Evidence of meeting #117 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was protect.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I have a point of order, Chair. Talking about relevance, I'd encourage the member to come back to the topic at hand.
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Relevance is very subjective.
As I telegraphed to the committee, my speaking remarks are at least two hours long, so I will get to the relevant points of Ms. Khalid's motion in due course.
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Go ahead, Mr. Brock.
I'm not going to accept any interruptions here. We've talked about this many times, the fact that relevance is subjective. Mr. Brock will get to his points and make his points in an appropriate manner. I don't want any interruptions unless it's related to the actual Standing Orders and you can cite those.
Go ahead, Mr. Brock.
May 9th, 2024 / 1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Before I was interrupted, Chair, I talked about the Liberal Party of Canada's standing among the Canadian electorate. A number of polls have been conducted literally since the day our leader was elected. There has been a consistent drive to water down and eliminate that Liberal support. It obviously must be extremely disappointing to many long-standing members of the Liberal Party of Canada.
It's not surprising that we have a number of ministers who've decided not to run for re-election. We have a number of MPs deciding not to run for re-election. There is a phrase that I'm not going to use, but it's clear that they too look at the polls, and they know that public opinion is changing.
It's changing for a number of reasons, Mr. Chair. There always has been a shelf life for any political party. That applies to the Liberal Party; that applies to the Conservative Party. People get tired of being promised a number of things pre-election, merely to buy a vote, and then being profoundly disappointed when the prime minister of the day does not deliver.
That's precisely what's happening with Justin Trudeau. I'm sure he and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and the entire finance department, if not the entire Liberal bench, thought that the spring budget would finally end some negativity toward their economic policies, that they were going to make it fairer for a number of generations and that it wasn't strictly about the middle class. Now, it's fairness for multiple generations. However, what are we seeing in the budget? We're seeing the same, worn-out talking points that Justin Trudeau promised Canadians in 2015 and completely has not delivered on, particularly, in my view, in the area of public safety. I'm going to get to relevant points in due course.
It's emblematic of why this party and its members are just so desperate to find something for people to look at other than their track record. The budget has fallen flat on its face. One could have made the argument that the Prime Minister was going to drop the writ two or three weeks ago, with his cross-country tour and with all of his ministers following along and delivering all these little goodies as to what they can expect from the budget.
However, nothing has moved the channel, because Canadians are wise and Canadians are intelligent. They have finally realized that this Prime Minister, who they thought was going to conduct governance so differently.... Let's all remember his famous words in 2015, of how he would do politics differently, that his administration would be known as the most transparent, accountable and responsible government this country has ever seen.
However, then you take a look at everything that has transpired—their unwillingness to provide documents at committee, and instructing their members to filibuster when it comes to exposing elements of corruption and unethical behaviour. The list goes on and on. I could spend hours doing a deep dive, just taking a look at the number of scandals that have rocked Justin Trudeau and members of his cabinet and backbench, literally since 2015. Canadians are wise individuals, Mr. Chair, and they remember these things.
Therefore, all the efforts that the Liberal members of this committee are making now, trying to scare Canadians and fearmonger, in my view, are going to fall flat on their faces.
Let's take, for instance, this whole concept of the scariness of the notwithstanding clause. The notwithstanding clause—surprise, surprise—was introduced by Justin's father himself, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, well over 40 years ago. That notwithstanding clause, in the last 40-plus years, has not been amended. It has been on the books for a very long time. While no federal government has exercised its use, it does not necessarily mean—in fact, I'll say definitively does not mean—that it's inappropriate to use it in the future.
We know that some provincial premiers have used it. Where was the backlash from Justin Trudeau? Well, I guess there was a bit of backlash. He talked a good game, but he didn't do anything about it when Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, talked about it, and when the Premier of Quebec talked about it.
This is something that is law in this country. For all the non-lawyers on the Liberal bench, I invite them all to take the time, which would probably be less than two minutes, to actually read section 33 of the charter. When used, and clearly I'm just paraphrasing it, it's not permanent. It's reviewable at five years.
When we take a look at the comments recently made by our leader, these are comments that have not changed or been altered any which way from the first moment he talked about the applicable use of the notwithstanding clause. Despite the best efforts of Ms. Khalid to try to open up the floodgates and widen the potential abuse of the notwithstanding clause to scare Canadians, to make them fearful of the use of that clause because now it might be applied to reproductive rights, it is an absolute joke. It's offensive. She knows full well, as does every member of that Liberal bench, where the Conservative Party of Canada stands on that issue—dead stop, no further discussion needed.
That won't stop the Liberals, though. That will not stop them. They will continue to scare Canadians into believing that Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre—yes, I will say with complete confidence that he will be Canada's next great prime minister—will use it, if he uses it and when he uses it, for its stated objective. His stated objective is to correct a lot of things happening in our justice system that are really, really disturbing, not only to members of Parliament but also to Canadians as a whole.
I want to spend a bit of time talking about the Bissonnette case, because that really forms the genesis of our discussion regarding the notwithstanding clause. I want to read an article from the press. This is dated February 8, 2019. It contains some of the important words used by the sentencing judge in Quebec before the government decided to appeal.
The heading reads, “Quebec City mosque shooter sentenced to at least 40 years in prison”, and goes on to say:
Judge calls Alexandre Bissonnette's attack an “unspeakable tragedy” that “tore apart our social fabric”
Alexandre Bissonnette, who pleaded guilty to killing six men at a Quebec City mosque two years ago, will be allowed to ask for parole at the age of 67, a judge decided Friday.
Bissonnette, 29, will serve an automatic life sentence for shooting and killing the men at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre on Jan. 29, 2017. He has been behind bars since the shooting.
He will be allowed to go before the Parole Board of Canada after serving 40 years, ruled Superior Court Justice François Huot—in a decision that left survivors and families feeling “disappointed,” “dismayed” and “gutted.”
I'll go back to those words, Mr. Chair:
Huot called Bissonnette's attack an “unspeakable tragedy” that “tore apart our social fabric.”
During a sentencing hearing that lasted nearly six hours, the judge read out parts of his 246-page decision—
I'm sure that members of this committee would not like me to start reading all 246 pages, but I am certainly happy to, if necessary.
—to a packed courtroom, describing Bissonnette's actions as “premeditated, gratuitous and abject.”
“His crimes were truly motivated by race, and a visceral hatred toward Muslim immigrants,” Huot said.
Bissonnette was emotionless as the judge read out his decision and was quickly escorted out of the courtroom.
After a gruelling day, survivors like Saïd El-Amari were visibly upset by the outcome. He choked down tears of anger as he spoke outside the Quebec City courtroom.
“Today is a sad day. We are committing 17 orphans to 40 years of suffering, at the end of which they will have to show up again to keep this assassin behind bars. That suffering starts today and will last 40 years—I am floored.”
Aymen Derbali, who was hit by seven bullets and is now paraplegic, said he almost fainted when he heard the judge's final decision.
“I would have liked to see justice served today,” said Derbali.
Megda and Amir Belkacemi, who lost their father in the attack, extended their support to the families of the victims of Bruce McArthur, who was also sentenced today on eight counts of first-degree murder, with a chance of parole in 25 years.
Earlier in the day, Justice Huot did a minute-by-minute run through of the shooting.
It's important that I read this out, because I'm going to compare and contrast to the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada that deemed this cruel and unusual punishment.
Armed with a .223-calibre rifle and a 9-mm Glock pistol, Bissonnette was carrying 108 bullets when he entered the Islamic cultural centre, shooting into the crowded prayer room as Sunday prayers were ending.
The article identifies the names of those who died and says that five others were critically injured.
Bissonnette pleaded guilty in March 2018 to six counts of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder for the men he wounded, and a sixth count of attempted murder for the 35 people present that night, including four children.
Both the Crown and Bissonnette's lawyers said they have to review the lengthy sentencing decision and would not be commenting.
While first-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence, the judge had to decide how long Bissonnette would have to wait before he could seek parole.
We all know this:
In 2011, Stephen Harper's Conservative government adopted Article 745.51 to the Criminal Code, which allows a judge to impose consecutive rather than concurrent periods of parole ineligibility for multiple murders.
For the Canadians who are watching these proceedings—and I'm really glad that we are public and not in camera, because Canadians deserve to hear this—“consecutive” means just that, that there was a potential that Bissonnette could have served 25 years for the intentional premeditated killing of each member of that mosque. That's 25 times seven. He would have died in prison. He would have been carried out in a box.
With concurrent periods, it is the opposite. In essence, what the Supreme Court of Canada has done is to grant legal licence to mass murderers, telegraphing to all mass murderers that, regardless of the number of victims, regardless of how they kill those victims and regardless of their background, they have a licence to mass-murder innocent civilians in this country, and they will serve a maximum of 25 years before they're eligible for a chance at parole, because the wisdom of those nine judges—not too far from here, at the Supreme Court of Canada—deemed that having a life sentence that really means a life sentence....
These are the words that had been entrenched in the Criminal Code of Canada for decades: “a life sentence”, but our learned judges of the Supreme Court of Canada found that 40 years, Mr. Chair—not 25 times seven years, which would be 175 years—was cruel and unusual, because it denied this mass-murdering animal the opportunity to revictimize every single family member and extended family member of the seven people he killed. As a member of the Ontario bar, I find that absolutely and profoundly disappointing.
I had to think about the Bissonnette decision, Mr. Chair, when I was a member of the justice committee and we were studying victims' rights. It was coincidental that at that time the Bissonnette decision of the Supreme Court of Canada was released.
We invited two victims during one particular day of our study. I wish I had the transcript, so that I could actually share the extremely profound language these victims used. They appeared at the justice committee perhaps a week or two after the release of that decision.
I remember one case in particular—and I don't know if any members of this committee remember it—in which the accused, now a convicted murderer, was a man by the name of Dellen Millard. He and another co-accused, also a convicted murderer, decided to answer an ad from a gentleman. It was a young father who had recently got married, had a young family and lived in a rural part just outside of the city of Hamilton, Ontario. Millard answered an ad for the sale of the victim's pickup truck.
This is probably a warning to Canadians as a whole. I'm sure that people are taking appropriate precautions as a result of what happened in this particular case.
The two killers arrived at the residence of the victim. At the time, he was holding his baby, a baby who was denied the opportunity to really know her father. I think she was literally under the age of one at the time. They pulled up, and what they did should have been a red flag, in hindsight. Whatever vehicle they used, or whether they were dropped off at the residence of the victim, they ultimately walked up his driveway. It was a fairly long driveway. They said they were interested in following up on the ad for the sale of the truck.
2 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Mr. Brock, I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to stop you there.
2 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
I'm very disappointed in that, Chair. This is a great story I wanted to share.
2 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
I'm sorry, but we've run out of resources.
The meeting is adjourned.