Public Safety Committee on May 5th, 2021

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I don't know if I need to speak now. Glen just opened up a real window of clarity there that added to Jack's window of clarity, so I have a good idea now that we are actually trying to get to the point of the discussion that we had at the last meeting or the previous day.

I don't think I need to make any more comments, but I want to thank Glen for that, because that really did help with the clarity of the process.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Can either Pam or Jack arrive at some reconciliation as to what is being proposed?

Maybe I should go to Pam first, and then we'll try to find where the differences are between what Pam is proposing and what Jack is proposing.

Go ahead, Pam.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I think the only difference is the number of meetings for Levesque. I'm agreeable to what Jack was saying in terms of the number of meetings. What I'd propose is that on May 12 we have officials for IMVE. We don't have anything planned at the moment. They are people who can be readily available: the RCMP, CSIS and CSE.

On May 26, I think all of us want to finalize the racism study and get it tabled in the House. That certainly should be doable in a day if we all put our minds to it. Then I'm proposing that on May 31 we do IMVE, and bring back Blair and Lucki on June 2.

At that point, the Levesque study should be written and translated, because we know that it takes time to translate. Therefore, on June 7 we would start reviewing the Levesque study. On June 9, we would do IMVE; on June 14, the one-day border study we'd agreed on; and then—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Hang on. You're going a little too quickly for me.

On June 9, we'd do what?

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We'd do IMVE. On June 14, we'd do the border study, and then the next three meetings—June 16, 21 and 23—would be on CSC.

Based on what Jack was saying, I think we could have some flexibility there in terms of the order. I'd love to hear from Jack in terms of moving it around.

I do think, though, we need to hear from Blair and Lucki, and we should try to get a couple of meetings in on IMVE by the end of May. We all listened to David McGuinty. I think there's agreement on the committee as to how urgent this study is. We need to get a couple of meetings done by the end of the month. I've backed off quite a bit from where we started, so I'm hoping that committee members will agree with this.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Before I go to Jack, does everybody now understand what Pam is proposing, before we get any further confused than we already are?

Tako, are you wiggling your finger or are you confused?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

I was scribbling down notes as quickly as I could, but I didn't get when the second Levesque day will be.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Chair, is it okay if I respond?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Yes. The first Levesque day is today. I think the second Levesque day is the seventh, is it not?

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

It is.

I had only put down one meeting on that. Part of the reason is that I think we want to try to get it back to the analyst as quickly as we can. I recognize that there are a lot of recommendations in that, but I also think, if we put our minds to it, we can go through that report and determine what we all agree on. There might be a fair amount we don't agree on, which is fine, and those would be supplementary or dissenting reports.

We could try to do in a day the sections that we agree on. Jack has suggested two days, and that may be necessary and that's fine. We could do June 7 and 9 on Levesque, but the risk we all run is that the longer it takes for us to do Levesque, the less chance we have that it gets tabled in the House, because of translation and analyst writing time. Bear that in mind, but I think we could be flexible and do June 7 and 9 on Levesque if we needed to.

Tako, does that make sense?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

That makes sense.

I'm just thinking that it is going to be two days. If I go by experience on how many days we spent on the racism report, I'm not optimistic that we'd get the review of the Levesque report done in one day.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I think we all understand the proposal in front of the committee and we're all singing from the same song sheet.

First up in the choir is Mr. Harris.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm in general agreement with the approach that Pam has taken. However, I think it's unrealistic, and frankly impossible, to have a Levesque report done in that time frame. First of all, we're going to be reviewing something that's drafted for June 7. It is not going to be passed that day. I haven't seen them, but I'm told we have 50 recommendations, plus there's a whole raft of them in the recommendations from witnesses. That's an impossible task. We'd be very lucky to get a report, if we did nothing else, to ensure that we had the Levesque study—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're having Lucki on June 2.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

June 2 is committed already. That is clear. We agreed with that.

Having May 12 for IMVE is agreeable. May 26 is clear, and hopefully we'll finish that day, but there's no actual guarantee on that. I'm satisfied with leaving IMVE for May 31 if it is available, but not if the racism study is not finished.

For Blair, Lucki and Bastarache, I think that will hopefully take one day. If we can get drafting instructions on that day, then we can have a report on Bastarache by the end of June.

June 7 is for Levesque.

On June 9, I would want to start the CSC study. I want to start the CSC study early. The border study may be flexible to go on the 16th, and we can use June 9 for the Levesque study to hopefully get somewhere with that and do the CSC study on either June 9 or 14. Then there are three days left. We may need time to do Bastarache. We'll still have a second day for the CSC study and then we'll have the one flexible day.

That's the way I would see it shaking down. If we finish Levesque, that would be wonderful. If not, the fall could be a time when we would finish off the CSC, finish off the IMVE report if we don't get time to do it, and then finish Levesque. I think we could have two IMVE meetings in May and then one that could follow in June if there is a place outside of the dates that I've outlined.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

What I'm hearing is agreement all the way to and including June 7.

Glen.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for that, Jack, as well.

Pam mentioned something a few minutes ago, and I think, Mr. Chair, you reinforced it. Some of these studies will not get to the House, even though we want them there. They won't get there before we rise at the end of June. The CSC study will not be done, as Jack has indicated, before the end of June. The extremism study will not be done before the end of June. With those things in mind, while it's important that we at least start both of them, we're putting ourselves under the gun to get the studies done that need to be presented to the House before we rise. We're putting them off.

Quite honestly, the Levesque study is not that long. I believe that it should be easily drafted by the 31st because it's not that long of a study. We can get at it, then, as soon as we can. The House voted unanimously to bring it to committee to get this done, so it would be remiss of us to not get it back to the House for the House to receive it before we rise.

The racism study, certainly, has been longer, and we have a timeline for it. I would hope that.... If we have a meeting on the 31st, then let's move the Levesque study back to the 31st. We can start our extremism study on Wednesday. We have some witnesses that we're prepared to bring forward, I believe—and I'm sure everyone does—for that day. Let's bring the Levesque study and get a good handle on it for the 31st. We can have Blair and Lucki on the second. The Levesque study can come back on the seventh, and we can finish it off. Then we can get to Jack's CSC study, I agree, earlier. We're going to have a day.... Let's get another extremism study date in there before the end of June as well. At least we can get at the things there. We can get the reports back to the House that we've committed to before Christmas. We want them to get back to the House. We've not had that opportunity yet. I would think that this would be wise of us to do.

Both the CSC study and the extremism study will be things that might take us down longer paths. I'd hate to start them because we know we're going to have to finish them in September. They will not be done at any time before we rise.

Why are we cramping our style to not get other things done in time before the House rises so that they can be presented? That was the essence of my motion last time, Mr. Chair, my friendly amendment to Kristina's suggested amendment on the dates. That's why.

I think that if we can come to a compromise that we make the 31st a Levesque study meeting, that we then have Blair and Lucki, and that we take the seventh for the Levesque study, we honour Jack because he's had this CSC study on the radar for us for a significant period of time. We certainly think that there are some things there that we need to consider as a committee. That still leaves us with an extremism date sometime following that, be it the 14th, 16th, 21st or 23rd. One of those four remaining days, we can get another extremism study meeting in there before we rise.

Those would be my suggestions, Mr. Chair. We can try to make that work.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

The big elephant in the room, though, is translation. We don't even have the recommendations translated at this point for the Levesque study. It's just a challenge. It's a challenge for every committee. For us, it's a unique challenge.

I take your overall point. We have to give ourselves a real chance to be able to table both the racism study and the Levesque study. I think that, in principle, everyone agrees with that.

I think Pam was up first and then Jack.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

If I'm not mistaken, other than Glen we had agreed until June 7. Then I think Jack wanted to do CSC or Levesque on June 9, I'm not sure which. We'd be agreeable to that.

I just want to go back, though, to the CSC. This was an issue that we'd studied in the last Parliament a number of times. No one on the committee is more committed to looking at what's going on in corrections, but let's go back to the fact that the Liberal members brought this motion as an emergency motion to the public safety committee, because we have concerns, based on what CSIS has said and what NSICOP has said. Just today, the leader of the NDP was talking about his concerns around IMVE.

There was an arrest made in Edmonton on April 29, where the RCMP said the following:

An ever-increasing concern and challenge faced by law enforcement is the use of the internet and social media as a platform to inspire, radicalize or espouse extremist messaging or calls for violence....

This was in relation to an arrest made there:

The accused was interacting online with like-minded individuals in posting extreme views that ultimately escalated towards him engaging in criminal activity that posed a considerable risk to public and police safety, ultimately resulting in his arrest.

I want to draw us back to the fact that we, as Liberals, felt that this issue required immediate attention, so I'm glad everybody agrees with that. I think it's just timing. I think we've gotten down to probably June 9 at least, and June 14 to do the border study. On June 9 we could either look at CSC or continue Levesque, depending on what Jack is suggesting.

On the schedule, I did keep in mind the lengthy time that's required for translation. This wasn't an attempt to put off Levesque at all. It was more a reflection of the amount of time the House is requiring right now to get things translated. We have to be cognizant of that.

The longer we take to finalize the Levesque study, the less likely it is to get tabled in the House. I think all of us working towards getting that done, if we could, in a day...and I recognize that this is extremely optimistic.

I'll leave it at that for now, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay.

I think the big question is whether Mr. Fisher is eating an Annapolis Valley apple right now.

So we—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Chair, do you want me to put a motion for us to discuss to amend my motion, or...?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I think we're jogging along somewhat close to consensus. Before we get to the motion stage....

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We have basically agreed to June 7. We could leave it at June 9—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Hold on, Chair. On a point of order, I didn't agree to June 7.