Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan and her terrific presentation on the bill.
She raised the issue of civil rights. She has raised concerns, which have also been raised by the members for Vancouver East and Burnaby—Douglas, about how the government has acted with ports workers in a heavy-handed way. These people have lived all their lives working on the docks, contributing to our economy, yet they are being pushed aside, essentially, unless they can fill out onerous documentation, with every minute detail of their lives, which is then subject to some sort of approval process.
The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union is pushing back on this and is taking the government to court because these rules are so patently unfair.
She also raised the issue about Montebello and the use of undercover officers who carried rocks in what was clearly a peaceful demonstration.
Could she contrast the alacrity of the government with which it attacks civil rights, while at the same time, it has not dealt with the substantive issue, which is the fact that thousands of containers that come into Canada's ports from coast to coast to coast? We have the resources currently to only investigate 2% or 3% of them. Therefore, 97%, 98% of the container traffic coming in through Canada's ports is not inspected, which means we do not know what they contain. They may contain human beings for human trafficking. They may contain drugs. They may contain explosives. Who knows?
However, instead of dealing with that security issue, which is a substantive one and requires some investment of resources, the government chose to give billions of dollars away in corporate tax cuts. Now it is now attacking civil rights in a most egregious way, particularly for ports workers who have worked all their lives ensuring that Canada's cargo is unloaded and that Canada's trade is facilitated.