Bill C-20 (Historical)

Public Complaints and Review Commission Act

An Act establishing the Public Complaints and Review Commission and amending certain Acts and statutory instruments

This enactment, among other things,
(a) establishes, as a replacement of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, an independent body, called the Public Complaints and Review Commission, to
(i) review and investigate complaints concerning the conduct and level of service of Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada Border Services Agency personnel, and
(ii) conduct reviews of specified activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency;
(b) authorizes the Chairperson of the Public Complaints and Review Commission to recommend the initiation of disciplinary processes or the imposition of disciplinary measures in relation to individuals who have been the subject of complaints;
(c) amends the Canada Border Services Agency Act to provide for the investigation of serious incidents involving officers and employees of the Canada Border Services Agency;
(d) amends the English version of federal statutes and orders, regulations and other instruments to replace references to the “Force” with references to “RCMP”; and
(e) makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Report Stage

[An hon. member]

Oh, I know.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, let us talk about that. I know that members on the other side of the House are eager to jump into this right now, but the fact of the matter is that the Liberals promised it. They promised to introduce a more effective oversight of federal law enforcement agencies in, drum roll, 2015. That is right. Nine years ago, they were hot to trot and decided to introduce Bill C-98, an act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Canada Border Services Agency Act. However, when did they introduce it? It was not 2015, not 2016, not 2017 and not 2018. It was 2019, in May. What was May 2019 about? That was the end of their first mandate. They decided in May 2019 to introduce it and an election was called. They had to have an election. Then what happened? That legislation fell through.

They obviously were not very serious about this law, as it fell through in 2019. Then they decided they were going to bring it up again in January 2020, a few months later. They went through some of the processes, and actually, the Conservatives voted for the bill all the way through. However, the Liberals did not give themselves enough time, and even more than that, they decided to take the opportunity to have a COVID election, something they said they were not going to do but did. Then guess what happened to this bill. It tanked. It died.

Here we are again, and it is at the very end of the session. It is not May, though. It is June, and the Liberals have decided to bring it forward again, rushing it through because of their disorganization and ramming it through with time allocation. We are approaching the pumpkin hour debating Bill C-20, and my question is, are they even serious about having this bill pass? One must wonder. Maybe it is a good bill, and they are not used to having a good bill. The fact of the matter is that we want it passed. However, we do believe in debating it. We do believe in speaking to it. I think that is important.

The bill before us deals with specific complaints made by the public about the RCMP or the Canada Border Services Agency. It is about how these complaints would be investigated. Currently, the CBSA and the RCMP investigate most of the complaints filed. While both of these agencies, the RCMP and CBSA, are very professional, there is, nonetheless, concern about police investigating police. There is a risk of bias or perceived bias, which can undermine public trust, and an internal investigation process may lack transparency and public accountability, leading to doubts about fairness.

Before I go any further, I want to express my deep appreciation for the work and service of RCMP officers, police overall, and our Canadian border services personnel for the public security and safety they provide. They place their lives on the line, day in and day out. I think of Constable Rick O'Brien, who was a constable in my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge. He was at a drug bust when he was shot at through the door from the other side and killed. His widow is Nicole, and he had six children. He was a real example of a person who just gave his all in community engagement, especially with youth. He became an officer later in his life, probably in his forties, but it was his dream. However, he laid down his life.

Bill C-20 is not an anti-police or anti-border agency bill, but I just want to say that, as Conservatives, we support our protective services, and they know that. As a matter of fact, I can think of maybe one person who is a police officer who has said that she may not vote for me. I mean, there may be a police officer who is not voting for Conservatives, but they see that we stand for order, safety, security and sanity, as opposed to the disorder, insanity and chaos of the other side. We are living in a dangerous society, and our CBSA also faces risks. To them all, I say thank you.

Public complaints do occur, justified or unjustified, and it is important that the complaints be dealt with expeditiously with as little red tape as possible. However, the Liberals and the NDP are red tape proponents, and it just causes delays and increased expenses. Even though they have added 100,000 new bureaucrats, things have gotten a lot worse. We believe in being expeditious. We support an amendment for the PCRC, which would be the public complaints review commission, to direct the RCMP to conduct informal resolutions. It would just be informal.

According to the National Police Federation, most complaints can be resolved with a phone call, and they can conduct information resolutions to address long delays of complaints. It is important that we get things moving. We do believe that there need to be timelines, that it cannot just go on and on. Things must move along so that justice and people's concerns are addressed. We also believe that timelines begin at the top, and it really falls on the Liberal government, with its cabinet ministers who do not take control of the bureaucracy, and that just goes right down. We believe in having more efficiency, which is important for the taxpayers.

Conservatives also support the unions that represent workers during the hearings. We believe in fair processes that support union agreements, and an automatic back pay process for unfounded complaints because, when someone, such as agents, security personnel or police, is being investigated, it can be without pay. It is important that, if the complaint is unfounded, they would automatically receive their back pay.

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

Madam Speaker, one has to admit it is truly amazing when we get Conservative after Conservative standing up, saying they support the legislation and want to pass the legislation, but then go out of their way to actually prevent the legislation from passing.

The only reason the bill is going to pass is that we were able to finally get it time allocated. If we did not get it time-allocated, the Conservatives would continue debating it endlessly. There are only a limited number of days that the House actually sits. We have to get 70-plus pieces of legislation across. They should do the basic math. All the Conservatives want to do, even if they support legislation, is cause it to fail and prevent it from passing. Thank goodness we have a tool called time allocation. Otherwise, no matter who is in government, they cannot get legislation passed with the Reform Party across the way.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think the member is having a memory lapse. I went through the process about how the Liberals let it all flounder. This is nine years down the road. I know right now the Liberals are doing lots of other promises, nine years down the road, saying that they are going to do this, they are going to do that. Well, it is nine years right now. When we go to an election, it is not going to be based upon their promises, which do not get accomplished, but upon what they actually do.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, and I appreciated my colleague's intervention. We really got to see his teaching background come through there. It was as though he were giving a pop quiz that the Conservatives knew the answers to, but the Liberals had somehow not done their homework when it came to their past attempts at filibustering and changing the names of short titles and things like that, which I know will be brought up later tonight.

If the member could deliver one message, one line, to the Liberals based on their inability to get things done when they say they are going to get done, budgets will balance themselves and modest deficits, what would that line be, based on his experience with this bill?

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, I do not need a line; I need a word. It is called “misery”. What Canadians are feeling right now is misery. The standard of living is going down, nothing is getting done, nothing is getting built and it is just time for a change.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, we have heard this ridiculous conversation around bringing forward amendments to change the short title of a piece of legislation. Would the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge have any other examples of perhaps other parties putting forward amendments that would change the short title? This is not a very uncommon thing. Perhaps, even the government itself, the NDP-Liberal government, has done it also.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is an amazing question because I do have the answers. Let us give a few little examples. Let me see. The Liberals did it as well. For example, in the notice paper on November 26, 2018, a notice of a motion deleting the short title for Bill C-87 happened. That was interesting.

Again, on March 6 of the year before, the parliamentary secretary put a motion to delete the short title of Bill C-22. Yes, that was two, but we have to give three, right?

The third is on June 6, 2018. We need to mix things up a little bit. The NDP member for Victoria seconded an amendment by the BQ member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert to delete the short title of Bill C-218.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, first of all, there is some housekeeping. Of course, it is 11:05 p.m. on June 4, and we are here in the House debating a bill, but first of all, June 4 is a very important date in my household. June 4 is my anniversary with my wife of our marriage 13 years ago. Members who have met my wife know that I am a pretty lucky man, and I thank her for all the years and all the joy she has added to my life. My life is full because of her.

Let me get to the matter at hand here. My constituents will know that we start work the same time as they do, 8 a.m., here in Ottawa. Here we are at 11 p.m., and that is because of mismanagement of the government's agenda. There is a lot on the agenda here, but the things we were talking about last week and the week before are all a matter of not being able to manage the time in this House, and that is on the government's side.

However, tonight we are here debating Bill C-20, which is an act establishing the public complaints and review commission. It is an act that would actually take what was previously the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission and update it. It has been debated in the House by the government a number of times, in three different Parliaments, starting as a promise in 2015, and then it expired. Then, of course, it came back, and it came back again. It is back in front of this Parliament this time, and I will have people note that the first time the bill was read in this Parliament for first reading, as we call it, was on May 19, 2022. Over two years ago, the bill was brought before the House of Commons.

Then, of course, the process in the House of Commons is that we go to a second reading. The second reading, in this government's allocation of its timeline, happened on November 25, 2022, so about six months later, the House got it through to a second reading, which is where we debate in the House of Commons, much like we are doing here tonight, although we usually do it before supper.

Then, of course, it goes to committee. It gets consideration in committee, and that took, for some reason, a full year. People need to know that when a bill goes to committee, it has precedence over everything else that is happening in the committee, over all the reports and everything else, and legislation jumps to the front of that. It is not like it is waiting behind a whole bunch of things to get done. The minute it goes to committee, it gets considered, but for some reason, the government did not want to put it there and get it passed until November 2023, a full year after second reading in the House of Commons. That is too long. Again, it is mismanagement, not on the opposition side, but on the government side.

The government does not know how to get its legislation through the House, and it was not always this way. Governments used to get things done in this place. They did not have to sit until midnight to go through an agenda to get things done. They actually got things done in the allocated time, and that took some co-operation with the other parties in the House of Commons. I wish the current government could learn co-operation and could learn how to actually make bills better in committee and on the floor of the House of Commons. However, it is acting repeatedly in an autocratic sense, and as a result, here we are. Here we are at almost midnight, 11:09, as I see right now on the clock.

We are debating Bill C-20, and it is not a bad bill, but it is a bill that we need to take a good look at because it would impact so much. It is about public trust, at the end of the day, to reinforce the government's intent to build that public trust in oversight of law enforcement for accountability and responsibility.

I am not sure I am allowed to do this, so I hope the Speaker pays attention to what I am saying. The bill was introduced in the House of Commons by the then minister of public safety. That former minister is no longer in cabinet for some good reasons. That former minister used to mislead this Parliament on a daily basis. He would come up in question period, and for every response to any question he gave, he would say the talking lines, even if they were so remote from reality that they stunk, quite frankly. I remember a journalist in the paper actually said that this man knows how to “fluff [his] putts” like nobody else. Yes, the remoteness from the truth was something that was very off his agenda at that point in time.

This is a bill about trust. That is pertinent because the people introducing bills have to be people Canadians can trust. To actually have trust in the House of Commons, we have to make sure people are always representing themselves as honest people. That is what we need. It is about honourability in the House of Commons. We have seen the results of that.

The bill is about an imbalance of power, if we think about it. If somebody is going to make a complaint in front of a public review committee and it is the police that they are complaining about, or the Border Services Agency, to go to the committee and tell it that they have a complaint about somebody in the organization creates a bit of a problem, particularly, if I can talk about it, with new Canadians. In Canada, we have a robust system of justice, a robust system of reporting and a robust parliamentary democracy, which is being mismanaged right now, but it is still a tradition of democracy.

Many Canadians come here from other regimes where they do not have that. The trust in the police is not there. New Canadians represent a substantial percentage of Canadians. They do not necessarily have trust in the institutions in their prior countries. The imbalance of power they sense would be much more than that of a complainant who was born and raised here and who has experienced their own interactions with police. There is that extra consideration we need to give in the bill to make sure that we are not looking at something and visiting it unfairly.

I would like to talk to the government, of course, about bias and conflict of interest, because the bill is all about conflict of interest and setting up a new body to make sure that other bodies are not looking after their own business at the end of the day. Setting up a separate civilian body to look after the police has been a long time coming. Roping in the Canada Border Services Agency is also something that needs to be done. It would elevate the organization as well. However, conflicts of interest are about the confidence, credibility and objectivity of the complaint process that would have to be undertaken.

Let me talk about something here, because I remembered that the former governor general was the special rapporteur on foreign interference in Canadian elections. I looked at it. I had great respect for the former governor general when he was the governor general. It is almost as if I wanted to scream across the airwaves to him that he was in a conflict of interest, with respect to what he would be reporting to on foreign elections interference. Not knowing one has a conflict of interest, even though one has an interest, is the definition of conflict of interest.

We have to understand that being involved in something means one has a perspective that does not make them objective. That is what the nature of the legislation before us actually would do; it would move the reporting relationship one step further than the people who might have been directly involved, one step away from what was involved in the complaint that happened in the first place. That is a necessity. That is the imperative that has to happen here. From what I have seen from the members on the other side, they have to get back to the basics of understanding what the whole nature of a conflict of interest is about.

I tuned in for a while to the Auditor General this morning. I can tell the House that she spoke repeatedly about conflict of interest, particularly with respect to the SDTC and how many of its directors appointed by the current government have put themselves in a position of conflict of interest. Clearly there is a misunderstanding among the government and its friends about how it has to report its interests, its financial interest in that case. However, interests are interests. We have to make sure that they are balanced appropriately and that everybody has the opportunity for objectivity.

There is a quantity that we are looking at. I appreciate that the minister has put forward what the bill would cost Canadians. It is about $120 million over the first six years, and then about $20 million per year after that, so even now, $20 million to set up an organization of arm's-length people to make sure that there would be a complaints process. Canadians need to know that, but I am hoping the government in this case can actually stick to a number, because it has not stuck to a budget yet that it has put forward on the floor of the House of Commons. That too is a matter of accountability that it has delivered nothing on at this point in time.

One thing I want to say before I close is that some input came in through committee from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. I will shorten the quote, knowing I am out of time. It states:

Unfortunately, Bill C-20 ignores these types of recommendations as well as the criticisms of the RCMP’s existing inadequate complaints investigation structure. Instead of putting in place truly independent, civilian investigation of police and security agency misconduct, it retains the limited powers in the current police complaints system and extends the CRCC’s flawed oversight model to the CBSA.

I wish—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

We will have to move on to questions and comments.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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

Madam Speaker, interestingly enough, I was actually here during the four-year majority government of Stephen Harper. During that period of time, in standing committees, I cannot recall Stephen Harper's Conservative Party ever supporting an opposition amendment. I could be wrong on that. The Conservatives might have accepted one or two amendments, but I cannot recall any. We can contrast that to this government.

When we think of the number of times the Conservatives brought in time allocation, it must have been 125 times. Do we want to talk about a majority government and dominant rule? Do we want to do a comparison with the Liberals and the four years of a minority situation in terms of how much legislation we have been able to get through and how much legislation we have been able to build consensus on? Our legislative agenda and our performance far surpass whatever Stephen Harper did. I can assure members of that.

I can sense a little remorse on that side. The Conservatives are feeling a little guilty because of the stupid amendment they brought forward.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I retract the word “stupid”, so the members can calm down.

Having said that, surely the Conservatives realize that this is something that could have passed. They support the legislation. Why the ongoing filibuster?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I know it is getting late and I know the member seems a little cranky at this hour. It has gotten a little testy, but I will challenge him on the veracity of everything he is saying here.

When we come to Parliament, and I am not as long in the tooth in Parliament as he is, Canadians expect us to be able to work together and actually make legislation together. After everything I have seen, at every one of the committees I have been at, when the government says it is going to do something, it will just go through the process, get done what it wants, and forget about what everyone else is saying because it does not matter.

Co-operation needs to happen here, and the government does not put enough effort into that co-operation.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the use of the word “co-operation”. We heard it from the member for Calgary Centre—