Public Safety Committee on May 19th, 2022

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Respectfully, Minister, I do feel that this is a bit of an excuse. They were here to talk about extremism and they could not tell me.... They weren't even following this at all. They couldn't tell me whether anyone had been arrested. I find that very concerning. Have you had discussions with your officials since that meeting?

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

You may recall that I expressed concern at the time of the incidents that you refer to.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

You did provide a tweet, but that was about the extent of what I saw.

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

As I was just going to say, Ms. Dancho, I think it's important not to gloss over this.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I would agree.

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

We have to place our confidence in law enforcement to do their job when it comes to investigating—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Certainly, Minister. I'm sorry to cut you off.

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

—and charging. I'm just simply highlighting that parliamentarians have to be cautious about—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

You are here to discuss matters in your jurisdiction—

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

—commenting on ongoing investigations.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

—and those who you are in charge of at the RCMP, who are charged with keeping Canadians safe, as are you, were not able to tell this committee if anyone had even been arrested. They're not even reading the news about this, let alone being informed by their officials. I find it very concerning, and we've seen this escalate.

Perhaps as a result of none of these wrongdoers, none of these eco-terrorists, having been arrested or shown that what they've done is wrong, we've seen—as I'm sure you would know or I hope you would know—in Montreal, that former Conservative minister and senior RBC executive Michael Fortier, while he and his family were sleeping at 1:30 in the morning, awoke to his vehicles in his driveway being set on fire. In fact, the RBC Quebec president has also been a target of this. RBC branches have faced vandalism.

This is continuing to escalate and I would say that public safety is at risk at this point. Would you agree?

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

I condemn that violence. I think we all should.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Are you concerned about the public safety and the escalation that we're seeing?

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

Of course. That's why I'm here, Ms. Dancho. We're here to talk about ways in which we can strengthen our laws as well as provide additional tools to law enforcement to keep Canadians safe, as the threat landscape becomes increasingly complex. I agree.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Then why are you not concerned that your officials for the RCMP who were here a few days ago to talk about extremism were not following the Coastal GasLink case? They were not aware. They could not answer simple questions. That tells me that there's a bit of failure of leadership here, Minister.

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

Again, respectfully, Ms. Dancho, I would not say they're not following. I think rather they're being prudent in not wanting to comment on an ongoing investigation—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

They couldn't confirm if anyone had even been arrested.

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

—which is a very well-established principle within our democracy.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

They couldn't confirm if anyone had been arrested. Don't you find that concerning?

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

I think questions around ongoing investigations are best put to law enforcement.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Do you feel that perhaps there is some leniency here from your government, that you personally have not clearly provided your officials the mandate to follow this case closely? Can you point to any evidence to the contrary?

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

On the contrary, I think my officials are extremely alert and vigilant when it comes to threats.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

When they came to committee to speak about extremism, they had no evidence to show that they had been following this case. As you just outlined, an attack on our pipeline infrastructure is one of the gravest threats to our national security, yet your officials could not answer simple questions, Minister. It's very disappointing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

We're out of time.

We now move to Mr. McKinnon.

You have a five-minute block of questions, Mr. McKinnon. The floor is yours, sir.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for joining us today.

Four of the members of this committee are actually from British Columbia, so I was very glad to hear about the availability of funding for disaster response in the province. I want to talk a little bit more about that and how that's going to play out.

Also, we have a minister of natural disasters. I wonder how your two ministries interact.

Perhaps you could start by telling us the kinds of emergencies that this funding will help to mitigate or to recover from, noting that we're going straight into the forest fire season, imminently. Last year, about a month from now in our time frame, we had a heat dome that killed arguably hundreds of people. We have had the floods that you mentioned. I'd really be delighted to see how this funding can help us.