day in Canadian parliamentary history. On a day that the Government of Canada has paid a Texas company $4.5 billion to leave Canada and to stop investing in our resource sector, we also have the government House leader bringing to the House for the 34th or 35th time a time allocation motion on a motion that has not yet been debated. This is truly unparalleled.

The member was not here in the last Parliament, but I would like to remind her of the wisdom of her deputy, the member for Winnipeg North, who used to call such tactics “assaults on democracy”. There are so many times he said that. In fact, he went further to talk about the use of time allocation on omnibus bills before the House. He said they are “an affront to democracy and the functionality of Parliament.”

Why do the Liberals fear debate? Why do they fear Canadians knowing what is happening? Why are they using omnibus bills for budget implementation, and for Bill C-75 and Bill C-59? What about the openness and transparency they promised?

Report stage

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, one of the sections of Bill C-59 that the minister did not talk about too much was part 8 that deals with the Youth Criminal Justice Act. When we think about indigenous youth, racialized youth, and especially when we look at some of the challenges they might face, the amendments in this piece of legislation would require that only a youth justice court would have the jurisdiction to make orders against young persons, and would ensure that they are detained in a safe, fair, and humane manner. I wonder if the minister could further elaborate on that and talk to the importance of this particular part of the legislation as it pertains to our young people.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, many constitutional and civil rights experts who have looked at the ministerial directives we drafted a year ago and at the provisions in this bill, which take the essence of those ministerial directives and would give them the force of law through orders in council as a result of Bill C-59, have said that those directive are the most progressive they have ever seen. Plus, they are public for the first time in Canadian history. We have moved this along light years from where it was.

Let me just put a hypothetical situation to the hon. member. Imagine that there was a would-be bomber in a little town in rural Ontario who was going to get on a train to go to a big urban centre to detonate a bomb, and presume that information about that threat came to the attention of the RCMP and there was a question as to the source of that information, but the information was accurate and was viable. What would members do in those circumstances? Would they let the bomber get on the train to go to a large urban centre to kill thousands of people, or would they put in the law, as we have done, the exception that when the use of the information is necessary to save Canadian lives, they can in fact save those lives?

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

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the member said in his speech that the central tenet of Bill C-59 is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I was under the impression that Bill C-59 was about protecting Canadians and national security. Let us keep that in mind.

During the clause-by-clause consideration at the public safety and national security committee, over 235 amendments were proposed. Interestingly enough, all 29 Conservative amendments were defeated by the Liberals, and all 43 Liberal amendments were passed.

Now, on one such amendment that was proposed at committee, we heard from national security experts. It was proposed by the Conservatives, but it does not matter who proposed it because it was about national security. This really should be a civil liberties bill, because twice as many witnesses at committee were either civil liberty individuals or lawyers, as opposed to national security experts.

One thing that was brought up by a number of experts was the disconnect between intelligence and evidence—

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, at this point in the proceedings, we can get back to the topic of Bill C-59 for what is really, under our procedures, both a report stage debate and a second reading debate.

I am very pleased today to rise in support of Bill C-59, as it has emerged from the standing committee, the government's proposed legislation to update and modernize our country's national security framework. This landmark bill covers a number of measures that were informed very throughly by the views and opinions of a broad range of Canadians during extensive public consultations in 2016.

It was in that same spirit of openness, engagement, and transparency that Bill C-59 was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security before second reading. The committee recently finished its study of the bill.

I want to thank members of that committee for their diligent and thorough examination of the legislation, both during their consideration of the bill, and indeed, during their pre-study of this subject matter in 2016, which contributed significantly to the drafting of Bill C-59 itself.

An even stronger bill, with over 40 amendments accepted, is now back before the House. The amendments would bring greater clarity, transparency, accountability, and public reporting. One of the major changes made by the committee was the addition of a new act in the bill, entitled avoiding complicity in mistreatment by foreign entities act.

Last fall we undertook to enhance and make public a previously secret 2011 ministerial directive to both CSIS and the RCMP that dealt with how those agencies should share and receive information with and from foreign entities when there was a risk that the information may have been derived by, or could result in, torture or mistreatment. Obviously, it is important to have ministerial directives governing such a serious topic.

The goal of my directive was to establish strong safeguards to ensure that information shared by Canada would not lead to mistreatment and that Canada would not use any information that could be tainted by mistreatment, with one exception. That is when it is essential to prevent the loss of life or serious injury.

The new avoiding complicity in mistreatment by foreign entities act would go a step further than ministerial directives. It would create a statutory requirement for such directives to exist in the form of orders in council, and not just for CSIS and the RCMP but for all departments and agencies that deal with national security. It would also require that each of those directives in the orders in council be made public.

This amendment, which is now in Bill C-59, is another example of how this legislation would strive constantly to achieve two things simultaneously. This bill would strengthen Canada's ability to effectively address and counter 21st-century threats while safeguarding the rights and freedoms we cherish as Canadians.

Bill C-59 is the result of the most comprehensive review of Canada's national security framework since the passing of the original CSIS Act more than 30 years ago. That review included unprecedented open and transparent public consultations on national security undertaken by Public Safety Canada and by the Department of Justice.

Several issues were covered, including countering radicalization to violence, oversight, and accountability, threat reduction and the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, the former Bill C-51. All Canadians were invited and encouraged to take part in the consultations, which were held between September and December of 2016.

The response to the consultations was tremendous. Citizens, community leaders, experts, academics, non-governmental organizations, and parliamentarians alike made their views and ideas known over the course of that consultation period. In the end, tens of thousands of views were received, all of which were valuable in shaping the scope and the content of Bill C-59.

With almost 59,000 responses received, the online consultation was what generated by far the largest volume of input. In addition to that, there were nearly 18,000 submissions received by email. In addition, public town halls were held in five Canadian cities: Halifax, Markham, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Yellowknife. This gave citizens across the country a chance to share their thoughts and opinions in person.

The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security held numerous meetings on the consultations. It even travelled across the country to hear testimony not only from expert witnesses, but also general members of the public who were invited to express their views.

A digital town hall and two Twitter chats were also organized.

Members of the public also had the opportunity to make their voices heard at 17 other engagement events led by different members of Parliament at the constituency level.

In addition, 14 in-person sessions were held with academics and experts across the country, as well as a large round table with experts from civil society.

I simply make the point that there was an extensive effort to be open, to be inclusive, to ensure that every Canadian who had something to say on this topic could have the opportunity to do that. This was not a process reserved for politicians in Parliament or for experts in ivory towers. This was an open, public, inclusive process, and Canadians let their voices be heard.

After all of that information was collected, the next step was to carefully analyze every comment, every submission, every letter, and all of the other forms of input. All of the views that had been expressed to the various consultative mechanisms have now been published on the Government of Canada's open data portal, so anyone interested in actually seeing who said what to whom throughout the whole consultation process can look it up and see what the dialogue was like.

In addition to that, an independently prepared report provides an overview of what was heard during the consultations.

While it would be difficult to summarize everything that we heard from Canadians in a consultation process that massive, I can speak to a few of the key themes and ideas that emerged.

As one might expect, given the thousands of submissions, there were widely differing opinions. That is what we would expect from Canadians who are very engaged in an important discussion. Certainly that was the case in these consultations.

The results make one thing perfectly clear. Canadians want accountability. They want transparency and effectiveness from their security and intelligence agencies. They want all three of those things, accountability, transparency, and effectiveness, together. They want the government and Parliament to achieve all of those things at once. Bill C-59 goes farther and better than any other piece of legislation in Canadian history to accomplish those three things together.

Canadians expect their rights, their freedoms, and their privacy to be protected at the same time as their security is protected.

Consistent with what we heard, Bill C-59 would modernize and enhance Canada's security and intelligence laws to ensure our agencies would have the tools they needed to protect us and it would do so within a clear legal and constitutional framework that would comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

There is no doubt in my mind that the legislation before the House today has been strengthened and improved by the result of the close work that was done by the standing committee. All the scrutiny and clause-by-clause analysis and consideration, all the debate around all of those various amendments has resulted in a better product.

When we tabled this legislation, and before the committee did its work, many of the most renowned experts in the country said that it was very good legislation and that it accomplished more in the field of national security than any other proposal since the CSIS Act was first introduced. That was a great compliment coming from the imminent experts who made those observations. However, now, after the debate, after all of the input, after all of the amendments, the legislation is even better.

One of the things I am most proud of with respect to Bill C-59 is how it represents a dynamic shift in the review and accountability structure for our entire national security apparatus. Currently, some of our agencies that deal in national security have a review body that examines their work. CSIS of course has the Security Intelligence Review committee, SIRC. The RCMP has the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, CRCC. Those are a couple of examples. However, there is no unified review body that can look beyond one agency at a time and actually follow the evidence as it moves across government from agency to agency.

For the first time, Bill C-59 would fix this problem by creating the national security and intelligence review agency, or NSIRA. NSIRA is largely modelled on the often discussed idea of a “super-SIRC”, which would have the authority to review all matters of national security, whether they are with CSIS, or CBSA, or IRCC, or the RCMP, or Global Affairs, or DND, or anywhere else in the Government of Canada.

When we link that to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which was recently created by the passage of Bill C-22, Canadians can be assured that we have a review architecture in place that is required for the 21st century. It involves parliamentarians, through the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. It involves expert review through NSIRA. In addition to that, it involves, for the first time ever, a brand new innovation that we have introduced, a new element of actual real-time oversight, which has never existed before, through the work of the new intelligence commission, which is also created by virtue of this legislation, Bill C-59.

We also worked to ensure that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the central principle behind Bill C-59. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than the changes we have made to the former Bill C-51's threat reduction measures.

When Bill C-51 created these threat reduction measures, it created an open-ended, seemingly limitless course of possible action for CSIS to take. This bill would create a closed list of specific actions that CSIS could apply to a federal court for permission to undertake. It is open, it is transparent, while at the same time gives CSIS the tools it needs to keep Canadians safe.

Another part of the former Bill C-51 that we have undertaken to dramatically improve is the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, or SCISA. After Bill C-59 is enacted, this new legislation will be renamed to the security of Canada information disclosure act, and it will not grant any new powers to collect information on Canadians. Rather it is a roadmap for how existing information related to a threat to the security of Canada can and should be shared between departments and agencies in order to mitigate or eliminate that threat.

It clarifies that advocacy, protest, dissent, or artistic expression are not activities that undermine the security of Canada, and it creates a robust review framework to ensure that information is being disclosed to other departments appropriately, with proper record-keeping at both ends of the process.

Next I want to touch on an issue that I believe almost every member of the House supports, and that is the fixing of the passenger protect program, or what is sometimes known as the “no-fly list”.

I imagine that virtually every member of the chamber has met with a member of the group called “No-Fly List Kids” at some point during this Parliament. To be clear, there are currently no children on Canada's passenger protect list. However, there are children and adults who may share a name with someone who is on the list. Former defence minister Bill Graham famously had to deal with this very problem when someone sharing his name was actually listed.

Fixing the problem involves both funding and new legislation. Bill C-59 will play an important role, allowing the government to collect domestic passenger manifests and screen the list itself, rather than sharing our passenger protect list with over 100 airlines around the world. What this means is that once the government is collecting the passenger manifests, it will be able to issue redress numbers to people who share a name with a listed individual. Anyone who has booked a flight to the United States in the past few years has probably noticed that their system has a box for a unique redress number. Once Canada's system is up and running, it will operate in a very similar fashion.

I would also note that we got the necessary funding to develop this new system this past March, in the most recent budget. This measure is another excellent example of ensuring that the rights of Canadians are respected while at the same time safeguarding national security.

There are many other important parts of Bill C-59 that I will not have the time in 20 minutes to go through in detail. However, I would like to just mention some of the others—for example, the new stand-alone legislation to modernize Canada's Communications Security Establishment. It has needed this modernization. It has needed this new legislation for a long time. Bill C-59 introduces that legislation.

There are also important changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which ensures that protections are afforded to young Canadians in respect of recognizance orders.

Changes in the Criminal Code would, among other things, require the Attorney General to publish an annual report setting out the number of terrorism recognizances entered into during the course of the year. Also, there are very important changes to the CSIS Act that would ensure that our security agents are confident they have the legal and constitutional authority to undertake their essential work on behalf of all Canadians, including, for example, the complex matter of handling data sets, taking into account the advice and judgments of recent decisions in the federal courts.

Should Bill C-59 pass, this historic piece of legislation would enhance Canada’s national security, keep its citizens safe, and safeguard Canadians’ constitutionally protected rights and freedoms.

For all these reasons, I would encourage all hon. colleagues to join me in supporting Bill C-59. I am glad it enjoys strong support among Canadians generally and among some of our country's most distinguished experts in national security and civil liberties. We have been very fortunate to have the benefit of their advice as we have moved this legislation through the parliamentary process.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Citizenship and Immigration

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

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we were going to be debating Bill C-59, and I am the only member in this place who has report stage amendments for the bill. Therefore, I would have been the first speaker on that bill.

Despite that, I am still very pleased to have raised the points I did in my speech. The fact is that Bill C-59 is going to be before the House this afternoon. Essentially the Liberals have tried to escape the fact that they supported Stephen Harper's draconian security bill, the former Bill C-51, and, as usual, were trying to have it both ways, having their cake and eating it too, that there were problems with the bill, but they would support it and fix it after an election.

What happened after that? We waited two years after an election campaign. The Liberals promised to fix those egregious measures. They ignored the fact that in the meantime CSIS was still using the powers given to it through Bill C-51. After that, the Liberals tabled the bill in the dying days of the spring sitting, in June 2017, and did not bring it up for debate until the fall. Then when we finally got the debate on it, we had shortened committee hearings, nowhere near enough time to deal with omnibus legislation.

I respect my colleague and I certainly respect the fact that there can be an upheaval to Parliament's schedule. I would like to be making my speech and going back to my office, or doing whatever else, but this is an important issue. I do not want to hear that somehow Bill C-59 is so urgent, because the Liberals have certainly waited a long time to do anything about it.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to a very important report, but there are some things on which I would like to comment before I get into some of the details of the report or issue that we are debating today.

It is interesting to note that the report was tabled back on March 23, 2017. Many dozens of reports have been tabled in the House, more than 100. As with this report, I commend the efforts of members who take the time and use the resources and spend the energy in putting these reports together. Whether it is this report or other reports that come before our standing committees, it is important that we acknowledge the amount of work, not only by politicians but by Canadians in all regions of our country, who often come to Ottawa to express their opinions and concerns. Ultimately information is accumulated and put in the form of different recommendations.

This report is no different from many other reports that in good part are being acted on by the government in different ways. For example, if we look at this report, we see there are 24 recommendations. I have had the chance to briefly go through some of those recommendations. There is one I want to provide some comment on specifically, but as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has described, the department has acted in a very strong way on a number of different recommendations. Something that Canadians should be aware of is that even though all of our standing committee reports do not get debated on the floor of the House of Commons, it does not mean the government is not taking action on these reports. We value the fine work of our standing committees, where Canadians as individuals or groups express their ideas and thoughts on important public policy. We understand it and appreciate it, and it does not have to be debated in order for the government to look at the recommendations and act on them where we can.

There are very few ministers of immigration, with the possible exception of the previous one, who have been as aggressive in addressing the important issue of immigration here in Canada. Let there be no doubt that immigration is absolutely critical to the long-term development of our country, both economically and socially. As a government and as a party, we understand that and appreciate it. The actions seen day in and day out continue to reinforce just how important immigration is to our country.

Having said that, I want to also make reference to the reason we are debating it here today. I am very much suspicious in the sense that this is one of many different types of reports out there. Here is a report that has been sitting around now since March 23, 2017. The government has proactively been implementing certain aspects of its recommendations, but why has the official opposition chosen to take it up today?

The opposition members like to say they want to debate government bills, but when they are afforded the opportunity to debate government bills, we see tactics of this nature that ultimately prevent them from debating government bills.

What were we supposed to be debating this afternoon? I believe it was Bill C-59 regarding public safety. It is legislation that is very important to all Canadians. All political parties want to debate the bill, yet we have the official opposition bringing forward a report that will take away from the debate on Bill C-59. Trust me when I say that in the coming days, the opposition members will stand in their place to say they want more debate time. That is what they will argue, but then they will bring in motions of this nature.

This is not to marginalize the issue. We understand the importance of immigration. We understand how important it is to recognize and act on the work that our standing committees do, but we are not going to be fooled by an opposition party that now decides that this is the day to debate it. The real reason they are doing this is that they do not want to debate the government bill. That is the reason they have brought this motion today.

That is fine. They are the official opposition. They can work with the other opposition parties and entities in the House, and this is the topic that they want to debate today. It happens to be a topic that I am exceptionally passionate about, because there is nothing that is brought to my constituency office more often than immigration concerns.

I often say that I get hundreds of files or immigration requests every month. People think I am exaggerating if I say 400. If anything, I am underestimating the actual numbers that I deal with in my constituency office. Most people would be amazed at the amount of help we try to give people to come here from countries like the Philippines or India, in particular the Punjab, and other countries around the world, such as Ukraine and Pakistan. Individuals are trying as much as they can to get family to come and visit Canada.

I follow the issue of immigration very closely. I used to be the immigration critic for the Liberal Party of Canada when we were in opposition. I witnessed first-hand the types of problems that were created and generated by Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney, and there were plenty. If members want to talk about disasters in immigration, this is a great way to look at it. I remember sitting at committee when they came up with the announcement about stopping the sponsoring of all parents and grandparents. They killed it flat. What they did was say they would come up with a super visa to justify doing that. Then a couple of years later, after they finally opened the program, they said it would be 5,000. When the Liberals took the reins of power, we doubled that 5,000 to 10,000.

The Liberals put in a better processing procedure for immigration. We are making a real difference in processing times. The best example is the reunification of families. Imagine if a person is going to the Philippines or to India. In particular, I said I do a lot of work in relation to the Punjab. When a person went through the province of Punjab to get married, it would take two to three or even more years to get their spouse to Canada.

During the Harper years I was not able to get one temporary visa, not one, where dual intent could have been used in order to get a spouse over to Canada. We have seen significant improvements. Now it is closer to a year. I believe it is just under a year. I have actually been successful at getting some of those temporary visas for spouses.

Our ministers of immigration have understood, right from the get-go, how important it is to clean up the mess that the Conservative Party left when they were voted out of office. We will continue to do so. This is all about clients.

I believe that technology can make a difference. In 1991, I believe it was, I was in the Philippines in the embassy as a Parliamentarian taking a tour of the facility, and I saw these huge plastic containers. I asked what all the plastic containers were for. There were literally thousands of documents inside these plastic containers.

They said they would get two or three plastic containers of written correspondence a day.

Technology does need to be acted on, which is something this government takes seriously. We are proactively fixing many of the problems that were created by the previous Conservative government.

Customs Act

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in support of Bill C-21, an act to amend the Customs Act. Simply put, the proposed changes would provide the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, with the legislative authority to collect basic exit information on all travellers leaving Canada. The information we are talking about is simple biographical data, such as name, date of birth, and nationality, just enough to know who left the country and when.

Up to now, this has been something the CBSA has not been able to do. The CBSA collects information on all travellers entering Canada, but it collects exit data only for non-citizens who leave by land. Bill C-21 would close this information gap by providing a remedy. It would authorize the CBSA to collect exit information on all travellers. For those leaving by land, it would get it from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which collects the same information on entry into the United States. For those leaving by air, it would get it from the airlines. In other words, travellers would not have to provide any additional information or be otherwise inconvenienced in any way.

The process by which information would be collected and exchanged under Bill C-21 was the subject of extensive consultations. The government has made privacy a paramount consideration in the development of this legislation. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has been extensively engaged on this subject. In fact, when the commissioner testified before the public safety committee, which I have the honour of sitting on, he said that the information in question is “not particularly sensitive”.

Even so, the new system of exit data collection would require that privacy impact assessments be carried out, potentially by a number of federal organizations, before being implemented, always, of course, in accordance with Canadian law. This is in line with our commitment to accountability and transparency, particularly in the realm of national security. Canada now has the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, and Bill C-59 would create a new review agency for security and intelligence activities. In addition, the public safety minister has said clearly that the government is examining options for a specific review body for CBSA.

All of this should give Canadians confidence that the measures in Bill C-21 would be implemented with the utmost consideration for rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy. The Privacy Commissioner said at the committee that Bill C-21 would serve “important public policy objectives”, and I certainly agree with that.

It would, for example, address several security blind spots caused by the fact that we do not currently keep track of who leaves our country. For example, at the moment, very curiously, we have no way of knowing if wanted individuals are fleeing Canada to escape prosecution. Similarly, we might not know that an abducted child who is the subject of an amber alert has been taken out of the country, or that someone who is radicalized is leaving Canada to join a foreign terrorist group.

This lack of information also creates administrative problems. For instance, it complicates the administration of social benefit programs with residency requirements and applications for citizenship and permanent residence, because there is no quick and reliable way of knowing that an applicant spent the requisite amount of time in this country.

The public safety committee heard from a senior immigration department official, and I will quote this because it is very important to get it on the record. She said, “I cannot stress enough how access to this information will enhance program integrity across multiple lines of business by providing IRCC's officers with a tool to objectively confirm an applicant's presence in, absence from, entry into, or departure from Canada.”

Immigration officials also told the committee that Bill C-21 would help to ensure that people who are entitled to Canadian citizenship and permanent residence can get it with a minimum of hassle. Rather than requiring applicants to produce documentation to prove their travel history from years past and expending department resources to conduct investigations and verifications, reliable and accurate information about who was in the country, and when, would already exist.

Bill C-21 would address these and other gaps, improving Canada's ability to combat cross-border crime, effectively administer immigration and social benefit programs, and continue to manage the border in a way that contributes to the safety and prosperity of Canada and Canadians.

Most of our allies, including those in the Five Eyes, have similar systems already in place and this is for good reason. This legislation would bring Canada in line with our international partners in ways that we have not seen before.

As hon. members well know, our highly trained CBSA officials play a critical role in keeping our borders secure and facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel 24-7. No matter how well we train our border services officers, we must understand that their effectiveness depends on having the right tools. This includes complete and accurate data. That is why the bill is about accurate, timely, and complete information for border services officers in both Canada and the United States.

We owe it to the country's citizens to close the information gaps that exist in our current border operations, and in this light, I ask all members to support the bill.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member not concede that the very thing she is complaining about in Bill C-51 is, in fact, being amended, improved, and changed in Bill C-59? Bill C-51 was the Conservative bill. Bill C-59 is the current bill that is being dealt with by this Parliament to correct the problems existing in C-51.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to rise to raise my concerns in this place regarding Bill C-21.

New Democrats take the personal information and privacy concerns of Canadians very seriously. It is clear that since the bill was first introduced in June 2016, Canadians have become increasingly concerned about the privacy of their personal information, as we have seen numerous troubling situations of data breaches, unscrupulous data collection and mining, and targeted misinformation campaigns based on collected personal data, just to name a few things.

Just last month we learned that Facebook estimates that over 620,000 Canadian users had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. In 2017, we found out that Equifax, one of the three largest credit agencies in the world, had been hacked and that the personal, financial, and identification information of an estimated 19,000 Canadians had been stolen.

While these data breaches were in the private sector, we know that these kinds of data breaches can occur in the public sector as well. In 2016, we learned of an employee at the Canada Revenue Agency improperly accessing personal accounts. We learned as well of the loss of a DVD containing the confidential tax information of 28,000 taxpayers in the Yukon.

Canadian taxpayers also had to pay roughly $17.5 million when the government settled a class action law suit at the end of 2017 over the loss of personal information for roughly 580,000 Canada student loan recipients that had occurred five years ago.

Regarding the data that would be collected under Bill C-21, Professor Wesley Wark, a security intelligence expert, stated that “There's been a lot of concern over the years in Canada and elsewhere about data breaches where various malicious actors—criminal groups, hackers, foreign governments—are going after information held by the Canadian government, and this big database will be an attractive target.”

It is our duty as elected representatives to take the privacy and security of our constituents' personal information very seriously, and we must ensure the utmost care any time authorization is given for the collection of their data. We must be even more careful when we authorize that data to be shared if we have no jurisdiction or control over what other entities may do with it.

Bill C-21 does just that. I and my New Democratic colleagues are concerned that the Liberal government is not taking the privacy concerns of Canadians and the recommendations of experts on these matters as seriously as they should.

We saw this in Bill C-59 and again here in Bill C-21. This bill would amend the Customs Act to allow for the collection and sharing with United States authorities the exit information on all persons leaving Canada, including Canadian citizens. Currently no authority exists in the Customs Act to collect exit information from travellers, including Canadian citizens, and there is only limited authority to question travellers departing from Canada.

Bill C-21 would be a significant departure from the current situation. When he spoke on the bill, my esteemed colleague from Beloeil—Chambly spoke about how the government continues to suggest that there is nothing to worry about, that this is just the collection and sharing of basic information, just information that is found on page 2 of a passport.

However, as I said, any time we are expanding our data collection, we need to be sure that we actually need to do so, that this data will be adequately protected, and that it will not lead to any undue harm for Canadians. That third piece is the most important.

The role of the Canada Border Services Agency is not to hand over Canadian information to foreign authorities; the role of the Canada Border Services Agency, first and foremost, is to protect Canada. Once the CBSA turns over data to the United States, there is no way to know how the information will be used. There is no way to know how long those records will be kept. More troubling, there is no equivalent to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in the United States.

In fact, when my hon. colleague, the member for Salaberry—Suroît, spoke to this bill, she pointed out the alarming surveillance that occurs in the United States, which the world learned about through the whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

As we debate this bill at third reading, given the length of time it has taken to reach this stage, we need to acknowledge and examine how things have changed in the nation with which we will be routinely sharing this information since this bill was first tabled. The election of Donald Trump has brought a very real anti-immigration, anti-foreigner streak to the highest level of office in the U.S. We see this not just with refugee claimants crossing into Canada at irregular intervals from the United States and hoping that the Canadian system will provide them a fair opportunity to hear their case, but in also in the numerous instances of Canadians being mistreated and profiled based on the colour of their skin when they were entering or attempting to enter the United States.

American authorities, emboldened by a president who pursues shutting down American borders to Muslims and building a wall to keep Mexicans out, have subjected Canadians to inappropriate questioning and profiling when Canadians attempted to make a routine border crossing. In fact, I rose in this place three times in February 2017, on the 9th, 13th, and 22nd, asking the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Prime Minister what actions will be taken to ensure Canadians will not be subjected to racial profiling while attempting to cross the border into the United States.

We heard about Fadwa Alaoui, a Muslim Canadian born in Morocco, whose Canadian passport was not enough. She was berated by the U.S. border guards about how often she attended her mosque and what her views were on the president, and was even asked if she knew the people killed in the Quebec City mosque attack. After four hours of feeling humiliated, she gave up and drove home.

The Liberals kept assuring parliamentarians and the public that Trump's travel bans and rhetoric would not impact Canadians, but the stories continued. We heard about 19-year-old Yassine Aber, who was a student at Sherbrooke University and a member of the school's track and field team. As part of the team, he was travelling into the United States to participate at a track meet. Mr. Aber was born in Canada and was travelling on a Canadian passport that did not expire until 2026. His parents came to Canada from Morocco over 25 years ago.

He was subjected to similar harassment for five hours. His phone was seized, and he was forced to give the agent his phone's password. He was the only person of the 20 to be subjected to this, and only Mr. Aber was ultimately refused entry. He was told he was not allowed to cross because he did not have a valid visa.

Canadian citizens with valid passports do not require visas to enter the United States. These were acts of discrimination and profiling, plain and simple.

It was also brought to my attention through the sharing of an access to information request that dozens of Canadians born abroad have had their card revoked for vague reasons. It is within this context that we would be passing and enacting Bill C-21.

In addition to the fact that there is no U.S. equivalent to our Privacy Commissioner, President Trump signed an executive order explicitly stating that persons who are not U.S. citizens are now excluded from the protections offered under United States privacy legislation. It is within this context that the CBSA will be turning over information on Canadian citizens to their American border counterparts.

Canada's Privacy Commissioner has expressed concerns regarding Canada's privacy framework. In 2016 he stated:

The issue is that if you allow greater information-sharing, the legal standards authorizing this activity should be such that law-abiding Canadians, ordinary Canadians who should have nothing to fear from surveillance activities of the state, are not caught by the information-sharing regime.

Canadians should also hear about the impact of certain surveillance measures on democratic rights and privacy. A more balanced and comprehensive national discussion is needed.

When it comes to the collection and sharing of their personal data, I believe that we would easily find that most Canadians have moved well beyond the idea that if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about. Canadians are wary of their personal information being shared among government agencies and Canada's foreign partners because of previous acts passed, such as the Harper government's Bill C-51.

The current government's plan to collect and share even more personal information, without proper independent oversight of our national security agencies, is of great concern to New Democrats. The Canada Border Services Agency was never required to collect information on those exiting Canada, as that was the responsibility of the agency where the individual was travelling to. There is a real concern that Canadian authorities are being asked by foreign governments to hand over the personal information of Canadians. That should not be the responsibility of the CBSA. Our border agency's full purpose is to protect Canada, not to hand over Canadian information to foreign authorities. In the case of extenuating circumstances, where such information needs to be shared, such as threats to national security or criminality, the relevant police agencies, such as the RCMP and CSIS, are already in contact with their international counterparts. In these cases, existing legislation and practices are already applicable. Therefore, in many ways, Bill C-21 is a solution in search of a problem.

To date, the government has failed to truly show this House why this legislation is needed and has failed to provide real assurances that the risks of this additional data collection and data sharing would be properly addressed and mitigated. Given the current context that we would be entering into this new level of data collection and sharing, it is my opinion, and my colleagues', that Bill C-21 needs to be opposed.

During his appearance at the public safety committee on the study of Bill C-21, my colleague questioned the Privacy Commissioner on whether information-sharing programs implemented under the former, controversial Bill C-51 would apply to data collected at the border under Bill C-21. The Privacy Commissioner stated:

Yes, the information collected under Bill C-21 on people leaving Canada could very possibly be shared through the measures established under Bill C-51.

The Privacy Commissioner went on to reaffirm the following, saying:

As you know, I have commented on Bill C-51 as to the standard under which information-sharing is permitted. In my opinion, the standard established under Bill C-51 is too permissive when it comes to information sharing. I stand by those comments.

Once again, we have no ability to control what American authorities do with this data once it is shared.

As I illustrated in examples earlier, we know that Canadians are being impacted at the border by President Trump's rhetoric and policies. Instead of standing up for Canadians who are being targeted and profiled by Canadian border agents on the basis of their skin colour and religion, the Liberal government appears, instead, to be committed to offering to make the agents' jobs easier by collecting for them and turning over more personal data.

It is the responsibility of the government to protect public safety and to defend civil liberties. The government has failed to show that Bill C-21 would do either of these things. Until it is able to do so, the government needs to shelve this bill.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to begin the debate on Bill C-21 now at third reading stage in the House of Commons.

The Public Safety Committee has carefully considered this legislation and reported it back to the chamber, with a great deal of consensus and support. I would like to thank the committee for the hard work that was done, and note that one amendment related to the length of time that exit information may be retained after it is collected was adopted by the committee. The original version of the legislation allowed for this time limit to be set at some future date by regulation. The NDP put forward an amendment for a 15-year retention period in the law itself, and this amendment found majority support among committee members.

I believe the amendment makes the bill stronger and the government is very happy to accept it.

Before I discuss the specifics of Bill C-21, I cannot stress enough how important a smooth, secure, and well-functioning border is to both us and the United States.

Every day, around 400,000 people and $2.5 billion in bilateral trade cross the Canada-U.S. border in both directions. We and our American counterparts have frequently reiterated our shared commitment to creating an even safer border that promotes even greater prosperity, two goals that go hand in hand. The bill before us today is a big step toward achieving those goals.

Bill C-21 would help us not only ensure that our border with the United States is more secure but also would ensure that our immigration system and social benefit system are better equipped to perform as intended.

Many Canadians would probably be surprised to find out that we do not currently have a system to track when somebody departs Canada. In fact, we have never had that kind of system. Most other developed countries keep track of who leaves as well as who arrives. Canada, of course, does an excellent job of taking note of who is entering the country. However, we need to address the security loophole and catch up to the rest of the world on who is leaving the country. Canadians might also be surprised to know that the Canada Border Services Agency has very few powers in the law to stop goods from leaving Canada, even if it is aware that the goods should not leave the country. Therefore, the legislation needs to be fixed, and Bill C-21 deals with both of these issues.

First, Bill C-21 would amend the Customs Act to enable the collection of basic exit information when someone leaves our country. With a clearer picture of who is exiting Canada, we can ensure the efficient movement of legitimate trade and travel, and keep our border more secure. Currently, this information is only tracked on foreign nationals and permanent residents leaving Canada by the land border for the United States.

It would be helpful to consider some examples of how the new legislation would be useful to the CBSA. It could, for instance, help to determine if a foreign national is overstaying his or her visitor visa. Canada is a welcoming country, but we expect those who are visiting us to abide by the terms of their visas and travel documents, including any expectation that when their visa has expired, they would return to their home country. At the moment, without Bill C-21, we can never know for sure.

Another example is tracking the exit of those who are inadmissible to Canada and have been issued a removal order. Currently, many individuals in that situation simply board a flight at their own cost and depart on their own initiative. However, with no way to track exit information, the Canada Border Services Agency cannot close the file. The result is often the issuance of immigration warrants for people who may already have left the country.

The exit information that would be collected is brief, basic, straightforward, and unobtrusive. It includes name, nationality, date of birth, gender, and the issuing authority of the travel document—in other words, nothing more than is found on page 2 of everyone's passport—along with the time and place of departure. This information would be gathered without imposing any new requirements on the travelling public.

When a person leaves Canada by land, the person would, as usual, show his or her passport to the U.S. border officer and the U.S. would automatically send that basic information back to Canada. This is a reciprocal arrangement with the U.S., which is in fact already receiving information about people departing that country and arriving in Canada via the land border. For those leaving by air, air carriers would collect the basic passport data from passenger manifests and provide it to CBSA before departure.

In addition to the benefits I outlined earlier, Bill C-21 would be of great use to law enforcement. Canadian authorities would be better able to combat cross-border crime, respond to national security threats, prevent the illegal export of controlled goods, ensure the integrity of our immigration system, and protect taxpayers' dollars by making it easier to identify cases of identity fraud and abuse in certain government programs.

A good example is in the event of a kidnapped child and the ensuing Amber Alert that would be issued. When an Amber Alert is issued and shared with the CBSA, the CBSA would be able to create a lookout for the missing child or for a suspected abductor. If those individuals should cross the land border, U.S. border officials would send the exit information back to CBSA almost instantaneously. When the name of the child matches the Amber Alert, CBSA would be able to inform the RCMP that this particular person has left the country. The RCMP could then coordinate with American counterparts to locate the child and apprehend the offender, or if the lookout matches someone on the passenger manifest of an imminent outbound flight, police could possibly intercept the abductor right at the airport and rescue the child before takeoff.

The same principle would apply in the case of known high-risk travellers. Currently, those on the passenger protect program list, or what we call the no-fly list, can be denied boarding if they attempt to travel overseas to join a terrorist organization. However, to be listed on the passenger protect program, the government must have sufficient evidence or intelligence to merit the listing. That is a rigorous process.

A target at the early stages of an investigation might not yet meet the threshold for formal listing and could still freely travel out of the country, leaving authorities with no way to know that the person is gone. Bill C-21 would create a record of that departure, which could help our intelligence and police agencies build a future case. If the person has been flagged to CBSA by either CSIS or the RCMP, those agencies could get advance warning that the individual is leaving several days before his or her flight departs, and for investigative purposes, that is very useful information.

It would also be an important tool for Canada's efforts to combat human trafficking. For example, if police are investigating a case of human trafficking, border officials could alert the RCMP if any of the suspects leave the country or are planning an outbound flight. This could help police determine the location of a suspect, or a victim of human trafficking. It could help determine the travel patterns of suspects or victims, which in turn makes it easier to identify human smuggler destinations, or implicated criminal organizations, and it could help police to identify other suspects or victims by learning who is travelling with the individual in question.

Bill C-21 would also help immigration officials make better-informed decisions and better use their resources. For instance, a permanent resident who is applying for citizenship must have physically spent at least 1,095 days in the past five years in Canada. Without exit information, this can be very difficult for both the government and the citizenship applicant to prove.

Bill C-21 would also help protect taxpayer dollars by reducing fraud and abuse of certain federal programs that have residency requirements. By establishing when people leave Canada, we would be better able to determine who is and is not eligible for certain benefits that are tied to Canada being a person's official country of residence. Of course, when people are entitled to benefits based on their residence in Canada, those benefits are properly and generously provided by Canadian taxpayers. However, eligibility criteria exist for a reason, and Canadians would expect the government to administer these programs responsibly. That means making sure the rules are properly adhered to.

Seniors currently collecting old age benefits in accordance with the law, for example, old age security, would not be affected. That is because once somebody has 20 years of residence in Canada as an adult, OAS becomes fully portable no matter where the person lives. Medicare eligibility would also not be affected because exit information would only be used in the administration of federal programs. The information would not be shared with provinces.

This bill also includes measures that would strengthen the ability of the Canada Border Services Agency to deal with smuggling and the illegal movement of goods out of Canada. Members will remember that this issue featured prominently in the report of the Auditor General in the fall of 2015. That report found that improvements were needed to combat the unlawful export of controlled or dangerous goods, including illegal drugs and stolen property. Even more importantly, as we are in the midst of NAFTA negotiations, these new powers would help ensure the CBSA could better combat the flow of counterfeit goods to our neighbours to the south, as well as the illicit diversion or transhipment of strategic products such as steel or aluminum.

Currently, the Customs Act only prohibits the smuggling of goods into Canada but not out of Canada. This legislation would address that gap in the law by making it an offence to smuggle prohibited, controlled, or regulated goods out of the country.

Prior to tabling the legislation, Public Safety Canada proactively reached out to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. This was an issue of interest to the standing committee. Privacy impact assessments have already been completed for the current and previous phases of implementation of this program involving the collection of basic data for non-citizens, and summaries of those assessments have been made available on the CBSA website. An additional assessment will be done once this new legislation is passed and the new framework is in place. This is all to ensure the requirements of Canada's privacy laws are properly adhered to by this important measure.

As we have seen with the debate on Bill C-59, which is our national security legislation, in particular the information-sharing provisions in Bill C-59 related to national security, many members of this House are concerned about the prospect of sharing personal information between federal departments, that is, within the government overall but between one department and another. Let me be clear, however, that under Bill C-21, before any information could be shared between CBSA and any other federal agency or department, a formal information-sharing arrangement must be established. Such an arrangement would include information management safeguards and privacy protection clauses.

The exchange of information with the United States would also likewise be subject to a formal agreement to establish a framework governing the use of any information and to set up mechanisms to address any potential problems.

Let me repeat something that I mentioned earlier, because it is very important when considering the impacts of this legislation on a traveller's privacy: the only information that we are talking about in Bill C-21 is the basic information, the basic facts, that appear on page 2 of everybody's passport, which all travellers now voluntarily provide to the customs officers of other countries when they enter those countries. This is simply a matter of making sure that the same information is available to Canadian customs officials so that it works both ways.

The benefits of Bill C-21 are clear, and I am glad to note that there has been broad consensus and support in the House for this measure. It would help ensure the efficient flow of trade and travel, which are are essential to our country's prosperity, and make sure that it continues with a secure border. It would help law enforcement agencies with everything from human trafficking to amber alerts, help the immigration department run its programs with more clarity and certainty, help to ensure government benefits go to those who are eligible for them and not to those who are ineligible, and help to ensure Canada can help to prevent prohibited goods from leaving the country. All of this can be achieved with virtually no impact on travellers and with robust privacy protection measures in place.

In short, this bill is good for Canada. I look forward to seeing it come into force at the earliest possible time and I thank the House for its consideration.

Public Safety

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they can enforce what they want. It is a question of political will. That is it.

Canada recently took part in a joint police operation with its allies to combat international terrorism, specifically that perpetrated by ISIS. The purpose of the operation was to undermine the power of the terrorist group's propaganda machine by seizing countless software programs and Internet servers all over the world. The operation was laudable and necessary, but in matters of counterterrorism, we must attack on all fronts.

Why is the Liberal government eliminating criminal penalties for terrorists right here on Canadian soil in Bill C-59?

Public Safety and National Security

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, several hundred witnesses later, and 50-plus amendments, 76 briefs, and over 70 hours' worth of testimony, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 19th report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in relation to Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters. The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments. This was a classic demonstration of how a parliamentary committee should operate.

Agriculture and Agrifood

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, it gives me pleasure to be here in the House to speak about a crucial sector of the Canadian economy, namely our agriculture industry.

On December 8, 2017, I asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food a question, and it was answered by the parliamentary secretary. By way of background, my perfectly simple question asked why the Liberals were abandoning farmers.

The parliamentary secretary's answer was about supply management. He reminded us of the Liberals' traditional position of supporting supply management. I strongly suspect it is the same answer we are going to get tonight. However, my question, which the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food did not answer, had other elements. I talked about how the Liberals had abandoned farmers by calling them tax cheats during the tax reforms, trying to take away their deferred cash tickets, and refusing to split Bill C-59 at the time.

Members will recall that back in December 2017, we predicted a crisis in grain transportation. We anticipated that grain transporters in western Canada would have trouble exporting their grain and that a crisis would erupt in the transportation system. We called on the Liberals to take action. Unfortunately, our calls fell on deaf ears, as did the calls of farmers and the industry. A serious crisis did develop, and grain farmers are still suffering the consequences today. That is the reality.

I asked why the Liberals were abandoning farmers. Sadly, not much has happened since. Actually, to be precise, a lot has happened, but to no effect. We have been presented with a budget that made absolutely no mention of agriculture. That is a fact. Now we have proof: since December 8, 2017, in regard to agriculture, the Liberals have abandoned Canadian farmers. What has happened since then? The grain crisis.

The Senate sent amendments to Bill C-59 back to the House. Those amendments could make Bill C-59 acceptable if we manage to adopt them. The Senate sent its amendments to the House over two weeks ago. We have not heard a thing. That is the government response to the amendments to Bill C-59. No news, and the crisis is ongoing. The Liberals refused to pass an order in council to resolve the crisis.

Now, once again, we have a very serious problem before us. What happened in the meantime? Oh, right, the NAFTA negotiations. Something did happen. The parliamentary secretary can give us all the reassurances he wants about supply management, but I have just one little thing to say to him. Despite his and his government's reassuring words, the Union des producteurs agricoles du Québec and its president are demanding that the government get tougher and stand firm. They want the Canadian government to say, loudly and clearly, that supply managed sectors will not be opened up to American producers any more than they already are and that we will not sit back and let them impose tariffs on other products.

My question this evening is this: will the parliamentary secretary pledge to the president of the Union des producteurs agricoles du Québec and us that supply management will not be opened up any more than it already is? The president is not asking for protection; he is just asking the government not to open up supply management any more.

Public Safety

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman is a distinguished lawyer and knows very well that I cannot comment on the items that are included in his question.

However, I can tell him that the issue of transparency and accountability is taken very seriously by our government. We have implemented measures in Bill C-59, in Bill C-22, and we have published the first-ever ministerial directives with respect to the issue of torture in dealing with international entities.

I am pleased to say that he is one of the members of Parliament that in fact serves on the national security and intelligence—

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

The hon. gentleman will know that I am prohibited from commenting on outstanding court proceedings, but I would point out in response to his questions about transparency and accountability with respect to our security agencies that we have issued new ministerial directives and we have published those ministerial directives for the first time ever.

We are also in the process of working on Bill C-59, which implements a whole series of transparency and accountability measures, and we have created the first-ever National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.

Opposition Motion—National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to have a say in this debate.

The answer regarding the invitation in India is already quite clear. The invitation should have in fact never been extended and, as we have said many times, when the existence of the invitation was discovered, we withdrew it immediately. Another point: we have full confidence in Canada’s security advisors and diplomatic advisors, who consistently act impartially in the best interests of Canadians.

The opposition raises the importance of ensuring that parliamentarians are kept informed of security issues. On that, we absolutely agree. We agreed when former national security minister Anne McLellan introduced Bill C-81 in 2005 establishing a national security committee of parliamentarians. This bill died on the Order Paper when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives took office in 2006.

We agreed when former Liberal MP Derek Lee introduced a similar bill in 2007, when our colleague from Malpeque did the same in 2009, and when the member for Vancouver Quadra did so in 2014.

Each time, the Conservatives opposed the idea that parliamentarians of all parties and of both Houses should have access to secret information, and that they be kept informed of national security issues in Canada.

Fortunately, as my colleagues know, Bill C-22, An Act to establish the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, received royal assent in June 2017.

Then, in November, the Prime Minister made it official by saying that “[i]n our system of responsible government, there is no substitute for scrutiny by parliamentarians.”

I am pleased to say that the committee is now in place. Its mandate is to review any matter relating to national security for all government departments and agencies. It will be supported by an independent secretariat headed by an executive director, who will be appointed shortly. The committee will be composed of eight MPs and three senators, all of them holding the highest security clearances.

It is now the appropriate vehicle for parliamentarians to thoroughly review and report on certain national security matters.

The committee is able to analyze the work of a wide range of government departments and agencies involved in security and intelligence.

Establishing this committee closed a loophole in our national security accountability framework. Before, Canada was an outlier in the Five Eyes alliance, since it was the only one not to have such a committee. However, establishing this committee has made Canada a transparency and accountability leader since our committee of parliamentarians has access to ongoing national security and intelligence operations.

By contrast, our committee’s Australian equivalent may only conduct statutory reviews or consider their agencies’ spending and administration. It must obtain a minister’s order to review other matters.

In our case, if the committee believes that a national security matter warrants review, it may simply do so.

In the United Kingdom, the committee must obtain a memorandum of understanding from the Prime Minister in order to review matters that go beyond the work of the three British agencies.

Our committee, with its distinctly Canadian design, has a much broader reach than those of two of our important foreign allies, who also have a Westminster-style system similar to ours.

I was pleased to witness the various debates during all the readings and to see how thorough a review it was given by the standing committee.

The expert consensus is that this new committee strengthens the accountability and effectiveness of Canada’s national security and intelligence system. Bill C-59 will further strengthen it by establishing the national security and intelligence review agency.

Since the current government took office, Canada has made great strides in national security transparency and accountability.

All that is to say that when I hear the opposition insist that parliamentarians should have access to security information, I cannot help but contrast the Conservative decade with the past two years.

The Harper government repeatedly rejected the principles of transparency and accountability when it came to national security. The current government acted to bring in significant transparency, openness and accountability with respect to national security.

We should all be confident that Canada’s security advisors and diplomatic advisors act impartially and in the best interests of Canadians.

They deserve much better than the insinuations and allegations on which this motion is based. I for one have full confidence in their professionalism, expertise, and service to Canada.

Opposition Motion—National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the answer with respect to the invitation is already very clear. In fact, the invitation should never have been sent, and once discovered, it was immediately rescinded.

Another point that needs to be noted is that this government has great confidence in the security and diplomatic advisers to the government who always act in an impartial manner and always in the best interests of Canadians.

The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was given a strong mandate with respect to national security. Bill C-59 is a focal point of that mandate. It was drafted following unprecedented national public consultation. Through an online questionnaire, town halls, social media engagement and more, the consultations heard tens of thousands of views, which Public Safety Canada and Department of Justice collected, documented, and analyzed.

As members know, the standing committee held numerous meetings of its own on the national security topic, and I thank members here for their input on this priority issue.

Citizens, community leaders, experts from a broad spectrum of the security field, academics, and parliamentarians alike can see their views reflected in Bill C-59. One of its core themes is central to today's debate, enhancing accountability.

The proposed creation of an intelligence commissioner along with a national security and intelligence review agency would complement the work of the newly established National Security Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. I am pleased to say that the latter committee is now in place. The intent of its creation has always been to protect Canadians, and to safeguard our values and freedoms.

Let me turn to the recent trip to India, and the important things that were accomplished during that visit.

India, as has been noted, is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, making it a market of enormous potential. It is already the world's seventh largest economy, and projections are showing that it would be the third largest by 2030, barely more than a decade from now.

For these reasons and others, India is a priority market for Canada. It is Canada's seventh largest export market and 14th largest for imports. In 2017, two-way trade of goods between Canada and India totalled nearly $8.4 billion, almost double the amount we traded a decade ago. More than 1,000 Canadian companies and educational institutions are currently doing business in India, and 400 actually have a physical presence in the Indian market.

Our service exports have grown significantly over the last five years. Canada's institutional investments, especially those made by our largest pension funds, have also been growing rapidly, and are now estimated to exceed $15 billion.

There is so much more we could do. Exports to India totalling $4.2 billion represent less than 1% of Canada's total exports worldwide. In today's ever-changing connected global economy, Canada can only prosper by expanding markets for its companies.

True success in building strong and lasting commercial relationships demands sustained effort and long-term commitment from all stakeholders, whether government, business, or civil society, using a framework of formal structures and informal networks, or a new generation of economic agreements and extensive people-to-people links. This is all the more true when it comes to developing a mutually beneficial commercial relationship with an emerging economic power such as India.

During the recent visit to India, the Prime Minister led a range of efforts to expand and diversify bilateral economic and commercial relations and promote Canadian interests.

The strengthening of the government-to-government commercial framework was demonstrated through the conclusion of several MOUs and co-operation agreements, with significant progress being made on many others. These covered areas as wide-ranging as civil nuclear science and technology, education, audiovisual co-production, information technology, intellectual property, and even sports.

The Prime Minister also met with top Indian business and political leaders, including not only the leader of the federal government, Prime Minister Modi, but also the chief ministers of the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Punjab. These states are populous, enjoy a large degree of autonomy, are immensely influential economically, and buy large quantities of Canadian products and services.

The Prime Minister interacted with hundreds of Indian and Canadian business leaders through his participation in business-focused round tables and forums. At every opportunity he encouraged them to continue to explore all avenues for increasing trade and investment between our countries.

During his meeting with Prime Minister Modi, the Prime Minister secured a commitment from India to work closely with Canada on finalizing an arrangement before the end of this year, to enable the continued exports of Canadian pulses to that country. As the world's largest exporter of pulses, Canada plays a critical role in providing India with a long-term supply of this very important dietary staple.

Additionally, the Prime Minister announced commitments from businesses, worth more than $1 billion, which will help to expand both of our economies. These included a commitment from Indian companies to invest close to $250 million in Canada, leading to the creation of more than 5,800 good, well-paying middle-class jobs for Canadians. These investments are made by global innovation leaders who have confidence in Canada and understand the long-term advantages of doing business here.

There was a commitment from Canadian companies to invest close to $750 million in India. As is often the case with Canadian investments in India, a significant portion of this amount will go toward large projects aimed at earning long-term, stable income for Canadian investors and pensioners. In addition to the increase in direct company investment, the overall level of investment from Canada's institutional investors and largest public pension funds has surged in recent years, further demonstrating the wealth of opportunities that exist in India.

There was a commitment to provide opportunities in business for women. Reflecting one of the imperatives found in budget 2018, Canada and India will work together on initiatives that help women in both countries build thriving businesses by providing new access to funding, talent, mentorship, and potential customers.

There was an agreement to increase the level of creative collaboration between Canada and India. The cultural sector has huge potential. It will create good jobs in the creative sector, among other ways, and potentially help grow Canada's film industry.

There was an agreement to increase people-to-people ties even faster through education. India is Canada's second largest source of international students, with an estimated 124,000 holding a valid study permit for six months or more at the end of 2017.

Canadian universities and colleges are very active in India, and increased collaboration in education stimulates increased people-to-people ties, encourages joint research and development projects and spurs entrepreneurship and innovation in the decades to come.

There was a renewed emphasis on fostering innovation ties between Canada and India. There is an immense demand and enormous potential for innovative solutions whether in agriculture, food processing, skills development, financial technology, transportation, health sectors, clean tech, and aerospace. Canada has a long tradition of finding these innovative solutions, and is ideally suited to filling this demand from India.

In conclusion, Canada is, has been, and always will be a nation that depends on international trade and investment to prosper. Trade and investment are critical to Canada's prosperity, fuelling economic growth, supporting good jobs at home, raising living standards, and helping Canadians provide for their families with affordable goods and services.

As Canada challenges itself to retain and advance its place among the world's most progressive, innovative trading nations, the strength that comes from collaboration cannot be overstated. This government has invested billions of dollars in helping Canadian workers and innovative businesses become world leaders in their fields.

We have also recently agreed to sign a trade agreement with Pacific rim countries through the comprehensive progressive agreement on the trans-Pacific partnership. This, in addition to the implementation of our agreement with the European Union, will generate thousands if not tens of thousands of new jobs for middle-class Canadians.

Canada now has preferential market access through 12 trade agreements to 45 countries, with over 1.2 billion consumers and a combined GDP of $41.5 trillion. This represents over one-half of the world's output of goods and services, and demonstrates the critical importance of pursuing, with renewed vigour and negotiations, trade and investment agreements, especially with countries such as India.

As reinforced by the success of our expanding economic and commercial relationship with India, Canada is quickly becoming the bridge between Asia and the rest of the world, one that will offer business unprecedented access to new market opportunities. Now is the time to increase our global investment and partnerships, and make the most of this opportunity.

Trade keeps our economy open, dynamic, and competitive, and helps ensure that Canada continues to be the best place in the world to do business. We must emphasize to the world that Canada remains open for business, and is committed to expanding international trade and investment. India is and will remain a very significant part of that commitment.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Madam Speaker, in response to an invitation from Indian Prime Minister Modi, the Prime Minister of Canada concluded his first official visit to India last month. He was accompanied by six ministers in the official delegation. Fourteen members of Parliament participated in key elements of the program.

Recognizing that the relationship is underpinned by people-to-people ties, the Prime Minister incorporated a strong focus on education and youth in the program, reflecting Canada's 1.4 million Canadians of Indian heritage, and cognizant of Canada's geostrategic and commercial interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Prime Minister's objective was clear: to reaffirm that Canada stands with a united India. Recognizing that the relationship between Canada and India is based on a shared commitment to pluralism, diversity, and democracy, the Prime Minister visited cultural and religious sites of significance to people in Canada, India, and around the world.

During the visit, the Prime Minister met with India's Prime Minister Modi, India's President Kovind, the Minister of External Affairs, business executives and entrepreneurs, civil society advocates, academics, and thought leaders.

The Prime Minister visited the world's most populous democracy, the fastest-growing major economy in the world, and a society on the cusp of dramatic cultural, political, and economic transformation. India's economic heft is increasing. Its middle class is expanding, and its global influence grows stronger every day.

Over the past few years, Canada's relationship with India has thrived. We have expanded and deepened our traditional areas of engagement. However, Canadians expect the Prime Minister to do more, to welcome more skilled workers, to attract more students to study in Canada, to facilitate the ease of doing business with and investing in India. Canada's Prime Minister took the pulse of the change afoot in India in order to guide Canadian stakeholders through this transformation.

The relationship between Canada and India is strong and mutually beneficial. Two-way trade between Canada and India is estimated to have reached $8.34 billion in calendar year 2017. This represents an increase of 3.9% over 2016, and an increase of over 30% just in the last three years. There is an estimated 1,000 Canadian companies active in the India market, of which 400 have a physical presence in the country.

Despite these impressive figures, there is a palpable sense that Canada-India trade should be higher than it is right now, that there is enormous potential in India. The fact that our trade and investment numbers are low relative to the size of our GDP is just one example. On the same note, our negotiations on a comprehensive economic partnership agreement, known as CEPA, and a foreign investment protection and promotion agreement, known as FIPA, are important priorities for both countries.

Closing these bilateral agreements has proven to be long and arduous, and we are not quite there yet. However, Canada shares the same objective as India: to work together to create economic growth, prosperity, and good middle-class jobs and more opportunities for our citizens.

To this end, in the joint statement issued by the leaders on February 23, Canada and India agreed to intensify negotiations to finalize both CEPA and FIPA. As well, Canada and India finalized a memorandum of understanding between Global Affairs Canada's investment and innovation bureau and Invest India, which will enhance two-way investment between the two countries.

The Prime Minister welcomed the conclusion of, and progress on, co-operation agreements in areas such as civil nuclear science and technology, education, audiovisual production, information technology, intellectual property, sports, and many other areas.

The leaders agree to encourage the private sector to explore further investment opportunities, and they welcome the signing of the commercial agreement, which will create thousands of new economic opportunities and jobs for both countries.

Clearly, this was a valuable international trip to engage with an increasingly important global partner, India. This brings me to the subject of today's supply day motion.

Unfortunately, the subject the opposition has chosen to put forward in today's supply day motion calls into question the professionalism of some of our most senior public servants in the country. Canada's national security agencies are non-partisan, as well they must be. They are highly competent and highly effective. We trust them to protect and promote Canada's security. They continue to do an excellent job in serving and protecting the interests of Canadians regardless of what party might be in power. We respect our national security agencies and we respect the non-partisan public service. We respect their ability to provide non-partisan advice, including on operational issues that bear upon national security.

As has been explained to the House on many occasions, the invitation to Mr. Atwal should never have been sent. When the government became aware of the invitation, it was withdrawn. The member of Parliament who extended that invitation has apologized for doing so.

Our security and intelligence agencies are highly competent and do their jobs extremely well. Our government has been working to ensure they continue to do that work despite deep cuts that were made by the previous Conservative government. In fact, in their last four years in power, the Conservatives cut $1 billion from our national security and intelligence agencies.

By contrast, the Liberal government has been providing them with integrity funding as we undertake reviews to ensure they have the resources to match their mandates and the difficult tasks we ask them to do every day on behalf of Canadians. More than that, we are restoring the public trust and confidence in our security and intelligence agencies that eroded over the 10 years of the previous Harper government.

Last year, Parliament passed Bill C-22, which created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. For well over a decade, experts, academics, and parliamentary committees, including ones that I was on, have called for a committee of parliamentarians that would be mandated to review the work of our security and intelligence agencies and who would have the appropriate clearance to review all classified material. That committee is now up and running. It is currently reviewing and taking a look at our national security and intelligence apparatus.

We are also enhancing and making major changes to the existing review bodies by combining all entities with a mandate to review an individual department or agency into one body. Some academics have referred to this for years as a super SIRC. This too was called for in Justice Iacobucci's report and Justice O'Connor's report. Certainly in my time as the critic for public safety when I was in opposition, it was something that we called for and something that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security called for.

We are calling it NSIRA, the national security intelligence review agency. There are benefits of having one review body that can actually follow the evidence as it moves from one agency to another. As an example, if SIRC were currently reviewing a CSIS operation and found that at one point CSIS had turned it over to the RCMP for an investigation, SIRC would not be able to follow the trail to see what the RCMP had done with that information. In other words, the security and intelligence review of matters would be siloed and there would not be the ability to follow them from one agency to the other. This would make knowing exactly what went on or what went wrong nearly impossible.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, CRCC, could review what the RCMP has done with that information in the example that I gave earlier, but it would not be able to know what CSIS did in order to obtain it. Should Bill C-59 be passed by Parliament, the new NSIRA would have a mandate to look at every department or agency within the national security and intelligence function.

In line with Canada's feminist foreign policy and feminist international assistance policy, as well as the emphasis on gender equality in the budget tabled in Parliament, the goal of women's empowerment and gender equality featured prominently during the Prime Minister's visit to India. He participated in a women's business leaders round table and launched the Canada-India accelerator program for women tech entrepreneurs.

Canada and India announced collaboration between Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and India's Department of Science and Technology to jointly promote and strengthen the participation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As well, Canada's International Development Research Centre, IDRC, announced research initiatives into the most important and effective ways to empower women, prevent gender-based violence, and make digital platforms work for inclusive development in India. New investments by the IDRC in 2018 will improve the working conditions of homeworkers and improve business practices in global supply chains. Canada announced $7.9 million for 40 Grand Challenges Canada projects in India, supporting women's empowerment, sexual and reproductive health rights, water and sanitation, and mental health. Finally, Canada and India launched the Nutrition International's Asia campaign called “She'll Grow Into It”. The campaign, supported by $11.5 million of funding through the right start initiative, works to empower the world's poorest women, adolescent girls, and children.

On the last day of the visit, the Prime Minister delivered a keynote speech before 5,000 youth at the 2018 Young Changemakers Conclave annual conference. At this event, captured live on Facebook, the Prime Minister emphasized the importance of gender equality, youth engagement, and diversity, and discussed the role of technology and innovation in empowering young leaders. Canada's Prime Minister heard directly from India's young leaders on how they are making their country and their world a better place in which to live. India has the largest youth population in the world, with more than 780 million under the age of 35.

Speaking about youth, I want to turn to the topic of education. India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world. With over 30 million students enrolled in higher education every year, the demand far exceeds the supply. As a result, more than 550,000 Indian students opted to study abroad in 2017, and Canada is increasingly a destination of choice. Canadian institutions currently have over 400 arrangements with Indian institutions, and approximately 50 universities and colleges have a presence in India. In addition, the government has been proactively targeting students from abroad with the result that a record number of Indian students, an estimated 124,000, held a permit to study in Canada for six months or more in 2017. Canada now trails only the United States as a destination for Indian students going abroad for higher education.

Academic collaboration is also moving forward at an accelerated pace. In 2016, Mitacs, a Canadian not-for-profit organization, brought 184 Indian researchers to Canada with funding of over $2 million through the Mitacs Globalink program and $736,000 in support from the Government of India. Since its launch in 2013, the India-Canada Centre for Innovative Multidisciplinary Partnerships to Accelerate Community Transformation and Sustainability, known as IC-IMPACTS, has delivered 38 projects that have resulted in 16 technology deployments in Canada and India in a variety of fields. Recognizing the importance of innovation, the Prime Minister and Prime Minister Modi welcomed a call for research proposals amounting to $4 million toward cleaning polluted bodies of water and mitigating fire hazards in buildings. Key partners in this initiative are IC-IMPACTS and India's departments of biotechnology and science and technology.

During the Prime Minister's trip, a memorandum of understanding on higher education was renewed, and Canada announced it will host the 2018 meeting of the joint working group that oversees implementation of that memorandum of understanding. As well, the Prime Minister recognized the 50th anniversary of the Shastri lndo-Canadian Institute in promoting understanding between India and Canada through academic activities and exchanges, with the support of both governments to the institute.

To pursue this line further, if we continue to link youth and entrepreneurs in India and Canada and if we continue to encourage innovation and collaboration between academics, the private sector, and civil society, then government can back away and let these dynamics take over. There is nothing we wish for more than for the citizens of our two countries to drive forward this relationship and economic partnership.

A number of important security challenges face India and Canada in the Indo-Pacific region. On regional and global issues, the leaders discussed the prevailing security situation in Afghanistan, calling for an immediate cessation of violence, renunciation of links with international terrorism, and the dismantling of infrastructure of support for terrorism. The leaders reaffirmed support to the government and the people of Afghanistan to achieve an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled national peace and reconciliation process.

The leaders called upon the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the DPRK, to abide strictly by its international obligations and commitments. They called on all states to implement rigorously the relevant UN Security Council resolutions relating to the DPRK.

The leaders deplored the current state in the Maldives, and urged the Government of Maldives to allow democratic institutions, particularly the judiciary, to function independently in a fair and transparent manner.

The two leaders discussed the humanitarian and security crisis in the Rakhine State of Myanmar and across the border in Bangladesh, and called for the voluntary, safe, and sustainable return of the people displaced, while stressing the importance of ensuring law and order, and respect for human dignity in the process. The leaders also called for the restoration of humanitarian access for relevant UN and other international organizations to facilitate the return process.

In short, Canada and India resolved to work together, bilaterally and multilaterally, to promote a stable and rules-based Indo-Pacific region that would not only benefit Canada economically vis-à-vis India, but would serve to broaden our interests in the region and move us toward greater connectivity.

To promote and sustain collaboration, Canada's national interests call for a stronger relationship with India. To this end, the prime ministers of Canada and India reinforced the architecture of our security partnership. A dialogue of national security advisers was institutionalized. Canada's national security and intelligence adviser met with his Indian counterpart in New Delhi just prior to the Prime Minister's visit, and concluded a framework agreement on countering terrorism and violent extremism. This framework agreement reaffirms the shared resolve of India and Canada to combat terrorism and violent extremism in all their forms and manifestations.

Canada and India agreed to step up bilateral collaboration under a newly-formed national security advisers' dialogue, the joint working group on counterterrorism and its experts' sub-group. Both leaders agreed to work collaboratively to address the threat posed by cross-border and state-sponsored terrorism, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure, prevent the supply of arms to terrorists, and to counter violent extremism and radicalization to violence.

On broader defence and security issues, the leaders committed to develop bilateral defence co-operation by exploring possibilities in diverse fields, including cold climate training. They agreed that Canada and India would coordinate on cybersecurity and address cybercrimes at bilateral and multilateral fora going forward.

India sent a high-level delegation to the Vancouver peacekeeping defence ministerial meeting in November 2017. It is the world's third largest contributor to international peacekeeping operations. The two leaders decided in India to enhance co-operation on peacekeeping to provide an effective response to global challenges. They stressed the importance of integrating gender perspectives into peace and security activities, and interventions in line with the women, peace and security agenda, including prevention of conflict-related sexual violence.

Taken as a whole, this visit reflects an important step forward in the Canada-India relationship. There is much our two countries can offer each other, in commercial and security terms and in the fruits of collaboration in international fora. To recognize the future of this commercial partnership, Canada and India announced a new dialogue on innovation, growth, and prosperity. This is a collaboration between Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation and India's Gateway House. It will convene subject experts, government officials, and business leaders to promote economic growth and innovation in today's digital economy.

It is unfortunate that, rather than celebrating all of the accomplishments, the opposition is using today to attack public servants and question their non-partisanship. I will say one more time that Canada's national security agencies are non-partisan, highly competent, and effective. We trust them to promote and protect the security of Canadians. That is why I will be voting against the motion.

Bill C-69—Proposal to Apply Standing Order 69.1—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised on February 27, 2018, by the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé concerning the second reading of Bill C-69, an act to enact the impact assessment act and the Canadian energy regulator act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts, under the provisions of Standing Order 69.1.

I would like to thank the hon. member for having raised this question, as well as the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons for his intervention on this point.

The hon. member argued that Bill C-69 is an omnibus bill, as she feels it contains several different initiatives which should be voted on separately. She noted that the bill would delete two existing acts, would enact new ones, and would amend over 30 other acts. The hon. member requested that the Chair divide the question at second reading to allow for a vote on each of the three main parts of the bill.

Part 1 would enact the impact assessment act and repeal the existing Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Part 2 would enact the Canadian energy regulator act as well as repeal the National Energy Board Act. The hon. member argued that this second part deals more with natural resources than with the environment and should therefore be voted upon separately.

Part 3 consists of amendments to the Navigation Protection Act, which would be renamed the Canadian navigable waters act. As this deals with matters relating to transportation, she felt that this part should also be subject to a separate vote.

The hon. member helpfully identified which of the consequential and coordinating provisions, contained in part 4, she believed were associated with each of the other parts. I am grateful for her specificity in this regard. I would note that these consequential and coordinating amendments represent the changes to the 30 other acts referenced by the hon. member. In the vast majority of cases, the changes are to reflect updated terminology relating to the names of new agencies or statutes created by the bill. The fact that there is a large number of them is not a significant factor in determining whether or not this constitutes an omnibus bill.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader agreed that the bill amends several acts, but argued that there is in fact a common element to link together all of the changes. He stated that the bill represents a comprehensive review of federal environmental and regulatory processes and that to consider them separately would create unnecessary uncertainty about the overall framework.

As members will recall, Standing Order 69.1 took effect last September. It gives the Speaker the power to divide the question on the second or third reading of a bill where “there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked”. The critical question for the Chair, then, is to determine to what extent the various elements of the bill are linked.

To date, I have been asked to apply this standing order on two instances. On November 7, 2017, I declined to allow multiple votes in relation to Bill C-56, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Abolition of Early Parole Act, as I felt the two issues raised by the bill were sufficiently related and that they were essentially provided for under the same act. On November 8, I agreed to apply the standing order in relation to Bill C-63, the Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, as I considered that there were several issues contained in the bill that were not announced in the budget presentation. On November 20, in relation to Bill C-59, the national security act, 2017, I ruled that the standing order could not apply to a motion to refer a bill to committee before second reading, though I invited members to raise the issue again prior to third reading of the bill if necessary.

I would underscore, as I did in my ruling on Bill C-63, that the Chair does not have the power to divide a bill into different pieces of legislation to be considered separately. The Standing Order only allows me to divide the question on the motions for second and third reading for the purposes of voting.

Bill C-69 does clearly contain several different initiatives. It establishes two new agencies, the impact assessment agency and the Canadian energy regulator, and makes a series of amendments to the Navigation Protection Act. One could make the case, as did the parliamentary secretary, that there is indeed a common thread connecting these various initiatives, in that they are all related to environmental protection. However, the question the Chair must ask itself is whether the purpose of the standing order was to deal only with matters that were obviously unrelated or whether it was to provide members with the opportunity to pronounce themselves on specific initiatives when a bill contains a variety of different measures.

In presenting arguments relating to Bill C-63, the hon. member for Calgary Shepard raised an interesting concept from the practice in the Quebec National Assembly. Quoting from page 400 of Parliamentary Procedure in Québec, he stated:

The principle or principles contained in a bill must not be confused with the field it concerns. To frame the concept of principle in that way would prevent the division of most bills, because they apply to a specific field.

While their procedure for dividing bills is quite different from ours, the idea of distinguishing the principles of a bill from its field has stayed with me. While each bill is different and so too each case, I believe that Standing Order 69.1 can indeed be applied to a bill where all of the initiatives relate to a specific policy area, if those initiatives are sufficiently distinct to warrant a separate decision of the House.

In this particular instance, I have no trouble agreeing that all of the measures contained in Bill C-69 relate to environmental protection. However, I believe there are distinct initiatives that are sufficiently unrelated that they warrant multiple votes. Therefore, I am prepared to allow more than one vote on the motion for second reading of the bill.

As each of the first two parts of the bill does indeed enact a new act, I can see why the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé would like to see each one voted separately. However, my reading of the bill is that the regimes set out in part 1, the impact assessment act, and part 2, the Canadian energy regulator act, are linked in significant ways, reflected in the number of cross-references. For example, the impact assessment act provides for a process for assessing the impact of certain projects, but contains specific provisions for projects with activities regulated under the Canadian energy regulator act. There are also obligations in the Canadian energy regulator act that are subject to provisions in the impact assessment act. Given the multiple references in each of these parts to the entities and processes established by the other part, I believe it is in keeping with the standing order that these two parts be voted together.

With respect to part 3, which amends the Navigation Protection Act, I find that it is sufficiently distinct and should be subject to a separate vote. While there are some references in part 2 to changes made in part 3, I do not believe they are so deeply intertwined as to require them to be considered together. There would be an opportunity to correct these references as part of the amending process if part 3 should not be adopted by the House.

As I stated earlier, part 4 of the bill is made up of consequential and coordinating amendments arising out of the other 3 parts. In my ruling on Bill C-56, I recognized that the analysis and division of a bill into different parts can sometimes be quite complex. Based on my reading of part 4, which differs slightly from that of the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé, clauses 85, 186, 187, and 195 seem to be related to part 3 and will be voted with that part. The remaining clauses in part 4, with the exception of the coming into force clause, specifically 196, appear to relate only to parts 1 and 2 and will therefore be grouped with those parts. The schedule relates only to part 1 and will also be grouped with it.

Prevention of Radicalization through Foreign Funding Act

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. However, there is something that I need to tell him. Right now, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security is studying Bill C-59. As part of that study, we noticed that there is a gap in Bill C-59, and that could be filled by Bill C-371, which was introduced by my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka. It would be nice if my colleague were listening to me, but that is fine.

Today, I am pleased to rise in the House to support my colleague's bill, Bill C-371. I think it is an essential tool for combatting terrorism in Canada. As proposed, the bill would give the government the ability to establish, based on the recommendations of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, a list of foreign states, individuals, and entities that suppress religious freedom, sentence individuals to punishment based on their religious beliefs, and engage in or support activities that promote radicalization.

This bill deals with what is known as the covert means by which money is paid to Canadian organizations and institutions that support radicalization. It would make it possible to prevent an individual, entity, or foreign state that supports, promotes, or is associated with radicalization from funding an institution through donations or gifts.

This bill is very important because the Liberals prove to us almost every day that they do not fully understand the very clear danger we are facing.

For example, all Canadians in every region of the country heard the Prime Minister say that the Islamic State jihadis can have an extraordinarily powerful voice in Canada.

It is incredible that a prime minister would make such a comment. Not only is it absurd, but it is completely irresponsible.

Many of these people have returned to Canada with terrorist training, which is based on hatred for everything that is contrary to their views. These terrorists have committed unthinkable acts of violence. They have shot homosexuals, raped women and young girls, and killed Christians, Jews, and members of other faiths.

Today, the Prime Minister not only believes that these animals can be integrated into our society, but that they can be a powerful voice. Does the Prime Minister mean that they are a powerful voice for radicalization? Does he perhaps mean that they are a powerful voice for turning back the clock on women's rights? Is the Prime Minister aware of the real danger that these people represent? Does the Prime Minister keep an eye on the news about terrorist attacks in other countries? I am not so sure.

Another example is that the Prime Minister reached a settlement agreement with a terrorist, but he is dragging our veterans, those who fought to protect Canadians, through the courts. Clearly, the Prime Minister lacks judgment. He does not have his priorities straight.

Bill C-371 is important because we know that there have been relatively few charges, prosecutions, or convictions of people who have taken part in or provided material support to the jihadi movement.

We are concerned about the failure to prosecute when it comes to terrorist financing.

We learned that between 2009 and 2014, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada identified 683 cases of terrorist financing, and that no legal action was taken under the relevant sections of the Criminal Code. The terrorist threat to the security of Canada has increased significantly.

In recent decades, a number of Canadians have been convicted in court for planning multi-target, mass-casualty strikes in this country. Threats have been forthcoming from Canadians who have joined terrorists hostile to Canada and its allies. We know that more than 80 Canadians have returned to Canada after participating with Islamist fundamentalist groups. Many of these people return with terrorist training, combat experience and may therefore pose a security risk to Canada. There have been relatively few charges, prosecutions, or convictions for participating in or providing material support to the jihadist movement.

Similarly, with the exception of the 2010 conviction of Prapaharan Thambithurai, who was charged with raising money for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, there have been no charges in the area of supporting listed terrorist entities like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Islamic Relief Fund for the Needy and Afflicted.

Calgary imam Syed Soharwardy, as well as other witnesses, advised the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence that extremist jihadist ideology is being spread at schools and universities in Canada, often under the guise of academic freedom and away from the eyes of CSIS.

The person who told us that is an imam. Specifically, he said this:

The money comes in different ways, in secret ways. Money comes through institutions. There are two organizations in Canada. Basically they are U.S. organizations that are operating in Canada. One is called AlMaghrib Institute, the other is called AlKauthar Institute. Both work in universities, not in mosques. Both give lectures. Both organize seminars. They are the ones who brainwash these young kids in lectures.

That is what the Calgary imam told the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. I did not make that up. When Shahina Siddiqui of the Islamic Social Services Association appeared before the same committee in 2015, she said this:

I can tell you that my own organization was offered $3 million. We refused, even though I had not a penny in my account at that time, when I started the organization, because this is a Canadian organization, and we don't need funding from anywhere else.

The same thing with our mosques in Manitoba. We were offered money from Libya when we made our first mosque. We refused it.

Did some mosques accept money from overseas because it was legal to do so? If we want to curtail that practice, we have to make it illegal, not just for Muslims but for all groups. One person said no. M. Siddiqui from Islamic Social Services said that he refused money. He was offered $3 million from Libya. He knew it was irregular. There was nothing stopping him from accepting that money. That is what is meant by secret ways. That money could have come in through the back door and, if these people were not honest, they could have had that money. There is no way to control that.

Richard Fadden, former director of CSIS and national security advisor to former prime minister Harper and to the current Prime Minister during the first few months of his mandate, confirmed that there are concerns about foreign financing of Canadian religious and quasi-religious institutions. The danger is real. This bill would serve as another tool to counter those who hate our society. As I said earlier, Bill C-59 is a massive, 140-page document that includes a lot of things. However, ever since the committee started hearing from witnesses, we have seen that this bill is flawed. I mentioned to my colleagues that Bill C-371 would address the gaps in Bill C-59. Despite the government's claims, I think that passing this bill would be very appropriate.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate. As we continue to read Bill C-371, I would like to say that I support the purpose of the bill and the ideas that inspired it.

Curbing or preventing the flow of money that supports terrorism is one of the government's key concerns. Bill C-371 seeks to prevent the flow into Canada of foreign funds donated by sources who have been associated with radicalization. During our last debate, several hon. members pointed out that there was some overlap in the bill that conflicts with mechanisms that are already in place in Canada.

The bill also has significant flaws that would be hard to overcome. For example, under Bill C-371 some charitable organizations might be unduly penalized. This would prevent religious, cultural, or educational institutions in Canada from accepting money or goods from sources affiliated with the countries on the list, including senior officials, family members, or partners. Accepting donations from these individuals would become a crime.

The problem is that there would be no list of individuals barred from donating. Charities would have to do thorough background checks on everyone who offers them a cheque, and could face criminal penalties if they fail to do so. The due diligence required would be excessively complex and would require investigative capacity well beyond that available to most charities. Furthermore, the government would probably not be able to enforce the prohibitions in the bill because they are too vague and general. For example, people associated with the countries on the list would not be on the list.

Moreover, the bill is incompatible with government policies on radicalization that leads to violence. The fact is that existing laws and initiatives already fulfill the stated purpose of this bill. I would like to point out that the government is already taking concrete, effective measures to fight terrorism and radicalization leading to violence in Canada. Canada has a robust set of tools to protect Canadians and registered charities from the risk of terrorism and its deplorable acts. One of those tools is the terrorist listing regime in the Criminal Code.

As soon as an entity is added to that list, banks and financial institutions can freeze its assets. In fact, being added to the list can also lead to the criminalization of all support activities to help stop potential sympathizers in Canada from providing any financial assistance to terrorist groups. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act resulted in the creation of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, which oversees the financial system and gathers information to support investigations into terrorist financing.

FINTRAC is also supposed to hand over to the Canada Revenue Agency any financial information it has regarding charitable organizations suspected of being linked to terrorist financing. In addition, the State Immunity Act includes a list of foreign countries that support terrorism. The act makes is possible for victims of terrorism to seek justice from the countries on the list.

Bill C-371 states that anti-terrorism efforts should include charities. Once again, we already have effective mechanisms to do so. The Canada Revenue Agency already monitors registered charities to ensure that they remain focused on their stated charitable goals. Under the current rules, any charity using its resources to support terrorist activities, radicalization to violence, or incitement to hatred would be denied registered charity status or could have this status revoked.

The government also has measures in place to denounce and combat religious persecution, torture, and other human rights violations.

For example, some provisions of the new Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act make it possible to freeze the assets of those responsible for serious human rights violations.

There are apparently several measures already in place that can achieve the objectives of Bill C-371 without making legitimate charitable organizations liable to penalties. Consequently, despite the bill's good intentions, I cannot support it because of the overlaps and shortcomings in the bill.

Of course we all want to fight terrorism and extremism. That is why, for example, the government established the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence to fight the radicalization of young Canadians. In budget 2016, the government allocated funding of $35 million over five years for the work of the Canadian centre. The centre provides national leadership to support local efforts. It makes all the difference.

Communities across the country receive assistance through effective, innovative programs to combat radicalization leading to violence. This assistance often brings together law enforcement authorities, communities, and service providers. Furthermore, our security and intelligence agencies also have access to a series of prevention measures to help them monitor and intercept threats, maintain a no-fly list, refuse or revoke a passport, maintain public order, and lay criminal charges if there is sufficient evidence.

The government also introduced Bill C-59, which will increase accountability and effectiveness in Canada's national security framework. This bill was introduced in response to Canada's largest-ever national security consultation.

I know that all hon. members are united in the resolve to combat extremism, prevent terrorist violence, and bring perpetrators of such acts to justice. Unfortunately, Bill C-371 will not be an effective tool to help us achieve this common goal. I am sorry that I cannot support it, but I look forward to working with the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka and all hon. members to ensure that Canadians are as safe as possible and can live free from all forms of extremism and violence.

Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague touched on a whole host of issues. However, I would like to quickly address his comments with respect to Phoenix.

The member talked about the fact that we were advised to dial back in January of 2016. However, the reality is that the previous Conservative government fired 700 compensation advisers throughout the public service. These were the people who did that work. Therefore, to suggest that we could suddenly stop the process is completely inaccurate. We could not have done that. The motions were already in process, individuals had been fired or let go, and there was no opportunity to start dialling back and not implement Phoenix.

Let us talk about the legislation being introduced today.

Bill C-59, which had been introduced by the previous Conservative government, had provisions in it that took a heavy-handed approach to perhaps some bad apples in the bunch. In my experience of dealing with the public service and unions, when we can work collectively with unions, when we can collaborate together to bring forward good policy, that is when we truly get the benefit of this. That is what the legislation before us today would do. It attempts to create an environment in which we can work with the unions to bring forward good legislation so we can have decent policy from which they can benefit and we can also benefit.

Does the member not see the value in working collaboratively with our unions?

Public Safety

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, the research reports today are highly speculative, but the point is simply this. We are dealing with a flawed system that was implemented about 10 years ago by the previous government, and we are trying very hard to fix that system. It requires new legislation, new regulations, and a new computer system built from the ground up. The first step, the legal authority, is contained in Bill C-59, and I am sure that all members of Parliament will want to vote for this legislation.

Agriculture and Agri-food

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, whether in Saint-André, New Brunswick, or in Calgary, where I met with grain producers, everyone is wondering who in this government is standing up for agriculture.

Farmers were called tax cheats, family transfers were compromised, deferred cash tickets were almost taken away, and the government refused to split Bill C-59 on grain transportation. The list is long.

Worst of all, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has not been involved in any of the free trade negotiations. Agriculture is the basis of our economy.

Why are the Liberals abandoning farmers?

Public Safety

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-59 was preceded by the most exhaustive public consultation across Canada ever on national security. There was an opportunity by the public safety and national security committee to ensure there was a review of the security framework. That led to the legislation before us today, which would see finally the oversight that was talked about for so many years, including when I was the critic in opposition and pushing for it.

We have waited for over a decade. It is time to move forward with appropriate oversight.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are claiming it is not possible to repeal the Conservative Bill C-51. My colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke is proposing just that with his Bill C-303 to fully protect Canadians' rights.

Under the 138-page Liberal Bill C-59, CSIS still has extensive and invasive powers. The privacy of Canadians is still under threat and oversight of government agencies is insufficient.

Will the government divide Bill C-59 into separate bills so they can be properly studied? Canadians' rights are at stake.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Privacy Commissioner said that Canada was moving from the back of the pack and catching up with the rest of the international community. In fact, he said that Canada was moving to the lead as a result of the legislation, Bill C-59.

The fact is that the legislation is putting us at the vanguard, that we are ensuring two things equally: one, the protection of Canadians; and two, making sure that their rights are protected.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals promised to fix the problems in the Conservatives' anti-terrorism bill, which was an unprecedented attack on Canadians' civil rights.

The Privacy Commissioner sounded the alarm on the Liberals' Bill C-59 yesterday in committee. The thresholds for sharing information about Canadians among departments are still too low and must be more limited.

Will the government finally agree to amend its bill to protect Canadians' civil rights?

Opposition Motion—ISIS fighters returning to Canada

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Madam Speaker, first, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Barrie—Innisfil.

I am pleased to rise today to discuss this important national security issue. A report issued by the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in 2016 estimated that 60 jihadists had already returned to Canada and that 180 others “were abroad and...were suspected of engaging in terrorism-related activities”.

It is estimated that 90 individuals who fought for terrorist groups will try to return to Canada in the coming months, now that ISIS is losing ground in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the government wants to implement a reintegration program. The Prime Minister also said a number of times that he would create the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence to counter radicalization.

While the government is trying to reintegrate and monitor the Canadians who went to fight with ISIS, Canadians are worried about the impact the return of these fighters will have on national security. The government must address that concern. It has a duty to reassure us.

Anyone who has taken part in the activities of a terrorist group, whether as a fighter, a teacher, or a nurse, is a criminal. Canada has every right to charge such individuals with terrorism offences when they return to the country. We know that so far, about 60 Canadians who were involved with ISIS have returned to Canada. Only two of them have been charged; the others have not been charged with anything whatsoever.

We also know that it is difficult to gather the evidence needed to charge these individuals with participating in the activities of a terrorist group, but that should in no way interfere with the government's work. This is a priority issue. These people can unfortunately pose a risk to the security of our country.

The RCMP does not currently have the resources for round-the-block monitoring of all the fighters who have returned to Canada. The government needs to set priorities, take appropriate measures based on the risk posed by each individual, and create a bulletproof safety net that will make all Canadians feel secure.

Today we are asking the government to send a clear message to all Canadians. What are the repatriation procedures? What is it doing to ensure national security? How will it provide assurances to Canadians about that? How many and what kinds of resources will be invested? How many Canadians are under surveillance?

ISIS is losing ground every day. More and more Canadians who joined ISIS will return to Canada. It is time to establish a clear national policy that covers the psychosocial aspects of the problem and, above all, the security aspects.

Those who have joined a terrorist group and fought against Canada and its allies must be brought to justice. It cannot be denied that those people decided to fight against our own soldiers, Canada's soldiers. We know that those individuals who return to Canada must be arrested and charged upon arrival, or authorities could quite simply lose track of them in our country.

Canadians' desire to feel safe in their own country is a basic and perfectly legitimate issue. The Liberal government must do everything possible to detain and bring to justice the Canadians returning to Canada after collaborating with ISIS, and it must do so quickly.

On November 30, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness testified before the committee about his bill, which will address the alleged gaps in the Anti-terrorism Act. He explained that Bill C-59 would restrict the powers of Canada's secret services to disrupt terrorist plots while they are in the planning stages.

However, we should be working on prevention. Many Canadians get the impression that the government is spending more time protecting the criminals than the victims and Canadians themselves. This is fuelling a deep and understandable concern that the government must address.

The political choice to give priority to respecting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for criminals instead of doing everything we can to ensure that they are arrested does not fly. The political choice to give priority to respecting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for criminals instead of doing everything we can to ensure the safety of Canadians does not fly. Those who made the personal choice to fight alongside terrorist groups also made the deliberate choice to fight our own soldiers and our allies.

That is why so many Canadians do not understand anything the Liberal Party is saying right now. This government has to demonstrate that it is listening, respect people's intelligence, and address their concerns about our country's national security.

Our motion today proposes:

That the House:

(a) condemn the horrific acts committed by ISIS;

(b) acknowledge that individuals who joined ISIS fighters are complicit in these horrific acts and pose a danger to Canadians;

(c) call on the government to bring to justice and prosecute any ISIS fighter returning to Canada; and

(d) insist that the government make the security and protection of Canadians its priority, rather than the reintegration of ISIS fighters, or the unnecessary financial payout to a convicted terrorist, like Omar Khadr.

The opposition is very worried about how this Liberal government is handling this national security issue. We, like everyone else, see these incidents and attacks carried out all over the world. We are very worried to know that Canadians made a deliberate choice to go to these countries to fight alongside ISIS soldiers. By fighting alongside them, these individuals also made the choice to fight our own soldiers.

We just marked Remembrance Day, on November 11. We all took part in various commemorative ceremonies. We have seen how hard our soldiers have worked to protect democracy and peace here in Canada and around the world. These individuals did so proudly, and based on directives from our Parliament and our army, which believed in justice everywhere.

Knowing that some Canadians will be able to or have been able to go and fight overseas and then return to this country without facing any justice whatsoever, that worries us. To hear this government hide behind the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms again and again instead of bringing in the measures needed to keep Canadians safe is worrisome.

I look forward to questions from my colleagues across party lines. I hope the members of the House will stand up and send a clear message by voting in favour of our motion before the House.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, let me begin by saying that I am somewhat frustrated to be involved in this debate today.

The motion on the floor purports to be about the interplay between national security, human rights, and fighting terrorism, to some degree. However, its spirit is to divide Canadians, in my opinion, for political gain by praying on fears. Its effect is to scare Canadians into positions, rather than to engage them in a nuanced debate.

We live in a time in our global history right now of ultra-divisive politics that has seen many issues that were not legitimate policy discussions turn into an exercise in fearmongering designed to secure the support of a political base. Once-healthy democracies across the world have become sick with a virus of anti-intellectualism that is spreading rapidly across our planet.

In the age of social media, the phenomenon is even worse, as individuals prone to one idea or another on various points of the political spectrum more easily find validation in the echo chambers of the Internet. However, we cannot let Canada fall victim to this deeply worrying trend. People need to step away from the computer, find a human being, and talk to each other. They should not get sucked into the kind of nonsense that so many politicians around the world would have them engage in, without informing themselves, without facts.

I cannot let another motion like this, which I believe is designed to spread fear amongst Canadians, go unchallenged. I believe that, at the end of the day, I am responsible as a parliamentarian not only for my own actions and decisions but also for the opportunity, when I have the chance, to confront an injustice and not choose to stand idly by instead.

I will not be supporting the motion on the floor of the House of Commons.

Over the course of my remarks, I hope to cover a few themes. First is the importance of protecting the rule of law, then the issue of extremist travellers returning to Canada, then a brief conversation about the settlement involving Omar Khadr, and I will conclude with the need to combat the politics of fear and division.

The rule of law, in my opinion, is a fundamental pillar of our democracy. It separates our country from dictators and despots, and ensures that our government is subject to the law and that our citizens are protected by it, not the other way around. It prevents the possibility of a given leader or government eroding protections enshrined in our legal system for political advantage, and prevents them from operating without scrutiny or accountability.

The rule of law is the linchpin to our democracy. Our entire system depends on this. Without it protecting our rights, our society would break down. At times, protecting the rights of Canadians can be extremely difficult. It is very easy to give away the rights of other people, but we need to stand up for the rights of our neighbours, not only when it is convenient but when it is difficult. In fact, that is when it is most important.

It can be very hard to defend the rights of another person when seeking to balance those rights with such heavy concepts as security or such immense threats as terrorism. Those words have extraordinary power.

When we fear for our safety, the easy thing to do is to give away the rights of our neighbour. However, my friends, our neighbours' rights are our collective rights. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, any society that would give up a little freedom to gain a little security deserves neither and will lose both.

The erosion of our freedoms and our security will not come at the hands of tyrants and terrorists half a world away. The threat is far nearer. It is going to come by the decisions and actions of some future government, a generation from now, empowered by an erosion of our rights today, and it is going to happen in our own communities, right here at home, if we do not take a stand to protect our rights.

The fact is that we can protect our rights and our security at the same time. There is immense interplay between these two concepts, but they are not mutually exclusive. There are, in fact, very serious issues of national security that any government needs to address in the 21st century. Our government is addressing those matters. Given the changing nature of the global order and the rise of well-organized, well-financed sub-state terror entities like Daesh, we need to adapt our traditional model of national security to address the changing nature of the threats we face, and the world faces.

With respect to the first aspect of the motion on the floor today, I anticipate every member of Parliament joining me in condemning the horrific acts of violence committed by Daesh against innocent people around the world. I readily acknowledge, without equivocation, that we must work as part of the global community to eradicate these acts of senseless violence from our planet altogether.

Notwithstanding my agreement with the first part of the motion on the floor of the House, I take sincere exception to the other parts, which seek to stoke fear of extremist travellers returning to Canada. We have to formulate policy on issues of national security from a place of reason. The Conservatives have not taken a rational approach to this issue and are seeking to form policy from a place of fear, which in my opinion is very dangerous and creates an unreasonable apprehension of risk, not just amongst their caucus members but amongst Canadians as well.

We need the tools to address these kinds of threats, and in fact, we are in the midst of ensuring that we have those tools. I note the efforts that have been raised today to pass Bill C-59, which would eliminate many of the superfluous measures that were contained in the prior iteration under Bill C-51, to which I had great objection.

I note that leading experts Kent Roach and Craig Forcese have referred to some of those measures as overkill and have since said that the revisions made under Bill C-59 are the real deal and pose no credible threat to security.

The motion today no doubt arises as a result of our public safety minister sharing in question period the fact that approximately 60 extremist travellers have returned to Canada. The opposition members have seemingly implied in the House and previously that they have returned under the Liberal government's watch, when in fact this same number had returned to Canada prior to the last election when they were still in power.

We cannot forget that, under both Canadian and international law, citizens have the right to return to their country of citizenship. My own view is that I would rather have a dangerous person who is a Canadian citizen detained or being monitored within our own country than being part of an international terror organization abroad where they could more easily escape scrutiny and pose a greater danger to innocent people around the world and in our country.

In fact, the heavy irony of the opposition's calls for enhanced prosecution of returning ISIS fighters is a difficult one to swallow when we consider that, under its government, precisely zero prosecutions actually took place. Moreover, in its last term in office alone, the Harper government cut over $1 billion from the budgets of the very agencies that seek to protect us against the kind of harm that they now raise in the House.

Since the Conservatives were ousted from power by Canadians, prosecutions of extremist travellers have actually taken place and a conviction has been obtained not too long ago. The fact is that groups such as Daesh are to be treated seriously, and I know every member of the House shares that opinion.

However, Canadians need not live in fear, as the Conservatives would have us do, because these matters have the fullest possible attention of our world-class security agencies. We know that safety and security of our citizens is a top priority for any government of any party. To suggest otherwise is a distasteful display of fearmongering that seeks to take advantage of Canadians, who need not be afraid.

To any Canadians who may be listening, do not fall into this trap. They do not need to fear that terrorists are running rampant through our communities, unchecked. CSIS, CBSA, and the RCMP work with global partners to monitor security threats through surveillance, intelligence gathering, and many tools that are available under the Criminal Code, including prosecutions where there is evidence that a crime has actually been committed.

In fact, we are significantly more likely to be killed while walking, riding a bike, or experiencing a heat wave than we are to die in a terrorist attack in our country. I am not going to let groups like Daesh hold the power of fear over me from the other side of the world as other members of the House would. Let us provide our security agencies with the tools that they need to protect us, while upholding the values enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and let us move on with living our lives free of fear.

The motion on the floor today also makes passing reference to what the opposition has called the “unnecessary financial payout” to Omar Khadr. This position is a choice by the Conservatives to ignore the world around them when the facts are readily available to demonstrate the Government of Canada's inevitable liability in the litigation that was before the courts.

The opposition seeks to undermine the rule of law and erode our Charter of Rights and Freedoms to once again divide Canadians on the basis of fear, not facts or evidence. It has gone to incredible lengths to demonstrate Mr. Khadr is evil in order to justify gross miscarriages of justice and to excuse unconscionable conduct that demonstrates a moral and legal failing by the Government of Canada.

I do not know Mr. Khadr, nor do I need to in order to understand what was going on in this piece of litigation. The settlement in this case has nothing to do with his quality as a person or his actions in Afghanistan. Instead, it addresses the sole question of the Government of Canada's conduct and responsibility to make amends for its breach of legal duties it owed to one of its citizens.

Many Canadians were upset upon learning the details of the settlement with Mr. Khadr. I have been watching this file unfold for years. I have been deeply disturbed by it for quite some time. The fact that our country would demonstrate such a disregard for one of its citizens is the real shame in this matter, and we all need to wear that as Canadians.

To conclude, there are reasoned debates to be had about the interplay between human rights and national security. Our national interest compels it. However, our citizens are more intelligent than this motion gives them credit for. They deserve a nuanced debate. However, the quality of our politics cannot possibly be so low that a party's political fortunes depend on the fear or ignorance of the electorate.

I have now watched the opposition use politics of fear and division repeatedly without shame, not just in this motion but when it came to the niqab ban and the immigrant snitch line. I received promotional materials in a prior election that promised to deny dental benefits to refugees.

I am sick of the fearmongering that is invading Canadian politics. Liberals do not like it. New Democrats do not like it. Progressive Conservatives in my riding do not like it, and they do not deserve to be painted with that brush. The failed—

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, not surprisingly, that member's characterization is completely false. We did not cut money. I should not be surprised, because this is the same party that said it would only run a $10-billion deficit. It has a lot of problems with math and the facts.

Here is the fact, and we took a lot of heat for this. The Conservative government is the one that made sure terrorists would not be able to organize in Canada. It enacted laws against terrorism being promoted on the Internet, which are being rescinded, by the way, if we look at what is happening with Bill C-59. We were criticized for the work we did because we were working so hard to invest money to keep Canadians safe.

The Liberals' approach to this is what is causing the problem. They are not taking this issue seriously.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time this afternoon with the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London.

Women and girls held captive, used, and sold as sex slaves; gay men pelted with stones, thrown from the rooftop because they are homosexual; children taken from their families and turned into suicide bombers; tens of thousands of innocent humans placed in mass graves: these are just a sample of the awful, horrible, and repugnant stories we have heard time and time again from territory controlled by ISIS and its fighters.

However, these awful tragic events are happening literally on the other side of the world, so we actually have nothing to worry about, right? I guess that is what some would think. We, on this side of the House, are being called fearmongers, because we are actually suggesting that what is happening in ISIS-controlled territories on the other side of the world actually does affect Canada and could have an even more lasting effect on Canada. We are being told we are wrong and that we are fearmongers.

In our present day, with our modern technology, terrorism and terrorist groups are not geographically limited. They recruit, they inspire, and they fundraise right around the globe, including here in Canada. Do not take my word for it. Let us look at what the experts say.

In its most recent annual report to Parliament, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said:

The principal terrorist threat to Canada remains that posed by violent extremists who could be inspired to carry out an attack in Canada. Violent extremist ideologies espoused by terrorist groups like Daesh...continue to appeal to certain individuals in Canada.

This is a concern to us. Let us talk not just about those individuals here in Canada who may espouse these values but about those who have taken that additional step to go to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and fight with them and have then returned to Canada. With that in mind, let us think about potential dangers these ISIS fighters pose to Canada.

Sadly, shockingly even, this does not seem to trouble our Prime Minister. In fact, when our Conservative leader pressed the Prime Minister last week, right here in the House of Commons, on the troubling pattern of Canadians fighting for ISIS and then returning to Canada, we did not get an answer. What did we get? We got an angry, attacking Prime Minister who tried his very best to slap a racist label on those important questions.

Islamophobia is what the Prime Minister called our concerns and the concerns of Canadians. Invoking that label is wrong, and it is cheap politics. It ought to be beneath the Prime Minister. These are concerns Canadians have. These are letters, emails, and social media that are full of the concerns Canadians have. These are legitimate questions that should not be dismissed with name calling, including fearmongering or Islamophobia. That is wrong.

ISIS does not represent Islam, nor does it represent the overwhelming majority of the almost two billion peaceful and peace-loving Muslims on this earth. What ISIS does do is represent a narrow-minded, extremist, and radical ideology, rooted in violence, seeking a religious cloak.

Sadly, we know that some Canadians have fallen prey to these extreme ideologies and recruitment approaches. Some have even travelled to the Middle East in aid of ISIS. Some of these fighters have come back to Canada, and that is what we are talking about today.

Although it does not seem to be a major concern for the Prime Minister, it is a concern for our professionals in the security and intelligence field.

Retired CSIS director Michel Coulombe, said:

Daesh, in particular, has developed a robust social media presence, allowing it to successfully recruit thousands of individuals, including Canadians, to travel to Syria and Iraq.

These extremists also pose a potential threat if they return to Canada.

Those are not our words. Those are the words of CSIS director Michel Coulombe. Let me continue his words:

For instance, they may radicalize others, help with logistics and financing for those who may want to travel abroad, or engage in attack planning here in Canada.

Terrorism is a global threat and we are not immune from its reach.

It is a global threat from which Canada is not immune. That principle has been recognized by successive governments in their approach to fighting terrorism.

Jean Chrétien's Liberal government, following the 9/11 terrorist attack, brought in the Anti-terrorism Act and the Public Safety Act, 2002, to establish a legislative framework to address terrorist crimes. Paul Martin's Liberal government authorized the deployment of Canada's troops to Kandahar to support our allies in Afghanistan.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government, in which I had the honour to serve, had a very long track record of fighting terrorism. We extended the mission in Afghanistan, brought in stronger anti-terrorism laws, and made it an offence to travel abroad to engage in or facilitate terrorist activities. It is against the law. When they come back to Canada, they could be prosecuted for that. That is the law we brought in, but this government refuses to actually enforce it. Conservatives also created a process for removing Canadian citizenship from convicted terrorists who were dual citizens. Under Stephen Harper, Canada joined a global coalition to fight ISIS.

Then these Liberals took office, and everything changed. The Liberals withdrew Canada from the global anti-ISIS coalition. These Liberals passed legislation allowing convicted terrorists to retain Canadian citizenship and enjoy their Canadian passports. These Liberals introduced Bill C-59 to unwind and roll back the tools our police and intelligence agencies have to fight terrorism. These Liberals are welcoming ISIS fighters back to Canada with a reintegration program, thinking they can de-emphasize violent terrorist instincts. These Liberals cut a $10.5 million cheque to a convicted terrorist, Omar Khadr. That is the shameful record of these Liberals.

Canadians expect their government to protect them and to keep them safe. Knowing that terrorist fighters are in Canada is worrying enough. Our government welcomes these fighters, arranging group meetings and supportive meetings and asking them to please stop being involved with those bad people and running around with bad gangs. The Liberals think that will be sufficient.

No wonder Canadians are upset. No wonder we are hearing from our constituents. Right across the country, people are concerned. When we label those concerns and call them names, it does not stop the concerns. It actually makes them even worse.

What the federal government, and the Prime Minister, really ought to be doing is making sure that we can, and do, bring these fighters to justice. ISIS fighters and other terrorists should be made to face the full legal consequences for their actions. They should be charged, they should be prosecuted, and they should be in jail. The federal government ought to make sure that the RCMP and its provincial and municipal partners have the tools, the legal authority, and the resources needed to bring charges and secure convictions against these returning terrorists.

We need to keep strong relations with our allies in fighting terrorism to ensure that we have the information, the intelligence, and the evidence necessary to prosecute terrorists and to protect our citizens. However, that is not what we have been seeing from the other side of the House. Instead of focusing on what can be done to keep Canadians safe, we see a government obsessed, for reasons we just do not understand, with avoiding any appearance of being tough on terrorists here in Canada. As Professor Randall Hansen, the interim director of the Monk Centre, said last year, “there's nothing admirable in letting other countries do the fighting while you hide behind liberal pieties”.

Canada's contribution of fighter jets to the anti-ISIS coalition was pulled, abandoning our allies. We have deprogramming coffee circles set up for ISIS fighters who come back to Canada.

When Omar Khadr, a convicted terrorist, sued the federal government, what did the Liberals do? They gave in. Let us not be fooled that this was somehow a charter issue. No court ruled that Omar Khadr should receive $10.5 million. The Liberals hiding behind that is a fraud. Repatriation was the settlement. Repatriation is what happened. The Liberals could have fought the lawsuit. They could have said that the Supreme Court's ruling was enough, but they decided to make this terrorist, a videotaped bomb-maker and convicted killer, into a multi-millionaire.

Let me just finish with this. Canadians are concerned, but in less than two years, these Liberals are going to have to take their record to the country, and they will answer. The year 2019 cannot come soon enough.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise and join in this important debate, in part because of its timeliness, given the apparent winding down of combat activity against Daesh and the ongoing evolution of terrorist threats in this country. It is also because the myths and misperceptions that have been allowed to persist in this House over the last few weeks have misinformed Canadians. Not surprisingly, those misperceptions are now echoed at family dinner tables right across the country.

If the quality of recent debate is to be believed, Canadians would think that we are combatting returning terrorists with poetry. However, Canadians expect to know exactly what their government does to protect their safety without the distraction of irresponsible sound bites. Therefore, I will dispel some of these myths.

First of all, how are returning extremists treated? The idea persists that they are somehow akin to prisoners at the end of their sentence, being reintegrated into the community, which is certainly not the case. Canada's law enforcement, security, and intelligence departments and agencies actively assess and monitor the threat each individual poses. They may be charged with a criminal offence where the evidence warrants. Based on available information, they may have passports revoked. They may be denied travel or placed on Canada's no-fly list. They are monitored closely in every case, and their return is tightly controlled and managed. In some cases, they may be found suitable for programs designed to help disengage from violent extremism, but by no means does that replace, prevent, or exclude investigation and close monitoring.

Second, the myth persists that somehow we can and should paint each returning extremist with the same brush through immediate action. However, we cannot, and we should not. Threat assessment is made to measure. Their places of travel, experience, and motivations may be entirely different. Criminal investigations are unique from case to case, and these, I can say from experience, can take time. They take a herculean effort on the part of many agencies in collaboration with international allies.

Third, there is a myth that our security agencies cannot possibly keep tabs on each and every returning extremist, which is also untrue. There are approximately 60 who have returned to Canada, and that is over the past decade. This has not changed significantly over the years. The full range of counterterrorism tools are in use, including surveillance, monitoring, and ongoing investigations. Once they return, agencies are well aware of them and aware of appropriately managing the threat they present to our citizens.

Fourth, there is a perception that these returnees pose Canada's largest security threat. This is also an unfortunate mischaracterization. Let us remember that the Strathroy and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu attacks in Canada were made by homegrown terrorists. They never left the country. They were radicalized right here in Canada. The same goes for attacks in Berlin and Nice. Those terrorists had not been trained in Syria or Iraq, but fought from their home countries, inspired by groups like Daesh. The risks that homegrown terrorists pose can be just as great as those posed by returning extremists.

There is no neat and simple solution to the complex problem that terrorism poses in a rapidly changing world, but we have in place effective and world-class professionals. Canada's full range of counterterrorism tools are in use, and these include ongoing investigations, surveillance and monitoring, intelligence gathering and sharing, the collection of criminal evidence, criminal charges, and prosecution where the evidence exists. Other Criminal Code tools, like peace bonds, public listings, expert threat assessments, no-fly lists, the revocation of passports, and legally authorized threat destruction measures, are all in use. The government and Canada's top-notch security agencies continue to use all the tools at their disposal to address the threat of Canadians joining or returning from terrorist activities.

The National Security Joint Operations Centre helps to coordinate an effective and timely operational response to high-risk travellers. G7 interior ministers recently redoubled their commitment to sharing information and working closely together to deal with returning extremists, and the process has worked.

We must now focus our attention on what lies ahead. Daesh, for one, continues to aggressively target the Internet to push an evil ideology and to recruit new adherents. Those who were on the battlefield may now be attempting to move perhaps to Africa, Asia, or Europe, and even to Canada. Yet, as the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has said, the terror threat is now morphing into other forms, and we must not be complacent.

As I have noted, homegrown terrorism is one of our most urgent threats. It can come in many forms, from right- and left-wing extremism to religious motivations.

In Bill C-59, the overhaul of national security legislation currently at committee, we intend to provide the framework through which we can act on these threats, moving forward. We need to play the long game. International experts recognize that a key part of that means getting to the roots of the problems on our own turf, and that is why the government recently launched a new centre to coordinate, bolster, and help fund and share the counter-radicalization programming that exists across the country. It is called the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. It is based on the fact that early intervention in dangerous situations to prevent radicalization to violence can and does work. The centre takes a broad approach to this issue, recognizing that the process of radicalization to violence occurs differently for different people.

It provides national leadership to support local efforts, and a key part of that work is through the community resilience fund. This fund was created to enhance those partnerships and to promote innovation in research on countering radicalization to violence, and domestic programming. We have recently announced a renewed call for proposals under this fund, with $1.4 million available to approved projects starting in 2018 and $7 million annually for the balance of the program. The centre is ensuring that resources are in place to facilitate disengagement from violent ideologies. In particular, children are served who return from combat zones and require tailored support to recover from their traumatic experiences.

From every angle, the Government of Canada continues to carefully monitor trends in extremist travel, and our national security agencies work extremely well together to ensure our response reflects the current threat environment. Canadians can be assured that our agencies are carefully monitoring returning extremists and that our law enforcement agencies are doing the difficult work of collecting the evidence required for convictions in Canadian courts. This remains a priority for our government and for all of our national security agencies. We must work together, alert at all times to the threats posed by terrorism at all levels, buoyed by solid facts and a shared commitment to act.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, at the outset, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest.

Today, I am rising to speak against the motion brought forward by the Conservative opposition, and my reasons for doing so are straightforward.

Contrary to what this motion suggests, our government has already unequivocally condemned Daesh for committing acts of terrorism and genocide, as they should be. In addition, the Canadian Forces, law enforcement, and intelligent communities are fully engaged in combatting and preventing terrorism in all its forms, both abroad and at home. This is work of which we should all be proud.

Finally, Canadians can be confident that we have enacted a robust set of criminal laws, offences and preventative tools for law enforcement, to address terrorism, which are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, wherever and whenever appropriate.

In a moment, I will expand on how these measures are collectively working to keep Canadians safe, but first I need to express how regrettable it is to hear the opposition politicize national security time and again.

Far too often, we see the Conservatives wagging their fingers, lecturing Canadians, and pandering fear on this subject. However, one need only look at their record to see it is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance.

I hear hon. members heckling from the other side, and that will not change the facts. Let me tell everyone what some of those facts are.

During their 10 years in government, the Conservatives imposed dramatic cuts to national security. Indeed, in their last four years in power, they slashed close to $1 billion in resources to the RCMP, CBSA, CSIS, CATSA, and CSE. The opposition would do well to remember these figures, as I know Canadians will in sizing up the validity of this motion and the credibility of the Conservatives on the whole of national security.

Let me now say a few words about a number of the terrorism provisions within the Criminal Code that specifically apply to terrorist travel.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that thousands from around the world have indeed travelled to join terrorist groups and that this is indeed an important issue, which our government is grappling with domestically, internationally, and abroad with all our partners in the combat against terrorism.

Within the law as it exists in Canada, there are four specific offences of leaving Canada, or attempting to leave Canada, for the purpose of committing specific terrorism offences. In this way, the criminal law addresses the terrorist traveller phenomenon by having the substantive offence crystallize before the person leaves Canada and by applying the same maximum punishment to attempting to leave Canada, as well as leaving Canada, to commit these offences.

Over and above these targeted offences, the Criminal Code includes terrorism provisions designed to prevent the carrying out of terrorist activity and have a preventive focus. They are in large part designed to permit law enforcement to intervene and charge someone with a terrorism offence before a terrorist attack can take place. Such offences include knowingly facilitating terrorist activity and knowingly instructing someone to carry out a terrorist activity.

A particular example of this can be found in the participation offence, which is under section 83.18 of the Criminal Code. Terrorist travellers could be, and have in fact been, prosecuted under the offence of knowingly participating in any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to carry out a terrorist activity.

I will pause for a moment to say that in my former career as a federal prosecutor, I have first-hand experience dealing with these provisions. Again, I would draw the attention to Canadians that they can take great satisfaction and confidence in knowing we have a rigorous criminal law enforcement provision. I was honoured to serve with many prosecutors and members of the RCMP and CSIS, who continue to do a good job today in keeping our country safe.

As well, it is notable, in the current threat environment, individuals are often radicalized to violence and encouraged through online interactions and messaging. In Bill C-59, the national security act, 2017, the government proposes to revise the offence of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general to be one of counselling the commission of a terrorism offence, whether a terrorism offence is committed and whether a specific terrorism offence is counselled. The advocacy or promotion offence has been much criticized since its enactment in 2015 for being vague or overbroad. Bill C-59 proposes to revise this offence to use well-known criminal law concepts and facilitate its prosecution.

The bill continues to support the view that the active encouragement of others to commit terrorism offences, even without being specific as to which terrorism offence is being encouraged, should be an offence in the same way as it is an offence to counsel a specific terrorism offence.

Some of these criminal offence provisions have already been successfully used in court. To date, there have been 26 terrorism convictions in Canada and three trials are currently in progress.

I will now speak about preventive enforcement tools.

Certainly one of the most fundamental tools police and prosecutors have to keep Canadians safe from individuals who may have associated with terrorism groups abroad is the terrorism peace bond. This is a powerful preventive tool that can help to protect Canadians from terrorism offences.

In situations where police may not have enough evidence to justify charging a person with a terrorism offence, the terrorism peace bond is available to bring the individual before a judge rather than wait until it is too late. In such cases, the court has the power to impose “any reasonable conditions” to counter the threat posed by the individual concerned.

The Criminal Code also sets out that the provincial court judge shall consider whether it is desirable, to prevent a terrorist activity from being committed, to include in the recognizance a condition that the defendant deposit, in the specified manner, any passport or other travel document issued in their name that is in their possession or control. If the judge decides that it is desirable, the judge shall add the condition to the recognizance and specify the period during which it applies.

Furthermore, the provincial court judge shall consider whether it is desirable, to prevent a terrorist activity from being committed, to include in the recognizance a condition that the defendant remain within a specified geographic area unless written permission to leave that area is obtained from the judge or any individual designated by the judge. If the judge decides that it is desirable, the judge shall add the condition to the recognizance and specify the period during which it applies. Furthermore, If the provincial court judge does not add a condition, the judge shall include in the record a statement of the reasons for not adding it.

With respect to the recognizance to keep the peace related to terrorism, this tool has been used by law enforcement agencies and by Crown prosecutors. The use of this tool has been on the rise since 2015. Specifically, there have been 19 applications for this recognizance in the past two years, compared to six between 2001 and 2014.

I would note that during the 2016 national security consultation, some called into question the threshold for a terrorism peace bond that was enacted in 2015 by former Bill C-51. That act lowered the threshold of the terrorism peace bond from “will commit” to “may commit”. After careful consideration, the government has determined that the lowered threshold is a balanced approach between the constitutional rights of Canadians and the need to protect the security of Canadians. This threshold has also been upheld as constitutional in the recent Manitoba case of Regina v. Driver in 2016.

Another preventive tool is the recognizance with conditions, which is available for law enforcement in the appropriate case to disrupt nascent terrorist activity.

The Canadian Passport Order contemplates that passports can be denied or revoked in certain instances of criminality and where necessary to prevent the commission of a terrorism offence or for the national security of Canada or a foreign country or state.

As can be seen, Canada already has a broad range of offences and tools to assist in the fight against terrorism. As the hon. Minister of Public Safety has said, we need them all and we use them all.

Opposition members have spent the last week criticizing national security, national defence, and deriding effective counter-radicalization measures that go a long way toward both combatting and preventing terrorism. Instead of that kind of partisanship we need a thoughtful debate that will strike the right balance between protecting Canadians as well as their charter rights.

I encourage all hon. members in the House to reject the opposition motion and to support the important measures this government is taking on this file.

Opposition Motion—ISIS Fighters Returning to Canada

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, any worthy debate is one with thorough facts. The member has been serving quite honourably on the committee studying Bill C-59 and has served the country as a police officer for most of his adult life. The Conservatives have concerns regarding the lack of information, how many fighters from Syria and Iraq have come back to Canada, and the fact that the information we have been given is about two years old. Does he find it concerning that the government is not forthcoming with that information and that the government is also not letting us know whether ISIS fighters are being supervised?

I am particularly concerned because many of these individuals may have participated in genocide, human trafficking, all sorts of heinous crimes, including attacking our allies, perhaps even firing at Canadian Armed Forces abroad. Could the member please comment on these issues?

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

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not deceived by the platitudes of any government or the rhetoric of any government, to be honest. It is important to recognize that when it comes to public safety and national security, when there is a threat to our country and our citizens, it would behoove all of us in this place to put partisanship behind us, not point fingers, and all work together.

I have said repeatedly in the national security committee that we are committed to working on Bill C-59 and getting it right. There is a reason the government has sent the bill to committee before second reading, and that is because there are some things we have to get right that are not quite right yet. The Liberals acknowledge that, which is great. I am encouraged we can work together to improve the gaps in our national security and the things that would give confidence to the public on protecting them and our future as a country.

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

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my questions to the parliamentary secretary, it goes without saying that we condemn the terrorist and violent acts committed by ISIS as well as by neo-Nazi groups, for example; we are disgusted by them.

Not only should all forms of terrorism be condemned, but we also find that our measures provide sufficient evidence to lay criminal charges. The parties all agree on that.

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the fantastic interpreters here in the House, it is worth repeating in both official languages that we find any violence committed by any terrorist group, whether it is ISIS or neo-Nazis, to be abhorrent and something we denounce. Insofar as we have the evidence required to go ahead with criminal proceedings and press charges, it should absolutely be done. That is not something up for debate, no matter which party is in power. On that, I certainly agree with the parliamentary secretary.

The sad part about trying to politicize a situation that is obviously very worrisome for all Canadians, as it pertains to their safety and security, is that when it comes to radicalization we have to ask ourselves what is the best way to address it. I heard the Conservatives say that this is not about people who are in the process of being radicalized, but about those who already were and have now returned.

With that in mind, it is very important to remember that the problem does not lie with our legislation or political will; in fact, we are talking about the justice system and not a political decision. It is about adapting to the standards of proof.

The way evidence is admitted in court is extremely important when we look at this particular issue of foreign fighters returning to Canada, in particular in what way intelligence gathered can be admissible as evidence in court. Even experts have had a hard time grappling with how we can lay charges with that evidence. That is something we acknowledge the government needs to look at and work on. It is certainly something that could help law enforcement press charges when they may be required.

When we are looking at pressing charges, it is not just what evidence is admissible. It is also the question of even laying terrorism charges, which is something we did not see in the previous Parliament under the previous government and that we have now seen twice under the current government. It is complicated, because as experts have said, often terrorism charges do not relate to the violence in and of itself, which usually falls under another part of the Criminal Code. Terrorism charges usually relate to the planning of said violence, which makes it very difficult, especially when we fall into the trap, as with this motion, of targeting specific groups.

I will explain why. Members will recall the horrible massacre in Moncton. By all accounts, this man committed a terrorist act. In fact, he confirmed that he wanted to attack the RCMP because it supported a government he thought was corrupt. I do not think this can be described as anything other than a terrorist act, and yet no one calls it that.

The attack at the Métropolis against a newly elected Quebec premier could also be considered a terrorist act.

However, in both of these cases, no terrorism-related criminal charges were laid. Criminal charges were obviously laid, but these charges fell under other parts of the Criminal Code.

This is a very important point, because it shows how difficult it is to judge motives and to define terrorism. This is unfortunately extremely complicated, and we need to work on that.

I also think it is important to trust the men and women who work for our national security agencies and police forces—in the case, the RCMP. It goes without saying that if they collect enough evidence, we can, and should, be confident that they will file criminal charges. The problem is how to obtain this evidence and whether the evidence is admissible. There is no point laying criminal charges if the person ends up being released because of a lack of evidence. This may be annoying, but this is the reality of our legal system, and we must respect that. This is exactly what terrorists want to attack. If we cannot respect this pillar of our democracy, we are doomed. This is very important here.

The other point is the question of resources, which is extremely important and which we raised over the course of the debate on what was Bill C-51 in the previous Parliament.

We can change the law. We can make the strictest laws possible. We can say we are going to throw everyone in jail and throw away the key, but if the men and women in uniform do not have the human and financial resources to do the work, the law is useless. That is a key issue here.

The commissioner of the RCMP has said that the focus on radical Islam has taken away from other investigations at a time when we are seeing a rise in hate crimes, a rise in anti-Semitism, which are also forms of radical violence and are, in some cases, forms of radical terrorism.

It is important to keep in mind that it is not always a legal issue. It is sometimes the political will to provide the appropriate resources to the national security agencies and police bodies, something that, unfortunately, certainly was not done in the last Parliament, and there is more work to be done in the current Parliament. That is important to keep in mind if we actually want the RCMP, among others, to have the resources to do the work they need to do to keep Canadians safe.

Getting back to the subject of radicalization, which is at the heart of today's motion, I asked the sponsor why the Conservatives have been so intent on disparaging anti-radicalization efforts. I was told that this is not about being for or against radicalization, but right after his speech, his colleague spent at least five minutes sneering at anti-radicalization efforts. That makes absolutely no sense.

During the last Parliament, nothing of substance was done to fight radicalization. Although I frequently disagree with the public safety minister's stance on issues, I am pleased to see that something is finally being done at the community level to fight radicalization through a centre set up to fund local projects. The Conservatives scoffed at those projects in their motion, as did their critics in their speeches on the subject. That is a shame.

If we really want to keep our communities safe, we have to fight radicalization and make sure people do not leave in the first place. Extremist groups such as Islamic State and far-right groups such as neo-Nazis often exploit young people with mental health problems. We need to help those young people not because they should be treated as victims but to ensure public safety, which requires a concerted, community-wide approach.

I asked the parliamentary secretary a question about what is being done in prisons.

I overheard a comments from a Conservative that we are saying to not put them in jail, because they are going to be radicalized there. That is not what we are saying. We are saying that we cannot do one without the other. The experts all say that one of the worst places for being radicalized is in prison. If there are criminal charges brought and people are found guilty, certainly no one is debating whether they should be in prison. The issue is that when they are in prison, we need to make sure that the programs are there to get to the root of that radicalization that is taking hold and leading them to be a threat to national security and public safety. That is what is at stake here. If we just want to incarcerate and forget about it, to see no evil and hear no evil, those people, if they ever get out, will have slipped through the cracks and will not only be people society has not come in aid of but will be people who will pose a threat to public safety. If the objective here is to protect public safety, then let us make sure we are cutting the evil that is radicalization off at the root, and that means providing the proper programs.

As I said, I recognize the efforts the government has made to begin working with and funding best practices in some of those efforts, but more needs to be done. Again, prisons are one example. I appreciate the openness the parliamentary secretary has shown to recognizing that this is an issue and to working on it, but more needs to be done.

Let us move on to the matter of counter-radicalization, which is something else that is of great concern to me. What are we talking about? Some people go abroad and are labelled as “fighters”. In some cases, they do not commit any acts of violence, which is why it is so important to have evidence. In fact, sometimes these people are victims. Some of them are taken over there by their families. They are vulnerable people who quickly realize after arriving that they have made a mistake, and who then come back to Canada without committing any acts of violence.

Will some of these individuals be criminally prosecuted? Of course, but evidence is needed. Rather than heckling and shouting “yes”, we must understand the nuances of the situation. We have to understand that our system is a system of law. I am not talking about rights and freedoms. I am talking about a system of law, the rule of law. It is important to understand that simply making a list of people and sending them all to prison is not an effective approach to public safety. We have to have evidence, and we have to understand the challenges associated with that evidence, challenges that experts have told us about.

The Conservative member is heckling me by shouting “yes, we have to do it”. If we move forward with these criminal charges, we need to make sure that they will result in prison sentences. Rather than blaming the government and engaging in a senseless dialogue by claiming that some people in the House are seeking to jeopardize the safety of Canadians, we need to understand that there is work to do to ensure that the national security agencies and police forces that have the evidence they need to successfully prosecute will do so. Everyone would be pleased if that happened, because it would help keep Canadians safe.

Let us engage in a positive dialogue. That is the approach that we are advocating today. It is no secret that I disagree with the approach of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, but one thing is certain and leaves no room for debate: we want keep to Canadians safe and ensure public safety.

In that context, when we are looking at such an important issue as this one, to engage in dog-whistle politics and use expressions like “welcomed with open arms” and to throw things out about reading poetry, to denigrate counter-radicalization efforts, does a disservice to the men and women doing the serious work of making sure Canadians are safe, does a disservice to this House where we all believe in the importance of ensuring Canadians' safety, and does a disservice to the real efforts and debate that need to happen over the proper way of dealing with the situation.

As part of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security's review of Canada's national security framework, we travelled for one week, stopping in five cities in five days. We stopped in Montreal, where we had the opportunity to visit the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence. This centre is one of a kind in North America. It is so unique that it receives calls from families in New York who are worried about the possible radicalization of a friend, a family member, or even a child in some cases.

We sat down with the team at the centre and had a nuanced discussion. It was clear that these people fully understood that in many cases, the RCMP and our national security agencies have a role to play and a job to do if they are to catch those who pose a threat to public safety and security.

The collaboration between our police forces and national security agencies has been outstanding. They have also made an effort to reach out to the community and to concerned families and individuals. This work did not focus on any community more than another. An attack like the one committed at the Islamic cultural centre in Quebec City is just as troubling as an attack like the one that took place in Edmonton. Both are equally troubling, and the centre acknowledges that.

The people who fight against radicalization fully understand what we are saying today in the House. Yes, we need to consider prosecution. Yes, we need to make sure that anyone we can press charges against is actually prosecuted. However, we must also recognize that simply acknowledging one facet of an extremely complicated and important issue does not diminish the need to hold this debate and offer concrete solutions. Not only would concrete solutions help us ensure public safety, but they would also keep youth from falling through the cracks and possibly save them from the scourge of radicalization.

In closing I want to say, as I have said several times in my speech, that the minister and I certainly have our differences, and it is no secret in this place, but there is one thing to which we will always commit, and that is working together to ensure the safety of Canadians, no matter what the partisan issue is.

To do that, there is a lot that needs to be done. I have mentioned some of it: getting terrorism charges right, getting the peace bond process right, getting the evidentiary process right with regard to intelligence gathering. These are all challenges that we have in getting the counter-radicalization efforts right.

The government has taken some good steps. We think we can do more, including doing it in federal prisons, and making sure that, in some instances where there are best practices, there is more robust federal leadership despite the importance of supporting those grassroots efforts.

Those are all things on which we are ready to work with the government. It is part of the reason why it is so disappointing to hear the kind of hyperbole we hear today. When it comes to ensuring public safety, there are important measures that need to be taken. It is not about stoking and fanning the flames of fear, but rather about standing in this place and having the courage to take on these important challenges that we face, and that all experts agree are challenging but are at the core of the mandate we have as parliamentarians.

I am very happy to say that the NDP is committed to working with the government on all the points that I mentioned.

No proposal, whether Bill C-51, introduced during the last Parliament, or Bill C-59, should ever implement more draconian public safety legislation at the expense of rights and freedoms. However, that does not preclude concrete efforts from being made, for instance, providing more resources to the RCMP and other national security agencies and strengthening our counter-radicalization efforts. We have to do what we can to truly put an end to this scourge instead of simply focusing on one aspect of the issue and moving on.

There is still a lot of work to be done. Let us set aside this kind of rhetoric and ensure that we are doing our job properly because that is what Canadians expect from us.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my question, there is not a person in the House who does not unequivocally condemn terrorism. There is not one person in this place who would not, at the first opportunity if evidence presented itself, pursue to the fullest extent of the law somebody who committed an act of terror. To make the outrageous assertion that a member of any party in the House of Commons feels otherwise is unbecoming of this place and it is disgraceful that anyone would stand and make such a statement. We all unequivocally condemn the horrific acts of Daesh. Although we may disagree about the policies and the mechanisms that we use to go after terrorists, each and every one of us wants to hunt down and find those that would do others harm.

The member opposite made a few points that are concerning and I have unfortunately heard others in his party making the same points. He said he was not disparaging anti-radicalization efforts and yet in his speech he talked about poetry readings and how people are soft on individuals who would do us harm. The poetry reading he is talking about is in fact being conducted by a university aimed at young people who committed no crime, young people who might be starting down a dark path. God forbid we should use the arts to try to reach somebody who might be heading down a bad path. Is that the assertion Conservative members are making?

The entire focus of Conservative members on attacking our efforts on anti-radicalization shows the fundamental problem with the 10 years that they occupied office and their complete unwillingness to look at the need and imperative nature of prevention in all of its forms, whether or not it is health, crime, or terrorism. Terrorist acts have already been committed and I have already said we must pursue the individuals who committed those acts with every ounce of our force.

There are all sorts of terrorism that have not happened yet, people who have not yet been victimized, people who have not yet been attacked. Is it not our job every day in every single possible way to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that those who would seek to do us harm are pulled from that pack? Is it not our job to stop acts from happening before they are ever committed?

For some reason members of the opposition cannot get their heads around the idea that there are two separate but equally important priorities. The first is going after those who have committed wrongs and have already broken the law and who, with our international partners, we must pursue. The second are those who have not yet done harm, who are misled, who are beginning to head down a dark path, but who could be pulled away from that direction. There is nothing at odds about pursuing those two objectives at the same time.

The other problem that I have with the rhetoric that we are hearing from members on the other side is that it does not match their record. The Conservatives are now talking about the importance of protecting our communities, and I agree with them, but over the 10 years that they were in power they cut $1 billion from the very agencies designed to protect us. Let us go over those: $430 million cut from the RCMP; $390 million cut from the CBSA; $69 million cut from CSIS; $42 million cut from the Canadian security agency; and, $171 million cut from CATSA. Not only did they not keep up with inflation during that period for this ultimate priority that we all share, they slashed funding during that period of time.

The Conservatives talk about how Liberals will not pursue those who have come back to Canada. Two matters are actively being pursued to convict individuals where we have evidence and a decade under the Conservatives that number is zero, not a single one. It is a little rich for them to stand up and say there has been a sea change and suddenly now we are not doing anything.

It is the cloak that is put around it, as if they and they alone walk the streets concerned with protecting Canadians from terror. It is unbecoming of this place, and I wish that we could spend more time in this place having the kinds of intelligent debates that, frankly, we saw with all members including Conservative members around the security and intelligence framework, the kinds of conversations we are having around Bill C-59 right now to create the best and most leading-edge policy framework and oversight mechanisms and resources for our police. That is the debate that is worthy of this place, not this motion that we are going to spend a day talking about. It is unfortunate to try to angle for whatever particular partisan gain. Of course, in this place every day we try to advance what our party does well and they do poorly, but when it is framed this way it is so cynical.

With that, I want to point out one last thing as just a rebuke to what we heard earlier around the notion of extremism and to point out that not only do we hear the Conservatives belittling it in their text, but that in the 10 years they were there, the work to stop people walking the path of violent extremism simply was not done. According to Dr. Lorne Dawson of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society, “all the G20 nations...are convinced of the need to move into prevention program...” but “the previous conservative government had little or no interest in following up on this”. According to former CSIS analyst, Phil Gurski, the“previous government had an abysmal record when it came to countering violent extremism and early detection. The Conservative government didn't care.”

I do not know that the Conservatives did not care, I would not make that characterization, but I think their priorities were in the wrong place. I think that while they went after, rightfully, those who had committed acts, they did not do a fraction enough to go after those who were beginning to walk that dark path, and their lack of regard for it in their debate and their discussion on the motion is heavy evidence of it.

We recognize and condemn the depravity of groups like Daesh. That is why Canada has renewed our military commitment to the Global Coalition against Daesh until March 2019. In addition to training, advising, and assisting Iraqi security forces, we have expanded our intelligence capabilities, we are conducting aerial surveillance and recognizance to air-to-air refuelling, we are leading the coalition medical facility, and as the situation continues to evolve we will re-evaluate how the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces could be most effective and ensure that we equip them with the resources they need to get the job done.

On the home front, when people have given support to Daesh and other terrorist groups and they return to Canada, whether they were active in combat, fundraising, propaganda, or in some other way, they are confronted with the full weight of Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies controlling and managing their return. Canadians can be assured that our world-class security and intelligence law enforcement agencies actively track and assess all potential threats. To this end, they work 365 days a year with domestic and international partners, including Five Eyes, the G7, the European Union, Interpol, and many others. These are professional, non-partisan agencies whose skills and expertise are sought all over the world. They work for us. They worked for a Conservative government. They would work for an NDP government. They would work constantly, vigilantly, ceaselessly for any government of any stripe. It is what they did, it is what they do.

They monitor returning extremists closely and gather and share intelligence in accordance with the law. They conduct investigations, collect criminal evidence, and lay criminal charges wherever possible. They use Criminal Code tools like peace bonds and terrorist listings as well as no-fly lists, passport revocations, and other authorized threat disruption measures wherever appropriate. Whichever tool they use, their work is apolitical, based on expert assessments and threats to public safety and national security.

At a recent gathering in Italy, G7 interior ministers, including our Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, committed to working together to address this very issue. This will involve multi-agency co-operation, risk assessment, and possible interventions, as our allies continue to deal with this shared threat.

To give a sense of the situation on a global scale, I would direct hon. members to the most recent public report on the terrorist threat to Canada. It shows, for example, that over 6,600 extreme travellers from western countries went to Syria since the start of that conflict in 2011. The number of Canadians involved is relatively small, about 250, with a nexus to Canada have gone abroad to participate in terrorist activity of some kind. Some went to Syria and Iraq, and many others went to countries in conflict zones. Around 60 of them have returned to Canada. These were the numbers at the end of 2015.

CSIS confirmed in its annual public report released this past February that the numbers stayed largely stable, and that remains the case.

We should neither underestimate nor overestimate that threat. We should not understate it, because there are people who have felt, and may continue to feel, so strong an affinity for the vile ideology and conduct of groups like Daesh that they travelled halfway around the world to get involved. Some of them may have been active participants in brutal violence. Certainly, as the motion before us states, people who team up with terrorists are complicit in atrocities, must be found, must be convicted, and must be put in jail.

When these individuals return to Canada, they merit and receive the full attention of our security intelligence law enforcement agencies. At the same time, that is exactly why we should not overstate the threat. Our expert, highly-skilled, highly-trained security services are on the job. They lay charges when there is evidence to support charges. Even when there is not enough evidence for criminal prosecution, they keep a close tab on these individuals to ensure Canadians are kept safe. They evaluate the extent to which each returnee remains bent on radical violence and they take appropriate measures to keep us safe.

As for the 100 to 190 Canadians who remain abroad, experts do not necessarily expect a great influx back to Canada. For one thing, many of them may be dead. Of those who are still alive, it may not be easy to leave whatever country they are in, and some of them may not want to. For those who do come back and face the same full force of our security and intelligence, it will be exactly the same treatment as those who arrived here already.

That is how we deal with people who have been radicalized. It is, of course, far preferable to prevent radicalization from happening in the first place, which is why I spent so much of my initial conversation in my speech talking to this point.

That is why we have established the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. Setting up this new centre was a commitment we made during the last election. We set aside funding for it in our very first budget, and it has been up and running since June. Canada has certain local initiatives, such as the Centre de prévention de la radicalisation menant à la violence, Montréal and the ReDirect program run by the Calgary Police Service. These programs and others like them engage in direct intervention with people at risk of being radicalized.

Our new federal centre is not meant to supplement. Rather, it is a coordinating body that helps local initiatives work to prevent violent extremism of all kinds. It includes Islamic extremism, white supremacy, and others.

The centre also facilitates the best practices and supports research to develop an evidence base about what approaches work best to combat radicalization in the Canadian context. This is important, and prevention is really the most effective way of reducing the threat posed by radicalization in the long run, not instead of a robust security and enforcement response, but in addition to it.

Therefore, I hope we are hearing, from the comments opposite, an approach that is misled. There is a need to ensure we approach both sides of the equation with equal vigour.

I would also like to address the motion's reference to the case of Omar Khadr.

Canadians obviously hold deeply divergent views about how he ended up on a battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002, and about what happened there. It was undoubtedly a tragic situation, particularly for the family and friends of Sergeant Christopher Speer, who was killed, and for Sergeant Layne Morris, who was injured.

There is conflicting evidence and commentary about what occurred on that day, 15 years ago. There is, however, no ambiguity about the fact that the Government of Canada violated Mr. Khadr's rights when he was in custody. The Supreme Court has been very clear on that point, on not one occasion but two.

Court proceedings have already cost upward of $7 million and prolonging them would have cost millions more, not to mention the cost of settlement itself, all to fight a case that was virtually unwinnable for reasons that were purely political. The settlement was the only sensible course of action. It saved taxpayers an enormous amount of money. It reminds us of the fundamental point that Canadian governments must apply the Constitution, follow the law, and respect the rights of citizens no matter how controversial they might be.

I am proud to be part of a government that upholds Canadian rights and I am proud to be part of a government that prioritizes the security of Canadians. We know that when there is a difficult case, when there is to be an arbiter of whether a Canadian citizen's rights were violated, it is not this place but the courts that make that determination. It is the courts that tell us whether our charter has or has not been upheld. When we violate fundamental rights, there has to be a consequence. Our charter is a document that protects each and every one of us. That is what can be so dangerous in this debate.

Each and every one of us has an incredible zeal to protect our fellow citizen. Probably all members here, if they were to list the top two or three things they wanted when the came to this place, was to make their communities safer, to make their families safer, to make their friends and neighbours safer. It is a prime motivator, I believe, for almost any person who runs in an election. However, when we get here, in our zeal to do so, we have to ensure we do it right. Yes, we go after those who perpetrate violence and create victims and ensure they are incarcerated and face justice. Similarly, we have to ensure those same actions do not transcend into violations of the rights of innocent people.

We can look at the O'Connor and Iacobucci inquiries and the recommendations that came out of them. Serious failures in our intelligence and security led to innocent people facing dire circumstances. Freedom is delicate. It must be carefully guarded. Those who would attack us or commit terrorism hope we will suspend freedom, live in terror, and lead our lives differently. However, when we get the opportunity to be in a free country, we have to hold that responsibility close. That balance of prevention, enforcement, protection, and the guaranteeing of rights is one that we must debate with the utmost caution, weight, consideration, and lack of partisanship. I hate to say it, but this motion fails on that account.

Public Safety

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, never before have Canadians been so engaged on the issue of national security. In fact, the broadest consultations in Canadian history happened on Bill C-59.

I want to thank the member opposite and the committee as well for their months of work in the study of the national security intelligence framework. The minister was able to point directly to the work of the committee and how it influenced the creation of that bill. This is an excellent example of not only profound and deep national consultation, but the committee working excellently together. Because the bill has been moved at first reading, I look forward to working with the member in a very open way to make sure we—

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

Mr. Speaker, this would have been a lot less complicated if we had adopted the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley's motion for a real appointment process for officers.

On another topic, yesterday, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security met with the Minister of Public Safety only for one hour on a 138-page omnibus bill, Bill C-59.

We cannot fast-track issues relating to our national security, rights and freedoms, and the privacy of Canadians. Spending one hour with the minister and two hours with heads of agencies is simply not enough.

Can the minister commit to come before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and once again answer members' questions on this omnibus bill?

Prevention of Radicalization through Foreign Funding Act

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

Madam Speaker, I have some thoughts I would like to share with members, and I will start with one of the criticisms from across the way, which is that this government is not concerned about a very important issue to Canadians. We have not only talked about the issue of safety, but very tangible actions have been taken, whether it is budgetary or legislative measures.

My colleague made reference to the Magnitsky legislation that was passed by the House. It received all-party support. There were many strong advocates within the Liberal caucus for that legislation. In fact, Irwin Cotler, the former member for Mount Royal in Montreal, is a very strong human rights advocate. He is very well known and respected in the world. In fact, he is one of the most able-minded individuals dealing with that. He contributed immensely in the House with respect to that act, which was discussed not only over the last couple of years but for a few years. Even under Stephen Harper, there was discussion about the Magnitsky Act.

Many of the comments we are hearing, even this evening, have been dealt with in part through the Magnitsky legislation. I have had the opportunity, not only in Ottawa but in other places, particularly in Winnipeg, to talk about the importance of the issue.

This was one piece of legislation that passed with the support of all members of the House.

However, we also introduced government legislation. Members will recall Bill C-51 and the impact that legislation had in the chamber. When the member across the way is critical of the government and says that it is not doing enough, I remind the member that two substantial pieces of legislation have been brought forward to the House.

Bill C-22 dealt with the establishment of the parliamentary oversight committee. This might even be an issue the oversight committee could discuss, once it is up and running, but I suspect it will have a fairly busy agenda. That was put in place to ensure rights and freedoms were being addressed, which is very important.

When we talk about the safety of Canadians and the radicalization of individuals who call Canada their home, we take it very seriously. At the same time, we also want to ensure that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are being protected. Therefore, that legislation was put in place.

Today, we are having a great deal of discussion about Bill C-59. Many measures within that legislation deal with safety. I do not know how many times I have heard the Prime Minister talk about the importance of ensuring that Canadians feel safe. Aside from governance, it is most important to ensure there is an element of safety. Many measures have been put in place by this government. The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the minister responsible for global affairs, and members as a whole recognize what is being talked about and the concerns that Canadians have.

This is the reason I asked the questions of the sponsor of the motion. What is the motivation behind this legislation? We all want to ensure we have safe communities and there is proper legislation in place to prevent radicalization whenever we can do that. There is already a litany of measures in the Criminal Code.

I emphasize that we have proactive law enforcement agencies, security agencies, and even the Canada Border Services Agency for border control. There are many different departments in place today to protect Canadians.

One of my colleagues across the way made reference to education. We have invested, through budgets, millions of dollars for education or outreach. In fact, we launched the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence to support local initiatives. To cite a few examples, we looked at pushing back against violent extremism, addressing online terrorist propaganda and recruitment, intervening early to turn young Canadians away from the path of extremism, and supporting families and communities affected by radicalization.

I was involved with the youth justice committee for many years, and we had a wonderful RCMP officer who participated in it. I know first-hand the commitment of our women and men in the RCMP. It is about making connections and connecting the dots to promote more harmony and tolerance in our communities.

I did not like the debate that took place here regarding Islamophobia. I believe it did more damage than good inside this chamber. I still do not quite understand why we have some people in the House who do not recognize Islamophobia as something that is real.

We have to go out of our way to ensure that there is more communication among the many different groups out there. We even have a group in our caucus that meets on occasion with two different faith groups to try to bring faith communities together. This is something I believe is really important.

When I think of radicalization, one of the areas of concern I have is not necessarily what takes place in communities as much as what takes place on the Internet. The Internet is one of those areas we could spend time evaluating. Some of the problems being generated in society are because of the Internet, and we should consider ways we can address that issue.

We have seen radicalization that has stemmed from the Internet. I am concerned about the attraction it has. It is universal. It does not apply to one group of people or one faith group. Youth look at it far too often as something that might be an attractive thing to do. At times, it even crosses gender.

Many of my colleagues reach out to the community on this issue. At the end of the day, I believe we should be promoting education. It think education is the best way to combat radicalization. Whatever we can do to support that—

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Madam Speaker, I reiterate my appreciation to the hon. member across for his work on the bill. This is an area the government is very concerned with, and we appreciate his attention to the issue.

Most of my comments today will centre on the question I asked concerning redundancy, namely the mechanisms that are already in place and whether this bill is filling a gap or overlapping the existing mechanisms, and what the consequences would be. I will run through these, if I could.

The proposals to create a mechanism to stem funding from foreign bodies known to promote radicalization and extremism in Canada are at the centre of this bill. It would also authorize the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in consultation with the Minister of Public Safety, to recommend the listing of states that have engaged in religious persecution, torture, and the promotion of radicalization. Canadian religious, cultural, or educational institutions would then be prohibited from accepting money or other valuables from sources affiliated with those listed states. As I have stated, these measures are totally in line with the objectives of the government.

The bill also attempts to respond to recommendation 15 of the 2015 interim report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. That reference proposes that the government develop measures to prevent foreign funds from entering Canada, where such funds, donors, or recipients have been linked to radicalization.

My concern is that the stated aim of the bill seems, in some instances, to be inconsistent with its provisions. Only one of the three reasons to list a state has to do with promotion of radicalization. The other two do not. They have to do with subjecting individuals to human rights violations, either through religious persecution or torture and cruel punishments. Those violations are already covered under the new Magnitsky act, which allows Canada to impose broad asset freezes and financial prohibitions on individuals responsible for, or complicit in, gross violations of international human rights.

With respect to preventing funds from being used to support terrorist activities, we can say that the Government of Canada is committed to a strong and comprehensive regime. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act,, or the PCMLTFA, is a primary piece of legislation that establishes this framework. The act requires approximately 31,000 financial institutions and intermediaries to identify their clients, keep records, and have internal compliance programs in place. It creates a mandatory reporting system for suspicious financial transactions, large cross-border currency transfers, and certain proscribed transactions.

The legislation also established the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, which I was referring to earlier, Canada's main agency for monitoring money laundering and terrorist financing. FINTRAC is authorized by the existing legislation to collect and analyze financial transaction reports and disclose pertinent information to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. With the millions of financial transaction reports received every year, FINTRAC helps to establish links between individuals and groups in Canada and abroad suspected of financing and supporting terrorist activities. This intelligence assists police and national security agencies in their investigations of terrorist financing and threats to the security of Canada. It is also information that is used in assessing the level of risk posed by organizations that apply to be registered as charities.

There are a number of rules that govern how charities should operate, whether in Canada or abroad. The Canada Revenue Agency, as the federal regulator of charities, protects the charitable organization registration system from being abused by individuals or groups with links to terrorists. The charities directorate formally established the review and analysis division in 2003 to audit registered charities based on the potential risk of terrorist financing abuse. It works to prevent organizations with links to terrorism from being registered and to revoke the registration of those that are.

The Criminal Code's terrorist listing regime is another important tool in the fight against terrorism. The listing of entities counters terrorist financing and criminalizes certain support for listed entities. It is based on a principle similar to what we see in the bill before us today. When an entity is placed on the list, banks and financial institutions freeze its assets. The code makes it a criminal offence for Canadians at home and abroad to knowingly deal with the assets of a listed entity. Listings aim to help obstruct financial support for terrorist groups and supporters of terrorism. For example, Canadian charitable organizations that are maintaining connections to organizations already listed under the Criminal Code can be and are listed.

Furthermore, the list of entities helps to prevent registered charities in Canada from serving as a support network for terrorist organizations operating abroad. An organization can be denied charitable status or have its registration revoked when its resources provide any means of support for, or benefit to, an organization listed under the Criminal Code.

A further result of listing may be to deny its members, recruiters and facilitators entry to Canada.

The assessment process to identify potential entities to consider for listing is continuous and action can be taken when and if necessary. Under the code, Canada has the ability to apply appropriate criminal measures to deter terrorist activity in Canada. Once listed, an entity becomes defined as a terrorist group under the Criminal Code, which means various terrorism-related offences could potentially then be applied to the entity's supporters in Canada. These include offences related to terrorist financing, terrorist related-travel, recruitment and training.

When it comes to the prosecution of terrorism-related offences, however, it should be noted that the Criminal Code's definition of a "terrorist group" is not restricted to listed entities. Charges and prosecutions can even proceed if the group involved is not on the list. That is only one of several mechanisms we already use effectively.

When it comes to countering terrorism, the government understands that stemming the flow of dubious funding is only one part of the equation. That is why we have taken a recent major step further, through the effort to prevent radicalization to violence rather than only deal with it after the fact. That involves getting at the root causes and factors that contribute to terrorism by actively engaging with individuals and communities.

We know that our success in doing so relies on the support and participation from all levels of government and society, especially local communities and individual Canadians. The newly created Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, or the Canada Centre, is a source of advice, research and funding in that respect.

Thanks in no small part to $35 million in funding over five years provided through budget 2016, the centre is already making a real difference. It is working with youth, communities, academia, and stakeholders to help prevent radicalization to violence in Canada. It is based on the understanding that there is no single ideology or cause of radicalization to violence and that prevention must be an essential component of Canada's efforts to counter terrorism.

All of this goes hand in hand with new security legislation, or Bill C-59, which is heading to committee now. It is designed to update our national security framework to reflect current realities, while putting the rights and freedoms of Canadians at the core.

The Canadian government already takes all appropriate action to counter terrorist threats to our country, to our people, to our way of life, and to our global interests. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, the efforts of FINTRAC and our security agencies, the Criminal Code listings, and the new Canada Centre, in concert with our proposed overhaul of Canada's national security framework, are all parts of a well-functioning system. Every day, they are informing our work to combat terrorism and to keep Canadians safe.

As I mentioned at the top of my speech, Bill C-371 is a well-intentioned legislation. The concern I would have, and I raised it in my question for the member, is where it will fill in any gaps that might have been missed in the various mechanisms I have just articulated.

One of the things I would ask members to do is to consider the implications of that duplication and ensure the legislation is moving that forward.

I look forward to further conversations with the member. I very much appreciate him bringing forward the legislation and for his ongoing work and concern, which I very much share.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue the debate begun this morning on the Conservative Party's opposition motion.

Tomorrow, we will have the second and last day of debate at third reading stage of Bill C-45 on cannabis.

Monday, we will resume debate on Bill C-59 concerning national security. We will then move on to the report stage of Bill C-63 on the budget.

We will continue with debate of Bill C-63 on Tuesday.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we shall take up debate on the Senate amendments relating to Bill S-3, the Indian Act, unless we can get it done sooner.

I should also note that we will have the LGBTQ2 apology next Tuesday, November 28, immediately following question period.

Bill C-45—Time Allocation Motion

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, the fact is this has become a government that is engaged in serial closure. This is the 25th time in this Parliament that the government has sought to ram through legislation without having proper debate, and it is particularly egregious.

Yesterday, on Bill C-59, an immensely controversial piece of legislation, the government imposed a procedural trick to shut down debate after only a few hours. Today, we are dealing with deeply flawed legislation with holes in it that need to be fixed, and the government is saying that it is going to shut down debate in the House of Commons and ram things through. The number of witnesses the minister cites does not matter. The fact is that amendments have been rejected time and time again and now the Liberals are trying to shut down debate. Why do they not fix the bill? New Democrats are willing to work with them.

Standing Order 69.1—Bill C-59

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask that you consider Standing Order 69.1 and divide certain parts of Bill C-59 before us today into separate pieces. As mentioned during today's debate, I believe that Bill C-59 is an omnibus bill as described in that standing order.

Standing Order 69.1 now says, in part:

(1) In the case where a government bill seeks to repeal, amend or enact more than one act, and where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked, the Speaker shall have the power to divide the questions, for the purposes of voting.

I submit that Bill C-59 fits that description.

We are thinking of this analysis at this time, because in your ruling of November 7 on Standing Order 69.1, you said:

Where members believe that the Standing Order should apply, I would encourage them to raise their arguments as early as possible in the process, especially given that the length of debate at a particular stage can be unpredictable.

That is what we believe we are doing today.

Here is how I see the various parts of the bill and why, I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, we believe they should be divided into different parts to be voted on separately.

Let us take a look at part 1 and part 2. Part 1 enacts the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Act, and part 2 enacts the Intelligence Commissioner Act. These two parts enact two new acts and amend up to 12 existing acts.

These parts obviously create watchdogs to oversee the national security agencies.

The activities of the new agencies created under this bill would affect up to 14 federal departments. Since these parts create new agencies and enact two brand-new acts with a very specific mandate, we believe they should be voted on separately.

We believe that part 3 should be separated because it makes a significant change. It too would enact a new act, the Communications Security Establishment Act, yet another act that will amend existing acts.

That proposed act would also amend the National Defence Act. We know that the minister responsible for CSE is the Minister of National Defence. Again, we feel that puts certain optics around this debate, given that the Minister of Public Safety is tabling this bill, and the purpose for changing that particular piece.

Still on part 3, I do want to mention that many of these components are being painted as dealing with specific aspects of national security, more specifically terrorism, but if we look the part dealing with CSE, we see that a large part of the mandate goes beyond just terrorism. It could be individuals and, to use the colloquial term, hackers or even states that would be engaging in certain forms of cyber-activity. The proposed act would give CSE the ability to interfere and even counter certain things that might be done, which is very separate from reforming elements of the previous Bill C-51.

Parts 4 and 5 deal with metadata collection and the threat disruption powers being given to CSIS. In the case of the metadata collection, that of course is something new. In the case of threat disruption, we are obviously looking at what the specific intent of the bill was, which is to repeal and amend, in this case to amend certain things brought in under Bill C-51 in the previous Parliament.

We are also looking at changes to SCISA, the information-sharing regime brought in by former Bill C-51. That again leads us to argue that parts 4 and 5, given their nature and the connection they have with previous legislation that is being changed, should be looked at together.

Part 6 has to do with the Secure Air Travel Act and the no-fly list. We definitely think this needs to be separated. There are a number of important elements to consider, not to mention the issue of funding and the different work that will be done by the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Transport in co-operation with airlines.

Part 7 deals with specific changes to the Criminal Code, certain offences that were brought in under Bill C-51, and other aspects that needed to be cleaned up based on the reforms the government wishes to propose to the Criminal Code, specifically to what the previous government did in that respect. We are looking here specifically at how terrorism charges are laid and prosecuted in Canada, which is fair to argue is very distinct from dealing with cybersecurity threats or even the no-fly list. We are looking here at the way the justice system is treating these matters.

Part 8 is in the same vein because it proposes changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It looks at those offences, but from the perspective of young offenders and, more specifically, at how to deal with those particular cases.

Parts 9 and 10 are the more procedural elements, dealing with statutory review and coming into force provisions. We believe that we can group together parts 7, 8, 9, and 10.

As you obviously know, the Standing Order currently gives you the power to divide a bill, but is limited to “the motion for second reading and reference to a committee and the motion for third reading and passage of the bill.” I am sure that could be read to mean that you do not have the power to divide the bill for a vote on a motion like the one before us to immediately refer a bill to a committee forthwith.

The government, by presenting this motion in a way that, on the surface, is well intentioned and indicates its wish to significantly amend the bill and hear experts at committee, I submit is actually attempting to circumvent Standing Order 69.1, knowing full well that this is omnibus legislation. It is trying to do so by sending this bill to committee before second reading, and therefore preventing us from going forward with the way the Standing Order is now drafted, which would mean second reading and then referral to committee. That is not how the process would take place given the motion that is before the House today.

This bill has so many components and, as the government has said, is perhaps one of the most significant changes to the various components of national security, whether oversight, CSE, or CSIS. It includes some significant changes to how national security cases are charged and prosecuted in the judicial system. It is telling that the government seems to recognize the omnibus nature of the bill in debate here today. It seems the only procedural way to hide the omnibus nature of the bill is for the government to present the motion today to provide it with a legislative pathway that would allow it to circumvent its own new rules in the Standing Orders on omnibus provisions.

We are concerned that the Liberal government is hiding the omnibus nature of this bill from the public. From a communications point of view, we know it sounds nice to only talk about the oversight elements when experts have agreed there are very significant concerns over how cyber-weapons, as described in part 3 of the bill, would operate. We have even heard experts say it is not possible for them to fully analyze all of the elements or the entire scope of the bill, even with their own expertise. To me, that is very telling of the omnibus nature of the bill and the difficulties of undertaking a legislative process in the way proposed by the government.

While wanting to give the benefit of the doubt to the government and its good intentions to have a robust study, the feeling we get from our reading of the Standing Order seems to be that this is an attempt to do through the back door what it is forbidden from doing through the front door, thereby preventing you and the powers conferred on you in this place to separate the different aspects of the bill.

I assert that under Standing Order 69.1, the role of the Speaker is to apply the rules of the House to deal with different concepts and themes in a bill with a different vote, which is obviously what I am raising today, so that MPs can represent their constituents' views differently on each part of a bill if they believe they should and are able to vote appropriately based on the different complexities and nature of different points. As my colleague from Victoria just pointed out in his speech, the fact that we might agree with the government on going forward with certain elements of oversight is distinct from a debate on cybersecurity or one on the no-fly list, which are very different matters. Pardon my choice of words, but I believe comparing oversight to cybersecurity, the Criminal Code, and the no-fly list seems a little ludicrous, and makes it very challenging as members of Parliament to properly vote and express ourselves.

By having the bill go through before second reading, the government is arguing that it should be treated as one whole question. It is all about security. However, anything can essentially be qualified as national security. That is obviously not enough of a common element.

When we look at what these different parts would do, the new acts that would be created and the acts that would be amended, forcing MPs to vote on the creation of two new acts and the amendments of dozens of other acts, such significant acts as the National Defence Act, the CSIS Act, and others, it certainly causes problems for members of Parliament who wish to vote on these different distinct components. I also submit that it circumvents these very same omnibus rules that have been put in place by a government that said this would no longer be a practice, as we saw under the previous government.

Mr. Speaker, you stated in your November 8 ruling about the uses of Standing Order 69.1, “In my view, the spirit of the Standing Order was to provide for a separate vote when new or unrelated matters were introduced in the budget implementation bill.” I agree with the logic you expressed at the time and believe that in this case, the same logic could apply. We are, of course, dealing with new and unrelated matters that were not part of the debate leading up to the tabling of the legislation and the arguments the government made for the need to reform certain elements of legislation tabled in the previous Parliament. I hope you will agree with our assessment and arrive at the same finding here today.

Finally, I submit that Standing Order 69.1 should apply at all stages of the process, including sending the bill to committee before second reading. Again, the motion is before us today. This way, a bill that contains very different ideas would be divided in such a way at every stage that members could continue to express their views, the views of their constituents and the views of Canadians more broadly in dealing with these very distinct and complicated matters when it comes to these important reforms and not simply having to say yes or no to these sweeping reforms and then be accused of being on one side or the other when clearly there are some very distinct components.

I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. New Democrats fundamentally believe that these important and unique changes to such cornerstones of our democracy as national security and the protection of Canadians' rights and freedoms and privacy deserve to be separated in order for members to express Canadians' concerns and views through a vote. That is why I thought it was extremely important to bring all of this to the attention of the House.

Public Safety

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, that process is under way. The hon. gentleman will know that debate has begun in the House on Bill C-59. Bill C-59 gives us the legal authority to do exactly what he has suggested in his question. We will need to adjust regulations. We will also need to rebuild the computer system in order to accommodate a fully interactive government-controlled system, instead of the flawed system his government introduced a number of years ago.

National Security Act, 2017

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague pointed out the fact that over the previous week, many of us in this chamber had the opportunity to participate in remembrance services across our ridings to thank our men and women in uniform for standing up for the freedoms we enjoy today. He also pointed out that Bill C-59 makes it more difficult for our security and police officers to intercept emerging threats.

However, one of the most disturbing comments I heard this past weekend is what appears to be an attempt to rebrand these terrorists who are returning to Canada as simply “returning foreign terrorist travellers”. Does my colleague have any comments to make on this attempt to rebrand a group of people we should be doing everything we can to keep out of our country?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise at this stage of our study of Bill C-59.

Nine days ago, on Remembrance Day, November 11, all Canadians, including MPs, were united in our thoughts. Hundreds of commemorative events took place on that day. Personally, in my riding, I commemorated Remembrance Day in the indigenous community of Wendake with my 94-year-old father, a World War II veteran.

I am mentioning this because Remembrance Day unites all Canadians, and especially because it reminds us that Canada has always been on the right side of history. Canada has always fought the enemies of freedom and defended the values that it holds dear and that unite us. In World War I and World War II, the enemy was a nation, a country. It had a uniform and a flag. It displayed its colours. Today, the enemy is everywhere and nowhere all at once. The enemy is terrorism.

That is why we must fight this enemy with all our energy and necessary tools. That is why I wanted to draw a parallel between the hundreds of thousands of Canadians and soldiers around the world who made the ultimate sacrifice by laying down their young lives to fight the enemies of freedom and those who, today, in the 21st century, fight the enemies of our core principles, the terrorists.

The world changed on September 11, 2001. When terrorism reared its ugly head and attacked our neighbour and ally, the United States, the world took drastic action to combat terrorism. Since terrorism is cowardly and hypocritical, and since the enemy has no pride or honour and does not follow rules, terrorists are always everywhere, insidious, masked, hiding in the shadows and waiting in ambush, because they have no honour or even the courage to defend their beliefs honourably. We must therefore fight the enemy with information and, here in Canada, with CSIS.

The enemy has struck south of the border, and it has struck here as well. Thirty-seven months ago, almost to the day, the enemy came right up to the door of the House of Commons in Ottawa, and we lived through a tragic and horrible act of terrorism. That is why the Conservative government at the time, with the help of several individuals, took the necessary measures to combat terrorism in Canada by introducing Bill C-51, which was sponsored by the hon. member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, then minister of public safety, and by the hon. Peter MacKay, then minister of justice.

Some were in agreement with the bill, while others opposed it. I would like once again to point out the cohesiveness of the NDP, as the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie was saying. We do not agree, but they, like us, are consistent. Curiously, the people who now make up the government voted in favour of the bill. We were happy, but a few months later, during the election campaign, those same people got all worked up about Bill C-51, saying that it made no sense. They said that, if they were elected, they would properly restore order and discipline. It took them 18 months to come up with Bill C-59, which they introduced at the very end of the session last June. If I remember correctly, it was June 17, just before we returned to our ridings to work with our constituents.

This bill is nothing short of massive. It proposes to amend nine acts over as many chapters, for a total of some 140 pages. It is what we might call a mammoth bill or an omnibus bill, but let us set political rhetoric aside and get to the meat of the matter.

Why, in our opinion, should this bill be studied?

On this side of the House, we believe that CSIS agents should be given all the tools they need to detect and eradicate terrorism. It is the best course of action.

If I spoke of Remembrance Day at the top of my speech, that was to remind the House that, today, our enemy hides in the shadows. The enemy is a hypocrite, a coward. It knows no religion or law. It has no flag. It is everywhere and nowhere all at once. We must therefore allocate the resources needed to root it out. We must provide all necessary tools to law enforcement working to eradicate terrorism should it ever rear its ugly head in Canada.

We believe that the bill will make the work of CSIS agents more difficult, because they will have to work harder to convince judges to give them the authority they need to take action. This is true for several measures, whether for “altering, removing, replacing, destroying, disrupting or degrading a [terrorist] communication or means of communication”, or for “altering, removing, replacing, destroying, degrading or providing—or interfering with the use or delivery of—any thing or part of a thing, including records, documents, goods, components and equipment”. Wars hinge on such things.

If we want to eradicate terrorism, we must allow our police officers to address terrorist activity directly, by intercepting the transmission of communications and documents.

The same applies when it comes to “fabricating or disseminating any information, record or document”.

The same also applies when it comes to “making or attempting to make, directly or indirectly, any financial transaction that involves or purports to involve currency or a monetary instrument”.

These people are not living hand to mouth. They are extremely well paid, in fact. We must locate the source of their funding.

It is the same when it comes to “interrupting or redirecting, directly or indirectly, any financial transaction...interfering with the movement of any person; and personating a person, other than a police officer, in order to take a measure referred to in [the previous act]”.

What that means is that, with Bill C-59 and its proposed new measures, the current government is making the work of police officers who risk their lives every time they try to flush out terrorists. That is our concern.

It is the same thing with cyber-attacks. Bill C-59 sets out the government's plan to protect Canadians from the terrorist enemy's attacks via Internet, or what are known as cyber-attacks. The government needs to take measures that can directly thwart the enemy and cause it to back down when it comes to cyber-attacks.

Oddly enough, the government is giving the Minister of Foreign Affairs veto power in this regard. Why? Why give veto power to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and not the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Justice, or the Minister of Transport?

If, God forbid, the enemy wanted to undermine our air travel security, for example, why would the foreign affairs minister have veto over whether we launch a cyber-attack against the terrorists? We do not understand the reasoning behind this measure.

That is why we have serious concerns about this bill, which will also affect our foreign relations with our main partners, friends, and allies in the battle all democracies are waging against terrorism. Three weeks ago, the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles talked about a sad reality, and that is the fact that 60 members of the Taliban who fought against our troops in Afghanistan have come back to Canada. That is like Canada welcoming 60 members of the SS immediately following the Second World War. That would have been unspeakable. For all of those reasons, we have reservations regarding this bill.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, those are great questions.

I would like to start by highlighting some of the changes that are being proposed. Part 8 of Bill C-59 would amend certain provisions of the YCJA to ensure that youth protection applies in relation to recognizance orders, including recognizance with conditions and peace bond proceedings.

First, we are bringing in protection and making sure that protection is recognized when it is needed. Second, these amendments clarify that the youth justice court has exclusive jurisdiction to impose these orders on youth, and eliminates any uncertainty about the applicability of certain provisions to a youth for whom a recognizance order is being sought. Third, in addition, there is currently no access period. What this bill is proposing as an amendment to YCJA is to make sure we have six months after the expiry date of the order, limiting the time that the youth record can be ordered.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise today to speak in support of the national security act, 2017, Bill C-59. Two years ago, our government came to Ottawa with the promise that it would address the numerous problematic elements of Bill C-51, which was enacted by the previous government. Canadians agreed that in attempting to safeguard the security of Canada, Bill C-51 failed to strike a balance between security and freedom.

Today I am proud to be able to rise in this House and say that we have wholeheartedly delivered our commitment to addressing those problem areas. Our government began its commitment to achieving this goal by first reaching out to Canadians in an unprecedented consultation process, where all agreed that accountability, transparency, and effectiveness are needed from their security agencies.

Secondly, Bill C-22 was passed earlier this year, which created the multi-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. It is tasked with reviewing national security and intelligence activities through unprecedented access, with the goal of promoting government-wide accountability. On November 6, our Prime Minister followed through on this commitment by announcing the members of the committee. Today we are debating the national security act, 2017, Bill C-59, the last step in achieving our commitment to improving those problematic elements of Bill C-51. This package consists of three acts, five sets of amendments, and a comprehensive review process.

In creating the national security and intelligence review agency, the office of the intelligence commissioner, and the Communications Security Establishment, we have created the robust and effective national security establishment that Canadians have asked for. In addition, we are amending the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, and the Secure Air Travel Act to strengthen the role of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, limit the collection of personal information, safeguard Canadian rights to peaceful assembly, and fix problems with the no-fly list.

Finally, our amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act would ensure young persons would be provided with all appropriate child protection, mental health, and other social measures needed when faced with a terrorism-related offence. Through my work on the mental health caucus, I know how important it is for all Canadians, especially those of marginalized groups, to have access to all available safeguards, services, and measures when navigating the criminal justice system. Therefore, I am pleased to speak today specifically about these proposed amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act included in part 8 of the national security act, 2017.

My riding of Richmond Hill is an incredibly diverse and vibrant riding, where over half of my constituents are Canadians from an immigrant background. Of these, the majority are youths and young families under the age of 30. For this reason, I am proud to say that through this set of amendments, our government is taking action to ensure that all youth involved in the criminal justice system are afforded the enhanced protections provided by Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, while also holding them accountable for their actions.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act, or YCJA, is the federal law that governs Canada's youth aged 12 to 17 who commit criminal offences, including terrorism offences. The YCJA recognizes that the youth justice system should be separate from the adult system, and based on the principle of diminished moral blameworthiness of youth. It emphasizes rehabilitation and reintegration, just and proportionate responses to offending, and enhanced procedural protections for youth. The act also recognizes the importance of involving families, victims, and communities in the youth criminal justice system. The YCJA contains a number of significant legal safeguards to ensure that young people are treated fairly and that their rights are fully protected, for example, the identity publication ban, and significant restrictions on access to youth records.

Young people also have enhanced right to counsel, including state-provided counsel, and the right to have parents or other guardians present throughout key stages of the investigation and judicial processes. If a young person is charged, all proceedings take place in youth court. In addition, the YCJA would establish clear restrictions on access to youth records, setting out who may access youth records, the purpose for which youth records may be used, and the time periods during which access to records is permitted. Generally speaking, although the offences set out in the Criminal Code apply to youth, the sentences do not. Instead, the YCJA sets out specific youth sentencing principles, options, and durations. There is a broad range of community-based youth sentencing options, and clear restrictions on the use of custodial sentences.

Turning now to Bill C-59, it is important to recognize that there have been very few cases in Canada in which a young person has been involved in the youth criminal justice system due to terrorism offences. In total, we have had six young people charged since 2002. Two were found guilty, three were put under a peace bond, and one had the charges dropped. Nonetheless, it is important to ensure that when this occurs, the young people are held to account, but also that they are afforded all of the enhanced protection under the YCJA. It is perhaps even more important in terrorism-related offences that we do everything in our power to reform young offenders so that future harm is prevented.

Part 8 of Bill C-59 would amend the provision of the YCJA to ensure that youth protections apply in relation to anti-terrorism and other recognizance orders. It also provides for access to youth records for the purpose of administering the Canadian Passport Order, subject to the special privacy protections set out in the YCJA. The bill would also make important clarifications with respect to recognizance orders. Although the YCJA already provides youth justice courts with the authority to impose these orders, several sections of the YCJA would be amended to state more clearly that youth justice courts have exclusive jurisdiction to impose recognizance on youth. This would eliminate any uncertainty about the applicability of certain rights of protection, including the youths' right to counsel. In addition, there is currently no access period identified for records relating to recognizance. Therefore, the YCJA would be amended to provide that the access period for these records would be six months after the order expires.

With respect to the Canadian Passport Order, Bill C-59 would amend the YCJA to specifically permit access to youth records for the purpose of administering Canada's passport program. The Canadian Passport Order contemplates that passports can be denied or revoked as a result of certain criminal acts, or in relation to national security concerns. For example, section 10.1 of the Canadian Passport Order stipulates that the minister of public safety may decide to deny or revoke a passport if there are reasonable grounds, including that revocation is necessary to prevent the commission of a terrorism offence, or for the national security of Canada or a foreign country or state.

The current YCJA provisions governing access to youth records do not speak to access for passport matters. As noted, Bill C-59 would allow access in appropriate circumstances. However, it is important to note that the sharing of youth information on this provision would still be subject to the special privacy protection of the YCJA. Canadians can be assured that our government is addressing the national security threat while continuing to protect democratic values, rights, and freedoms for Canadians. Those two goals must be pursued with equal dedication.

I encourage all my colleagues to vote in support of the bill.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

My answer will be brief. Unfortunately, I do not have much hope, since, despite the government’s promises to co-operate, collaborate, and be more open and democratic, that is not what we have been seeing in the past two years with the constant use of its parliamentary majority to crush the opposition. Let us hope that, because of the scope of the issue, this time it will be different.

I would like to draw my colleague’s attention, and the attention of everyone listening, to the fact that the text of Bill C-59 concerning the definition of “activity that undermines the security of Canada” includes “significant or widespread interference with critical infrastructure”.

The NDP is concerned that interference with critical infrastructure might result in authorizing secret services to spy on people who intend to protest the construction of new pipelines. With a government that has just given its support to Kinder Morgan and Keystone XL, we are concerned that Bill C-59 could be targeting peaceful, ecologically minded, or indigenous protesters.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, of course Canadians want to feel safe, but they also want to feel free and not as if they are being spied on all the time. Having a good watchdog to oversee the police who are watching us is crucial, but that is lacking in the bill right now. We will see if Liberals are open to accepting some important amendments.

I would also like to mention the fact that there is something missing in Bill C-59. It does not mention the new directive introduced in October 2017. This is a government directive on public safety and emergency preparedness that says that Canada does not condone torture and that it does not practise torture. We agree that this is a very good thing. However, what is missing and what is not amended in Bill C-59 is that we will not under any circumstances use information that other countries might have obtained through torture.

This is like saying that we are against torture, but that we reserve the right to use information that was obtained through torture in other countries. Generally speaking, information obtained through torture is worthless, since people being tortured will say anything. This also destroys our principled stand on the serious issue of torture based on our values as Canadians.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to talk about this important bill.

Earlier today, the Minister of Public Safety said that a government has no greater responsibility than keeping its people safe. These people live in our ridings. They are our colleagues, our neighbours, family friends, even our own children. The public safety minister is absolutely right. All governments around the world are responsible for keeping their people safe. That is a weighty and fundamental responsibility that must be taken seriously.

However, the minister was unable to add that the government's responsibility to protect people's freedoms is just as important. It has been obvious from the get-go that the government's approach is skewed toward security and policing and that it is much less interested in talking about the importance of protecting our freedoms.

As citizens who are privileged to live in a democratic society where we can vote and say what we want and enjoy freedom of expression and freedom of association, we must never forget what a long, hard road it has been to get here. We must resist any attempt to undo our progress by taking away any of our rights and freedoms. Bill C-59 is shocking in several ways, considering it comes from the party that authored the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This worries us, as progressive New Democrats and as democrats.

Bill C-59 continues the Liberal Party's two-faced tradition of saying one thing and doing the opposite. The Liberals can advocate one thing and then make decisions that oppose it. The member for Winnipeg North has just demonstrated this perfectly by reminding us that Bill C-51 was strongly opposed by civil society organizations, experts, and defenders of civil liberties, and yet the Liberal Party, with an eye on the upcoming election, voted in favour of Bill C-51 because it would help the party on the campaign trail. It is hard to follow the Liberals' logic at any given point in time. They are not consistent.

It is too bad that we are dealing with a government that plays politics, waffles, contradicts itself, and is sometimes incredibly hypocritical. We can blame the previous Conservative government for a lot of things, but a lack of consistency is not one of them, even though we were often strongly opposed to its decisions.

The Liberals' habit of talking out of both sides of their mouths is not just affecting our security intelligence agencies and police forces. It is as though we have been listening to a broken record for the past two years. The Liberals have been saying that Canada is back on the world stage and that they are going to take tougher action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, we can see that this is all a sham. The Liberals have adopted the same plan as the Harper Conservatives and are approving pipelines left and right, which is obviously going to increase our greenhouse gas emissions. The Liberals are saying one thing and doing another.

The Liberals talk about an open and transparent government, but the changes they are making to the Access to Information Act will make it more difficult and complicated to follow that approach. The Liberals are saying that they want to restore people's confidence in public institutions, but then ministers are hosting cash-for-access fundraisers at $1,500 a ticket.

What is happening today is therefore just another example of the Liberals playing politics at the expense of Canadians' safety and security. They are merely tinkering with Bill C-51, when the NDP and others believe it should be repealed. We need to start from square one and draft a good bill that makes Canadians safer, since that is absolutely essential.

We want to do everything we can to prevent terrorists and other ill-intentioned people from coming here and plotting or preparing attacks or violence against Canadians. We also want to give our democratic institutions and watchdogs the tools needed to watch the watchers. If this is not done properly, we could see a shift towards a police state that infringes on our privacy and digs through our personal lives to gather a bunch of information, even when there is no reason to suspect someone of wanting or attempting to do anything wrong.

We believe that Bill C-51 jeopardized our privacy, our freedom of expression, and our freedom of association. Unfortunately, Bill C-59 does not do what it takes to correct that. The Liberals have missed the mark. A few of these measures might be worthwhile, but overall, the Liberals are continuing the dangerous trend we saw under the previous Conservative government.

The new oversight and review mechanisms are limited and do not offset the exchange and sharing of information and almost unlimited powers within our security agencies. This is a major concern.

There is something rather ironic about what I am going to say, but it must be said as it is of great concern to us. In November 2016, or last year, the Federal Court handed down a ruling with respect to the massive collection of data by CSIS. It had illegally kept personal electronic data for more than 10 years. In its rather scathing and very clear ruling, Justice Simon Noël stated that CSIS breached its duty to inform the court of this data collection since the information was gathered using judicial warrants.

CSIS should not have retained the information since it was not directly related to threats to the security of Canada. That is important. That is a very real example that highlights all the concerns of people who wonder what type of information will be collected about them, who will have access to this information, and to whom this information will be communicated and transferred. In November 2016, the Federal Court pointed out that there can be exaggerations. This is not a figment of the imagination. It happened here.

The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness quickly reacted and said that the government took note of this and would not appeal this decision. Oh, okay. That is a good sign. Perhaps it is a step in the right direction. Oh, wait. Surprise! In Bill C-59, the Liberal government responds to the Federal Court decision in a strange way when it comes to our privacy protections. The new law will allow CSIS to collect huge amounts of metadata containing confidential information about Canadians that is not relevant to its investigations.

The November 2016 Federal Court ruling stated that CSIS did not have the right to do so, and that it was illegal. Bill C-59 makes it legal. People need to understand that if Bill C-59 is passed, CSIS will be able to collect huge amounts of metadata containing confidential information about Canadians that is not relevant to its investigations. These are the kinds of things that make it impossible for us to fall in line with the Liberal government. Yes, we are happy that we can study Bill C-59 more closely, but we are sounding a warning bell.

We are telling Quebecers and Canadians in general to be careful, because there are elements in this bill that will increase police surveillance. We are going to be spied on more, and we do not know who is going to end up with the information.

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

Madam Speaker, I have full confidence in the intelligence-gathering processes in Bill C-51, which we passed in a previous Parliament, in 2015. That piece of legislation allowed for information-sharing between CBSA, the RCMP, CSIS, CSE, and the Department of Foreign Affairs. I think most Canadians just assumed this had already been taking place. With government, everything always operates in silence. When we can level things off and allow information-sharing to percolate through all departments, we do a much better job of protecting Canadians, whether it is at the border, at the ports, or on our own turf.

I have a concern about returning ISIS fighters and the whole policy of reintegration rather than incarceration for these people. I think all of us are concerned about that. That is why Bill C-59 has to be studied in great detail, with expertise, so amendments can be made to the bill so that this legislation does not actually become reality.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have read in detail Bill C-59. As the last speaker mentioned, there are over 140 pages in the bill. There are some good parts in this legislation, but there are parts I have a lot of concern about. One is the limits the bill would place on the ability of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to reduce terrorist threats in Canada. It bothers me that we would start pulling some of its authority and some of its ability to effectively make Canada safer for the public. The bill would limit the ability of government departments to share data among themselves to protect Canada's national security.

The hon. member talked about ISIS fighters coming back to Canada and the fact that we have a government that is not going to take a strong stand on this. It should be taking a strong stand.

I wonder if my colleague could comment on the ability of our government agencies to share information about the people coming back. Do we just want them to filter into our communities?

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

Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise to address Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters.

This is an omnibus bill that is making some significant changes to the way national security is going to be dealt with in this country. It is a huge bill. It is over 140 pages long. It has a great deal of information, some that is quite concerning to us as the official opposition.

I have taken the time to read through the bill, and I am quite concerned about some of the things in here. As I just mentioned to the Minister of National Defence, one of the concerns is around CSE, which has traditionally been an organization that is under the National Defence Act. It has worked alongside our Canadian Armed Forces to ensure that our guys who are deployed are safe. That, in itself, is something that has to be paramount in what CSE continues to do.

The Communications Security Establishment is a great organization and one we support wholeheartedly. It has always respected the laws of Canada. It has worked very closely with our Five Eyes partners—the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand—in collecting intelligence and sharing that where possible. At the same time, it respects Canadians' privacy rights and charter rights to ensure that they are not being unjustly spied on, unless, of course, they are acting in a manner that concerns national security and may be committing some sort of criminal act.

This bill, overall, would weaken our national security in this country. It would change the way CSIS and CSE operate, as well as the RCMP and other police agencies. It proves again that the Liberals are not serious when it comes to public safety. They prefer to water things down rather than do what is right.

It is interesting to watch. We have members on the other side who, when the Liberals were the third party, voted in favour of Bill C-51. Today they are watering down that very act. I have real concerns about how our allies, particularly our Five Eyes partners, are going to feel about the trustworthiness and interoperability of CSIS, the RCMP, and CSE and their security intelligence-gathering mechanisms.

To highlight this and show that the Liberals are not serious about protecting Canadians and how we deal with terrorism, just this past week, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness said, when talking about Canadians who joined ISIS and became ISIS terrorists and ISIS fighters, that he wants to reintegrate them back into Canada, not charge them under the Criminal Code as terrorists and not charge them under the Criminal Code for committing treason because they are fighting against Canada and our allies in Iraq and Syria. He wants to reintegrate them. That is disgusting.

I have heard over and over again this past week in the riding that Canadians are concerned that the Liberals are putting their lives at risk, because they are going to allow these ISIS fighters to return to Canada. These terrorists who have been radicalized will come back here, and rather than being incarcerated, will have the opportunity to return to their communities and radicalize their families, their friends, and the people they interact with. That is completely unacceptable. That just proves the fact that the Minister of Public Safety and the Liberal government are not taking security seriously.

We can compare that to what the U.S. government is doing, what the government of France is doing, and what the government of the United Kingdom is doing. They have put out kill orders for all their fighters fighting in Syria and Iraq right now. They have been told to shoot to kill anyone who came from Great Britain, the United States, or France who was radicalized and joined ISIS and is in Syria and Iraq fighting their forces. This is to ensure that their public safety is respected.

That is not happening here in Canada. We are going to reintegrate them. We should at least incarcerate them, but no, we are going to reintegrate them.

In the time I have left, I will speak about the Communications Security Establishment. This is an organization that has done yeoman's service over many decades ensuring that our troops stay safe and ensuring that Canada stays safe. Whenever the commissioner for the Communications Security Establishment has looked at ministerial authorizations that have been given, the rights of Canadians have been respected, whether it has been in collecting metadata, in intelligence-sharing, or when there has been a need to issue warrants for the monitoring of Canadians who are directly or indirectly involved in fundraising for, or the activity of, terrorism or other attacks on Canadians on our soil or that of our allies. They have been able to do that and respect our charter rights, respect the Privacy Act, and ensure that Canadians' rights have been respected on a legal level. I think that is clear.

In the new section on the proposed Communications Security Establishment act in Bill C-59, I applaud the government for bringing forward some clear definitions on cyber-defence and cyber-offence. Times have changed. We need to have the ability not only to defend against cyber-attacks but to take out those cyber-attacks and be pre-emptive, if necessary. If they collect the proper intelligence, we would have the ability to go out and destroy that potential threat. It could be an attack on our infrastructure, an attack on the Government of Canada, an attack on our troops serving overseas, or an attack that would wipe out our financial sector. That capability has to be there, because our cyber-infrastructure, such as power, financial institutions, and government institutions, is critical to the everyday lives of Canadians. We have to be able to pre-emptively remove a threat.

The amazing part of everything we are doing is that under this new cyberwarfare process, under “Cyber Operations Authorizations”, in the proposed Communications Security Establishment act, subclause 30(2) would give a veto to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Always the CSE and CSIS have operated in close collaboration with the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of National Defence, and to some degree, the Minister of Justice. Now the Minister of Foreign Affairs would have a veto over whether we spy on individuals or organizations. The minister would have a veto over whether we launch a cyber-attack or defend ourselves from a cyber-attack by individuals and organizations, whether they were criminal organizations, terrorist organizations, drug cartels, or just hackers. This is something we just do not understand.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs does not have the same intelligence mechanisms within the department that the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of National Defence have access to. Why we would give an authorization to the Minister of Foreign Affairs is beyond me. All we have to do is look at the former minister of foreign affairs, Stéphane Dion, who was acting in a role of appeasing Russia, which is definitely the greatest threat to Canada and the Five Eyes allies. If members look at our partners in the Five Eyes, we are always making sure that we have robust cybersecurity and cyber-intelligence-gathering on the Russian Federation, especially those kleptocrats in the Kremlin and those who want to do harm to our alliance through NATO.

We know that Russia is spying on us. We know that China is spying on us, yet when Stéphane Dion was still the minister of foreign affairs, he had the idea that we would appease the Russians, and he would not authorize those types of spying activities. That cannot be allowed to happen.

The current government is trying to do a trade deal with China. Would the government authorize spying and cyber-defence activities against the Government of China? Is the government so caught up in the idea that it wants to do trade with China, despite China's terrible environmental record and the atrocities it is committing against its own citizens, such as the Falun Gong? I am sure the government would appease China.

We need to make sure we get this right. That is why the bill has to get to committee right away. We have to make these changes so the bill is actually in the best interest of Canada and is not about playing political games, through the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to try to appease some of the greatest threats to our national security. It is to put our safety first, rather than the government's political aspirations.

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Minister of National Defence]

Madam Speaker, as Minister of National Defence, it gives me great pleasure to rise to speak in support of Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters.

As my colleague from public security indicated in his earlier speech, Bill C-59 proposes a number of timely and greatly-needed measures to enhance Canada's national security framework, while respecting the constitutional principles enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This commitment to security and the highest standards of democratic accountability is clearly apparent in part 3 of Bill C-59, which would provide the Communications Security Establishment, known as CSE, with the modern tools and authorities it requires to better protect Canadians from foreign threats.

CSE is one of Canada's critical security and intelligence organizations within the National Defence portfolio. However, it is not a household name. Nevertheless, CSE has a long and proud history. Indeed, over the course of the year, CSE has been celebrating its 70th anniversary, reflecting on its proud service to Canadians since the end of World War II.

I want to highlight the key contribution that CSE makes to our safety and security. Its contribution to the protection of Canada's important cyber-infrastructure cannot be underestimated, and its role in protecting Canadians from terrorism is greatly appreciated.

Currently, CSE's important mission is derived from its authorities within its three-part mandate in the National Defence Act.

First, it is Canada's national signals intelligence agency. It serves the national interest by providing foreign signals intelligence in accordance with the government's intelligence priorities.

I want to emphasize that what CSE does is foreign intelligence. By law, it cannot direct its activities at Canadians or anyone in Canada. CSE's intelligence helps prevent terrorist attacks, radicalizing, and training individuals to carry out attacks in Canada and around the world. It protects Canada's deployed military forces. CSE's foreign intelligence informs Canada's government decision-making in the fields of national security, defence, and international affairs. It provides key insights that help guide Canada and its allies on important issues.

The second part of CSE's mandate is cyber defence and protection. CSE provides advice, guidance, and services to help ensure the protection of electronic information and information infrastructures of importance to the Government of Canada. Its sophisticated cyber and technical expertise helps identify, prepare for, and respond to the most severe cyber-threats and attacks against computer networks and systems, as well as the important information they contain. It helps protect Government of Canada systems from foreign states, hackers, terrorists, and criminals. It tracks cyber-threats from around the world, and works with government departments to defend and strengthen systems against compromise. Finally, CSE helps protect sensitive information held by the government from theft, including the personal information of Canadians.

The third part of CSE's mandate is to provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies in the performance of their lawful duties. Under the assistance mandate, those capabilities may be used to assist a Canadian law enforcement or security agency under the requesting agency's legal authority. Security and intelligence agencies require modern capabilities and powers to maintain the security of our country.

In today's dynamic security environment, CSE's efforts to protect Canada and Canadians against threats are more critical than ever.

Under the bill before us, CSE would be given modern cyber authorities and tools to respond to serious foreign threats. As it works to protect Canadians against threats, CSE knows it has a responsibility to protect privacy, and it takes that responsibility very seriously. Indeed, these principles of lawfulness and privacy are critical to the work of CSE. Protecting Canadian privacy is not an afterthought. It is a fundamental part of the organizational culture and is embedded within CSE's operational structures, policies, and processes.

Across our country, and indeed around the world, governments and citizens are relying on evolving technology to communicate, work, and to live.

We expect to be able to interact with our governments in the digital world, and we want to access our government services online.

In recognition of the cyber-revolution, CSE has focused on improving the government's cyber-defences by building specialized cyber-tools and developing resilience within our systems. We are better positioned to resist and protect ourselves against cyber-threats than ever before. However, as new and sophisticated communications technologies emerge, we need to be prepared to protect ourselves from new threats.

This is the world in which CSE works diligently every day to protect our governments, businesses, and our citizens. Because of our sophisticated understanding of the cyberworld, CSE was asked by the Minister of Democratic Institutions to assess the cyber-threats that faced Canada's democratic processes. Also, it was asked for advice about best cyber practices to all political parties in the House.

Trust in our democratic processes is essential for our democracy to work. We have all seen how our democratic processes have been attractive targets for nation states and non-state actors seeking to influence our country. CSE has, throughout its 70-year history, served our country proudly, while adapting to enormous changes in technology and how people use it in the international security environment and in the threat landscape. Today, cyber is clearly a part of that threatened landscape. In responding to this threat, CSE has proven itself to be an innovative leader and a trusted partner.

In the past year, CSE has also taken several unprecedented steps to be more open and transparent about its work for the country, telling Canadians more about the work it does to protect their security, their personal information, their privacy, and their rights and freedoms. It has increased its public outreach through a number of media interviews, participating as speakers in various symposia and conferences, and assisting in other outreach efforts to discuss CSE's mandate and topical issues around security and defence.

I should also like to add that officials from CSE have appeared many times as invited expert witnesses before committees in both Houses.

Many of my hon. colleagues know these officials as dedicated and knowledgeable public servants who are keen to help us understand the complex work that they undertake. No doubt CSE is embracing an open approach to communicating with Canadians about the important work it does.

There can be no greater obligation than to protect the security of Canadians at home and abroad. Bill C-59 would provide CSE with the authorities and tools to maintain the highest standards in security protection while adhering to the high standards of accountability and transparency.

This is s timely and necessary bill. It would serve both Canada's national security interests and adheres to the Canadian principles of accountable government. It would permit our government to take the necessary and appropriate steps to protect Canadians. This is a bill that would enable our government to do so in an open and transparent way. It is a good bill and we will work hard to implement the measures of the proposed legislation.

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

Madam Speaker, today, we begin debating Bill C-59. In fact, we are debating a motion to send the bill to committee before second reading. I will come back to that.

Bill C-59 is the result of a process that began more than two years ago, even before the current government was elected. We know that we can trace this bill to Bill C-51, which was introduced by the Conservatives and then passed by the Conservative majority, with the support of the Liberals, of course, including the current Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Prime Minister.

When I think about the Liberals' approach to national security in the last parliament, an certain expression comes to mind.

They want to have their cake and eat it too.

That is the problem. It is extremely worrying to see that someone can be so cavalier about an issue as fundamental as the rights of Canadians, their freedom, and their right to privacy. This is what was jeopardized, on several fronts, by the system introduced by the previous Bill C-51. Unfortunately, 10 minutes is not enough for me to review all the problematic elements, so I will instead focus on the Liberal government's effort, which is unfortunately a failure.

Of course, there are some elements that we could support in the current bill. The creation of what some are calling this new body of super SIRC is something we could support. The changes that are being brought forward are long overdue for the no-fly list, although much more needs to be done.

I would be remiss to not mention the importance of the fight we have been waging with groups like the no-fly list kids, fighting the false positives, and making sure the proper funding is there for a proper redress system, which is not something specifically addressed in the bill. It is an element that, at the very least, things have started to move, although not quickly enough for the needs of these families who pay the price in dignity and travel logistics every time they attempt to travel.

There are several elements that we are extremely worried about. There is the part about the information sharing system's name change, as the minister even admitted. This change was brought about with the previous Bill C-51. A new name was given and there was a cosmetic change, but the concerns remain the same. That is what we are hearing from groups like the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. This group explained to us that, despite the good intentions, keeping a system that should have never existed in the first place is problematic. This is why the NDP is asking that the provisions brought about by Bill C-51 be outright repealed. That is what my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke proposed with his Bill C-303, which was put on the Order Paper and was introduced. It proposes to eliminate all these problematic elements.

That is why New Democrats have always called for the full repeal of all elements that were brought in by former Bill C-51. These cosmetic changes that are being proposed by the Liberals are not enough. The concerns still exist about sharing information between government departments. The minister can use the word “disclosure” and say it is already existing information, but the fact of the matter is, if we are considering, for example, a Canadian detained abroad and some of the horrific and tragic situations that have led to many of these national inquiries, which have led to some of the recommendations the government is attempting to act on, part of the problem has always been information sharing. For example, we can look at consular services and foreign affairs, that might be obtaining information about a Canadian detained abroad in a country with a horrible human rights record. That information is being shared with CSIS, that then might share it with the Five Eyes allies, like the U.S., that in the past has not been up to snuff on some cases of the way Canadians have been treated in some of these situations, where they have been stuck in countries with horrible human rights records. None of that would actually be fixed by what is being proposed in the bill.

We have other serious concerns about the bill. One has to do with the changes regarding cybersecurity and, in particular, the idea of creating cyber-weapons. Experts and civil society are very concerned, because the Liberals have not properly explained how these weapons will be protected. We are not talking about traditional weapons that can be stockpiled in a particular location to protect a physical place. We are talking about creating situations in which weapons can easily be moved around the digital world. This point was raised and it is worrisome.

I want to get back to the motion before us. The government is acting as though sending the motion to committee before second reading is a good thing. It claims that the process will allow us to have a more in-depth study. On the surface, it is hard to blame them. We would be happy to have an in-depth discussion on this in committee. It is extremely important.

Consider this. This motion would put us in a position, and the Liberals have attempted to find this loophole, where we can no longer fall back on a standing order specifically to prevent this kind of omnibus legislation from being put forward, once again something the government promised not to do. This is omnibus legislation, the creation of something like three new acts, and many acts being substantially changed. The National Defence Act would change. Different elements of acts under the purview of the public safety minister would change. These disparate elements require separate votes.

The fact is that at 150 pages long, with so many elements being tackled, it is of grave concern that we would have to go through it in such an expedited process. It deserves to be properly separated and considered. That is particularly concerning because that is exactly the approach that the government said it would not take. That was part of the problem with Bill C-51. It changed so many elements of how we would deal with national security and protecting Canadians' rights in this country that it became almost impossible for the committee to give it proper study, despite the valiant attempts that were certainly made by the New Democrat opposition and with little help from the Liberals at the time.

I unfortunately have just 10 minutes, so I want to take this opportunity to say that we will be raising a point of order to try to convince the Chair that we must separate the different elements of this bill. We want to show our support for some of these elements, but we want to call the government to order by opposing the elements that were meant to repair the damage caused by the former Bill C-51. These elements make up the bulk of the bill, but they do not repair that damage.

Let me go back to some of the other problematic elements in this bill that were supposed to be fixed from Bill C-51. Let us look at the threat-reduction powers that were given to CSIS. The very existence of CSIS was specifically to separate the powers of intelligence gathering and law enforcement. Too many times, history pointed to occasions where the RCMP failed to juggle the dual responsibilities of intelligence gathering and law enforcement. Different recommendations led to the creation of CSIS.

The minister is obviously fully aware of this because, as he mentioned in his comments, the CSIS Act was adopted over 30 years ago, with very little overhaul, until Bill C-51 and this legislation being proposed. We have to understand that CSIS does not have threat reduction powers. That responsibility belongs to law enforcement, as well as the information-sharing regime brought in by Bill C-51. Once again, the changes being proposed by New Democrats are certainly an improvement, but when the bar is as low as it was with Bill C-51, it does not go far enough. These are the types of elements of the previous legislation under the previous government that need to be fully repealed. Unfortunately, CSIS was given this responsibility, which is not part of its mandate and should never have been, to begin with. It is exactly the opposite of why CSIS was created.

I see that my time is unfortunately running out. Since we are debating a motion, we have just 10 minutes to debate a 150-page bill. This is obviously one of the reasons why the elements should have been separated.

We are opposed to this motion. The only solution is to repeal all of the elements in the former Bill C-51.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. It is apparent that he is very knowledgeable about the current situation in Canada with respect to all these potential terrorist attacks and the changes occurring all over the world.

Does my colleague really believe that Bill C-59 will improve the protection of honest Canadian citizens? Does it not rather water down the legislation currently in effect in Canada?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. That is precisely what I would like to know, and that is the point of asking questions.

To our understanding, the proposed changes in Bill C-59 will diminish what CSIS agents can do on the ground. Is there something else that it is trying to say? I would love to know. At the end of the day, if I misunderstood, if my team misunderstood, then so be it, but as far as we can tell the agent will have to get a warrant from a judge before taking direct action to address a situation. That is where we take issue with this bill.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-59 and to express my concerns about this bill being passed in its current form. I have read through the bill carefully and tried to understand the intentions of the Liberals, who seem to want to accommodate terrorists.

In the Liberals' speeches, they try to convince us that they are looking out for Canadians and working to keep them safe. However, if we look at their actions, such as the ones proposed in Bill C-59, it is obvious that either the Liberals are getting bad advice, or they are more concerned about the rights of criminals than those of law-abiding Canadians.

Let me explain. The most significant and most contentious change that Bill C-59 would make to the Criminal Code is the amendment of the offence set out in section 83.221, which applies to “Every person who...knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general”. Bill C-59 would introduce a much more stringent test by changing the wording to “Every person who counsels another person to commit a terrorism offence”.

The same goes for the definition of “terrorist propaganda” in subsection 83.222(8), which will significantly reduce the ability of law enforcement officials to use the tool for dismantling terrorist propaganda with judicial authorization as set out in Bill C-51. One could argue that using the expression “another person” means that the offence must target someone specifically rather than the broader target of domestic terrorism and the offence that Bill C-51 is supposed to prevent.

Madam Speaker, I know you understand the importance of what I just said. If Bill C-59 passes in its current form, terrorists will be free to spread all kinds of propaganda using social media, without any fear of being arrested or prosecuted.

The vast majority of terrorist activities are generated from propaganda that is spread in a general way, rather than directed at a specific person. Imagine how this measure will affect the work of our police officers and how we combat terrorism. This proposal is absurd, because it protects criminals and those who want to engage in violence in our country. The government has some explaining to do, and I mean today.

Bill C-59 limits what the Canadian Security Intelligence Service can do to help us protect ourselves. When Bill C-51 was tabled by our government, it gave CSIS the power to engage in threat disruption activities. This meant CSIS could contact the parents of a radicalized youth and urge them to prevent their child from travelling to a war zone or committing an attack here in Canada.

However, if the Liberals' Bill C-59 passes, CSIS will lose that power and will not be able to do anything on the spot to protect us. All of its activities will require a warrant, which is not exactly convenient when the goal is to stop someone from committing an act of terror. Currently, a CSIS agent can pretend to be a local resident to influence someone who is preparing to commit a terrorist act. Bill C-59 will put a stop to that. Agents will just have to watch the threat develop and will have to get a warrant from a judge before they can take action. By the time the warrant is issued, it could be too late. Why are the Liberals putting so many obstacles in the way of law enforcement, who are just trying to protect us Canadians?

The Conservative Party has always taken Canadians' safety seriously, as demonstrated by the introduction and passage of Bill C-51. We must not forget that this bill was passed by the Conservative government with the support of the Liberals, who were then the second opposition party. A couple of years ago, in 2015, the Liberals were in agreement. There was a slight change during the election campaign and now they have introduced Bill C-59, but let us not forget that Bill C-51 was approved by the Liberals.

Now it seems that the Liberals are trying to make things more difficult for the officers tasked with fighting these criminals. In 2015, during the campaign, our Liberal colleagues clearly stated that, if they were elected, they would amend this legislation. It is important to highlight that the bill was only introduced in Parliament at the end of June of this year. It took them 18 months.

The Liberals took their sweet time in keeping their election promise. Perhaps they realized that the original legislation was not as flawed as they thought. They now want to make amendments to show that they are keeping another promise.

The Conservative Party knows how important it is to have measures regarding national security institutions and the responsibility that comes with that. For us, there is no question that the safety of Canadians comes before the comfort of terrorists and criminals. Canadians who love their country come before those who are seeking to destroy it. Unlike the Liberals, we are committed to protecting Canadians. That is not just an idea that we came up with during the election campaign. We have always been committed to that goal because the threat still exists and has not diminished. The threat posed by these criminals is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

We have also heard that these thugs are wandering the streets of our communities after fighting with ISIS. They fought against our own soldiers. We know that they fought alongside ISIS and that many of them came back to Canada. The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is now saying that he is looking for evidence to arrest them. That is all well and good, but in the meantime, Canadians need clearer information about the situation.

Where is the transparency that the Liberals promised Canadians? Why is the Minister of Public Safety not saying anything about these criminals? Why is he being so silent on this?

As it now stands, Bill C-59 will greatly hinder the efforts of our peace officers and compromise the safety of Canadians, while facilitating the work of terrorists.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

moved that:

Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, be referred forthwith to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Madam Speaker, the Government of Canada has no greater responsibility than keeping Canadians safe. We must fulfill that essential and solemn obligation while at the same time safeguarding Canadian rights and freedoms.

This double objective of protecting Canadians while defending their rights and freedoms was the basis of our commitments regarding national security during the last election, and it informed everything we have done in the area since we have been in government.

We have, for example, created a committee of parliamentarians with unprecedented access to classified information to scrutinize the activities of all national security and intelligence agencies. We have launched the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence to help Canada become a world leader in counter-radicalization.

We have issued new ministerial directions that more clearly prohibit conduct that would result in a substantial risk of torture. Our starting point was the most extensive and inclusive consultations about national security ever undertaken by the Government of Canada. Beginning in the spring of 2016, that effort involved individual stakeholders, round tables, town halls, various renowned experts, studies by parliamentary committees, and a broad solicitation of views online. More than 75,000 submissions were received.

All of this fresh input was supplemented by earlier judicial inquires by Iacobucci, O'Connor, and Major, as well as several parliamentary proposals, certain court judgments, and reports from existing national security review bodies. It all helped to shape the legislation before us today, Bill C-59, the national security act of 2017.

The measures in this bill cover three core themes, enhancing accountability and transparency, correcting problematic elements from the former Bill C-51, and updating our national security laws to ensure that our agencies can keep pace with evolving threats.

One of the major advances in this legislation is the creation of the national security and intelligence review agency. This new body, which has been dubbed by some as a "super SIRC", will be mandated to review any activity carried out by any government department that relates to national security and intelligence, as well as any matters referred to it by the government. It will be able to investigate public complaints. It will specifically replace the existing review bodies for CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment, but it will also be authorized to examine security and intelligence activities throughout the government, including the Canada Border Services Agency.

In this day and age, security operations regularly involve multiple departments and agencies. Therefore, effective accountability must not be limited to the silo of one particular institution. Rather, it must follow the trail wherever it leads. It must provide for comprehensive analysis and integrated findings and recommendations. That is exactly what Canadians will get from this new review agency.

Bill C-59 also creates the brand new position of the intelligence commissioner, whose role will be to oversee and approve, or not approve, certain intelligence activities by CSIS and the CSE in advance. The intelligence commissioner will be a retired or supernumerary superior court judge whose decisions will be binding. In other words, if he or she says that a particular proposed operation is unreasonable or inappropriate, it will simply not proceed.

Taken together, the new comprehensive review agency, the intelligence commissioner, and the new committee of parliamentarians will give Canada accountability mechanisms of unprecedented scope and depth. This is something that Canadians have been calling for, and those calls intensified when the former Bill C-51 was introduced. We heard them loud and clear during our consultations, and we are now putting these accountability measures into place.

BillC-59 also brings clarity and rigour to internal government information sharing under the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, or SCISA. This is the law that allows government institutions to share information with each other in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada. Among other things, Bill C-59 would change the name of the law, in English, to the security of Canada information disclosure act, to be clear that we are talking only about the disclosure of existing information, not the collection of anything new. Government institutions will now be required to keep specific records of all disclosures made under the act, and to provide these records to the new review agency.

Importantly, Bill C-59 clarifies the definition of activities “that undermine the security of Canada”. For example, it is explicit in stating that advocacy, protest, dissent, and artistic expression are not included. The new legislation would also provide more precision in the definition of “terrorist propaganda”, in line with the well-known criminal offence of counselling.

The paramountcy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is an overriding principle in Bill C-59. That is perhaps most evident in the updates that we are proposing to the CSIS Act. This is the law that created CSIS back in 1984, and it has not been modernized in any meaningful way since then.

The former Bill C-51 empowered CSIS to engage in measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada without clearly defining what those measures could and could not include. We are now creating a specific closed list of measures that CSIS will have the authority to take to deal with threats. If any such activity might limit a charter right, CSIS will have to go before a judge. The activity can only be allowed if the judge is satisfied that it is compliant with the charter.

Another concern we heard during the consultations and more generally has been about the no-fly list, especially the problem of false positives, which affects people whose names are similar to listed individuals. This is due to long-standing design flaws in the way that the no-fly list was first created many years ago. Those flaws require legislative, regulatory, and technological changes to fix them.

Bill C-59 includes the necessary legislative changes and paves the way for the others that will be necessary. In essence, Canada's no-fly list currently piggybacks onto the airlines' computer systems, which means that the government does not control the fields to be included nor the way that the whole system works. This bill would give us the authority we need to allow the government, instead of airlines, to screen passenger information against the no-fly list. The people who have been affected by this, especially those with children, feel frustrated and stigmatized by their no-fly problems. That is entirely understandable, and that is why we are working so hard to get this fixed. Passing Bill C-59 is a necessary step toward that end.

There is much more in Bill C-59 than I could possibly deal with in these 10 minutes, but in keeping with the open and inclusive approach that we have taken with this legislation since before it was even drafted, we are sending it to committee before second reading to ensure that the examination of the bill is as thorough as possible.

Professor Craig Forcese, a respected expert in national security law from the University of Ottawa, said Bill C-59 “appears to be more carefully crafted than anything we've seen in this area in a long time..”. I appreciate that, but there is still more work to be done.

I certainly hope to hear ideas and advice from colleagues in the House. We are open to constructive suggestions as we work together to ensure that Canada's national security framework is as strong and effective as it can possibly be.

(Bill C–59. On the Order: Government Orders:)

June 20, 2017—the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness—Second reading and reference to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security of Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters.

Business of the House

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, as a small footnote in history, I used to have the honour of serving as the government House leader. After an absence of 807 weeks, it is my privilege to answer this question once again on behalf of my colleague the current government House leader. Again as a historical reference, members might be interested to know that 807 weeks ago, what we were discussing in the Thursday question was reproductive technologies, public safety, competition legislation, species at risk, and pest control. In some ways, things never change. However, to get to the answer, this afternoon we will continue with the report stage debate on Bill C-45, which is the proposed cannabis legislation.

First, let me associate myself, and I am sure all members of the House, with the comments that the opposition House leader made about the respect we all have, and must have, for our veterans and members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

After we return from this constituency week, we will commence debate on Bill C-59, which deals with national security. I would inform the House that, in the interests of transparency, we will be referring this bill to committee before second reading, which will allow for a broader scope of discussion and consideration and possible amendment of the bill in the committee when that deliberation begins.

Following that, we hope to be back to the debate on Bill C-24, which would amend the Salaries Act. Our focus for the rest of the week after we return will be disposing of Bill C-45 at report stage and third reading.

Finally, Thursday of that week will be an allotted day.

Public Safety

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the no-fly list that was designed 10 years ago contains an inherent design flaw that needs to be fixed. To fix it takes legislation and regulation and a new computer system built from the bottom up.

The first step is to pass Bill C-59 to give us the legal authority to do these things. I urge the NDP to support Bill C-59.

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

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-59, as those parents said today at their press conference, does nothing to fix the problem that they face every single time they try to travel. I would ask the minister if he wants to go in front of those families to tell them, “Do not worry, your child is not on the list.” These are the false positives that are being lived by thousands of Canadians.

Children, business people, and even veterans are finding travelling difficult. They are being humiliated, profiled, and are living in fear of ending up on the no-fly list.

Again I ask the minister: will she fully fund an actual redress system, yes or no?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, we fully appreciate the frustration of law-abiding travellers who can be stigmatized and delayed as a result of false positives on the no-fly list.

However, to be clear, there are no children on the no-fly list, but there is confusion among similar names. That takes new legislation to fix that problem, new regulations, and a new computer system.

The first of those steps is being taken in Bill C-59. I urge the NDP to vote for it.

Transport, Infrastructure and Communities

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his interesting question. It reminds me of what we saw with the Conservative government's Bill C-51 and what we are still seeing with Bill C-59. Bill C-59 is supposedly going to repair the damage caused by Bill C-51, which jeopardizes the right of activists to protest for the environment.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is currently in court because the CSIS watchdog refuses to release documents that would show whether these people were spied on. This is sowing division and keeping people from speaking out and making sure the country and the government are on the right track with regard to the environment and sustainable development. We find that unacceptable.

Public Safety

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, the details of Bill C-59 have been examined by the most eminent experts in the field. Every single one of them has said that this represents a major step forward in terms of transparency, scrutiny, and accountability, including real-time oversight and the creation, for the first time, of the office of the intelligence commissioner that will examine the activities of security agencies before those activities are undertaken, as well as having them reviewed afterward.

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

Mr. Speaker, Canadians' overall distrust of our security agencies is a direct consequence of the fact that we have no mechanism to provide real-time oversight and accountability.

The government is currently in court with environmental groups it has accused of spying. Even the watchdog tasked with monitoring CSIS operations failed in its duty by dismissing their complaint and throwing a cloak of total secrecy over the whole case.

Bill C-59 does nothing to fix these problems, but pays lip service to them. When will the minister truly take steps to make real-time oversight, fix these problems, limit the excessive powers of CSIS, and truly protect the rights of Canadians to peaceful protests?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, again I would remind the hon. member that because of the nature of the investigation presently under way, questions of that nature cannot be answered in detail at this time. The police will pursue the evidence wherever it leads, and they will lay charges as appropriate.

With respect to information sharing among departments, I would advise her to examine the details of Bill C-59.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, the design flaws in the no-fly program stretch back many years. It was designed in a way which required people who were inadvertently red-flagged to present themselves at the counter to be cleared manually. That is a very bad system. We are determined to fix it. I would point out for the hon. gentleman that in Bill C-59 he will find the beginning of the legislative changes that are necessary to fix it.

Preclearance Act, 2016

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise again to speak to Bill C-23. I had an opportunity to illuminate many of the great benefits the bill would bring to Canadians in my speech at second reading.

I want to begin my comments by thanking all the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for their work. It is evidenced by the fact that our government adopted all of the committee's amendments, including the NDP amendment for a five year review. There is an excellent relationship between the committee and our ministry in making sure we have the most effective bill possible. It has been a pleasure to work with the committee members, and I want to take the opportunity now at third reading stage to thank them.

It is appropriate that we are speaking to Bill C-23 on the eve of summer. Many Canadians are getting ready for their travel plans, visiting family, or taking a vacation. One of the things they do not want to deal with on vacation is long lines, hassles, and problems getting to where they want to go.

Preclearance would help us facilitate the movement of goods, services, and people, making sure people are avoiding long lines, and that they can expand the number of destinations they can go to. In fact, some 12 million passengers each and every year in the airline sector alone already use preclearance. Some people may use preclearance, and not even realize they do. People flying out of Pearson have the opportunity to go through customs before landing on U.S. soil, which not only accelerates the opportunity for them to get to work, see family, or start their vacation, it also means they get to have that process happen on Canadian soil. I will get back to that in just a moment.

On the range of airports, it means there are a vast number of airports that suddenly open up to airline passengers as if they are domestic travellers. If people want to go to Nashville, for example, in the absence of preclearance, they will be in for a lot of transfers. With preclearance, they get to go there directly, roughly doubling the number of cities they can travel to as Canadian citizens. That is certainly a big benefit as a traveller.

The other point, which is incredibly important, is that often in this debate, we have a discussion in abstraction about whether or not there will be issues with moving preclearance on this side. Aside from the fact that it has already been happening for six decades, there is the point that someone who is already travelling to the United States gets to have that process happen on Canadian soil. The great benefit of that is that individuals have the opportunity to have the full protection of the Canadian charter, the Canadian Bill of Rights, and Canadian law, generally, so that if something were to happen that they did not agree with, there is the opportunity in the process to have that protection on Canadian soil.

It is important to look at this in conjunction with the work we are doing on oversight, more generally, to ensure as we look at our oversight mechanisms more broadly, when someone does have problems, CBSA has independent oversight. Members can see what is proposed with oversight more generally with Bill C-59, which was tabled just yesterday. It was the largest update of our security intelligence framework since the creation of CSIS. It would put in place rigorous and effective oversight, both in the form of a security and intelligence review body, but also in the form of a committee of parliamentarians. I was very pleased to see the Senate adopt BillC-22 without amendment yesterday. It will allow us to bring forward that committee of Parliament.

Therefore, it can be seen that we are looking at oversight, and making sure that the laws and powers that are extended have rigorous oversight. Of course, one of the great advantages of having preclearance happen on Canadian soil is the leverage. If something were to go wrong, there is the opportunity to have discussions bilaterally with our U.S. neighbours to ameliorate that.

There have been some questions about different elements of the bill. For example, if people walk into a detention area, they have to explain why they are there. Some people have taken issue with that, saying there should not be unnecessary delays. Of course, that is exactly the language of the bill. One should only be detained for a limited period of time, and it should only be to ascertain necessary information. Some people have asked, why? Very importantly, we could imagine that if somebody walked into a detention area, was just looking around, casing out a preclearance zone, and then made a decision to leave, we want to know why they were there, why they showed up. Asking questions in that regard is extremely important.

I spoke to many of these matters when we were at second reading. I want to come to the testimony we heard at committee. The committee had an excellent opportunity to hear from a very wide array of witnesses as to the economic and other benefits that would come as a result of Bill C-23.

We are all aware of the aspirations of the Jean Lesage and Billy Bishop airports. It is important to enumerate and talk about some of the other witnesses we heard from in terms of the benefits of this bill. In conjunction with that, technical briefings were provided to parliamentarians by Public Safety Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency that expanded upon some of the concerns, and I hope answered them.

I would like to go to the individuals from a variety of sectors such as tourism, Canada-U.S. trade, airports, and others. They told the public safety committee how preclearance would benefit their businesses. On that basis, I am going to begin with the tourism industry.

Rocky Mountaineer, one of the sites included in preclearance expansion, spoke to committee about how the current customs process works at their station in Vancouver, B.C. With routes that run between Vancouver and Seattle, Rocky Mountaineer currently uses post-clearance customs and immigration processes.

For example, on a southbound journey, U.S. customs and border protection officers conduct customs proceedings on arrival in Seattle. It can take 30 to 45 minutes to clear an entire train upon arrival. With preclearance, passengers would be cleared as they arrive to the train station, similar to the experience they go through at one of the eight Canadian airports with preclearance operations, some of which I was referring to earlier. Instead of a large group of people arriving simultaneously to be cleared, passengers could be managed as they arrive, and check in for their trip. It would be a more comfortable and manageable experience for passengers, and much more efficient for customs and immigration officers. That is the primary goal of Bill C-23 more broadly, to make the traveller experience more efficient, while maintaining security standards at the border.

As the Business Council of Canada pointed out during its testimony to committee, travellers seek out the path of greatest convenience and least resistance in air travel. It is not just the convenience factor, but there is a major economic benefit to the changes being talked about today. As Canadians or others are contemplating what kind of travelling they may want to do this summer, or any point in the year, they are going to choose the options where they are least inhibited, and are going to be dealing with the least number of headaches. Helping facilitate that is only in our best interest, particularly when we are thinking of foreign visitors who may be attempting to travel in and around North America.

preclearance would give Canada a competitive advantage. It would increase the number of destinations Canadians could travel to directly. I gave examples earlier, and Reagan airport in Washington is another great example. Without preclearance facilities, a traveller from Ottawa would not be able to fly directly to Reagan because it does not have customs and immigration facilities. I gave the other example earlier of Nashville.

Once travellers would be pre-cleared in a Canadian airport, they would arrive in the United States just like any other domestic travellers in the U.S. It would let them step off the plane immediately, make a connection, head to a meeting, or begin their vacation, all because they were able to pre-clear at the start of their travels in Canada.

The Business Council of Canada further stated that our country has a great desire for increased trade investment in tourism, and expanding preclearance would give a tremendous competitive advantage. It is worth noting that, in an age when there is so much competition for trade and commerce, anything we can do to eliminate obstacles and red tape, and move people, goods, and services in a better fashion is only to our advantage. Where we do not put it in place, we have a competitive disadvantage that is incredibly inhibiting. What we heard in testimony is how important it is to have preclearance go through to make sure we continue to have a strong competitive advantage.

Billy Bishop Airport also spoke specifically to this advantage. It has worked extensively to bring preclearance to the Toronto Island Airport over the last several years, and would work to implement preclearance facilities at its airport with the passage of Bill C-23.

I have had the opportunity to meet with the folks who are responsible for Billy Bishop, and they are ready to go. They foresee enormous economic benefits, not only for that airport, but for the entire greater Toronto region, and of course for the Canadian economy.

Billy Bishop welcomed 2.7 million passengers in 2016 alone, generating $2.1 billion as an economic impact per year. It is a huge amount, and that is before it has preclearance. It is the sixth-largest departing airport for U.S.-bound passengers, and the ninth-largest airport in Canada. Expanding preclearance to Billy Bishop will promote speed, access to increased destinations, and efficiencies, all without compromising security or safety of the border. In fact, from my earlier comment earlier, it would enhance them. It would make sure that Canadians are getting their preclearance done on Canadian soil under the full protection of Canadian law.

Toronto Pearson International Airport is the original example of the benefits of preclearance, as the original airport to be granted preclearance. As the Greater Toronto Airport Authority testified before committee, each new link or flight route is an opportunity for trade and jobs, something I do not think anybody in this House wants to stand between.

Toronto Pearson has become the fourth-largest air entry point into the United States. It pre-cleared six million passengers last year alone. It has had a 30% increase in preclearance traveller growth in the past five years. Quite simply, these numbers demonstrate the undeniable need for expansion and preclearance. If we see the benefit and impact of preclearance at Pearson, and we imagine Billy Bishop and all the other locations that are contemplating preclearance, and we magnify that increase in travel and that increase in commerce, it is not hard to get to a very significant number and the billions of dollars in increased activity for our economy.

The Tourism Industry Association of Canada spoke to these benefits as well. It noticed last year that $91.6 billion was generated from tourism revenues in Canada alone. Over 627,000 Canadians are employed in the tourism industry. It is a massive number of people who are counting on us to have a regime that works for them, and facilitates movement of people, goods, and services.

As Canada's tourism industry grows, we must ensure that we are doing all we can to modernize and expedite the flow of people and products across our border with the United States. Not only does preclearance attract tourists, but it can attract the air service, and allow airports to offer enhanced connectivity in an incredibly competitive global industry. It is a huge boon for both travellers and airports.

Canadian airports connect and manage over 133 million passengers each and every year. Of those, 9.8 million are tourists to Canada. In 2015, 12 million travellers were pre-cleared in Canadian airports to travel to the United States. The expansion of preclearance to additional airports and other modes of travel, such as rail, will build on the success of preclearance operations. The economic and traveller benefits cannot be overstated. As we heard from many in the tourism, airport, rail, and Canada-U.S. trade industries, these changes are absolutely vital. Bill C-23 would ensure that more Canadians have access to preclearance, while making border travel and trade easier, more profitable, and more secure.

Perhaps in the closing time that I have, I can go over some of the concerns that have been raised, and how we think those concerns can be fully addressed. One of the concerns that was raised, both during the committee proceedings and outside of them, was the ability for officers to conduct strip searches of travellers in Canada.

The rules governing searches by U.S. preclearance officers will be almost the same under Bill C-23 as they are right now. A U.S. officer will still have to ask a Canadian officer to conduct a search involving the removal of clothing. The only difference is that in a rare circumstance that a Canadian officer is unavailable, the U.S. officer would be able to conduct the search. Any search by an officer of either country would be subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is important to note just how rare a circumstance that would be, that a Canadian officer would not be present, but also how important, that if there were not a Canadian officer, that search could still take place.

Sometimes individuals have something on their person that could represent an immediate risk and danger to officers, and if officers are unable to conduct that search, it could put them at great risk, so it is something that cannot be deferred or simply held back.

Some people have asked what protections would exist for a transgender traveller being strip-searched by a U.S. officer. I can say that CBSA has policies in place allowing exceptions to the rule that strip searches must be conducted by an officer of the same sex as the traveller. For instance, in the case of a transgender person, searches of this nature by U.S. preclearance officers in Canada would be conducted in accordance with CBSA procedures and Canadian human rights jurisprudence. U.S. officers would be provided training to ensure that their conduct met these standards. This is yet another benefit of undergoing U.S. border procedures on Canadian soil.

I think I have explained why people have to identify their purpose when they arrive in a preclearance zone, so I will not talk about that any further.

Some people have questioned the term “unreasonable delay”. They have suggested that “unreasonable delay” of someone in a preclearance area is overly vague. Liberals would disagree. The concept of reasonableness is used widely in legislation and case law and usually means that other people in the same situation would reach the same conclusion or behave in the same way.

With respect to officer authorities, it has been used to refer to generally accepted standards. In fact, when the existing preclearance law was being debated in 1999, the NDP at that point argued in favour of adding the word “reasonable” to the section on the use of force as a way of limiting officer authorities. Certainly the NDP, in 1999, agreed that the term was specific enough to provide the protection and coverage required.

Others have questioned whether Bill C-23 would entitle U.S. officers to carry guns in Canadian airport terminals. The answer is no. Let me be very clear on this point. American officers would carry the same weapons as Canadian border officers in the same environment, without exception. Canadian border officers carry firearms at land, rail, and marine ports of entry, so U.S. preclearance officers would do the same. However, Canadian border officers do not carry firearms in airport terminals, so neither would Americans.

The same principle of reciprocity would apply to Canadian officers conducting preclearance in the U.S. One of the important tenets of the agreement reached with the Americans is the element of reciprocity. We would never see U.S.border officers with guns or comporting themselves in ways that would not be applied in the U.S. under similar circumstances.

It is worth mentioning that our hope and aspiration in passing this bill is that not only would preclearance be vastly expanded to include more locations across Canada but that we would see the same economic benefits and the benefits of the rapidity of travel we saw at YYZ . However, we hope, and have every reasonable expectation to believe, that the Americans will themselves also engage in preclearance in the opposite direction, which would have tremendous economic benefits and is something we would open by adopting Bill C-23.

The last question put to us was the question of permanent residents of Canada being denied entry by Canadian preclearance officers in the U.S. That is not a concern. In almost all cases, permanent residents would be treated exactly the same way in preclearance areas as they would be at any other entry point in Canada. The rare exception would be where there was a major issue of inadmissibility, such as serious criminality. Such individuals would still come to Canada, subject to the usual admissibility rules, at an ordinary point of entry. They just would not have the benefit of preclearance.

I hope I was able to outline for the House the tremendous benefits we have before us with Bill C-23. We need to get moving on this so we can help our tourism industry, trade, and Canada more generally.

Public Safety

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

Mr. Speaker, the committee of parliamentarians does not have full access; the consultation took nearly two years, while CSIS continued to use these new abusive powers that it has. The promise was to fix a bill as a way to hide from the fact that they endorsed the Conservatives' draconian agenda. The Federal Court ruled a few months ago that it was illegal for CSIS to retain bulk metadata. What we see in Bill C-59 is simply formalizing and legalizing what the court deemed illegal.

Could the minister explain where in the consultations he was told by experts and Canadians that it was the right thing to do?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, in the election we laid out a very detailed program for how we would deal with Bill C-51, and today we have implemented exactly that. It is contained in Bill C-59, before the House, which is in addition to the committee of parliamentarians, which is in addition to the funding for counter-radicalization, which is in addition to the most extensive consultations in Canadian history. We have listened carefully to Canadians and we have implemented their advice.