Bill C-3 (Historical)

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

This enactment amends the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act to, among other things, rename the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the Public Complaints and Review Commission. It also amends the Canada Border Services Agency Act to, among other things, grant to that Commission powers, duties and functions in relation to the Canada Border Services Agency, including the power to conduct a review of the activities of that Agency and to investigate complaints concerning the conduct of any of that Agency’s officers or employees. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act

[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.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec)]

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-3.

I am in favour of a complaints and review mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA. This type of proposal goes to the very heart of our government's core values and objectives.

Each minister of the crown has a mandate letter that clearly states:

We have committed to an open, honest government that is accountable to Canadians, lives up to the highest ethical standards and applies the utmost care and prudence in the handling of public funds.

We want to raise the bar even further on the transparency and integrity of government.

As Prime Minister Trudeau said, if we want Canadians to trust their government—

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sherbrooke.

I appreciate the opportunity to rise today and speak to Bill C-3, our proposed accountability legislation for the Canada Border Services Agency.

Specifically, this bill would establish an independent, arm's-length public complaints and review body for the CBSA. This is important and overdue.

This bill follows the efforts of Wilfred Moore, who proposed Bill S-222 and Bill S-205 to provide oversight for the actions of CBSA employees. This bill has been reintroduced in the House after its former iteration, Bill C-98, received all-party support during third reading in the last Parliament.

As we all know, the CBSA has repeatedly been singled out for the lack of independent oversight over some of its activities. Filling that accountability gap is the right thing to do in any democracy. It would also improve the public's trust and confidence in an agency that not only helps to keep the public safe but also deals with the public on a daily basis.

Many of our constituents travel for work or leisure. They expect and deserve a relatively uneventful experience when receiving border services.

Let me be clear: The CBSA does excellent work while operating in a complex and challenging environment. As I followed the debate with great interest, I was pleased to hear praise and recognition from members of this House for the agency and its dedicated employees.

More than 14,000 people work for the CBSA. Some employees have behind-the-scenes jobs, working on investigations of suspected criminals, national security cases and organized crime groups. Others have a more visible role, including the more than 6,500 uniformed CBSA officers. Many of these officers engage with the public at various ports of entry to Canada.

The CBSA manages 117 land border crossings, more than half of which operate on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week. The agency also operates at 13 international airports, and its officers perform operations at 27 rail sites. In addition to this, CBSA officers carry out marine operations at the ports of Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver, among others, and at numerous marinas and reporting stations.

The CBSA's work goes well beyond its presence at our ports of entry. For example, it processes and examines international mail at three processing centres. Its officers enforce laws and regulations that involve nearly every sector of Canadian society, including our agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. It has a very broad and wide-ranging mandate.

In fulfilling that mandate, CBSA employees engage with large numbers of Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals. In 2018-19 alone, they engaged with more than 96 million travellers. That is in addition to the over 19 million commercial shipments and more than 54 million courier shipments they processed last year. It is a world-class agency.

These numbers are a testament to the CBSA's diligent, hard-working employees. In almost all cases, the services they provide to the public are beyond reproach, but, as with any organization of its size and scope, incidents do arise from time to time. The CBSA has procedures in place to handle complaints about the public's experiences in dealing with the agency. Currently, these complaints about service or employee conduct are handled internally. If there is dissatisfaction with the results of an internal CBSA investigation, there is no mechanism for the public to request an independent review of a complaint.

That is where Bill C-3 comes in. It proposes to establish a strong and independent review mechanism for the CBSA called the public complaints and review commission, or the PCRC. We would not be starting from scratch with the PCRC, because it would incorporate and build on the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. The new PCRC would handle complaints from the public about its interactions with and the services provided by both the CBSA and the RCMP.

Here is a brief overview of how the proposed PCRC would work. The PCRC would notify the CBSA of any complaint it receives from the public. The CBSA would likewise inform the PCRC of any complaint it receives directly from the public. In most cases the CBSA would conduct an initial investigation of the complaint.

Of course, it is possible that someone making a complaint would not be satisfied with the way the initial complaint investigation was handled by the CBSA. Bill C-3 accounts for this. It would allow those filing complaints to submit a request to the PCRC for a complaint review. This request would need to be submitted within 60 days of receiving notice from the CBSA of the outcome of the complaint.

This bill would also give the PCRC the power to conduct its own investigation of a complaint. It could choose to do so if it receives or is notified of a complaint received by the CBSA and believes a PCRC investigation would be in the public interest.

In these cases, the CBSA would not begin an investigation into the complaint. If an investigation had already been launched, it would be terminated. As its name suggests, the PCRC would also play an important review role for the CBSA. The PCRC would be able to review any of the CBSA's activities, with the exception of those involving national security matters. That is to avoid duplication of work with the new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, as well as the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.

All other areas of CBSA activity would be subject to the PCRC review. The PCRC would be free to make its own decisions about what to review. A request for review could also come from the Minister of Public Safety.

I am proud to stand with a government that is committed to ensuring all of its departments and agencies are held accountable. It has been clear for quite some time that an accountability gap exists when it comes to some of the core functions of the CBSA. Right now the CBSA investigates complaints about its own conduct and service. That system certainly cannot be expected to inspire trust and confidence among Canadians.

Bill C-3 would make things right by creating a public complaints and review commission. This would be a body that people could turn to if they have comments or complaints about their experiences with the CBSA, and crucially, it would be completely independent.

That is why I wholeheartedly endorse this important piece of legislation and look forward to seeing it move through the parliamentary process during this session. I encourage hon. members of the House to join me in supporting this bill.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, in theory, my speech should last about 20 minutes, but it might be a little shorter. I want to give some notice to the speaker coming after me. If he or she is listening and is not already in the House, he or she can come a little earlier.

Today we are debating the role of the Canada Border Services Agency. It might be a good idea to remind everyone that the Canada Border Services Agency is a massive organization. It is responsible for enforcing no fewer than 90 laws and regulations, which is a lot. This is a very important organization.

One of the main laws that the Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for enforcing is the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA. Immigration experts and lawyers often say that if Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, is the judicial branch that handles immigration, the CBSA is its enforcer. This metaphor comes up often in the immigration world.

IRCC follows the judicial process. If a claim is filed, it is made in writing. The claimant is then heard by a panel, which must render a written decision. There are several ways to challenge the decision, either by review or appeal.

There is a transparent, substantive and reasoned process for challenging decisions that fall within the legal branch. However, at the enforcement level, there is no system in place to challenge what is being done, such as how CBSA officers may deal with individuals who, for example, are subject to deportation orders or with immigrants detained in detention centres for identification purposes.

There may be gaps in several places, but there is no way to find out what those gaps are, other than through an access to information request. There is no open complaint system, there is no open process, and there are certainly no guidelines for handling these complaints.

That is exactly what Bill C-3 is trying to correct. We need to ensure that there is a transparent system in place to monitor and track complaints, and perhaps even facilitate filing them.

The subject has attracted media attention in recent years. CBC filed access to information requests to get a better idea of what was going on and what kind of complaints were being received internally. It is possible to file complaints, but they have to be submitted to the CBSA and are handled by the agency, not by an external third party.

CBC filed an access to information request and got some information. From January 2016 through half of 2018, the CBSA received no fewer than 1,200 complaints about its employees. In some cases, the complaints were about harassment and grave misconduct. CBC noted that the number of complaints ruled credible was not made public and there was no information about measures taken to address complaints found to be credible. There is no accountability. Nobody follows up on the complaints. There is no system to remedy complaints deemed admissible.

The subject of the complaints was interesting too. It was not until the media got involved that we found out what was going on. Of the 1,200 complaints received, 59 were about allegations of harassment, five were about allegations of sexual assault, and 38 were about statements alleging criminal association.

In connection with the lack of a complaint handling system that was uncovered by the CBC, we are seeing another problem, namely that people who are in Canada temporarily have less access to this complaints system. We are talking about temporary residents and visitors who may also have to deal with CBSA officers. Some examples were reported by the CBC. A woman who was supposed to be deported to Guatemala claimed that CBSA officers seriously injured her by pushing her to the ground and kneeling on her back. She said, “They pulled [my arm] backwards and kept kicking my back with their knees”.

In that specific case, there is nothing in writing on that woman's file to indicate whether there had really been any excessive use of force. There was no follow up to the complaint because there is no complaint tracking mechanism. However, Nazila Bettache, a Montreal doctor who later saw the woman, said that she had suffered a traumatic injury that damaged the nerves in her cervical spine. Nevertheless, as there is no complaint tracking system, no one could ever shed light on what really happened.

A year and a half ago, La Presse filed an access to information request to get a better idea of what happens to complaints that are received and handled internally by the CBSA. La Presse found that about 100 of the approximately 900 complaints that were received were deemed to be founded. About one in 10 complaints is considered to be founded by the CBSA. Once again, that is problematic because we do not know what criteria are used to determine whether a complaint is founded or credible. The complainant does not necessarily receive a decision with reasons, as would be the case with a complaint received and handled by independent organizations with clear guidelines.

The report noted that some complaints were about CBSA officers who made racist or crude comments about travellers. There is no way to see the details of these complaints or how they were received, assessed and handled, as the case may be.

The Canadian Press also looked into this matter. For 2017-18, it identified 105 complaints that were deemed to be founded, which represented about 12% of the complaints received. It analyzed 875 complaints in total. Once again, we have to wonder about the proportion of complaints that are received and deemed to be founded. Perhaps a more detailed analysis with clear criteria would reveal that more complaints should have been deemed credible and accepted and analyzed. These complaints could have led to follow-up and hopefully to corrective action.

In this case, the Canadian Press looked at the type of complaints made. It mentioned one traveller who stated that a CBSA officer was rude and yelled at her until she passed out. Apprently, the officers only reported that she was found to be in medical distress and received appropriate care. There seems to be a discrepancy between the content of the complaint and the manner in which it was analyzed by the CBSA. However, an external investigation is not necessarily carried out in such cases.

Another complaint came from a traveller who reported that the officers were insulting other travellers and lacked respect. Radio-Canada also looked into this. It raised an issue that is a bit different but that also deserves to be analyzed by the committee that examines Bill C-3. The Radio-Canada articles state that border officers have the right to search the contents of electronic devices but that they have to put the device in airplane mode. It seems that, in many of the cases that were reported, the CBSA officers did not abide by that directive and there was not necessarily any follow up. I will give a few examples.

One person was asked for access to her online bank accounts. The person had her phone with her, and the CBSA officers asked for access to her bank account without giving any reason to justify it. We have to wonder whether it was legitimate to ask the person to give them access to her bank accounts.

Another traveller gave the following example. At the Montreal-Trudeau Airport, returning from a trip to Cuba, he was asked by border officers to open his luggage so they could inspect the contents. The traveller said that he had been to Cuba 15 times and never had any problems. That evening, he was clearly targeted.

In his luggage, he had a cellphone, a tablet and two USB keys, which contained his lesson plans and his students' files. The officers asked him whether they could inspect all of the contents of his USB keys and tablet. The next day, the man received warning messages informing him that an unidentified person had tried to access his Hotmail and Facebook accounts.

This raises questions that are very interesting to me as a lawyer. When those articles were published, I remember that they got people in the legal field talking, particularly my colleagues in immigration law.

Like my colleagues, I wondered what I, as a lawyer, would do if I arrived at customs and a CBSA officer asked me to unlock my phone to verify the contents.

As I am bound by solicitor-client privilege, it is possible that my phone might contain confidential information. I might be an immigration lawyer, and my phone might contain information from my clients that might end up in the hands of the CBSA. Do I cancel my trip? Do I hand over my phone to the officer? Later, if I want to file a complaint, the system does not allow me to do so properly.

There are some gaps when it comes to privacy protection. How do we know if limits have been exceeded when those limits are not yet clearly established? They cannot even be corrected through a process where a complaint is deemed acceptable after being analyzed, detailed and justified, or challenged in court and referred to higher courts to set precedent, because such a system simply does not exist.

The Bloc Québécois will support Bill C-3, just as we supported its previous iteration in the last Parliament, although it may have been introduced a bit too late, unfortunately causing it to die on the Order Paper.

However, we hope the bill will benefit from many thoughtful comments, but not only from CBSA staff. It is important to remember that our support for this bill does not mean we are in any way criticizing CBSA officers. No large organization has a monopoly on problems, nor is any organization immune to them.

The main objective is to give CBSA a chance to develop a good system for analyzing complaints so it can put best practices in place and, if necessary, be able to dismiss people who do not apply best practices when complaints are considered valid.

We hope the committee that studies Bill C-3 will hear from many experts, especially immigration lawyers and representatives of the union representing CBSA employees. This will ensure that the final version of the bill will give CBSA the best possible system for processing complaints and that complaints are then processed in a way that ensures CBSA officers are given clearer guidance.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of wonderful things in Winnipeg. I would invite the member to come to Winnipeg and see for himself.

With respect to his comments, I would not be so hard on Premier Brian Pallister. The province is trying very hard. We are working with his provincial government to deal with some of those outstanding things. This is an example of Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals working together to ensure all communities are safe, not only those in Manitoba but across the country.

In regard to prioritizing the legislation, it bodes well in the sense that it is Bill C-3. After listening to the debate thus far, I can tell there is good support for it. It would be nice, given its history, to pass it relatively quickly and send it to committee. The standing committee would be able to get a better assessment of it and look at possible amendments if necessary. Then we could see the legislation go to the Senate.

It seems to me that there is good, solid support for the legislation. It might need a bit of tweaking, and we will find that out once it gets to the standing committee.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Mr. Speaker, last year the member's city was one of the worst cities for murders. If I recall, it was a record 44.

The last public safety minister is no longer in the House. My province of Saskatchewan took care of that. The minister representing the riding of Regina—Wascana failed to do what was in his mandate letter in 2015, and that was to bring forward legislation like this. This could have been brought forward in the last Parliament. Now we are in a minority situation. How can Canadians have confidence in a minority situation and in a minister who has a lot on his plate, with illegal firearms and a rise in the number of shootings by gangs, which we have talked about in the House? How can we be confident that Bill C-3 will proceed any further than it did in the last Parliament?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I must first compliment the member for Guelph. I respect it immensely when members come across as being very strong nationalists, thinking in terms of the nation first and foremost while having a love for the province they represent and not forgetting about our other provinces.

I appreciated his comments in regard to Manitoba's 150th anniversary of joining Confederation in 1870, much like my other colleagues who are enthusiastically getting behind members of Parliament from Manitoba. We recognize the importance of that event, as I said in a statement earlier today. We should be very proud of all the different regions of this great country.

To get to Bill C-3, I will try to emphasize the numbers. We are talking about oversight for our border control officers, and I want to emphasize how important those civil servants are to our communities. We often talk about the complaints, and there are complaints, as I will say right away. However, the vast majority of the work conducted by these civil servants is overwhelmingly positive. They do fantastic service to our country with the fine work that they do. I want to extend my compliments to them, and I know members of this House would echo those comments in regard to the outstanding work that they do day in and day out, seven days a week and 24 hours a day.

Let us think in terms of the number of transactions that take place, or of face-to-face encounters. This is what really took me aback when I was doing a bit of research on the issue. Think of 2018-2019 alone; CBSA employees interacted with over 96 million travellers, conducted four million traveller examinations and processed over 19 million commercial shipments and 54 million courier shipments.

Those are incredible numbers. Earlier today, we voted on the free trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. In speaking to that legislation, we heard that in trade alone, we see $2 billion a day across that land border. I expect some of that is flown in and possibly even arrives by ship, but I repeat that it is over $2 billion a day in trade.

We have huge expectations for our border control officers. We expect them to be consistent and fair and to provide equal treatment. I suspect that it can be a challenge at times to provide that service, yet over 99% of the time, that is the type of service that they are providing. We need to feel comfortable about that organization, and confident in it.

The legislation before us was introduced by the Minister of Public Safety, and I compliment him and his department for the fine work they have done in ensuring that there was consultation over the last number of years. It is only because we had such a busy legislative agenda dealing with public safety in the previous run between 2015 and 2019 that this legislation unfortunately did not make it completely across the finish line. We are reintroducing it now, and it is a priority for this government. The Minister of Public Safety has done a fantastic job in pulling it together and making sure that we could deal with it it early in the current parliamentary session.

I have listened to a few members across the way who have already spoken on it. It is encouraging to hear that all members, or at least all parties of this House, have recognized the value of ultimately seeing this bill passed.

I understand that some members would like to review it at the committee stage, and I anticipate we will see some amendments. If our record has demonstrated anything over the last number of years, it is that our government, even in a majority situation, is very sympathetic to good amendments. In a minority situation, members can anticipate that we will continue to support good ideas that make legislation better for Canadians. I look forward to seeing the bill go to committee, given the type of support we have already seen at second reading.

Oversight is important. If we were to say there is public oversight for the RCMP, CSIS and our correctional services officers, most people would assume that we already have it for our border control agents. However, that is not the case. In essence, this legislation is meant to provide oversight for our Canada border control officers. As opposed to our creating something independent, this oversight body would also be able to deal with RCMP complaints. It has a name. It will be addressed as the public complaints and review commission, and it will deal with both RCMP and CBSA concerns or complaints that come forward.

As I referenced in one of my questions, by having oversight we are ensuring there is a higher level of accountability and transparency. In doing so, we are building public confidence in the system, and if not directly, then indirectly.

If we were to talk with stakeholders or individual Canadians, we would likely hear stories. We have already heard some of those stories in this debate. When we were debating Bill C-98, stories were brought forward as well, one about a border officer who had an issue and dealt with it in an inappropriate fashion.

We know that unfortunately things of that nature will occur. Members of the public need to feel that there is a sense of justice so that when they do occur, there is a place they can go to lodge a complaint. That is really what Bill C-3 would do. I see that as a win in many different ways. I suspect that if we were to talk to the civil servants who work for CBSA, they too would recognize the true value of oversight.

Our borders need to be safe. They need to be secure and open and provide for the efficient flow of travel and trade. As I referenced in my question to the member for Guelph, we have border officers not only along the Canada-U.S. border but also at the international airport in Winnipeg, and it is not alone. I believe we have 12, 13 or possibly 14 international airports in Canada. These points of entry and departure must have border officers in order to allow for the efficient flow of travellers and trade.

I am glad to see that we will finally have an oversight committee to build upon that confidence. I suspect and hope that members will see the benefits of moving the bill to committee, where we can give it a final review to see if there are ways to improve it.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, while I applaud Bill C-3 on its civil liberty enhancements, the Preclearance Act, Bill C-23 under the previous government, allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection agencies to detain and question people indefinitely, without allowing them representation or the ability to leave pre-clearance detainment while on Canadian soil. As the act says, “No action or other proceeding of a civil nature may be brought against a preclearance officer in respect of anything that is done or omitted in the exercise of their...duties and functions under this [legislation].”

What oversight are we going to provide to Canadian citizens in pre-clearance on Canadian soil with United States Customs and Border Protection?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Winnipeg North. Congratulations on the 150th anniversary of Manitoba that he spoke about earlier. I was born in Manitoba. “Go, Manitoba.”

A dear friend of mine in Guelph passed away today. I found out this afternoon that Ken Hammill passed away. He was a mentor and wanted the citizens of Guelph and across Canada to be engaged. He was a city councillor for 29 years. He was a friend of Guelph, and we will very dearly miss him. All my best to Eileen and his kids and grandkids. I will be missing time with him at Rotary and in coffee shops talking about the kinds of things we are talking about today.

We are talking about 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. We are talking about introducing legislation that has come to the House before. It was here in the last Parliament. It came to us originally through the Senate. It is needed legislation. Right now we are the only country within the Five Eyes that does not have public oversight over border services, which is something we need to correct.

Also, this is the last agency with the power of detention in law enforcement to have independent oversight, as has been mentioned in other speeches in the House today.

The volume of interactions has been increasing and will continue to increase as we have trade agreements with the EU and the United States, hopefully coming through very soon with CPTPP. There will be a lot more interactions going on at the border. Review agencies like this would help us with those interactions, as well as to see whether we are keeping up with policy and whether we are giving tools to the people at the border, who do the wonderful job they do, to keep us safe and to keep products and people coming and going to and from the country in a safe way.

The independent oversight provides an avenue for a non-governmental agency, an agency that is not connected with politics and is really independent, to look, as a citizen of the country, at whether the country is being served by the institution, to review complaints, and to provide citizen engagement and oversight.

It is very important that this legislation gets through the House this time. It is good to see that it is coming into the House early in our mandate and hopefully will get all the way through second reading, the committee work, to third reading and the Senate to get back to us in time to receive royal assent.

The case for independent oversight has been mentioned by several members today. We are talking about civil liberties. We are talking about how important it is, when we give authority over civil liberties, that it is then scrutinized by independent agencies as well as by the agencies themselves. They must have the means and professionalism to make sure that jobs are being conducted with respect for civil liberties within the policies they are given from Parliament, as well as through the Supreme Court.

It is important that the decisions are transparent and accountable, as was mentioned across the way, and timely. Maybe the committee could focus on making sure that we are being responsive. Decisions on forced detention and law enforcement have to be made a priority, because we are talking about the civil liberties of people who live in Canada. This is so important to our freedom and citizenship, but also to keeping our country safe.

With 96 million travellers coming into Canada, it is important that processes are applied consistently, fairly and without prejudice. We know that the professionalism of the staff is there. In fact, there is now a television show that shows some of the situations that people working for CBSA get into. People try to mislead them to get into the country under different pretenses. The professionalism that is shown on TV is, I am sure, the type of professionalism that we see every day. However, there will still be complaints, and we need a way to deal with those.

Guelph is not a border town. Places like Windsor and Niagara are clearly border towns, but Guelph is within easy access of a lot of Canada's borders. With the volume that goes through Sarnia, Windsor, Niagara, the ports of Fort Erie, the airports of London, Windsor, Hamilton and Waterloo, Guelph has a lot of connections that need CBSA's services.

When I travel on the shuttle back and forth to the airport, I meet a lot of people coming to the University of Guelph. These students come from different countries. There are researchers and professors. People visit Guelph for business. Twenty-five per cent of Guelph's employment is involved in manufacturing, and a lot of people and products go across borders several times. As we build the car of the future, as an example, we need to have free and open access the border, but we need to ensure we do it in the proper way.

Guelph receives 800 immigrants a year who settle there. Immigrants come with family members who want to see them in their new home. A lot of people want to reunite with families, and CBSA agents play a very human role. They are the first faces that many people see when they come to Canada.

The CBSA really does a lot of wonderful things to keep our communities safe, protect shipments and ensure our products move properly. Guelph is very appreciative of the work of the CBSA.

Guelph is part of the Great Lakes region. If it were a separate country, it would be the third-largest GDP in the world, with $6 trillion U.S., home to 107 million people, supporting 50 million jobs, and growing. We need to look at the importance of our border within the region to ensure it is successful in all ways, through safety, environmental success and economic success. How does this happen? How do we implement legislation? What changes are we talking about?

It is interesting that this legislation started in the other place through the great work of former Senator Wilfred Moore. It passed third reading in the previous Parliament. However, sometimes we do not get all the way across the finish line. We simply run out of time. Therefore, it is good to see the bill in the House early in the schedule.

When enacted, the RCMP oversight body will be expanded to include CBSA activities, as well as RCMP activities, under a separate group of people, renaming the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission to the public review and complaints commission. People will be tasked to look at CBSA and will share some administrative duties, but groups of experts will help with any complaints coming into the CBSA.

With all of this activity going on, 2,500 complaints came through the CBSA last year. What do we need to do to improve policy? Are we giving people the right tools to do the job? How do we have public oversight, which is really what we are talking about today?

The PCRC needs to have flexibility to organize its internal structure and give staff members, and there were some questions in the House today about what they need to do their jobs and how to organize things together.

Currently, complaints from the public regarding the level service are handled through an internal process, which will still exist, but there will also be this external process. Hopefully this will build public trust and show that we are being transparent and trying to meet the needs of Canadians. It comes down to citizen engagement.

The independent review requires citizens to step forward to help us ensure we do the right job on their behalf. It also asks citizens to tell us when we need to improve. In business, we talk about customer relationship management. Really, citizenship is active engagement to ensure that as customers of government services, they get the services they need.

It is important that we separate political influence from the implementation of policy. This external review will help us to do that. We will work on better solutions together through this independent review agency.

I look forward to the bill passing in the House in an appropriate amount of time so it can be enacted in this Parliament.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Shefford and congratulate her again on getting elected.

I think that this bill fails to address the issue of cybersecurity. It is a key issue because we have agencies that we are trying to improve. However, Bill C-3 is fairly limited in scope.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank members of the Conservative Party for organizing their speeches to allow me to have a portion of their time.

I am very pleased to see this bill come forward. We worked on it in the 42nd Parliament as Bill C-98 when it had a different name, but there are some concerns.

I would like to split up my time to talk about what the Canada Border Services Agency is, what it does, what the problems are and whether this bill would fix them. I will try to move quite smartly through that description.

We have in Canada national security agencies, such as the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Communications Security Establishment, which is a bit of a different animal, and the Canada Border Services Agency. They essentially are a collection of national security intelligence agencies that work with each other. As of now, the Canada Border Services Agency is the only one that operates without either oversight or a complaints process, yet it does have extraordinary powers.

The Canada Border Services Agency's powers at the border are superior to those of the police. They have powers to arrest, detain and remove people from Canada. This is a profound power, the ability to have someone deported. I want to underscore this for members because we need to get a review of our immigration and refugee law on another occasion. This bill does not have the scope for it. The previous government under Mr. Harper changed the deportation rule from deporting people as soon as is practicable to as soon as it is possible. That has resulted in a lot of people being thrown out of Canada more quickly than I think most Canadians would find fair, and certainly with disastrous consequences on a humanitarian ground.

The CBSA authorities can prevent people from entering Canada. They can conduct interviews with refugee claimants when they have lost their first opportunity to explain why they wish asylum. They can detain refugee claimants on any number of grounds. They can issue removal orders and send a person out of Canada without an admissibility hearing. In other words, they have enormous powers. By the way, a review of the agency, which I found extremely informative, was issued in 2017 by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

The question is whether, with all of these powers, everything is going very well. It is not perfect by any means. There are literally, as we have heard from other speakers, hundreds of complaints every year, but many of them are of a rather routine nature. They are unpleasant but they are accusations of racism and unpleasant comments.

I know that we want to thank the vast majority of members of the Canada Border Services Agency at the borders. We need them to be focused on stopping the flow of illegal drugs. We need them to stop the flow of illegal handguns. I think it would be well worthwhile as a public policy matter to stop having it be a priority to find people whose citizenship is irregular and deport them in a hurry. A lot of families are ripped apart by this and it would be much wiser to focus on those things that we know we want to stop at the border, such as drugs and guns, not necessarily people.

This brings me to one of the most tragic of many tragic stories. This one led to an inquiry. Unfortunately, it was in the form of an inquest because the woman in question died.

Her name was Lucia Vega Jimenez. She was stopped at a transit stop in Vancouver and transit police thought there was something unusual about her. It has been alleged it was her accent. It turned out that her citizenship papers were irregular. They turned her over to the Canada Border Services Agency and she was incorrectly advised. The inquest proved that she had been incorrectly advised that she had no hope of avoiding deportation and that there were no appeals. That was not correct. She hanged herself in her cell. The inquest then was able to find that there was a lot of discussion within the agency of how to cover this up, what to do if people found out. It is long overdue to have this kind of a complaints commission.

We now have another change that is worth looking at because we are in a new era of national security law. We have the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. It has the ability to have oversight over what all the agencies do, but it does not take complaints in the same way that this complaints commission would take complaints.

The public complaints and review commission, which is renamed from the public complaints commission that only looked at the RCMP, would now take on the Canada Border Services Agency. I will be voting for this bill at second reading. I do want to see this bill get to committee.

However, the concern I have is that there are a number of excluded areas that the complaints commission cannot look into. We need to look at those and recognize that while the larger agency, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, can give a summary and an overview of how the CBSA has been performing in these areas, people cannot make complaints in the same way.

Complaints cannot be made about the agencies in Bill C-3 that we are debating today. They cannot be made about decisions made by CBSA employees under statutory authorities. This of course includes one of the key areas where abusive behaviour has been reported and is of greatest concern, where people are detained and can die or could be deported and die in a country they should never have been sent back to: the statutory authorities under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and under the Customs Act.

It cannot receive complaints about matters that could be more appropriately dealt with by other bodies, such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Commissioner of Official Languages, and the Privacy Commissioner.

This one is really disturbing. It cannot receive complaints on the conduct of part-time employees at detention facilities where CBSA detainees are being housed. That is particularly concerning, because it goes on to actually say that the CBSA would not even be required to investigate complaints that relate to part-time employees.

We need to look at the whole scheme of things where things can go wrong and make sure that in this legislation we fix it as much as possible.

The other matter that is added to Bill C-3 which was not there in the previous Bill C-98 is that national security matters cannot be the source of a complaint.

There is good reason for that in policy because, after all, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency can look at the overview of what CBSA has been doing on national security matters. That is quite a different matter from saying someone cannot complain. The complaints are direct. They are personal. They deal with an actual incident. The review agency is going to look at the whole of the conduct as best as it can as an oversight agency.

I would be very interested to know if we cannot look at the CBSA in this bill and consider whether amendments would not be wise to say that any of the activities of the CBSA and its agents can come before the complaints commission. The complaints commission, if it knows of a better place, could make sure that takes place, as opposed to sending someone away, someone who has been traumatized by an episode at the border and sent away.

People may not know. Even if they are told to take the complaint somewhere, they may just stop. They may not want to go through a revolving door. The complaints commission could have a positive obligation not just to inform a person where to go but to actually take it on, organize the hearing and make sure it is started, make sure complaints are not ignored.

On the matter of national security complaints, I am very concerned about this. One of the places where the CBSA was first studied was in the context of the Arar commission of inquiry. Mr. Justice O'Connor, who was the commissioner in the Arar inquiry, commented:

The CBSA often operates in a manner similar to that of a police force. There is a significant potential for the CBSA’s activities to affect individual rights, dignity and well-being, and much of the national security activity undertaken is not disclosed to the public.

I am concerned that we not inadvertently miss an important piece of oversight, an important piece of justice to anyone who happens to be, and I certainly do not think it happens routinely, traumatized.

In my own experience, I had no idea there was a detention facility under the Vancouver airport where people are deported quite quickly, until the family of an indigenous man from Penelakut Island, not in my riding but nearby, reached out to me for help. It was in 2014. The issue was that CBSA agents had shown up at the door of his home. He is a grandfather, an indigenous man, living on Penelakut Island, whose wife was a residential school survivor. Without warning, they arrested him. They had sent him notices that he had missed. They put him in leg irons. They drove him in a van on that December night all the way to the Vancouver airport, where he was told it was hopeless and that he would be deported the next day back to the United States where he had been born. They did not say there was something called the Jay Treaty regarding indigenous rights. They just said that was it.

Fortunately, we were able to stop the deportation but it was not easy. It did give me an insight into what goes on.

I want to make sure this legislation will work. It needs amendments.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

We are considering Bill C-3, which would reorganize the RCMP's Civilian Review and Complaints Commission while extending independent oversight to the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP.

This past Monday was the RCMP's 100th anniversary, and part of the celebration includes a campaign to designate February 1 nationwide as RCMP appreciation day. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank RCMP officers for the tireless and important work they do. I also want to thank our Canadian border agents for everything they are doing to protect our country. There are four official crossings in my riding: Rockglen, Monchy, Climax and Willow Creek.

Conservatives believe in checks and balances, parliamentary ethics and the rule of law. To better promote these values, we support increased transparency, accessibility and accountability for government agencies. It is the right thing to do and it shows proper respect to citizens and taxpayers.

As a Conservative, I support the fundamental idea behind this bill, and I hope that expanded oversight will start to make a real difference. It is in line with our party's principles and vision for our country's future. It is one thing to have good ideas and intentions; we must also do our due diligence and make sure that this will be implemented and applied properly.

After the House votes on this, we will be waiting as the opposition to see how this new public complaints and review commission will work out in practice and whether it results in real improvements.

Responsibility means more than receiving people's complaints. We cannot be responsible without offering a response. We need to make sure that there is an effective response made in a reasonable amount of time whenever someone raises concerns related to law enforcement, such as with the RCMP or CBSA.

The main change proposed by this bill involves recreating and transitioning a government agency, and that is what raises the very practical point of timeliness and effectiveness as part of its operations. The RCMP has already had independent oversight since 1988, and it was established as the current Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, or the CRCC, back in 2013.

I have spent some time reading further into the CRCC's more recent work. I could not help but notice that there appears to be a pattern with its investigations since 2007, at least for those posted on the CRCC's website. It takes anywhere from three to seven years to get a final report on the findings of an investigation and the recommendations following from it. It is good to know that it is conducting a thorough review of the complaint, but the fact remains that it is taking a long time in the process.

Presumably, if the RCMP decides to implement any changes into its organization or policies, this will not be an overnight process either. It could take a long time to draft new policy or prepare for any changes addressing the areas that have been reviewed and criticized by the commission. All of this means that from start to finish we might realistically expect the process will go on for years and years, possibly even up to a decade in some cases. These kinds of timelines would likely dissuade too many people from even bothering to file a complaint at all. If people do not have the confidence to report an issue, it will defeat the original purpose of having a review process.

That is exactly what we want to avoid. We want Canadians to call attention to the real problems they are experiencing so there can be an investigation and fair treatment for anyone who is involved. Most importantly, we want to make sure problems get corrected as quickly as possible to prevent similar incidents from occurring.

For the final reports that were available for me to look through, the number of findings ranged anywhere from five to over 55 per incident and the recommendations ranged anywhere from one to 31. Further, I could not help but notice that there is one additional point that is missing after looking at these reports, and that is which and how many of the recommendations have been accepted and specifically implemented into RCMP policy moving forward.

I would like to see a review and report on the results of these final recommendations. It would be a valuable piece of information for the general public to be aware of whenever we are talking about all the different cases being studied. Again, I believe that a civilian oversight is the right approach. This all has to do with providing transparency and maintaining trust in the RCMP and CBSA, whom we entrusted with the public safety of our rural areas in Canada and our border crossings.

Respecting and maintaining public trust is extremely important. That is why it only makes sense to have a similar commission in place for the CBSA. If we are going to be broadening this oversight to the CBSA, then this would be the right time to also ensure that there are accurate reporting mechanisms on whether changes are implemented or not. The CBSA is another organization that the public has a great deal of respect for, based on the scope of the important job we have entrusted to it.

CBSA workers are routinely put in the uncomfortable spot of searching vehicles, belongings and persons, whether it be at an airport or a port of entry along the Canada-U.S.A. border. In the course of carrying out these searches and interviews as part of their duties, I would think that having oversight and review in place would help everyone involved feel more secure in these situations.

There is something else I noticed about the CRCC's current review process. At every stage of the review process, when initiated by the chairman, it goes to the Minister of Public Safety. At face value, it makes sense for the agency to work with the appropriate minister. The fact that there are provisions for this to happen in this bill, as well as before, is not an issue by itself. It goes back to an old question in politics: Who will watch the watchmen?

This is not an empty political cheap shot either. Our real problem is that we still have a Prime Minister and a government that have shown disregard for how our processes are supposed to work. We repeatedly saw their interference in the SNC-Lavalin affair, hiding behind cabinet confidentiality and insisting on limitations for witness testimony and the RCMP's investigation. Will they be able to resist the temptation to interfere in other areas? These are the kinds of real questions that people have across Canada.

In this past campaign I heard repeatedly that Liberal interference in the justice system was a big concern and, at the time, Liberals rallied with their leadership instead of with their former colleagues who were speaking out with integrity. Canadians have seen examples of the Liberals over the last year showing that they cannot trust them with staying out of business that is not theirs to dabble in.

I need to make it absolutely clear by saying again that we have the greatest respect and admiration for active members in both the RCMP and the CBSA. We are proud of their service, and this bill should be one of the ways in which we work with them to best serve the public good. Members in both of these organizations need to be included in our close consideration of this bill. For that reason, my colleagues and I are concerned on this side of the House about the reported lack of consultation with representatives for police officers and border agents. This concern was expressed during the rushed debate on this same bill at the end of the last Parliament, and it was raised again by the member for Kootenay—Columbia, who previously had a long career with the RCMP himself.

Supporting the idea of oversight in this bill does not mean we will not call for proper consultation and otherwise carefully consider it during committee. There are some unanswered questions about how the new commission will operate and we need to make sure that the bill is strong and well balanced for succeeding with its intended goal.

Since we are taking the time to discuss the RCMP as it relates to this legislation, I need to say something about its work in my riding and across Canada. Back home, I have attended five town halls around my riding regarding the RCMP's operations. There are huge concerns related to the number of officers in different places and the response times to emergency calls. This has left too many people feeling unsafe in their own homes. We are dealing with many terrible cases of violent crime. We are seeing an increase in the illicit drug trade with fentanyl and methamphetamine becoming a big problem.

The people in rural communities committing crimes are no longer just the local bad boys. They are large, coordinated crime groups and gangs coming out from the cities and from other provinces to commit organized and targeted crime. In a specific example recently in my riding, an off-duty RCMP officer saw three vehicles speeding in excess of 150 kilometres an hour. These three vehicles were headed to British Columbia with two young girls, who were being taken to be victimized by human traffickers. Thankfully, this story has a happy ending with the suspects being apprehended and the girls returned home safely.

This is the larger problem we have to deal with whenever we are considering public safety and how we can best support our law enforcement. I am looking for a solution that will significantly reduce rural crime and I am not sure that this bill really has much to say for that type of issue. Even though rural Canadians on the ground, provinces and some of my colleagues have been repeatedly raising this issue for a while, we have not seen or heard much about it from the government. We are still waiting for a response.

That being said, I look forward to further studying Bill C-3. We can only hope the government will respect and learn from this bill's spirit and principles of accountability.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe 380 million dollars' worth of investments are being made. Tens of thousands of CBSA employees provide excellent service to people travelling across our borders, and we commend the hard work they do.

The member opposite is right. We must ensure that all of our public service and government agencies that provide that support to Canadians are well maintained, well funded and efficient. That is why Bill C-3 is so necessary. It helps us create those efficiencies, fix the process and iron out any kinks that exist in the service the CBSA officers provide to people across the country.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the last Parliament, I had a constituent call me who was frazzled and embarrassed. He did not know where to go when he felt he had been discriminated against at the border. He had a complaint to file against the CBSA and felt there was no recourse for him. He had nowhere to go to lodge such a complaint, which could have been used in a positive way to improve the process of how the CBSA operates at our borders.

There are hundreds of stories like this across our communities. They are good examples as to how Bill C-3 would impact Canadians daily. Whether they are travelling for business or pleasure, they are coming into and out of our country as some of the millions of people who move across our borders annually.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks, I would like to say it is wonderful to see you in that chair again. I am looking forward to following the great work that you have been doing in this Parliament and many others in the past.

I welcome the opportunity to add my voice to the debate of Bill C-3 at second reading. This bill would establish a public complaints and review commission by making amendments to the CBSA Act and the RCMP Act.

This is a tool for people to be heard. It would build on the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, which is the independent review and complaints body for the RCMP. This new commission would then consider public complaints about both CBSA and RCMP employee conduct on service issues, except those related to national security. The review of national security activities is conducted by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.

For nearly 16 years, the CBSA has been an integral part of how we protect Canadians and maintain a peaceful and safe society. The over 14,000 women and men of the CBSA provide trusted, fair and equal treatment to the public they serve every day.

Most, if not all, of us here in the House interact with CBSA employees multiple times a year, if not every week. That might occur at one of the 117 land border crossings CBSA manages, at one of the 13 international airports at which it operates, at one of Canada's numerous marinas or major ports, or at one of 27 rail sites across the country.

In fiscal year 2018-19 alone, CBSA employees interacted with over 96 million travellers, conducted over four million traveller examinations, processed over 21 million commercial shipments and 46 million courier shipments. Their jobs include interdicting illegal goods, protecting food safety, enforcing trade remedies and removing or detaining those who may pose a threat or are otherwise inadmissible. I know I speak on behalf of all of us in the House when I commend their professionalism and dedication.

If I ever had a complaint to lodge against any government agency, I would like to be assured that the complaint was investigated and assessed independently. That is what citizens of our peer countries have come to expect, and it is what Canadians should expect as well.

Bill C-3 would fill a gap in our security review landscape. The CBSA is the only organization in the public safety portfolio without its own review body. The review mechanism we are proposing has long been sought after.

Allow me to take a look at the support for creating such a body. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has said, “we have joined the call for independent monitoring and oversight of the Canada Border Services Agency in relation to migrants and other foreign nationals in detention.” That is on top of similar calls to action from civil liberties associations and refugee lawyers, to name just a few. That is on top of numerous calls to enhance CBSA accountability and transparency.

In December 2015, the Hon. Senator Moore introduced Bill S-205 in the other place, proposing the creation of an inspector general to consider such complaints. In that same year, the report by the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, entitled “Vigilance, Accountability and Security at Canada's Borders”, made a similar recommendation. The committee recommended that the “Government of Canada establish an independent, civilian review and complaints body for all Canada Border Services Agency activities.”

We took that one step further. With respect to national security activities, we have brought into force a separate National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. That agency has the authority to review national security and intelligence-related functions across government, including the CBSA. To be clear, Bill C-3 would allow for independent review of non-national security activities only.

The new public complaints and review commission would not only be required to investigate complaints it receives, but would also be able to conduct its own investigations, self-initiate complaints and produce an annual public report on its findings. These are all welcome and long-sought-after changes.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any major contentions with this bill. It fills the critical gap in providing an independent review for complaints relating to CBSA employee conduct and service. It ensures all immigration detainees have access to an independent complaints mechanism. It provides ongoing capacity for conducting reviews that can lead to organizational enhancements. It clarifies the framework governing CBSA's response to serious incidents. It enhances accountability and transparency, and promotes public confidence. It brings us in line with our Five Eyes allies in other developed countries and their processes.

Our government is committed to creating robust accountability and transparency mechanisms that ensure the public is confident in our public safety institutions. That is important for Canadians, including for the trade and travel communities within Canada. It is also important for the CBSA. The proposed new public complaints and review commission would be accessible to all individuals who interact with CBSA employees. This would impact thousands of people daily and tens of millions annually.

Bill C-3 is thorough, comprehensive legislation that neatly responds to the calls to action of many over the years. I encourage all members to join me in supporting this bill and moving it through Parliament in this sitting session.