Madam Speaker, I am standing here tonight in the House of Commons, the House of the common people, with great pleasure. It is the first time I will be delivering a substantive speech since re-election.
I would first like to acknowledge my family. My family has been profound in getting me exactly where I am. There is so much work to be done, and without the family support that so many of us in this place have to get us where we are, we would not be here. I thank our families.
I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge the impeccable campaign team and my electoral district association of Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, which went above and beyond every single day. We ran a seamless campaign. It was impressive, and I am so grateful for all of them. I would also like to acknowledge the importance of serving with humility, grace, grit and sometimes an attitude. Respectfully, we have a tremendous responsibility to do what is right for all Canadians, and I give my word to the people of Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga that I will do exactly that.
It is wonderful to rise on behalf of all Canadians. I would also like to congratulate you, Madam Speaker, along with a lot of the new faces and the older faces here in this place. I would also like to thank those who are not returning to the House of Commons after a hard-fought election for their dedication to their constituents in the last Parliament. The last Parliament was a historic, unprecedented Parliament, and I am extremely glad that I was able to share a lot of that with them.
To the topic at hand, as I know everyone is anxiously waiting for me to turn the page, Bill C-2 proposes a whole list of changes to various acts of Parliament, and there is a lot to unpack. According to the government-issued backgrounder, it is a catch-all crime bill claiming to stem the flow of fentanyl, cracking down on immigration fraud and fighting organized crime, among other things.
The first immediate red flag that comes up is that this is already asking our underfunded and understaffed security organizations to do more with meagre resources than they already have. In my previous role, I learned a lot about defence and military concepts, and a parallel can be drawn between what we are seeing proposed and an unfortunate constant in our armed forces, an ever-increasing commitment capability gap. We do not have the resources to do the things we need to do. In the Canadian Armed Forces, that manifests itself in a lack of manpower, kit, weapons systems, supports, housing and pay. We may very well need our police organizations to have the authority to do more, but that is completely irrelevant if they are not given the tools to do their current job and what we are asking them to do in addition.
The bill, as it stands, would only increase that gap, which, in turn, would result in more inefficient capabilities across the board as organizations take resources from already struggling sectors to plug into the newly created areas of operation. It may seem as though I am getting technical here, but we really need to dig into this. There are a few parts in the proposed legislation where this is a concern, but there is one in particular that I would like to touch on today, as I have some familiarly, I mean familiarity, with it through my previous work.
I would like to acknowledge that when I was younger, I had a speech impediment, and I have come a long way. I was actually learning sign language when I was younger, in anticipation of not knowing how far my speech would develop, and now I am speaking as capably as I can in English. I am also vigorously learning French, and I am pretty comfortable in Spanish as well, so I have come a long way, but I say to those who have speech impediments or struggle to get up in front of a group, sometimes words from the past or different syllables might catch them, but they just need to keep going. To those who struggle at home, keep going.
Getting back to the legislation, for those listening who may not be familiar with this particular legislation, out of deference to the government, lest I be accused of misleading Canadians as to the content of the bill, I will reference the government's backgrounder, which it produced to ensure that we are getting this particular piece of legislation as clearly as possible so that people can understand it. It reads:
Expand the Canadian Coast Guard’s services to include security activities that will strengthen sovereignty and maritime domain awareness, particularly in remote Arctic waters;
This will enable the Canadian Coast Guard to conduct security patrols and collect, analyze and share information and intelligence for security purposes.
How exactly does the government plan to enable the Coast Guard to carry out these increased activities? Where are the additional ships, helicopters and personnel coming from? The legislation is silent on this. We cannot legislate sailors into existence. A bill does not create helicopters. Bill C-2, or any piece of legislation, does not create capability; it creates only verbal commitment, and that is a very serious problem.
This is not the first time that this government's legislation has widened a capability gap. In the last Parliament, the government introduced Bill C-40. The legislation was essentially created to address miscarriages of justice. While we do enjoy a relatively stable justice system, perhaps its single greatest flaw is the staggering slow pace at which it moves. The reason I wanted to speak about Bill C-40 today is the additional burden it put on the judiciary, a burden that has very real consequences.
During the last Parliament, I had the opportunity to speak with Kate, who made it one of her life goals to ensure that women do not have to go through what she did. I am not going to stand before you and repeat all of the terrible details, but, in short, she was the victim of severe intimate partner violence. Her partner tried to kill her. There was a video and photo evidence of her bloodied body as she tried to leave him. He gloated about this abuse to his neighbours. One would think it was an open and shut case. After all, this is Canada, a developed western nation, where justice is king, but after being rescheduled twice, the charges were stayed. She was granted a restraining order and told to be on her way. She had to literally flee the country just to feel safe.
Why did this happen? It happened because the courts could not handle the volume of cases. Hers was among many that were decided to be tossed out, not because of individual innocence but because of bureaucratic burdens. This is a perfect example of that capability gap that I spoke of earlier. The government needs to be able to ensure that our systems, and the people working to keep them going, can function at all times, and the same goes for our borders.
Moving on, I would like to talk about the practical nature of some of these changes that are proposed, changes that I think are more easily committed to than actually achieved. The document reads:
Enhance the ability of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to share information collected under the Act on registered sex offenders with domestic and international partners, including those located in the United States.
The document continues:
Authorize Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to share client information, such as identity, status and immigration documentation with federal, provincial and territorial partners through signed information-sharing agreements;
Make it easier for IRCC to share client information between different IRCC programs (e.g. using permanent residence application data to process citizenship applications);
Allow for regulations to be developed to share client information across federal departments for the purpose of cooperation.
These four proposals are very interesting because, again, they sound great, but exactly how are they to be facilitated? Is a new database being created? Will security clearances need to be harmonized across all departments? How do we know the provinces and territories will agree to these suggestions? Will this necessitate individual processes for each signatory? What if someone moves between provinces? These are all questions that need to be answered and actioned on by an already very slow-moving public service.
I need only point to the Phoenix pay fiasco. Regardless of where blame lies, the government had a very real issue with doing something as basic as paying its employees. The procurement system in the Canadian Armed Forces is piecemeal. Passports were taking months to be issued. ATIPs take months if not years. These are all existing systems that the government has been actively working on to fix, and we are expecting the government to reform IRCC's information-sharing system and incorporate all 13 independent provinces and territories. The Liberals might as well legislate away the national debt, toothaches and bad dreams while they are at it.
The questions keep coming. Bill C-2 proposes to do the following:
Ensure that electronic services providers (ESPs) have the capabilities in place to support law enforcement agencies and CSIS in criminal and intelligence investigations by requiring them to fulfil lawfully authorized requests to access or intercept information and communications.
This is an interesting one. I am not entirely sure how legally requiring an electronic service provider to hand over information to the government when asked means they will have the capability to access, recover and transmit that information to the government, but apparently this legislation would make that happen. It would be quite impressive if it works.
This last point segues into another area of concern: the consultative process. This is an extremely sweeping piece of legislation. We are already hearing concerns about the IRCC reforms from digital security experts and personal rights organizations. I am concerned that the government did not do the due diligence that we normally see in drafting this legislation. I am not sure how much conversation was held with stakeholders, the public or, I suspect, even with its own caucus.
This brings me to another point: Why introduce this legislation so early? The answer lies behind the motive. The legislation was not introduced out of a desire for increased security or a concern with the ongoing fentanyl crisis. No, it was introduced because of one word: tariffs.
Bill C-2 is the government's attempt to assuage the concerns, legitimate or not, of the Trump administration. I would like to be clear: The Trump administration's tariffs are unprompted, unfair and unjust, and I know the House is united in our feelings about this, but the reality remains that they are here. The only way we get rid of them is by sitting down with our American counterparts, listening, and coming to an understanding that these tariffs hurt not just our economy and our people, but those in the United States as well.
Doing that will take much more than speaking out in the House to an audience that is united in their desire to restore and reinforce our trading relationship with our closest trading neighbour; it will take action. It will mean having those very difficult conversations together. This is why I am personally reaching out to industry associations, stakeholders and policy-makers on both sides of the border at the state, provincial and federal levels to open that dialogue. I intend to work collaboratively with the Canadian and American governments in an attempt to come to a mutual understanding and get these unjust tariffs on Canada's businesses and goods removed.
This morning, I had the privilege of meeting with His Excellency Carlos Manuel Joaquín González, Mexico's ambassador to Canada. We had a really good conversation about the importance of building and maintaining the relationships between our two nations.
Not two hours ago, I sat down with American officials, and we had a very productive meeting. In addition, I am in talks with Canadian embassy officials in Washington to facilitate meetings on the ground in D.C., as well as Canadian trade delegates located throughout the U.S.
I recognize the Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade has just ended a visit there, and I would like to thank and applaud him for his efforts, but as the government likes to say, this requires a team approach. I will take this opportunity to invite the minister to join me in D.C. so we can have a real collaborative conversation, the government and opposition together, as we tackle these unfair and unjust tariffs with our American counterparts.
It is not always about Liberals and Conservatives. There are times when it needs to be about Canada and the United States, Canadians and Americans. Neither party nor nation can afford to lose sight of that.
Going back to the big picture and bottom line of Bill C-2, in closing, the Conservatives are committed to implementing the tougher and smarter measures that are needed to keep Canada safe. They include securing our borders, strengthening our immigration system and cracking down on terrorist financing. The safety and security of Canadians are non-negotiable.
