Public Safety Committee on Feb. 17th, 2022

[The Clerk]

Ms. Dancho has her hand up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Ms. Dancho, please go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

I want to make it very clear what we are voting on, colleagues.

We are voting on a motion that would call the Minister of Public Safety and various police forces in this country to committee. The spirit of this motion is that they come as soon as possible. We would like that to be next week.

I'm not clear. It seems, from subamendments moved by the Liberal members, that they don't find this situation urgent, that we could wait. In fact, I think a Liberal member said that this is not helpful. I would say what's not helpful is the Minister of Public Safety and police forces avoiding public scrutiny and accountability of how we got to such a point in our country that emergency powers had to be invoked.

Just to be clear to members of this committee, these emergency powers are now freezing the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the protest. This is live; this is happening right now, and it is incumbent upon the members of this public safety committee of Canada to hear from the Minister of Public Safety and the police forces in this country as to how we got to this extreme point in our country and in our history. That is the importance of this motion. That needs to be made extremely clear to those who are watching.

For that reason, obviously, Conservatives will be supporting this motion and look forward to having the opportunity to scrutinize and hold accountable the Minister of Public Safety for how we got to this point.

The last thing I will say is that he has failed to date to make a coherent argument for invoking these emergency powers, so I look forward to hearing him defend his position. Hopefully for him, he can do a better job than he's done thus far.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I have—

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I have a point of order.

I'd just like to know, if possible, what we're voting on, discussing and debating. There's been a lot thrown out, so we should just have that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

We voting on the main motion as amended.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Could that be read out to us?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Yes, after I deal with the five hands I see up, and there may be more in the room.

Clerk, I'll rely on you for that.

Go ahead, Mr. McKinnon.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to address Ms. Dancho's assertion that we seem to feel that this is not an important matter.

This is a critically important matter. The very fact that we have a legislated committee that will be set up in the very, very near future to deal with this matter underscores the urgency and importance of it.

My personal objection to dealing with this motion right now is that we also have other important things to deal with such as the witnesses we were unable to hear from today.

There are places that are much more properly tasked, I think, to deal with these questions. As well, as I mentioned before, is the issue of having law enforcement people speak to issues that are essentially ongoing. They are going to be necessarily constrained with what they say as long as these are live issues. Certainly I, as a Liberal—and I believe I speak for my colleagues as well—absolutely underscore that this is an important matter. It is an important thing to hear from these officials, but we just have to hear from them in the proper way.

I also take exception that the case has not been made for the invoking of the Emergencies Act. I think the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety did so very, very clearly when they announced the measures earlier this week. To say otherwise is disingenuous, and I take great exception to it. The matter is very clear: We will have a legislated, mandated committee to deal with this, and I must strenuously object to this motion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Ms. Damoff, I see your hand up.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to say that I think the original motion that was brought to this committee was brought in good faith. I think it was brought because members of this committee wanted to hear from the agencies.

I am quite disappointed with the way our colleagues from the Conservative Party are turning this into a partisan issue. To say that the only place these folks can appear is at the public safety committee is just factually incorrect.

In fact, right now in the House of Commons there is a debate happening on the invocation of the Emergencies Act. There will be a special committee formed that will be reviewing what happened, so if we want to talk about bank accounts being frozen and the need to get to the bottom of that, quite frankly, that is what's being debated in the House right now and will be debated for quite some time.

I think members will recall that we had FINTRAC come at the request of Liberal members of the committee, and they provided extremely helpful information to the government on the gaps that exist in the financial system. I think it's been incredibly important, the measures that were brought in.

To see the Conservative Party say that we don't treat this as urgent, when we have just brought in legislation that will invoke the Emergencies Act, something that hasn't been used since it was created, is to see something that is simply not true. It's obvious that we are treating it urgently.

I am really disappointed by how partisan this has turned. I think it's unfortunate that we're not using our ability on this committee to do some digging to get to the bottom of where things are. I am really disappointed.

I think the initial motion was brought in good faith and it's unfortunate that it's been turned into a more partisan debate. I think it's incumbent on us to respond to some of these allegations, which simply don't reflect the facts of what our government is doing right now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Clerk, I don't see hands in the room. Do you?

[The Clerk]

There's Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. Lawrence, go ahead.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much.

I am pleased that we will be able to go over and start the conversation, reviewing it. I am hoping that we can count on the good faith of all members, and hopefully the police forces to get in front of us as soon as possible.

It's not because of anything that I want individually, but I am always mindful of who we are and who we represent. I represent the 120,000 people of Northumberland—Peterborough South and so I believe that those 120,000 folks more than deserve the opportunity of one hour of a police officer's time to explain to us exactly what is going on in our country.

We have the Emergencies Act and the honourable member, Ms. Damoff, certainly points out the fact that this will be discussed in the chamber, but I think we can actually add to that conversation and those discussions. Why would we wait until afterwards to dissect what went wrong when maybe we can help the government not do what is wrong in the first place? To me, it's much better to prevent the milk from being spilt than to start complaining about it.

While I think it's somewhat regretful that the member has said this is partisan in nature, I can assure her that my intentions and the intentions of all the members here are good. We want to make sure that this doesn't go the wrong way. This is potentially a very dangerous situation and we want to make sure that the lives of Canadians and police officers and those who are sworn to protect us are in the best possible position to make sure they succeed and that we can go forward in a united and prosperous Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

Mr. Noormohamed, I see your hand is up.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to just take a minute before I start.

Mr. Lawrence just spoke. I think we all share a desire to return to the Canada that is governed by peace, order and good government. Those are the principles that we believe in.

What I find disappointing about this is that.... Indeed, I think the motion was brought in good faith and I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ms. Dancho. I think it does, in fact, lead to a lot of questions that a lot of us ask, such as how we got to where we are. How did this situation devolve in Ottawa?

I note the specific reference to the OPS and the OPP, who do not, by the way, fall under the purview of the federal government. I noticed those specific references.

I think everyone, certainly the citizens of Ottawa, want to know what happened and how systems failed them so that we have ended up where we are. There's no question about that. I think you'd have to be blind not to realize what is going on outside Parliament Hill.

If we think about the question of how we ended up here.... I note that in Ms. Dancho's motion there is no mention of the Emergencies Act, so now we are conflating these issues. We are bringing together the two issues of how we ended up in a situation in Ottawa and this now being the committee that is going to investigate and ask questions of the Emergencies Act. So it seems, from what we have heard from our friends opposite.

I guess the question is.... If we are starting to look into what brought us here, I think there are going to be a lot of difficult questions that need to be answered about how members of the opposition thought it appropriate and reasonable to engage with folks who were holding the city of Ottawa hostage and encouraging them. That appears not to be the purview of this committee right now and perhaps is not something that Ms. Dancho would like to explore through this conversation. I do think these are questions around which Canadians deserve answers.

There is a parliamentary process in place to investigate, understand, articulate and think about what has happened with the invocation of the Emergencies Act. There is a debate going on at the House of Commons as we speak. Some of our colleagues here will be speaking in that debate over the course of the next several days.

If we start to think about what we, as a public safety and national security committee can do, we can create the conditions, room and space required to ask and answer difficult questions. If we think that officials from the police service are going to come and speak to us in a public setting and provide us privileged information that they would not provide to the public in their public briefings during an ongoing operation, we are either sadly mistaken or incredibly naive.

If we are going to have these conversations—and I want to be very clear that I am fully supportive of having these conversations—then we should do this once live operations in the city of Ottawa are over, especially because this specific motion refers to the Ottawa Police Service and the OPP.

On a personal level, I think that if the operations in Ottawa are over, that's a perfectly reasonable time to start having conversations about what happened in Ottawa.

Let's be clear. If this conversation is about what is happening in Ottawa, then let's limit it to that and be clear about that. Let's not make it something that it isn't or let's be honest about what this actually is and let's have a debate about that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

Mr. Zuberi, I see your hand up.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I'd like to just add to what's been said.

I appreciate how important it is for all of us to get together and bring in the witnesses we want to bring in concerning how and what has been going on in the streets of Ottawa.

I also want to know a number of things. For example, I want to know how a Three Percenter flag—a listed terror organization—has been allowed to fly in the streets of Ottawa. I want to know how and why that was allowed to happen for two days. I want to know if those individuals have been identified and if their finances going to be seized. This is not okay.

I want to know why an arson was almost committed in an Ottawa building, as we saw on Twitter. How is it that the police only found out through Twitter? They said to direct message them on Twitter so they could investigate. It took a video of an act of arson to be posted online on Twitter for the police to get involved. I want to know how that happened.

I also recognize that police, RCMP and OPP are all working together right now to make sure that law and order is restored on Wellington and the downtown streets of Ottawa.

Essentially, I'm just adding that to the record. We want these answers. We do have to allow these authorities to do their job and then bring them in after that happens to ask these questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Clerk, are there any hands up in the room?

[The Clerk]

No, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

Mr. McKinnon, is that an old hand or a new hand you have up?

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

Well, it's certainly an old hand, but it's also an old hand in this context, so....

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Okay.

Mr. Chiang, I think I see a new hand with your name on it. Go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to bring up the point that as a former police officer, being in a policing role for 28 years, I have been in operations like this in regard to protesters. I was also part of the public order unit for many years. I stood on the front line in situations like this. I have first-hand experience.

When there is an operation going on, an incident command officer takes charge of the whole thing. Their job is to work the incident at that point. They are so preoccupied with the safety of the citizens, with the safety of the officers on the front line, that to be able to come out and discuss matters of urgency or emergencies currently going on—that would be highly unlikely. When an operation is going on, I don't think they would discuss in public what they plan to do in terms of the operation.

It's about safety for the officers and safety for the citizens. For them to speak about something they plan to do in the future, about what's going to happen, or about the next step they're going to take—it would be highly unlikely that we'd get the full answer that as a committee we're looking for in terms of what's happening on the ground.

In my humble opinion, hopefully we can extend it, but if we want to bring them in next week, we won't get the full answer we're looking for in terms of that.

That's my opinion on this. Thank you.