Public Safety Committee on May 19th, 2022

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

My understanding of this particular aspect or phenomenon is that it would likely fall more under the portfolio of the Department of National Defence, which is the branch that would likely have that mandate. The point that I'm really making is that our national security partners look for potential threats to our national security in every dimension, and as they arise we get briefed and we share—

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

To date, have you not been briefed on this? Have you had any discussions?

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

On this particular phenomenon, no.

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

Okay.

CSIS is in your department. It's in your purview. It's Canada's national security organization that investigates suspected threats to Canada at home and abroad.

Are you aware of any conversations CSIS has had with its U.S. counterpart on this?

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

I know there's robust collaboration between our security communities, and I would not want to speak for every possible conversation that has occurred between our—

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

Are you aware of any?

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

At this point, no, I am not.

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

The RCMP, as we know, has a number of these reports that are public, and it passes them to NORAD. Are you familiar with this protocol?

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

Again, Ms. Dancho, we're moving into an area that is probably best put to the specific officials, because I don't want to speak about any conversations that they may have had with partners on it. There may very well be some conversations that have been had, but those questions would be best put to them.

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

Do you feel that the Department of National Defence should be the lead, and that the RCMP and CSIS not play a role?

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

I think there's collaboration among all those departments. As it specifically relates to intelligence, there are, again, strong lines of communication, but from the reports that I've seen, and I'm not looking at the papers that you're looking at, my understanding is that some of that work is being led by National Defence.

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

I would just conclude, Minister, from a non-partisan perspective, please reach out to your U.S. counterparts to stay informed.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

In this final round of questions, I'll turn to Mr. Chiang, who has a five-minute block, to take us to the end of this panel.

Go ahead, Mr. Chiang.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for joining us again today.

This committee is focused on keeping Canadians safe, and this committee has an ongoing study to address IMVE in Canada.

Regarding the $5 million in estimated spending allocated to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, could you explain to this committee the importance of education and community outreach as a tool to combat hate, violence and extremism?

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

Mr. Chiang, I'm happy to elaborate on that. First, though, let me thank you for your leadership in this space. I know that long before you became a parliamentarian, you worked closely, as a police officer, with communities to keep them safe, including from the kind of awful racism that has beset so many of our communities.

The program that you have referred to is a concrete example of how the government is working in partnership with communities to build more resilience, tapping into local leadership, particularly communities that have been disproportionately impacted and that are at high risk for racism in all of its forms. I would point out that, for the government, this is not just about money. It's about making sure that we listen and make space for leadership from those who have been directly impacted by racism so that we can address it at its root causes.

Whether it's through this program or whether it's through the creation of the security infrastructure program, which is another initiative that is led out of my department, we will continue to work very closely with communities to stamp out racism and hate in all of their forms.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for your answer on that.

As you know, when it comes to addressing the rise in gun violence, it will take a multipronged approach that sees the government make investments in law enforcement but also investments that build our communities. What investment are we making to ensure that we see a decline in gun violence?

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

I will come to the investment in just a moment, but I want to highlight for you, Mr. Chiang, and I think for all members of this committee, how much I firmly believe that the strategy to reduce gun violence cannot be about just one thing. It requires doing a number of things at the same time.

We believe we have to continue to look at introducing common-sense laws and rules to ensure that guns don't fall into the hands of the wrong kind of individual. We need to continue to invest in law enforcement to stop trafficking at our borders and in our communities. We also need to address gun violence at its root cause. That's why the creation of the $250-million building safer communities fund is so critically important. We need to be doing these three things simultaneously.

That's our plan, and we will continue to remain resolved in seeing it come to fruition so that we can stop gun violence.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

During our study on guns and gang violence, one of the areas that I think caused concern for all of us was testimony regarding the rise in ghost guns. What are you and the RCMP doing to counter the proliferation of ghost guns in Canada?

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

Thank you for that question, Mr. Chiang.

I have had the opportunity to meet with law enforcement leaders in both the United States and Canada who have expressed real concern around the proliferation of 3-D technology leading to the manufacturing of what are now commonly referred to as ghost guns. This is a very deliberate tactic that is used by criminals to subvert investigations to make it more difficult for police to trace gun violence.

We are exploring a number of different avenues to address that issue. My sincere hope, as I said earlier to Ms. Michaud, is that, in the short term, we will be in a position to have a more robust discussion around new tools to law enforcement to address ghost guns and indeed other alarming trends when it comes to gun violence.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for your time.

I have a lot of questions, Mr. Chair, but I will give back the rest of my time to this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Chiang. Every second counts.

Minister, thank you very much for being flexible with your time so that we had an opportunity for two full rounds of questions from members of the committee. On their behalf, I thank you for your appearance today.

Colleagues, we will now take a very short break to make sure that the officials are miked up. Then we will resume with the second part of our meeting this morning.

We will see you in a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I call this meeting back to order.

We will now proceed to the questioning of officials in the second hour.

I will now open the floor to questions and we will begin with Mr. Van Popta.

Sir, you have six minutes. Whenever you're ready, please proceed.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being with us here today.

I didn't see who was here from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. I'm assuming that there is somebody here to hear this question and to provide us with an answer.

I'm from British Columbia, where there was devastating flooding this past winter in the Fraser Valley, touching also in my riding of Langley—Aldergrove. We heard from the minister, in the first hour, that there is some money available in this year's budget under the disaster financial assistance arrangements program.

My question for the officials is whether there is sufficient money in this year's budget to respond to this disaster in terms of short-term recovery but also over the long term to build up our diking systems and drainage.

Thank you.

[Rob Stewart, Deputy Minister, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Hi, my name is Rob Stewart. I'm the deputy minister of Public Safety Canada. I'd be pleased to respond.

There is money that has been provisioned for the DFAA. I would recall that, in the economic fiscal update of 2021, $5 billion was provisioned to deal with the floods in B.C. As things stand at the moment, we are working with British Columbia to assemble an itemized and audited list of expenses that B.C. has incurred, which will then be paid out through the DFAA over the coming months and years. These files take a long time to process, but there is quite a considerable amount of money put aside for this.

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

Thank you for that, sir.

I met, together with a couple of my colleagues who are also from the Fraser Valley, with Mayor Braun of the City of Abbotsford a couple of months before the flooding actually happened. Of course, we didn't know how devastating it was going to be, but officials there anticipated that there would likely be a problem with the diking system around Sumas Prairie and along the Fraser River. Estimates were about half a billion dollars for each one, to build it up to anticipated water levels and to upgrade them for seismic engineering. That's $1 billion all together and now we're talking $500 million to do the repairs.

Perhaps you could comment on that. Are we anticipating ahead of time to prevent future disasters and the expenses that go with repairing after a disaster?