Debates of Dec. 4th, 2017

Opposition Motion—ISIS fighters returning to Canada

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this is where the baloney meter would come into play. The member is wrong in what he is asserting. He is trying to give the impression that, for the first time, terrorists are coming back into Canada under this regime and this regime is choosing to do nothing.

I have two quick points. First and foremost, unlike the Conservatives, Liberals have confidence in Canada's security agencies. We have confidence and faith that they have the expertise, the understanding, and know what is best to do in order to keep Canadians safe. That is the first point I would express for my colleague across the way. The second point is that he will recall I asked him a specific question about how many of these individuals he is calling into question came back to Canada when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, when his party was in government, and the answer was zero.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Circumstances have changed.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The member says that circumstances were different. The circumstance that is different is that he is now in opposition as opposed to being in government.

The reality of the situation is that we need to recognize and acknowledge that we have security service agents who can keep Canadians safe and there is no substantial change from when Stephen Harper was prime minister to the current Prime Minister, with one exception. We now have a government that is prepared to support our security agencies and is also going to target youth being lured by countries or terrorist groups abroad to try to radicalize them to cause extreme activities that could happen here in Canada. We are prepared to take that on, whereas Stephen Harper was not.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it would absolutely astonish me if the Canadian branches of the Five Eyes—CSIS, the RCMP, and so on—were not keeping anyone associated with overseas engagement in ISIS activities under very close watch and surveillance. However, there is an opportunity here that we ought to talk about, and that is that these are monstrous people in a monstrous organization. I have heard the stories in the media of people who have left ISIS, have gotten away from ISIS, and have been so traumatized by it. We should get their voices out there to provide a counterbalance. The hon. member is quite right about the use of the Internet and social media to mislead and attract people to its horrific activities.

ISIS, right now, is in collapse, but we thought al Qaeda was gone, and then ISIS sprung up. These will remain threats. They are active. They quickly change names and leaders. We cannot ignore the threat of those people who have returned from those activities engaged with ISIS, on behalf of ISIS for its caliphate. What if, within those returning Canadians, there are the voices of those who could innoculate other youth from being mistakenly led to go overseas? Can the Government of Canada do more to find those voices of those who have returned?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. That is why, whether it was the Minister of Public Safety or the parliamentary secretary, they have picked up on that point.

It is not as if we have individuals coming back to Canada and they are lost among 36 million other people. Our security services agencies will continue to do the fine work they have done. It is one of the reasons, back in June, we launched the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. This is an excellent program that was just introduced in June. We genuinely want to intervene to try to prevent young people from being attracted to that extreme position.

I believe in taking a proactive approach. When I say “I”, this is not something unique to the Government of Canada. Countries around the world have recognized that this is the type of thing we need to do. In the long term, that is how we are going to make our communities, not only at home but also abroad, safer places to be. None of us support the types of terrorist activities that take place and the horrific actions of these individuals.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his passionate speech on the topic.

I have been listening throughout the day, and one of the interesting things I have not heard from the opposition, in terms of radicalization, is radicalization among the far right. I am wondering why we have not really heard the condemnation of that, which has led to terrorist activity in Canada, most recently in Quebec City.

The other issue, which is astounding, is that the motion calls on the government to bring justice and prosecute any ISIS fighter returning to Canada. The opposition knows that it is not the Government of Canada that decides who to prosecute. We have independence of prosecutors. We have independence of the RCMP.

This motion is an attack against the rule of law, an attack against the RCMP, and an attack against CSIS from a party that cut these agencies. I am wondering if the hon. member could comment on those particular issues and the hypocrisy we are hearing from the other side.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is one reason I, about three or four minutes into my speech, made reference to the fine work actually performed seven days a week, 24 hours a day, by the women and men in Canada's security agencies. It want to let them know just how much confidence we, as a government, have in their ability to make good, sound decisions.

It is those decisions that are ultimately providing the comfort Canadians require. I think the Prime Minister said it best. This is priority number one. We want Canadians to feel safe in the communities in which they live as we continue to build the economy, to support our middle class, and to do the things necessary so we can continue to develop as a country.

That is why at the beginning, I said that in my opinion, the Conservatives have chosen to take a wedge issue to create something that is just not there. In fact, we could have been debating so much more, such as the performance of the economy and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been generated. There is so much I think Canadians would have loved to see debated here.

If there is something I am hoping those who are following the debate will realize, it is that they should not buy into the Conservative falsehood, or baloney, that we are somehow in more danger today than we were two years ago. If anything, it is the opposite.

That is what is important to take away from the debate. We have a government that is genuinely committed to ensuring the safety of Canadians. There is no government member whatsoever who would support any sort of action from a terrorist. We see it for what it is: horrific and unacceptable. We will do what we can to fight terrorism, and we are also going to do what we can to prevent, in particular, young Canadians from falling into that trap and being lured by things like social media.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Souris—Moose Mountain.

One of the parts of being a member of Parliament I love the most is spending time with the individuals in my riding and talking to these down-to-earth, hard-working, sensible people in Simcoe—Grey. These are people who see through all the nonsense here in this Ottawa bubble.

One of the things I am hearing more and more from my constituents is that the government could not be any worse. However, the Prime Minister continues to come up with new and shocking ways to explain to Canadians this divergence from what were campaign promises.

First, it was the disaster of the budget that went from a small deficit promised during the election campaign to an obviously substantive one. Then it was cutting infrastructure funding from small communities, such as Alliston, Angus, Everett, and others in my riding to provide for big city projects for the Liberal boondoggle known as the infrastructure bank.

Not to be outdone by that, the government has a plan to legalize marijuana and to allow four plants for every household, and for kids ages 12 to 18 to be able possess without a penalty. While the Liberals were planning to make it easier for our kids to get their hands on pot, the finance minister was out breaking many laws so that the House needed to have a whole day of debate on that, whether it was a French villa that was not registered, monthly dividend payments, stock sell-offs, or a blind trust that was never set up.

In a previous government I was part of, accountability actually meant something. An individual was even removed from cabinet for purchasing some orange juice. That entitled behaviour obviously is not something the finance minister seems to understand.

Did I also mention that multi-million ice arena sitting outside on the front lawn that none of my constituents can actually play hockey on, or the millions of dollars in payments to terrorists like Omar Khadr? There has been so much incompetence in the government, one would think the Prime Minister had been in office as long as his father, but he has actually only been at this for two years. Admittedly, it is a high bar for incompetence, but my constituents are telling me now that they have had probably the most shocking news yet.

We have learned that the government has been allowing Canadian ISIS terrorists to settle back in Canada for two years now, no questions asked, no trials, no convictions, no accountability, and apparently, no problem with that. These are people who left Canada to go to fight against our allies in favour of a radical Islamic state.

We have seen some of these people and their fellow terrorists on video threatening Canadians and threatening our way of life. In one video, a man from Ottawa who joined ISIS is seen calling for attacks like the one that killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo to continue. Fortunately, that terrorist met his maker. Otherwise, he would be flying back to Canada to pick up his life where he left it off, again with no questions asked.

In March 2016, the former director of CSIS stated that 60 Islamic State terrorists had returned to Canada. Today the Minister of Public Safety is still using these figures. Canadians have not been updated as to how many returning terrorists there are in Canada.

Only a few weeks ago, during a CTV interview, did the minister confirm that passports may be seized and terrorists may be put on a no-fly list. My question is whether that actually happened or whether it was just hypothetical. We do not know how many terrorists we have in Canada, nor how many have had passports taken, or not. How many terrorist have been put on the no-fly list? How many are being monitored and surveilled? How many have committed heinous crimes during their time abroad?

Let us remember that ISIS is the same group that rapes and enslaves women and girls. It is the same terrorist organization that throws gay men off buildings, just for being gay. I know that the Prime Minister calls himself a feminist and supports gay rights, but this is why it is even more troubling that terrorists who support the most anti-gay and anti-women philosophy in the world would be allowed to walk back into Canada without any consequences.

I recognize that verifying reports of these atrocities is difficult, but that is exactly why these terrorists need to be detained and questioned. Were any of these Canadians present, for example, in western Syria in May, when terrorists claimed 50 lives by beheading women and using bricks to beat children to death? Are any of these terrorists about to enjoy Christmas holidays?

Were they involved in the 2014 massacre of 600 Shia, Christian, and Yazidi men, who were lined up on the edge of a desert ravine and shot point blank? Did any of these Canadian terrorists play a role in an atrocity reported in 2016 that saw six men burned alive in a bakery oven and up to 250 children run through a dough maker?

I do not know, and it appears that the government does not know either, or if it does, it does not care. However, my colleagues and I care about protecting Canadians, and we want some action. Canadians demand justice for those who have suffered at the hands of these ISIS terrorists.

The previous Conservative government passed legislation to protect Canadians. The Liberal government's legislative agenda is more concerned with overseeing CSIS than monitoring ISIS. Its focus is so misguided that it even removed a key tool in the fight against terrorism: the law that strips dual citizens of their Canadian citizenship if convicted of terrorism, treason, or espionage. Allies such as the United Kingdom are doing just that.

We need to stand with our allies in this ongoing struggle against this violent Islamic extremism. While our allies have stepped up their commitment to ensuring their citizens' safety, our government is lost. In fact, the U.K. minister of state for international development, Rory Stewart, has stated, “So I’m afraid we have to be serious about the fact these people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.”

Even Brett McGurk, an appointee of President Obama to the global coalition to counter ISIS, has said, “Our mission is to make sure that any foreign fighter who is here, who joined Isis from a foreign country and came into Syria, they will die here in Syria.”

Liberals can debate the methods used by our allies to keep their citizens safe, but they are erring on the side of protecting their law-abiding citizens.

Here in Canada, in contrast, the government created the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, which aims to prevent and counter radicalization to violence at an individual level. However, the centre does not directly intervene with radicalized individuals, so we cannot be sure how many terrorists it has worked with or if it has had any success. We are not even sure how it spends its money. What we do know is that an unnamed group received $367,000 from Public Safety Canada in September 2017 for poetry and podcasts for terrorists.

British and American terrorists can expect to be detained and have their citizenship revoked or to be killed. Canadian terrorists can expect a haiku or a podcast on why they cannot throw gays off the roofs of buildings because that is a bad idea. I wish I was making this up, but sadly, I am not.

Here is what we know. In March 2016, 60 ISIS terrorists were comfortably living back in Canada. We know that the government does not know, or say, how many have arrived since then. We know that the government has spent $365,000 on poetry and podcasts to de-radicalize terrorists.

It is time for the government to take the safety and security of Canadians seriously. That is what the people of Simcoe-Grey expect, and it is what Canadians deserve. I call on members of the House, especially those on the Liberal side of the House, to do the right thing and stand up with us and support the motion.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe what I just heard. Frankly, for that member to stand in the House, two years after sitting around the cabinet table, the cabinet that presided over cuts to our security agencies, the cabinet that presided over the re-entry of the people it now decries returning to Canada, the same number that existed then that is alleged to exist today, and the cabinet from which we did not hear a word from the member, or any other member, for that matter, about whether the Government of Canada was playing footsie with terrorists. I cannot believe what I am hearing. I cannot believe the allegations coming from that side of the House that would allege that this government is somehow indifferent to the safety and security of Canadians.

What I do hear is a lot of dog-whistles. What I do hear is a lot of campaign of fear. What I do hear coming from that side of the House is something we should all be ashamed of as Canadians.

I can assure that member that this campaign, just like her own campaign, will fail. What does the member have to say about that?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find it rather rich that the Liberals continually talk about how we should not hurl accusations at others, but then they just seem to do it themselves.

Let us be very clear. The government's legislative agenda when I was in cabinet was to be concerned about the safety of Canadians. That is why we put forward legislation that would strip individuals with dual citizenship of their Canadian citizenship if were involved in an act of terrorism or espionage.

This is what we know about the current government. In March 2016, we had 60 ISIS terrorists comfortably living in Canada. We do not know the new number now, or at least it has not been shared. We know that the government does not know or will not say how many have arrived. We know that beginning in November, the public safety minister was possibly considering or taking real action to control the movement of these terrorists. We know that the government has spent $367,000 on making sure that haiku poetry and podcasts are available to de-radicalize these people.

On this side of the House, let us be serious that we care about public safety and making sure that Canadians are safe. The government has no idea what it is doing.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I find it quite humorous and hypocritical the way the previous speaker spoke about his trust and respect for the work of CSIS and the RCMP. Was it not he and his colleagues who wanted to change Bill C-51 because they did not trust what those people were doing?

Could the hon. member comment on that?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, on this side of the House, we take great pride in making sure that Canadians come first and that we protect them.

Unlike the other side of the House that is spending a significant amount of money focusing on individuals who have been involved in terrorist acts and are returning to Canada and are thinking they can de-radicalize them through poetry and podcasts, we take this issue very seriously. Like our allies, we believe we should be moving forward to make sure that these individuals are detained, questioned, and that the RCMP as well as CSIS are supported in doing the outstanding job they do in protecting Canadian citizens.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member talks about safer communities and our desire for them. I wonder if she has looked at a relatively recent Stats Canada study that says the following: “The higher the proportion of recent immigrants in a neighbourhood, the lower the rates of drug offences, all types of violent crime, mischief and other thefts.” It concludes by saying that neighbourhoods with larger immigrant populations generally have lower violent crime rates.

With that in mind, does the hon. member supports greater immigration to Canada?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question and I think that Canada has been built by immigrants. However, we are not talking about immigrants today. I do not believe that every immigrant to Canada is a terrorist. I think that the Canadian terrorists who are coming home, who have worked with ISIS, are the ones whom we need to deal with. Those are the individuals coming home to Canada who may pose a threat to Canadians. They are the ones we should be detaining and speaking to.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It being 6:15 p.m. and this being the final supply day in the period ending December 10, 2017, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

All those in favour of the motion please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

All those opposed please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #413

Business of Supply

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I declare the motion defeated.

Concurrence in Vote 1b—Privy Council Office

[Scott Brison, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

moved:

That Vote 1b, in the amount of $34,195,262, under Privy Council Office — Program expenditures and contributions, in the Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, be concurred in.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?