Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I had started to talk a bit about that this morning. Since then, a lot has happened. I had to slip out, my apologies. So I had to miss some very interesting comments by my colleagues here in this room, since I had to take part in a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
Since my election last May 2, the government has regularly said in the House that we elected a strong, stable, majority government. However, I have never seen a government act so much as though it were weak and on the verge of falling. We have a law that requires that elections be held every four years. So there's no immediate danger for the government. However, it acts as though it was terrified at the thought of hearing arguments from the opposition party because they're not like its own.
This morning, when I was attending the meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I listened to members of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, who had come to express their views on the abolition of the Canadian Firearms Registry. They clearly said to parliamentarians in general, and the government in particular, that we cannot on the one hand listen to them when they appear before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and, on the other, not listen to them when they appear before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. They have the feeling that what they're saying in one place is true for the government and what they say elsewhere suddenly doesn't make any sense in the eyes and ears of this same government.
We've heard so many things, so many witnesses, but I'd still like to hear more. Even though the process imposed by our Conservative colleagues has limited the number of witnesses and also the duration of the hearings, I was nevertheless a bit optimistic on Tuesday when I saw how the committee, including the Conservatives, was working extremely seriously on the clause-by-clause consideration. I also felt confident because the experts from the Department of Justice had come to help the clause-by-clause consideration, in case we had technical or other questions.
It has often been said, but I'm not sure that my Conservative colleagues quite get it: there are actually nine bills included in this single omnibus bill. Each of these bills is an area of specialization in itself. I don't know many people who do law pertaining to young offenders and who are also experts in law pertaining to international terrorism, for instance. These are different areas of expertise, each of which has a broad scope. The legal experts around the table -- there are some in all the parties -- know how much a word, or perhaps a poor translation, can change everything.
Furthermore, the Minister of Justice of Quebec presented, on November 15, a letter addressed to the Chairman of our committee to draw attention to three amendments. These amendments were not at all dramatic. In fact, the government party and the parties of the opposition may not agree on the concept of long-term protection of the public, but it would have been worth the trouble to have this debate during clause-by-clause consideration of this omnibus bill. For example, they wanted to replace the verb "encourage" with the verb "promote." Sometimes it's interesting to have the time to take advantage of the skills of our experts, who were here and who must listen to us with great interest and great enthusiasm.
So I was reasonably optimistic last Tuesday, even though I would have liked to hear more from the witnesses and have more time than I was given to ask them questions and sometimes even force them to get right to the bottom of their way of looking at things, regardless of their position. Everyone's ultimate aim should be to have the best bill possible. When the committee reports on it and sends it back to the House for its next reading, it should go beyond simply saying that we are, for example, seven conservatives and that, on behalf of those seven members, we accept, adopt or reject the amendments or clauses.
I get the impression that it's just plain and simple pure mathematics. Even though this is a bill that is so fundamental, that affects so many areas of expertise, that will have direct consequences on the lives of all Canadians, in terms of the judicial system, diplomacy, young offenders or even political relations between the Quebec nation and the federal Parliament, for example.
Before coming back here, I took part in a program. I was listening to representatives of the opposition in Quebec talk about urgency, in light of the forced decision towards which our committee is heading, that is, the acceleration of the process of the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. However, on November 15, we received a letter from the Minister of Justice. It seems to me that decency, if we're talking about open federalism -- and I have always heard the Prime Minister talk about open federalism -- would have been at least to give some attention to these proposals. We could have taken some time, for instance, over the young offenders amendment, since it is designed to make sure that can rely on it before starting to publish the names of young offenders. These are only some examples, but all that is part of the process. We're creating something useless whereas the members of the committee were doing a serious job.
Regardless of the Conservative promise during the election campaign, no time limit was set for this committee. When our work began, no one said that the committee had to complete clause-by-clause consideration by a given date.
This was, however, announced to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in the case of the Canadian Firearms Registry. It was announced that there was a target date, the number of witnesses was set and we knew when we were beginning clause-by-clause consideration. This enables the parties attending, the parliamentarians who want to do a serious job, to prepare themselves accordingly.
Here, the decision came out of the blue, brutally, this morning when we were preparing to continue this serious work, unless this decision was dictated somewhere else. Still, if my colleagues are honest for two seconds, they will admit, like me, that serious work has nevertheless taken place.
Of course, there were the clauses on terrorism, the law that deals with various aspects of terrorism and the victims of terrorist acts. We had in Mr. Cotler someone who has been studying this issue for a long time and who tried to share with the committee his great expertise on the issue to make the bill even better by demonstrating greater caution so as to avoid challenges.
Dear colleagues, you who are listening attentively to this speech, know that I had a labour law practice mainly concerned with the negotiation of collective agreements. I always told people that my dream, in each of the files, was to make sure that my clients, be it management, which I represented more often, or the union, would need me as infrequently as possible, once my work was done. Why? Because that meant that we had done our work as creators and designers of clauses in their collective agreements. If we did our work properly, achieving the goals set and drafting the whole thing in comprehensible language, we ran less risk of having to appear before tribunals for grievances and so on.
It's the same concept here. We end up having to swallow our frustration as the official opposition, which gets to spend so little time questioning witnesses. I admit that this is what I miss the most in this exercise. Time limits were imposed on us and we heard witnesses who were cut off right in mid-sentence, because their five minutes was up. This doesn't make it possible to seek the truth, the reality, and to question them so as to bring out their contradictions or their convictions.
This bill includes a lot of technical aspects and terms that are not necessarily familiar to the large majority of people around the table, because this is not a language they are accustomed to using.
I think that, in all decency, when we stand in the House to vote for or against the bill in its final stage, we should feel that this exercise has been completed as knowledgeably as possible. This was the objective I had in mind when we started. I'm going to vote knowing full well what I'm doing. I am comfortable voting as I will. However, I can't confirm to the people of Gatineau, who gave me 62% of the vote, that the committee will be able, with this exercise, to vote knowledgeably or that it is convinced it is offering the Canadian population a bill that will resolve problems. Rather I have the impression that, with this way of preventing us from hearing what the parties may have had to tell us, we are going to give the population a bill that is going to cause even more problems, by bypassing democracy.
I think this is a funny coincidence. It's even kind of special to note that the Minister of Justice of Quebec wrote to the chairman of our committee on November 15 and that, the morning of November 17, a motion was passed to ensure that our analysis would end, even though we'd only got to clause 6 or 7, and that, by following the order, there was a good chance we wouldn't get to any questions that the government might feel uncomfortable dealing with.
As I heard while I was being interviewed, this is the message Quebec got: even though we had the minister come here to appear before our committee, he didn't get the time he needed to express his views. He thought our approach was a bit strange -- I'm putting words in his mouth, but one thing is certain, he was a bit surprised by the process. Because at the National Assembly they have a bit more respect for the witnesses that come to appear before their parliamentary committees. They actually have a chance to express their views. Here, we pay to have a witness come -- expenses are approved to bring him here – but we only let him talk for five minutes. I'm really looking forward to seeing the next budgets submitted by some of the Conservative committee chairmen.
The Minister of Justice of Quebec comes here and takes the time, with his experts, to provide not 150, but three amendments, including one to replace the verb "encourage" by the verb "promote." In my opinion, we wouldn't have needed 200 hours of debate to determine whether that was useful or to find a way to enable at least some youth courts to protect the identity of youths who maybe don't deserve to have their criminal offences made known forever or to be branded as criminals for the rest of their days. This could be very injurious and very harmful, especially in view of the absolutely phenomenal success rate on this issue in Quebec.
I don't claim to be Quebec's spokesperson, but you should know that the word is that this is an insult. It is certainly an insult that is harmful to relations between the provinces and the federal government. If that's how people with whom we want to work on building an open federalism are treated, I wouldn't want to see how people we don't want to work with were treated.
The Minister of Public Security of Quebec said so this morning. He was asked, in committee, whether he thought there was still a chance to prevent the abolition of the firearms registry and its data. Being the great diplomat that he is, but not knowing perhaps what was going on here, at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, he said he was still hopeful. I found him to be very optimistic, considering the past and what we've been seeing now for some time within the various committees, and not just this one.
It was quite a surprise this morning. Not only that, it should have been our chance to get down to work and consider all the amendments proposed. From the documents conveyed by the clerk, I could see that, after clause 9, we could gone directly to a vote on clauses 10 to 33 since there have been no requests for amendments to them. Then, for clause 34, a few amendments were suggested. After that, we could have dealt with clauses 35 to 38, and so on for the entire bill.
Some will say that all this time we're taking today could be used to wind up work on this bill. But that's not the point. At 8:30 a.m., before we even felt there would be some attempt at obstruction, our Conservative colleagues presented the motion, probably saying to themselves, that the first two hours spent on this bill would be two hours of systematic obstruction. I protest if this is the message they wanted to send us this morning. We've been told today that Mr. Cotler, a member of the Canadian Parliament and a former Minister of Justice, a leader in human rights, submitted his amendments with a view to obstructing. We're accused of submitting our amendments with a view to being obstructionist. But these are amendments that we believe are good and on which we'll express our views, on which we'll vote for or against, and the majority will carry the vote. I would like to find a way to convince you of the merits of some of the amendments we've proposed for some clauses. To my mind, they would achieve the same ends you are seeking and they would be expressed a little better.
There's sometimes something to be gained from having two pairs of eyes look at a text. Sometimes it's good to have people look at it who haven't had their noses stuck on the pages. They can spot small mistakes, like when the Government of Quebec suggested changing one word: from "encourage" to "promote." As it is, it's obvious we're having the rug pulled out from under our feet and democracy is being hindered.
Of course, this is a majority government. Still, as I'll keep repeating, it is a majority government thanks to our first-past-the-post parliamentary system. In my case, I feel comfortable because I represent 62% of the population in my riding. If I were in the shoes of those Conservatives who won a majority with 39% of the votes, I'd sometimes be embarrassed to claim I'd been elected by such a large majority. Some, who pride themselves on statistics, which really are not all that flattering to them, may be less easily embarrassed than I am. In any case, the government should at least agree that democracy must be allowed to work freely.
This isn't the first time this has happened. According to figures I've received from the New Democratic Party research team, this exercise, which consists of proposing a closure motion, has already occurred nine times, Mr. Chairman, and seven times since our return in the fall. To anyone who's listening, I say shame on the majority Conservative government, which should not be afraid of the results of democratic votes on clauses.
Everyone's asking what the rush is. On Tuesday I'd started talking to you about an article. The Barreau du Québec as a whole is opposed to bill C-10. I want this to be clear: it's not the entire bill C-10 that is problematic, but some parts of it which, let it be said in passing, have never been examined by the committee before. It seems to me that this is yet another reason why we should consider it seriously. We are members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. This isn't some ramshackle committee that adopts any old thing, saying to itself that the judges... Furthermore, we know that the Conservatives don't think very much of them and want to strip them of certain powers regarding the imposition of punishments. Regardless, we should at least make sure that we won't have to appear in court all the time.
Bodies as serious as the Canadian Bar Association and the Barreau du Québec, legal experts on all sides, whether Crown prosecutors, defence counsel, university professors or anyone else taking an interest in justice in this fine country, are telling us to pay attention and are suggesting some amendments to us. Where do you think we get our amendments? Do you think we got up one morning and they fell to us from the sky? Our amendments are based on certain problems raised by certain experts and on the experience of certain provinces. You may find it amusing to describe my province as being soft on crime, but with all due respect, it's still the province with not only the lowest crime rate, but also the lowest rate of recidivism. We don't have any lessons to be learned from anyone in this regard. On the contrary, it might be worth listening to what these people have to say to us and listening to them for a bit more than exactly five minutes, including questions. This exercise is so short-circuited. It is not worthy of this arena.
I mentioned this at the meeting of the other committee and I'm going to say it again: I am privileged to have with me today a young lady, a young student from McGill University. I'm not talking about my colleague, the member, who does her university credit, but another young woman who may walk in her footsteps. Her name is Chloe Silvestreet and she has had the misfortune of visiting Canada's Parliament today.
Well, shame on us parliamentarians.
Actually, I am extremely embarrassed to see that she has come to spend her day in Parliament as part of the program Women in Parliament for one of the greatest moments of perversion of democracy I've ever had to witness. I thought I'd finished seeing the government forcing people back to work, withdrawing the right to strike and the right to lock-out by imposing collective agreements. I thought I'd seen it all in June, but no, far from it. This poor Chloe, who has come today to shadow me throughout my workday, finds out that she will be with me until 11:59 p.m. at least. Well done!
Still, that's not the issue, because the time doesn't matter. The content is what counts. This is not edifying. This is the side that this Parliament chooses to show its taxpayers, its electors and its citizens. We're showing that, when the government is tired of debating or that it doesn't want any debates, it simply takes off. What's next? Are we going to prorogue Parliament when we've had enough of defending ourselves, when we get tired? It's so tiring, isn't it, to have people who don't think like us? It's very tiresome.