Public Safety Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[William Ray, As an Individual]

My name is William Ray. I served for 10 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. I hold the Governor General of Canada's decoration for bravery for halting ethnic cleansing in the Medak area of Croatia in 1993.

The first member of my family to get to Canada arrived here in 1759 and fought for General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham. One of his descendants was a man named Sir Samuel Benfield Steele, known as Sam Steele to anybody from the west. He was the third member of the North-West Mounted Police, now the RCMP, and one of its leaders for about half of its existence.

All of that is to say that I and my family have been involved in the defence and security of Canada since before it was Canada.

As written, Bill C-51, or law Bill C-51, will provide for neither our security nor surely our liberty. Nothing in this bill would have prevented the occurrences we have had here in Canada: nothing. This bill, and the security services of Canada, unfortunately, for the last couple of years have been pursuing the unethical use of security service powers against social groups, against anti-resource activists. We've seen this by the Canadian Armed Forces, my former organization, whose sole purpose is to literally fix and destroy those who pose a threat to the security of Canada. Following around native activists: this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in this country.

Bill C-51 needs to be revoked in toto. I would remind you all that the darkest periods in the history of our nation have occurred when we have traded the liberty of our citizens for what we perceived to be our security. I would include in that residential schools. I would include in that the forming of concentration camps for German, Italian, and Japanese citizens during World War II.

Anything that the security services need to do, as Mr. McSorley very ably pointed out, is covered by the Criminal Code of Canada. You may not destroy property. You may not threaten others. You may not injure others. There is no need for this bill. It is a massive overreach by the RCMP and CSIS. The RCMP does not have a good history with this sort of thing. We threw them out of the national security business for a good reason, most of which happened here in Quebec. I know their history very well, because part of it is my family history.

I would ask you all, as parliamentarians, to exercise your duty to the people of this country to protect not just their physical security but their liberty and the society that generations of people have fought to bring about and continue to improve.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Just before you sit down, Mr. Miller has a question.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

First of all, Mr. Ray, thank you very much for your 10 years of service to Canada. We all owe you a debt of thanks.

[William Ray]

Then fix the veterans act.

Go on. I'm sorry, sir.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Very good.

You said that Bill C-51 won't help security and liberty, which were your exact words. On the security part of it, sir, there's been a number of so-called experts in the field—and I'm not going to profess to be one of them because I'm not—who've said that if they'd had some of the changes in Bill C-51 in place two years ago, Warrant Officer Vincent and Corporal Cirillo may still be alive. Also that would-be terrorist, Mr. Aaron Driver, in Strathroy, Ontario, wouldn't have been apprehended if this law hadn't been in place.

First of all, what are your comments on that? There are a number of people who said that helped. I'm not saying the whole Bill C-51 is good, but in that part of it, there are people out there saying that it did help. Could you respond to that, please?

[William Ray]

Certainly. Now I work as a journalist. I'm a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists and I have questioned the RCMP, Sergeant Cox in Ottawa, quite closely about the incident that happened in Ottawa. They have provided me, certainly, with no evidence, nor does anything in the public realm show that they could have prevented this. This was a lone nut-case guy who didn't communicate with anyone. The RCMP admit that. He didn't communicate with any foreign groups. He wasn't part of a cell.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

What are you referring to, sir?

[William Ray]

I'm referring to Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau, who shot Corporal Cirillo.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, but if I could just stop you there, I think there are news articles out there, sir, that say the police or security forces, whatever you want to call them, had done a number of things. In fact, they revoked his passport and there were some other things; I just fail to remember them all. They were quite aware of him, but they didn't have the powers to detain him.

[William Ray]

Detain him for what? He didn't print a manifesto and declare on it he would attack Parliament, so detain him for what? What was in his mind? I hope we're not there.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

No, let's not—

[William Ray]

Sir, the RCMP have provided no direct evidence, and by the way, that case is still open, mysteriously. They provided no direct evidence.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

What I'm saying, sir, is the evidence of what happened on that day with Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau is in a coffin. What I'm saying is they were quite worried about this guy, that he might commit an act, and he did. You can't ignore the facts.

[William Ray]

If the RCMP had reason to believe this man was going to commit a criminal act, why weren't they watching him? Why did they not notice that this man, who was working in B.C., stayed in a homeless shelter in Ottawa and went out and bought a gun and a car? They didn't notice any of this, and they could do that under the Criminal Code of Canada if they sought a peace bond—voila. That's what I'm saying, sir.

Sure, you may have to expand some areas of the Criminal Code, some areas of, I don't know, the judicial powers, but you could do that. None of the incidents that have occurred in this country can be tied to any foreign group, and it is hard to see—

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

That isn't what I asked about.

[William Ray]

Okay, but it is hard to see. The RCMP in none of those cases so far have presented evidence that by monitoring the person's communications they could have stopped this event. I would disagree with you there, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm going to step in on this. You have both made your points and made them well, so thank you very much.

We have Madam Dressel, and after that Madam Goldberg.

[Holly Dressel, As an Individual]

Hi. I also am a journalist. I'm very happy to follow this man because he made some points that I wanted to make—and very well.

I have written several books with David Suzuki—

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I'm sorry. I didn't get your name.

[Holly Dressel]

I'm Holly Dressel.

I've taught at McGill in environmental studies, and I've worked a great deal.... For instance, Suzuki is a perfect example. He talked about the concentration camps and how we used laws like this to put people away. That is exactly what happened to the man I worked with for 25 years.

I work a great deal with native groups. I can tell you that I was shocked to find out, when I started working in Kahnawà:ke and Akwesasne, that nearly all the environmental activists that I dealt with who were native had had dealings with CSIS. CSIS had come. These were just regular little people living in little houses on the reserve. CSIS had come around in their lives in almost every case. They would make jokes about it. They would exchange CSIS stories.

How would you like to be in that position where CSIS is regularly checking on you and trying to get your friends to talk about you? This is one of the things that already happens to native activists and environmental activists.

One of the things that many of us thought—many thousands of people—when Stephen Harper pushed this bill through in the first place was that one of its major reasons would be to discourage native land claims and native activism to stop oil pipelines and fracking. We know that this is a constant preoccupation of federal governments. Now it is the preoccupation of the Liberal federal government, but this is a Stephen Harper creature, and frankly, if you, the Liberals, stick with this, if the current federal government sticks with this act, it will go down in history as your act, not Stephen Harper's, I assure you.

The big problem with it is exactly that: the way it criminalizes freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and everything that identifies a democracy.

The final thing I would say is that it's supposed to be against terrorism, but the idea of terrorism is to prevent people who will not allow you to have freedom from taking over your life, right? A terrorist is someone who makes you afraid to do what you want to do.

How many rural people do you think can go out there...? Once again, I've worked a great deal with farmers and rural people attempting to protect their watershed, their forest areas, or something from industrialization. How many of those people do you think will have the courage to go out and risk seven days of being held incommunicado and being called a terrorist? As this bill stands, it is too vague to protect that kind of action.

The questioner here, who I think was Mr. Mendicino, was talking about situations where this kind of citizen dissent gets out of hand. This hardly ever happens. When it does, it tends to be because of agents provocateurs. I was present at one such thing in Seattle in the year 2000. I watched and we watched the agents provocateurs come into downtown Seattle. They were great big gigantic guys who nobody had seen, in masks, and they had big lead pipes and went through and broke a bunch of windows at Starbucks and stuff, and then they vanished. Then the helicopters came in.

There have been cases of this—I don't have to tell you—in Montebello and so forth, so this is not any kind—

I notice that he's not paying any attention to me. However, I would say that—

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I'm taking notes on what you're saying.

[Holly Dressel]

Oh. Good. Good, you're concerned, then.

It's hard to tell with students, too, you know.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Matthew Dubé]

It's technology.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I would prefer that you not assume that I'm not paying attention—

[Holly Dressel]

Okay.