Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise in this place, thanks to the support of the great people of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, many of whom I have been hearing from on Bill C-2.
I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach.
Conservatives have always supported toughening up our borders, and making sure that we are not just securing our borders, but protecting communities and upholding the rights of Canadians. In the last election campaign, we fought very hard, laying out a message on how to make sure we secure our borders, and that would include adding more border agents. We need at least a couple of thousand more border agents to properly police the border, and not just at ports of entry, which is all Bill C-2 would do. We want to make sure that they have the power to police the entire border, whether we are looking at illegal immigration, people who are trying to run fentanyl and other illicit drugs into our country or human trafficking. We often see illegal guns coming across the border. Of course, the bill before us does not address this in its entirety, and that is why I have some concerns.
We need to make sure that our borders are secure. In the campaign, our leader, Pierre Poilievre, talked about installing greater border surveillance, including the use of drones and towers, and more high-powered scanners at land crossings and seaports to ensure that everything that is coming into this country is looked at. This way, we would know whether there is contraband being smuggled into this country, especially the ingredients to make fentanyl and other opioids, which are creating so much tragedy in our communities and on our streets. This is really a sad part that is impacting so many families. We also need to make sure that we are scanning things leaving this country as well, but nothing in the bill addresses that. The illegal export of stolen vehicles has to stop, which means containers need to be scanned, both coming in and going out, but, again, there is nothing on that in the bill.
We are concerned that Bill C-2 does not address the issue of tracking the departures of those who are in Canada and need to leave. If they fail to meet their dates, then we are going to see that they are staying Canada illegally, and they need to be deported immediately.
The bill would do nothing to toughen up penalties for repeat violent offenders. We are talking about stopping human trafficking, gun smuggling and fentanyl as the main reasons to thicken up our borders and secure them. However, the Liberals continue to support soft-on-crime policies, like making sure that repeat violent offenders have access to catch-and-release bail policies. We believe in jail, not bail, and the Liberals continue to have their multiple murder discounts on sentencing.
This is a big bill, over 130 pages, and that in itself makes it an omnibus bill. We know that Liberals have been scrambling since the election to finally take some Conservative policies and put them in their own policies. We will continue to support things that make Canada safer and more secure, but we do have a lot of concerns about how the Liberals continue to have catch-and-release bills, like Bill C-75, and in the last Parliament, Bill C-5. We want to go after gun smugglers, but the Liberals still erroneously vilify law-abiding firearms owners in this country instead of going after the criminals who are smuggling guns and increasing the penalties for gun smugglers, which they actually reduced in Bill C-5. We want to make sure that we are actually addressing that issue.
Another issue with the bill that I am hearing about is the concern we just heard in the previous question, which is that Canada Post would be given the ability to open mail without the proper charter-protected rights that would happen with judicial oversight and warrants. This is clear in the bill, as we were just talking about, in section 41 on page 12, “The Corporation may open any mail if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that...”, and then it lists those reasons, which include drug smuggling. That should be done under the authority of a warrant; Canada Post cannot just start opening up mail.
I am hearing from my constituents that they are concerned about part 11, which would limit the amount of cash deposits to $10,000. That impacts those in the agriculture community who want to use cash because they have curbside sales or farmers markets where maybe they are selling livestock or processed meats, vegetables or other types of horticultural crops out of their yards and collecting cash from that. A strawberry U-pick will collect over $10,000 cash easily in a day. Cash is still legal tender. There are ways we can still enforce the money laundering and terrorist financing rules in this country without going after people legitimately collecting cash in their day-to-day business activities. That was about part 4 on Canada Post and part 11 on farm gate sales.
I want to spend a little bit of time on other parts of this bill. In part 14 and part 16, the bill talks about the erosion of privacy rights and civil liberties of Canadians, which I have been hearing about from my constituents. They have been emailing and messaging me on social media. We need to address that.
In my last four minutes, I want to talk about part 5. Part 5 would amend the Oceans Act to provide coast guard services. It would include activities related to security and authorize the responsible minister to collect, analyze and disclose information and intelligence. It provides the power for “The Minister, or any other member of the King’s Privy Council for Canada designated by the Governor in Council for the purposes of this section”. This is where we are hearing about the transfer of the Canadian Coast Guard from Fisheries and Oceans Canada to the administrative powers of the Minister of National Defence. That was announced by the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence has talked about it. We have heard from the chief of the defence staff and the vice chief of the defence staff on what that is going to look like.
We know that the Canadian Coast Guard does not have interdiction capabilities. It is not a paramilitary organization; it is a civilian organization. It does not have guns on board. The ships have no defensive purposes at all. We must remember that the Coast Guard does search and rescue. It has a lot of scientific vessels that spend time studying our oceans. That is important and has to happen. It provides transit and transportation assistance by icebreaking in places like the St. Lawrence Seaway. That is all important work that the Coast Guard does. However, it is hard to make the argument that that is in the interest of national security or national defence.
This is just another exercise by the Liberals in creative accounting to move government spending from one department into National Defence without actually increasing the capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces. They are not talking about changing the Coast Guard fleet to have them armed up. They are not talking about having the sailors and crew of the Canadian Coast Guard actually be trained up to use sidearms.
We know right now that if the Coast Guard comes across somebody smuggling contraband, such as illegal drugs, they have to call the RCMP to come on board to then do the interdiction of those vessels. It is the same thing if the Coast Guard were to see somebody illegally fishing. They would have to call conservation officers with Fisheries and Oceans to come on board to do the interdiction. They would also, if they come across somebody who entered our waters illegally, either because they are smuggling humans or they got lost, call Canada Border Services to come in to process those individuals and do the interdiction.
The Coast Guard has absolutely no policing powers or ability to do those interdictions on their own, and it is erroneous to think that the Coast Guard provides any type of security purposes underneath the NATO construct. I would just caution the government that if it is going to try to count all of the Coast Guard's budget under National Defence, then it has to change the organization so that it can provide those broader services that have been talked about. The bill talks about how the Coast Guard is going to “support departments, boards and agencies of the Government of Canada through the provision of ships, aircraft and other services; and" “security, including security patrols and the collection, analysis and disclosure of information or intelligence”.
The Coast Guard does not have that skill set right now. It does not have that ability. The government needs to come clean with Canadians. It needs to come clean with NATO and our allies to explain how it can take a civilian organization and decide this is something that really will improve our national security and our national defence, and will actually increase the lethality and kinetic power of the Canadian Armed Forces, which we know right now, after the last Liberal decade, have been broken by the Liberals.
