Public Safety Committee on March 26th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Good evening, colleagues and ladies and gentlemen. We welcome our witnesses here this evening to meeting number 61 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

We're continuing our study on Bill C-51. We have two panels of witnesses tonight.

On our first panel tonight we welcome, from B'nai Brith Canada, David Matas, senior legal counsel, and Marvin Kurz, national legal counsel. We also welcome, from the Canadian Police Association, Tom Stamatakis, president. By way of video conference from Vancouver, British Columbia, we welcome Jessie Housty, as an individual.

Welcome, all.

Yes, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Chair, here is a quick point of order—you can take it off my time, if you must.

I know this is the last meeting for witnesses and we'll be starting clause-by-clause next week, I gather. Can we be given assurances that we will have Department of Justice people here who may have been involved in the drafting of the legislation? It's an omnibus bill. There are five sections. There are going to be a lot of questions on a lot of these sections. I don't think Library of Parliament counsel should be the ones who have to cover off on this.

Can we be assured that we will have Department of Justice officials who know this bill and its implications thoroughly?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

I can turn it over to the parliamentary secretary. The only suggestion I would make, Mr. Easter, is that it is normal practice to have departmental officials here, but perhaps Ms. James could advise us of the situation.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, there will be officials here from Justice. We've seen both ministers in the first meeting. Both the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety came because there are parts of this bill that apply to both.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

They will have been involved in the development of the bill, because they really have to know their stuff. There are a lot of questions here. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Easter.

I just want to confirm. Ms. Housty, are we live with you? Are you ready, willing, and able here? I just want to make sure we have contact. Can you hear us well?

[Jessie Housty, As an Individual]

Yes, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine. Thank you very much.

Then we will start off with our rounds. There will be up to 10 minutes for each delegation. If you can make it a little more brief, that would certainly be preferable, in that it gives our committee more opportunity to be involved in the question and answer session.

We will start off with B'nai Brith Canada. Mr. Kurz, you have the mike, sir.

[Marvin Kurz, National Legal Counsel, B'nai Brith Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

B’nai Brith is Canada’s largest membership-based Jewish organization. Through its League for Human Rights and Institute for International Affairs, it is the premier advocate of human rights for Canada's Jewish community.

In its submission today, B’nai Brith Canada will focus on one aspect of Bill C-51, that related to the creation of an offensive promotion of terrorism, seizure of terrorist propaganda, and deletion of terrorist propaganda from computer systems.

Our position is in favour of those aspects of Bill C-51, subject to some recommendations for amendments that will help ensure that the provisions are not seen to suffer from problems of vagueness and overbreadth, which may negatively protect the constitutionality of the bill.

My colleague, Mr. Matas, will speak at greater length regarding our recommendations for the actual amendments.

For now I'd like to briefly offer an overview explanation of how we came to the point of supporting the terror propaganda provisions that we are speaking of. In doing so, I point to the context of the Jewish community's vulnerability to hate propaganda throughout the world and particularly here in Canada, the tie between hate and terror, and the context of our anti-hate propaganda legislation.

In our paper we refer to what you all know, that is the recent spate of terror activities in Canada, those actually caught by our investigative authorities before they could be carried out, those that have actually been carried out, and those that are yet to come, including the future behaviour of Canadian children brainwashed to join jihadist groups abroad.

For our community, one part of the hidden context of so much terrorist activity is the fact that the most powerful terrorist groups are now the foremost hate groups as well, with ISIS, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and Hamas supplanting the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the Heritage Front as leaders of the hate movement. These are organizations whose raison d'être focuses in large measure on zealous anti-Semitism.

We know of the terror activities aimed at Jews in France, the Hyper Cacher supermarket slaughter tied to the Charlie Hebdo attacks; the 2012 murders at a Jewish school in Marseilles; the recent murder in Copenhagen of a young Jewish guard at a synagogue, who was protecting 100 people there for a bat mitzvah; the attacks on a Jewish-owned shopping mall in Kenya in 2013; and the attack on a Mumbai religious centre as part of a larger terrorist attack in 2008.

In each of these activities I'm talking about, in each of these crimes, Jews were singled out for attack purely for reasons of hate. There was no other strategic reason to attack these innocents.

In Canada, the Jewish-owned West Edmonton Mall, along with Jewish-owned malls worldwide, was at the centre of a terror threat by al Shabaab. What hasn't been made really clear is that the reason the West Edmonton Mall, as opposed to say the Yorkdale Shopping Centre, was centred out was that it is Jewish owned. The Ghermezians own the mall as well as some of the other malls that were mentioned. The only malls that have been threatened are Jewish-owned malls.

These terror threats come in the context of a worldwide increase in anti-Semitism. Our B’nai Brith audit of anti-Semitic incidents shows that in 2013 vandalism against Jewish targets was up 21.6% and violence, 7.7%. We're awaiting the 2014 numbers, which we expect to be far higher as they have been in Europe, for example, where there has been a 100%, a doubling, of anti-Semitic incidents in France; 60% in Belgium; 50% in Britain; and 33% in Australia. These figures are all in our paper.

Canadian law in the form of a series of Supreme Court of Canada decisions has frequently confirmed the propriety of legal limitations on hate speech, recognizing the tie between hate speech and hate crimes. We say that the tie between speech and action or crime is even greater in the case of the promotion of terror, which is why we support the provisions of Bill C-51 that we are supporting, subject to the caveats that my colleague, Mr. Matas, will now speak of.

[David Matas, Senior Legal Counsel, B'nai Brith Canada]

Thank you. I will speak specifically about proposed changes to Bill C-51.

In general, as you've heard, we're in favour of the advocacy and promotion of terrorism becoming an offence. We would like to see, and we appreciate through Bill C-51, a re-equilibration of the balance between freedom of speech and protecting victims of terrorism in light of the enhanced terrorist threat with which the planet in general and Canada in particular have been confronted.

There are three specific suggestions we have that we believe are consistent with the spirit of the bill.

One is to import a defence for the offences of promotion or advocacy, which already exist for the offence of promotion of hatred. The Criminal Code now provides that no person shall be convicted of wilful promotion of hatred who, in good faith, intended to point out for the purpose of removal, matters tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group. Something similar should be drafted for the offences of advocacy and promotion of terrorist activity.

Second, the proposed offences prohibit promotion and advocacy of terrorism offences in general without indicating what those offences are. We assume that this phrase “terrorism offences in general” refers to those offences found in section 83.01 of the Criminal Code, but whether this assumption is correct or not, the phrase “terrorism offences in general” should be defined so it is clear which offences are intended.

Our third suggestion relates to the consent of the Attorney General. For clause 16 of the bill, the seizure of terrorist propaganda and their deletion from computer systems requires the consent of the Attorney General. However, prosecution for promotion or advocacy of terrorism does not require that consent, and the absence of consent means that private prosecution is possible. We are reluctant to endorse the possibility of private prosecution for speech offences because our experience has been that once that sort of prosecution becomes possible, it is used for frivolous purposes to harass those with whom the private prosecutor disagrees.

While frivolous prosecutions are inevitably dismissed, it's no small matter to be dragged through the criminal courts, even if the result is acquittal. Attorneys General, we realize, have the power to direct a stay of private prosecutions, but mobilizing any Attorney General to exercise that power takes time and effort; and criminal private prosecutions, unlike civil lawsuits, do not allow for the awarding of costs against the unsuccessful prosecutor.

A requirement of the Attorney General's consent has, we acknowledge, its own problems. The relevant Attorneys General for these offences are the provincial Attorneys General, except for the territories. Our experience with the offence of wilful promotion of hatred has been that some Attorneys General were most reluctant to consent to prosecution of this offence, even in clear-cut cases. So we would suggest, in addition to the requirement of Attorney General consent, that there be guidelines for the use of that consent. In our written materials, we suggested several guidelines, but just as suggestions. The guidelines could be policy instruments of the Government of Canada, which they could publish after the legislation is enacted, and a committee could recommend that the government draft these guidelines. Alternatively, the legislation itself could incorporate these guidelines, somewhat like the sentencing guidelines already in the Criminal Code.

Well, that's all I wanted to say, but I just would conclude by saying that our general approach, both in proposing the requirement of Attorney General consent and suggesting guidelines is that a law criminalizing advocacy or promotion of terrorism should not be too easy to invoke, but it should not be a dead letter either.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Matas.

We will now go to Mr. Stamatakis for his opening statement.

[Tom Stamatakis, President, Canadian Police Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to appear before you this evening as you continue your study into Bill C-51.

As you mentioned, Mr. Chair, I'm here this evening on behalf of the Canadian Police Association, an organization that represents 60,000 front-line law enforcement professionals, which includes both civilian and sworn members in every provincial and municipal police service across the country.

As is my habit when appearing before you, I am going to try to keep my opening comments as brief as possible to allow you enough time as you need for questions. As I've been following the debate on Bill C-51 very closely, I would like to begin by offering the context around my appearance here tonight, and where I believe I can offer particular insight that might benefit you all in the course of this particular study.

There's no question that the issue of oversight has become a focal point in the discussions around our security and intelligence services, both here in Parliament and among the public in general.

As a front-line police officer myself, I'll be the first to admit that my experience is not as a covert intelligence officer, but it is as someone who has dealt with civilian oversight in the public safety sector on a daily basis, in a practical and not academic or theoretical setting. That's not to suggest other witnesses who have appeared before this committee, and who have commented publicly on this proposed legislation, haven't raised interesting questions and concerns, but in my experience simply calling for more oversight, without examining the practical applications and consequences of that oversight, is only giving half of the story.

Let me give you an example. Here in the province of Ontario, all professional law enforcement officers are subject to no less than three separate civilian oversight agencies: the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, the Special Investigations Unit, and the Ontario Civilian Police Commission. Despite these multiple layers, any time an unfortunate incident occurs that involves law enforcement personnel, the calls for additional oversight come quickly from almost all sectors.

This example isn't meant to suggest that there isn't a role for oversight to play in the public safety sector; however, I would take issue with calls for oversight bodies to take a more active role in the operational nature of the jobs we entrust to highly trained and very accountable professional law enforcement, whether a police officer employed by a federal, provincial, or municipal agency or an intelligence officer employed by the federal government.

Those who have criticized the Security Intelligence Review Committee for only providing "after the fact" oversight often underestimate how difficult real-time operational oversight can be to achieve, particularly in the context of a fast-moving investigation with very real public safety consequences. Those criticisms also undervalue the often positive effect that ex post facto oversight can have in our industry. Identifying where inappropriate actions may have been taken or where different and more positive decisions could have been made is the very foundation of our services and the training and education that often come from those service reviews.

From a law enforcement perspective, I'd suggest that while discussing whether an oversight body like SIRC has adequate resources to handle the role they've been given is important, perhaps asking whether the resources necessary to properly train our law enforcement and intelligence officers in the new powers they're being granted with this proposed legislation might be equally, if not more, important.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That being said, there are a lot of positive steps being taken within Bill C-51 that our association wholeheartedly supports.

I know the members of this committee have heard almost two weeks' worth of witnesses on these issues, so I won't go too deeply into the details or repeat what others have already said, but provisions that allow reasonable exchanges of information, where it pertains to national security concerns, among government departments will help alleviate one of the biggest problems facing public safety in this country—that the left hand often isn't allowed to know what the right hand found out six months ago.

In fact, I would suggest that while it may not be a popular opinion, given the multi-service nature of most national security investigations, and the fact that municipal and provincial police services are often called to play a role, the language in this legislation may not go far enough in listing the agencies with which particular information can be shared.

I would also like to highlight our support for changes to the Criminal Code that allow law enforcement agencies to detain a suspect for up to seven days when an officer suspects a terrorist activity may be carried out. These new measures, if adopted, will provide our members with the necessary flexibility to conduct more in-depth and thorough investigations, while still subjecting our actions to the very appropriate and necessary judicial review process.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I wanted to keep my comments brief, though I'm not sure I've succeeded in that regard.

Bill C-51 is an important piece of legislation that takes a number of steps to modernize our national public security apparatus, and the public and professional law enforcement have a large role to play in this regard.

The members I represent face the very real challenges posed by increased domestic radicalization, as we saw in the attacks against Canadian Forces personnel in Quebec and Ottawa only a few short months ago. With the proper training and, yes, oversight as well, they will continue to meet this challenge head-on in the professional manner we as Canadians have come to appreciate and expect.

Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Stamatakis.

Now we welcome Ms. Housty.

You have the floor now for up to 10 minutes, please.

[Jessie Housty]

I would like to begin by thanking the committee for the invitation to speak to you today. As I have been introduced, my name is Jessie Housty. I am a first nations woman from the Heiltsuk Nation, who come from the outer coast of British Columbia. The geography of my homeland is part of western Canada's front line of activism in response to multiple forms of resource extraction.

I serve my people as an elected councillor on the Heiltsuk Tribal Council. However, I do not come here today to speak to you as a councillor or on behalf of the Heiltsuk Nation. I speak to you today on my own behalf. I am an activist. I am a storyteller. I am a community organizer. My work at its core is grounded in a desire to protect our lands, waters, and cultural practices for my generation and for future generations. I speak to you today from that place.

In my work, and under current laws and regulations, I have witnessed the extent to which first nations people asserting their sovereignty are already labelled as radicals and agitators. In speaking to you today, I intend to share some specific concerns around the further implications that Bill C-51 may have for indigenous nation-building.

In summary, I am concerned about the bill's expansion of state power to place people under surveillance to monitor everyday activities. I have concerns that the bill will authorize criminalization of activities involved in advancing and protecting our rights and title, indigenous dissent and activism, and more broadly, democratic activities that are based on a goal to protect and improve our environment for our generation and for future generations. I am also concerned that this will give CSIS powers to act physically to disrupt the peaceful protests that form a strong part of the foundation of our attempts to uphold our rights, interests, and sovereignty as first nations people.

Before I begin my own comments, I would like to acknowledge and adopt the testimony of several witnesses who have spoken before me. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the advocacy and testimony of National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and Dr. Pam Palmater. They have spoken aptly to many concerns of first nations people and I echo their analysis of the proposed bill.

I will now speak briefly of two specific concerns about the proposed bill. First, regarding the proposed security of Canada information sharing act, it is my opinion that this should not be enacted. Other witnesses, including professors Roach and Forcese have spoken at length about issues with the proposed act, so I intend to keep my comments brief.

The stated purpose of the security of Canada information sharing act is to encourage and facilitate information sharing between Government of Canada institutions in order to protect Canada against activities that undermine the security of Canada. The language in the act is very broad and subjective, and I am concerned that it will result in unnecessarily classifying certain activities as terrorist in nature.

Unfettered access to information and the ability to share it widely with any person for any purpose is dangerous and fundamentally disturbing. Upholding ideals that are not considered to be in the national interest, ideals like first nations' right to sovereignty, may, under Bill C-51, open individuals to harassment and persecution with little ability to answer to the information being collected and shared about them. I am concerned that this may result in a chill on non-violent and direct action, the very action my community utilizes to mobilize support for acknowledgement of our rights and interests.

Protests and demonstrations have often been a key element of first nations' efforts to assert sovereignty and uphold rights, in keeping with widespread cultural values around business being conducted in a public and inclusive way. Fear of legitimate action being caught in the wide net of this proposed bill may have the effect of oppressing an important expression of nation-building efforts by first nations people.

I have heard Ms. Roxanne James explain to some witnesses that the exemption for lawful protests must be read with the rest of the section and that the activities must be those that undermine the security of Canada. However, I am concerned that this is too subjective as, if the cause being put forward is not supported by the government of the day, it may be labelled as an activity that undermines the security of Canada. My concerns are not allayed by the present wording of the bill.

Second, I would like to speak briefly to the issue of additional CSIS powers. Bill C-51 proposes troubling amendments to the CSIS Act, permitting CSIS, if it has reasonable grounds to believe that an activity constitutes a threat to the security of Canada, to take measures within or outside Canada to reduce the threat.

With these changes, democratic protest movements with tactics that do not square in every way with even municipal law will not have the benefit of exclusion for lawful protests. They may be the subject of CSIS investigation and may even be subject to CSIS disruption.

I am troubled by the trend of the scope of lawful protest becoming increasingly narrowed, with powers of physical enforcement being expanded to CSIS with even less accountability and oversight than we see at present. I am specifically concerned that the new powers contemplated to be granted to CSIS will allow CSIS to potentially disrupt peaceful first nations protest movements for recognition of our rights and title. I echo Dr. Palmater's concern that any expression of first nation sovereignty is at risk of being construed as a threat to national security insofar as it is inherently a threat to Canada's sovereignty.

As a first nations woman I am guided first and foremost by my Heiltsuk laws. At the foundation of Heiltsuk law is the principle that all business is carried out in a public and transparent way. My concern is that peaceful protest movements around rights and title may now be captured as a security issue and addressed with little oversight behind closed doors, at odds with the way I organize, with the way my people carry themselves, and with the way my laws are carried out. This is especially frustrating given the intent and foundation of our practices and the laws of our ancestors, which strive to be peaceful and non-violent. If there were more understanding of our traditional first nations laws and values, I believe there would be less suspicion of us and less concern about violence.

In summary, my view is that this bill represents a real threat to the tool box that indigenous peoples rely on for advancing our rights and title. For that reason, as well the many reasons that other witnesses have so capably spoken to, it is my opinion that the bill should not be enacted.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Ms. Housty. I certainly appreciate your comments here this evening.

Now we will go to our rounds of questions. We will start off, for seven minutes, with Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and through you, to the witnesses, thank you for appearing today.

With no surprise, my first questions will be to Mr. Stamatakis.

Mr. Stamatakis, today, we heard from Ray Boisvert, a former member of CSIS, in—quite frankly—senior positions. He echoed some of your concerns with regard to information sharing that often, not only in the world of security that he lived in, but in my experience.... You mentioned the right hand and left hand not knowing what they are doing. As we have seen in the past with terrible crimes being committed, we were unable to find who the perpetrator was. Yet if the information had been shared within police forces—I can start rhyming them off and I think you would know as many, if not more, than I do—we would have solved those crimes and perhaps even saved lives in the interim.

I'm going to direct your attention to that part of Bill C-51 that promotes information sharing. I wonder if you can comment on that from your perspective, after having read the bill, making note that what may seem like a minor incident or some minor piece of information to one entity might just be the tipping point for another. In other words, with something that seems inconsequential, somebody may be doing a project, and all of a sudden that piece of information now connects a lot of dots, and they can solve or find a perpetrator.

Could you make some comments on Bill C-51 in relation to information sharing amongst departments?

[Tom Stamatakis]

I think I touched on that in my remarks. Information sharing in this country right now, particularly from a public safety perspective but also more broadly from a community safety perspective, is one of the biggest barriers to delivering on the commitment to keep Canadians safe across all sectors.

From my perspective and on behalf of the members I represent, front-line police officers.... I go to meetings across the country where that's one of the primary issues they raise, the fact that you can't get information from another agency, and that if you'd had it, you could've been more proactive, for instance, in terms of getting ahead of a potential offence being committed.

From a policing perspective, we deal predominantly with criminal offences. But if you go further, particularly in light of some of the recent events, not just in this country but in other countries—especially when you look at the major urban centres across the country—front-line police officers are gathering intelligence and they're interacting with different groups in our communities every day. There are many examples, as you alluded, Mr. Norlock, where an inconsequential piece of information in one jurisdiction becomes a pivotal piece of information in terms of successfully concluding an investigation and getting it to prosecution in another jurisdiction.

We support those information-sharing provisions in the legislation, and I think they could even go further beyond the federal institutions and include, particularly, some of the larger municipal police departments like Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary. You have lots of activity occurring in those big communities, which is being monitored right now but where information is not being exchanged the way it should be.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much. I am going to go over now to peace bonds and preventive detention.

Could you comment on other Criminal Code amendments being proposed in the legislation, namely the lessening of the threshold for peace bonds and preventive detention, given that the recognizance with condition tools have not been used?

Do you believe in lowering that threshold but—and this is the pivotal part—ensuring that there is judicial approval and review of detention and that it could be a valuable tool for front-line law enforcement? Of course, to police officers, peace bonds are something that happens very frequently. This is specific, of course, to terrorism. We also know that, encapsulated in that proposal in C-51, judges can put on them any conditions that they deem necessary, including reporting back and other conditions.

Do you believe they would be useful tools? I wonder if you could comment on them in your experience.

[Tom Stamatakis]

Absolutely. Again, that's an area of the legislation that my organization supports, and the caveat is that, in my reading of the legislation, it's all subject to judicial oversight. I think that's the key.

I can give you many examples of the great lengths to which police officers have to go to put together the information to obtain a search warrant or to get the judicial authorization to engage in some other activity, and that's totally appropriate.

I think it is also appropriate, from my review of the legislation, that even in exigent circumstances—if there isn't time to get that authorization—there's a requirement to follow up as soon as is practicable to then get that authorization after the fact. That is a critical component, I think, particularly in Canada, to make sure there is the appropriate amount of oversight and police are getting the appropriate authorizations before they engage in activities that tread all over the rights of Canadians.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

We heard from Inspector Irwin earlier this week. Inspector Irwin talked about some of the good things that the Toronto Police Service and other police services are doing with regard to radicalization.

Are you aware of any programs that the Toronto Police Service or other police services are engaged in to prevent youth at risk from being radicalized?

[Tom Stamatakis]

I couldn't talk about specific programs. I know generally this is an issue that's been the focus of a lot of attention in the police community.

We have pretty robust programs in place now that focus on youth engagement. I know that those programs are now being looked at to incorporate this new threat to public security in Canada, so that we can proactively engage with those who are vulnerable to try to prevent further tragedies from happening.

This is a topic of a lot of discussion in the police community across Canada and will continue to be, I think, going forward in the coming months and years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Stamatakis.

Thank you, Mr. Norlock.

Now, Ms. Ashton, you have the floor.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you to all of our witnesses.

Ms. Housty, thank you very much for joining us today from British Columbia. We certainly appreciate your testimony as a young indigenous woman and an activist. Your perspective is unique, given the discussions we're hearing today. I know what you've brought forward is on behalf of many young indigenous people who are on the front lines similar to you.

You've shared your opposition to C-51, you've outlined some key concerns that we can glean from, and you've echoed other speakers we've heard in this committee. Given your activism on the front lines, I'm wondering if you can tell us briefly what you're up against and why you and so many young indigenous people where you are take to demonstrations to get your voices out.

[Jessie Housty]

Absolutely.

One of the difficulties that I face in my work interfacing between my community and the broader Canadian society at large is a great deal of persistent racism and misconceptions about what it means to be an indigenous person and to stand up for indigenous rights in this country.

My strength as an individual comes from a very place-based cultural identity that ties me to my homelands as part of a legacy of stewards and guardians that goes back tens of thousands of years. For me, the work that I do is based very deeply on love and passion and commitment to carrying on that cultural leadership that I've witnessed throughout my upbringing and that I hope to pass on to future generations in my family and in my community.

I have worked for a number of years as a community educator and a community organizer around a variety of resource extraction issues that are putting pressure on my homeland. I do this work because I believe that our people should be engaged, informed, and empowered to stand up for their rights and their homelands.

I've watched as the peaceful actions that my community has undertaken have been labelled as security threats, as my fellow community members have been called radicals and agitators and eco-terrorists and everything you can imagine. It's an incredibly deeply hurtful thing because it really drives home the fact that the narrative behind what we do is so different from the narrative that is imposed upon us by wider Canadian society when what we're doing is rooted in love and commitment, but we're being portrayed as a threat.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you for sharing that.

Ms. Housty, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a conservative think tank, published a report by Douglas Bland a while ago that portrayed first nations as a serious potential national security risk and a potential source of terrorism.

What do you think of this portrayal of indigenous people in Canada?