Yes, there we go. It would be, Chair. I appreciate that.
It's important to have that freedom, and I go back to former chief justice McLachlin's ruling on this. It especially includes political speech, because we realize that the right to disagree, especially to combat and challenge authority, is so critical.
One of the fascinating things when you see this discussion unfold is that the speech that is most necessary to protect is the speech that is most jeopardized and threatened by censorship. You know, I could say with my time here that I love puppies, and it's true. I do. My wife is a cat person. I'm a dog person. We compromise by having neither, but puppies are cute. Why do I need a constitutional right to free speech to say that, when no one is going to try to censor me for it? When we start talking about contentious political ideas, however, that is when censorship is engaged, when you start saying things that people don't want to hear and that they want to deny you the right to say.
I think this is an interesting point here. The reason we are trying to introduce this motion is that we believe that if we are going to proceed with Bill C-9, it needs to be done properly. We cannot proceed with clause-by-clause analysis of Bill C-9.... By the way, it is not the most crucial justice issue facing Canadians. The first clause of my motion is to prioritize the study of Bill C-14, the bail and sentencing reform act. Conservatives ran a campaign on stopping crime. The Liberals were successful in the election, and I congratulate them. They said they were going to take very serious measures to deal with bail and sentencing issues. I expected, when I was appointed to the justice committee, that the very first thing we'd get to deal with would be a bail and sentencing bill. The only reason that on this committee we got to engage in a study of bail is that Conservative members initiated it. We demanded a study of bail. We have been doing this and are just about to finish it. We have our final meeting on this on Monday.
Instead, the first justice legislation that the Liberals put forward was Bill C-9. The departmental officials could not say when they began working on Bill C-9 relative to when they began working on bail and sentencing. In fact, at the time we had those officials, I'm not even sure that Bill C-14 had a number. We were just being told that it was coming, that something was coming. Then, what we saw was a bill that addressed a lot of the concerns that Canadians have been talking about—certainly the Conservatives have been talking about them—but it did not go far enough, specifically in dealing with the principle of restraint. We will hopefully have an opportunity to hear from witnesses about the shortcomings of Bill C-14, but, again, we can't do that, because the Liberals have decided to make censorship their first priority. They've decided to make Bill C-9 their first priority.
Again, they're going to say that Conservatives are the ones obstructing, when what we are saying is that we cannot pass through, wave through and green-light bad law just because of arbitrary deadlines imposed by the Liberals.
There is no way we would have gotten through clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-9 today, which is why we've put forward this motion, resetting this committee's work and putting an end to Liberal obstruction of real justice issues that need to be addressed. Where I think there is going to be more cross-party consensus than there is on Bill C-9 is on the bail and sentencing reform act.
I believe the Bloc Québécois also put forward a very important study, which we were proud to support as Conservatives, on judicial appointments. When judges are appointed, you can often look up their names in Elections Canada and find that, coincidentally, many of them are past Liberal donors. There is a little bit of a problem in the judicial appointment system. More importantly, in some of the heinous decisions we've seen from judges on bail and on sentencing, there are clearly competence issues emanating from the judiciary that need to be addressed, and I would hope would be, in this study on judicial appointments. For example, I'd be keen to know why a judge in Quebec thought that someone who had hundreds of images of children as young as three being raped deserved a 90-day sentence. I would love to know why and how a judge who would make such a decision was appointed.
Unless this motion goes forward, between Bill C-9 and Bill C-14 and other justice legislation coming before this committee eventually, whether it's private members' bills or perhaps something dealing with child sexual exploitation and abuse material, which this committee has called on the government to put forward before the end of the year, there's no way we'll be able to do this study. Again, it's almost as if we have given this authorization to proceed with a study that the committee, by which I mean the Liberal members of the committee, have no intention of actually proceeding with.
I remember also that we were expecting to engage in this committee's work on Tuesday and never received a notice of meeting. I don't know why. It doesn't matter for the purposes of what we're discussing here, but that would have been an opportunity. We would have been discussing bail, and it was yet another obstruction that prevented us from doing our work as members of Parliament on this committee.
We have invited Minister Sean Fraser to appear before us to discuss his mandate and priorities. He did come forward on Bill C-9 and was very eager to come forward on Bill C-9. I know when we were debating in this committee, it was interesting how that was a priority—to get him to only talk about Bill C-9—and we still have not had the opportunity to talk to him about his mandate and priorities. Paragraph (3) of this motion is that you, Chair, be instructed to reiterate the invitation. I believe you passed it along. I believe the minister received it. I don't know if he put it in the filing bin that looks and sounds like a shredder or if he was planning to make it to us at some point. I think he should be reminded that he has an opportunity—not an obligation, I understand, but an opportunity—to appear before us to discuss his mandate and priorities.
There are a number of priorities that I think are very interesting and that I'd be keen to explore, such as why censoring what Canadians see and say online was more of a priority for him than dealing with bail and sentencing. I'd love to hear his response to some of the witnesses we've had from police associations and police services, including OPP commissioner Thomas Carrique, who's also with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. He came before us and said that the Liberal government's gun confiscation scheme was a waste of police resources when the actual problems that police need to be dealing with are repeat violent offenders.
Where the priorities of this government are is something I'd be very keen to hear from the minister, if he graces us with his presence on his mandate and priorities. I just want to make sure he is aware that he has an outstanding invitation. I'm a new member of Parliament. I realize that sometimes an email can linger in your inbox for a while, which is why I think sometimes you need to bump it to the top there. This motion, which I'm sure will have cross-partisan support, will reiterate that invitation, and I hope Minister Fraser will join us soon.
On Bill C-14, we will need to hear from the minister on that specifically. I hope that, when he testifies to that, he will address why he is trying to tweak the principle of restraint instead of getting rid of it and why he is trying to skirt around the edges of the core problem that has been identified by so many people in this country who have come before this committee and other stakeholders and communities all over: that you can draw a direct line between the principle of restraint and the revolving-door bail system that has resulted in criminals getting released on the streets over and over again, sometimes hours after they've been arrested.
It is interesting that in the last week, the Ontario government came out with an approach that I think is important—and I would actually love to hear testimony from the Ontario Solicitor General on this—which would reimpose cash bail. This was identified by a couple of our witnesses on the bail study, and I suspect it would come up during Bill C-14, because one of its major shortcomings is not dealing with the surety system. It actually makes no changes to the surety system, in which you have criminals vouching for criminals and you have unenforceable bail conditions. It does not change that at all. That would be important to hear, because bail conditions and sureties are a crucial part of the bail system. I would actually say that we could learn a little bit from what various provinces are doing.
Again, it's a cross-partisan consensus. Wab Kinew, who's the Premier of Manitoba, is a New Democrat, so I suspect he and I disagree with each other on a lot of things. He had a harder line on what we should do with people who peddle in child sexual abuse and exploitation material. I believe his exact line was that they should be buried under the jails.
From the Liberals, we got six hours of obstruction and hand-wringing instead of passing a very simple motion. I said, Chair, that we should actually invite or reiterate our invitation to the justice minister. He's apparently watching, because he's tweeting about this committee meeting right now. Minister Fraser says, “Conservatives are...obstructing the Justice Committee to prevent it from advancing laws to address hate crimes”. It's interesting. The minister has time to watch this committee, but he doesn't have time to visit the committee and testify on his mandate and priorities.
We are not obstructing. We are making an important point here, which is that we cannot stand for censorship shoehorned in under the name of expediency and under the guise of combatting hate, when this is a Liberal government that has no moral authority to do anything connected to freedom of expression. It certainly has no moral authority to take a stand against anti-Semitism when the Liberals have been criticized by members of the Jewish community for allowing anti-Semitism from within the party. I remember when Irwin Cotler, a lion of Canadian politics and one of the most vocal advocates for Jewish rights and human rights in the world, argued that Mr. Anthony Housefather, who's been very engaged in the Bill C-9 study, should leave the Liberal caucus over his position on these critical issues. I think there are a number of things that show that we should not, to quote the finance minister, take any lessons from the Liberals on these issues.
If we are to engage in a genuine discussion of what Bill C-9 seeks to do, it must be responsive to the witnesses we've already heard from, who have been talking about the assault on civil liberties embedded in Bill C-9. That's a very important part of this. More importantly, we need to hear from other witnesses who have wanted to come forward and share so many crucial things. Again, the calls have been coming from indigenous groups, from Muslim groups, from LGBT groups, from Jewish groups, from individuals, from legal scholars and from civil liberties activists.
Mark Joseph from The Democracy Fund came here and submitted a brief on Bill C-9, which was authored alongside Adam Blake-Gallipeau, who is a senior litigation counsel for The Democracy Fund. Mark Joseph is the litigation director there. They offered some positions that I think were very important to have heard regarding the section of Bill C-9 dealing with wilful promotion of hatred, terrorism and hate symbols.
What's interesting here—and we heard similar testimony from the lawyer who joined us from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association about this—is that there is already a provision of the Criminal Code that can prosecute someone for displaying a hate symbol. I believe it was when I was questioning Minister Fraser, I can't recall precisely, that I mentioned there was a case in my own riding, just outside of St. Thomas, Ontario, in which a man was charged with hate propaganda—with incitement, rather—under section 319 of the Criminal Code. One of the reasons he was charged was that he had a swastika mowed into his lawn, which was very distressing to the community, so police laid a charge. Not only did they lay a charge, but they would have done so with the Crown's consent. Because it was a section 319 charge, they had to lay that with the consent of the Attorney General.
This tells us two things that are very important about Bill C-9. Number one is that hate symbols can already form the context that is used to lay a charge against someone for hate. Number two is that the Attorney General consent requirement is not a veto on these charges. The Attorney General consent requirement actually is part of a necessary stopgap that prevents abuse. It gives law enforcement an opportunity to get some counsel on this that they may need before they lay a charge, knowing how high the stakes are when you're charging someone for what may be political expression, when you're charging someone for what they say, what they do or, in this case, what they mow into their lawn.
We already have authorities under criminal law in Canada that have been underenforced. We have authorities that prevent people from being able to block access to a synagogue or a school. We have mischief against religious property. We have charges that deal with incitements to genocide. I know we've heard from witnesses about some of these incitements to genocide when people have gotten up and called for intifada, which is very violent rhetoric against Jewish people. People have chanted “from the river to the sea”, which is literally calling for the eradication of Israel—the only Jewish state in the world. The questions we should be asking are about why law enforcement has not been laying charges that they are legally authorized to. A lot of that comes back to political leadership.
To return to the brief that we received from The Democracy Fund on hate symbols, I shared that bit of context just to establish that hate symbols are already things that can attract charges under section 319. What they say in this brief is that individuals have been charged under section 319 for the display of a hate symbol. They weren't referring to the case in St. Thomas. They were referring to another case, in January of last year, where a man who held what police called a “terrorist flag” at a protest was charged with hate crimes under existing laws before Bill C-9 was even a twinkle in this government's eye, before this government even existed, a government that so often tells us it is a new government. On the display of the Nazi hakenkreuz, I realize there is some contention around whether one can or should call it a swastika, but that is, again, something that can be and is often informative to the decision by police with the Attorney General's consent to laying a hate charge.
The Democracy Fund raised what I believe is one of the most crucial objections to Bill C-9, which is the way it redefines what hatred is. This is when we can go far beyond, and we must go far beyond, the Liberals simply saying that they are trying to just clean up some laws and trying to add some more clarity. There is no clarity given. This is a new definition. It departs significantly, The Democracy Fund writes, from the definition used by courts since Keegstra, and I would note that the Keegstra definition has been reaffirmed in subsequent cases. In the bill, hatred “means the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike”. In Keegstra, it is an “emotion of an intense and extreme nature”—not just “extreme”, as I mentioned earlier—“that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation.” We have the and/or distinction, and we have “intense and extreme” versus simply the emotion.
I realize these are emotional subjects. I realize it's emotional when we're talking about people who are saying things that are incredibly hurtful. I do not take the position I do on this because I'm defending calls to genocide. Quite the contrary, I want people who break the existing laws to be enforced to the fullest extent of those laws. But what I do not support, and no Canadian who values freedom of expression could ever say they support this, is trying to cast a wider net on political expression that may be offensive but is also what freedom of expression means.
Again, freedom of expression does not exist for the benign. It does not exist for things that are not controversial. Freedom of expression protections exist precisely for things that are. I look at how we have changed, how society has changed on so many social norms. There was a time when Tommy Douglas, who was a lion of socialism in Canada, a lion of the New Democrats, said in a prime ministerial debate that homosexuality was a mental illness. That was a progressive view at the time, and now we have a situation in which we all realize the importance of equal rights for people of all sexual orientations.
This is something that shows how what is controversial in one era is a norm in another, and we only get there when we have the ability to engage in debate and discussion. Again, courts have reversed themselves as well. I mentioned Beverley McLachlin. It was about 30 years ago or so that the Supreme Court ruled there was no right to die by MAID. Then you fast-forward from the Rodriguez decision to the Carter decision and the court has a different view because norms change over time. We should not be stymying debate and discussion when that is arguably the most important freedom and liberty that we have in this country.
I'll move to my second point now. Where we go from there is that if we do not take a stand now, an unequivocal stand, and draw our line in the sand and defend freedom of expression, we are going to allow a government that has shown a reckless disregard for civil liberties to offer more unchecked power. These erosions happen gradually, but they are very difficult to reclaim. I note what was argued by Christine Van Geyn of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, whose testimony I mentioned earlier.
It isn't just that more people will be charged under section 319, or potentially under the Canadian Human Rights Act or potentially under the Canada Labour Code. My colleague Mr. Baber has pointed this out—the incredible risk of applying this definition to all federal statutes. That, in and of itself, is quite interesting. This is not a case where we should ever put the power to government and just hope that they won't abuse it. I believe this was from an interview with Maya Angelou: “when people show you who they are, believe them”. The Liberal government has shown us who they are time and time again, including with the Emergencies Act.
I had the great privilege of interviewing Dr. Maya Angelou, back when I was in radio, and I'm having some déjà vu today. The late poet Maya Angelou had an incredible view about the human spirit and artistic freedom. It's interesting that when you look at artistic freedom, some of the most vocal critics of the online harms act when it came up were people on the left. Margaret Atwood is someone I would put right up there with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. I don't think anyone has ever confused Margaret Atwood with being a Conservative. If she were ever to run for office, I do not believe I would be sitting anywhere near her on our side of the aisle.
Margaret Atwood understands a thing or two about authoritarianism. She wrote The Handmaid's Tale, a book that was adapted into a TV series, which I believe they filmed in Cambridge, the riding held by my colleague Connie Cody. The Handmaid's Tale shows an extreme example of what happens when an authoritarian state expands its power. As we saw in that, it did not happen immediately; it happened gradually, so we have to be very careful about things that look like they are inconsequential, things that look like they are benign but actually are not.
I'll go to our point on—