Debates of Oct. 29th, 2020

Opposition Motion—Official Apology from the Prime Minister

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

He did not specify what type of amendment he would like. It is difficult for me to speak to hypothetical questions, but I would still like to thank him for agreeing with the principle of an apology.

I hope that when it comes time to vote, he will stand with us.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin spoke for 10 minutes about things other than today's motion. However, he said that he was not concerned with history. That may be why he is a Liberal. I have an important question to ask him.

I used to tell my students that if they wanted to know where they were going, they needed to know where they had been. However, this very important person representing Marc-Aurèle-Fortin is telling us that we ought not to be concerned with history.

What does my colleague have to say to that Liberal member?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am speechless. My colleague's question is too much for me.

I invite all members to come to my office for a drink after the House adjourns. I will tell them what I think about that in due course, and I will have time to think about it in the meantime.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell my very dear colleagues, who will have the opportunity to correct me, that they may be better than me at history, but it was always one of my favourite subjects at school.

In 1970, a few months before the crisis, a provincial election took place. This could explain why, being in a situation he did not know how to resolve, Robert Bourassa asked for help. As for Jean Drapeau, he was heading into an election a few weeks later, which could explain why he chose to do what he did.

I was always told that as a school principal, I should never blame somebody else when I am the one in charge and I am responsible for what I sign.

What does my colleague think of that? No matter what happened at the provincial or municipal level, the decision and the responsibility lie with Pierre Elliott Trudeau, do they not?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is understood that it was Ottawa's decision because it was voted on here. Let's be clear. Let's be honest. I would remind all those who say that Quebec asked for it that Quebec discussed it two weeks ago and agreed that what happened did not make sense.

Those who tell us that are people who do not want to accept the facts, who do not want to apologize, and we know that. Of course it is convenient to go back to that, to rewrite history and cherry pick the items the previous speaker mentioned.

In reality, they are the ones trying to rewrite history and deny that the legislation was voted on in this House, which is so quick to apologize to everyone on the planet. Apologize to the Quebec nation then. It is very simple. We will all be happy. Then we will move to something else until we get the name of the airport changed to make my colleague on the other side happy.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot for her passionate and fascinating speech.

We are here to talk about the famous War Measures Act. I think that it is rather important. I was actually disappointed to hear our Liberal colleagues repeat all day long that we should not be talking about that today and we should have focused on another subject. I am deeply disappointed by their attitude and I want to say it from the outset. It is nevertheless an historical event. A 50th anniversary is a unique occasion. It does not occur every week. The October crisis left its mark on so many people that I do not understand why we should not talk about our history. It looks like the members opposite feel uneasy about our history. I think it is important to look closer into that, because uneasiness can often be a sign that something smells bad and that people have something to hide.

I did not live through that era, since I had not been born yet. I had to find out about it through history books, videos, documentaries and all sorts of content and testimonies that we still have today. What I learned was deeply shocking to me. I was shocked to see that the army was sent out in Quebec, that Quebecers' rights were suspended, that more than 30,000 searches were carried out, that 500 Quebeckers were arrested arbitrarily, without a warrant and for no reason. Most importantly, I was shocked to see that decision-makers in Ottawa wanted to create a climate of terror in Quebec.

As I said earlier, I was not born yet at the time, but my father lived through this event. He was a child, about seven or eight years old. He once told me that he was afraid to leave his house around that time, because the streets were full of soldiers. On top of that, his father was a card-carrying member of the Parti Québécois, so it was serious. In the eyes of the Liberals, that meant you were almost like a hardened criminal. Every time my father, who was a child at the time, saw an army truck go by, he wondered if a soldier had taken his dad away. Every time he came home from school, he wondered whether his dad would be there waiting for him or whether he would be in jail. That would be really stressful and scary for a child at that age.

In the end, my grandfather was never imprisoned, but how many other families and children were frightened like my dad when he was just a kid? How many were not so lucky and saw family members thrown in jail? What were those people guilty of? They were guilty of having opinions. They were guilty of being nasty separatists, an opinion that was so dangerous that they had to be locked up and crushed.

Fifty years later, the government has still not published the official list of those arrested. It must be done. In fact, there may be a lot more, because those 497 people who have been listed are only the ones who were eventually found when we searched. Today, I want to mention several of them: Edward Martin Sloan, of Outremont; Thomas Sloan; Harold Slobod; Patrick Straram; Charles Felder Suddutch; Diane Synnett; Pierre Taddéo; Jocelyne Talbot; Monique Tardif; Claude Tedguy; Pierre Tétreault, of Montréal; Pierre Tétreault, of Longueuil; Richard Théorêt; Richard Therrien; Colette Therrien; Gilles Toupin; Julien Tourigny; Gérard Townsley; Tran Dung Tran; Gaétan Tremblay; Jean-Yves Tremblay; Pierre Tremblay; Réjean Tremblay; Yvon Tremblay; Louise Trépanier; Mona Trudel; Léonard Turcot; Normand Turgeon; Andrew Typaldos; Arthur Vachon; Pierre Vachon; Marcel Vaive; Pierre Vallières; Jean Van Schoorisse; Annie Vautier; Léo Veillette; Claude Veilleux; Fernand Venne; Pierre Venne; René Venne; Roger Venne; Gilles Verrier; Michel Viau; Frederick Vickerson; Do Duc Vien; Michel Viger; Pierre Villeneuve; Anne Villeneuve; Hélène Vinet; Robert Walker; Jeannine Warren Champagne; Daniel Waterlot; Leon Vincent Wright; Arthur Young; and Klaus Zezzar.

When we take a step back from the situation, we see that the real objective of this elaborate exercise, this whole charade, was not to flush out members of the FLQ, because almost none were found.

The real objective was to intimidate a people, to scare them and send them the message that what was happening to those who were locked up could happen to any one of them. This is serious, because this allegedly happened in a country of democracy, openness, peace and freedom of expression. In the end, it was clear that it was more of a country that prefers to lecture.

Sending out the army to crush a people is what dictatorships do. The Prime Minister, who is quick to apologize and has even managed to make a specialty of it, has shown himself incapable of apologizing for what his country, and especially his father, did to us.

However, even Jean Chrétien acknowledged it. The former prime minister, who was in the Trudeau cabinet at the time, said the following in his book Dans la fosse aux lions, published in 1985:

“One thing is obvious. The police did not need to arrest everyone who was arrested; they would only have had to arrest about 60 people, while they arrested more than 400”.

The next page reads as follows:

“In hindsight, I readily admit that the powers granted to the police by the War Measures Act were excessive, that a handful of would-be terrorists did not justify such a rush into battle”.

Those quotes were from former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien.

Apologies have been given for other situations. For example, the Canadian government apologized to the Canadians of Ukrainian descent who were interned during the First World War. There were apologies to Canadians of Japanese and Italian descent during the Second World War. Once again, the Canadian government apologized. Meanwhile, when Quebeckers are the ones being arrested, Canada does not apologize.

Is the Prime Minister refusing to apologize for his father invoking the War Measures Act because if he does, he will potentially have to apologize for the other despicable actions his government has taken against Quebeckers or that his father took against Quebeckers?

There are plenty of examples. There was the Brink's affair, which the federal government carried out just before the 1970 election to make people believe that all of the money was being removed from Quebec and that there would not be a penny left in our banks. There were the many attacks perpetrated in the name of the FLQ that turned out to be planned by the RCMP itself, as was revealed by the Keable commission. There was the infamous Neat Pitch plan developed in 1972, a secret military plan to invade Quebec. After all, they needed to make sure that Quebeckers did not control their own future, so they had to figure out how to invade them. There was the RCMP's theft of the list of PQ members in 1973.

These kinds of events reveal the real nature of the Canadian regime. It is a hypocritical and oppressive regime that would go to any lengths when it comes to Quebec. None of this stopped the PQ from taking power a few years later, in 1976. Quebeckers stood up and held strong against the intimidation.

The most ironic part of all this is that this same prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a few years after imposing the War Measures Act, imposed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on us in 1982, which, since its inception has been used to gut Bill 101. There are people today who would like to use this same charter to attack our state secularism law. We really have to wonder, then, what could we possibly gain from being in this country that is simply incapable of respecting us.

What worries me the most is that the Canadian government refuses to apologize. The Canadian government seems to have no problem sending the military out on the streets and throwing innocent people in jail. In fact, the Canadian government has shown no remorse, which means this could happen again. I find that appalling.

That is what the government across the aisle is all about. Actually, it is not just the Liberals, since the Conservatives seem to be on their side. That is outrageous. Those members should be ashamed of themselves. In any case, I am ashamed of them. They can send out the army as much as they like, but they can never kill what will eventually emerge in Quebec: a free country where people can live happily and peacefully, fully independent. We will not send the army out against our own people.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the member made reference to an election in the Province of Quebec, so I did a very quick Google search on it. I thought this was somewhat interesting. We have to remember it was the Province of Quebec and the City of Montreal that asked Ottawa to get engaged. What is interesting is that in 1973 the Liberal government at the time had one of its most successful elections in the history of the Province of Quebec, which would have been a couple of years after the October crisis.

Would the member expand on why he thinks that happened, given it would have been top of mind, no doubt, going into that election?

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is interesting because, just after the Canadian government thoroughly crushed the separatist movement, the Bourassa government took office, as the member said. However, it was later defeated. The Parti Québécois took over, and Quebeckers got their pride back.

The member mentioned how the Government of Quebec and the mayor of Montreal were supposedly partly responsible for asking for the infamous law to be invoked, but it is important to point out that it was invoked by the federalist parties and that people deeply regretted it later. Whether it was the ministers of the Bourassa government, the ministers of the Trudeau government or members of the Conservative Party, they recognized that they had made a mistake. It is important to remember that too.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member just said that Robert Bourassa was defeated. Yes, he was defeated, but I want to point out that that was in 1976. In 1973, he was re-elected by a strong majority, though we must also recognize that the Parti Québécois, which got 23% of the vote in 1970, got 30% of the vote in 1973. We therefore cannot say that that had a political impact on the discussion.

However, the question I want to ask the member is this: How is it that, this morning, during the 20 minutes his leader had to talk about October 1970, he never mentioned the assassination of Pierre Laporte or the kidnapping of James Richard Cross? He never spoke about the threats issued by the FLQ throughout that time in October. He never spoke about the 200 terrorist attacks perpetrated by the FLQ that killed 10 people.

How could he have forgotten to mention those things when his debate today is about October 1970?

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to give what I think is a very clear answer.

The sovereignist movement, like the entire population, has always considered the murder of Pierre Laporte to be a tragedy and has always condemned it. However, the federal government has yet to acknowledge that the War Measures Act of 1970 was unacceptable, that it violated our rights and that an apology is in order. That is why we are focusing on this subject today.

It does not mean that we do not care about the death of Pierre Laporte. We care very much. He was the representative for part of my riding. People back home have spoken to me about that time in history. I think it is important to extend all our condolences to the family of Pierre Laporte.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are hearing some rather absurd things in the House.

I want to come back to the comments of the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, who was accusing us of rewriting history. I think we need to bring the debate back to the victims, the 497 people. Earlier I was talking about Jocelyne Robert, who was seven months pregnant when she underwent a jailhouse gynecological exam in the middle of the night that left her scarred for 45 years. We have to be able to talk about it.

I also have to talk about Louis Hains. I ran out of time earlier. Louis Hains voted for the Liberals in 1968. He came from a Conservative family. Since he was not known in the sovereignist movement, he was worried no one would remember him and he would be left in prison. He remembered movies he had seen where people were loaded into paddy wagons, never to be heard from again.

These are real people who suffered powerful adverse psychological repercussions. They were traumatized. The motion we are moving today is about that. That is what we want to talk about. We are trying to bring the debate back to the victims of the War Measures Act.

What does my hon. colleague think of how easily our hon. colleagues across the way are rewriting history?

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his passionate question.

The answer was, in part, in the question. How did we end up with a government that does not want to acknowledge its mistakes? That is the real question.

I am really disappointed because it is the 50th anniversary. In 10 years, there is a chance that most of the people who lived through that era will no longer be alive. The government has an opportunity to make it right and apologize to them. It should not pass up this opportunity.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before giving the floor to the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable, I wish to inform him that he has 12 to 13 minutes for his speech.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think we should refocus a little and read the motion before us today.

That the House demand an official apology from the Prime Minister on behalf of the Government of Canada for the enactment, on October 16, 1970, of the War Measures Act and the use of the army against Quebec's civilian population to arbitrarily arrest, detain without charge and intimidate nearly 500 innocent Quebeckers.

This morning, the leader of the Bloc Québécois gave a 20-minute speech to present this motion. It was a characteristically passionate speech, one that characteristically did not hide his separatist values. However, this speech, like the motion presented by his party, unfortunately missed the mark with respect to the history.

Let us first talk about the speech given by the leader of the Bloc Québécois and what he deliberately left out. During his 20 minutes, the leader of the Bloc Québécois never mentioned Pierre Laporte, he never mentioned—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I apologize to the member for interrupting, but there is a problem with the interpretation.

It is working now, so I invite the member to continue.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

As I was saying, during his 20 minutes, the leader of the Bloc deliberately never mentioned Pierre Laporte. He never mentioned the kidnapping of James Richard Cross. He did not say a word about the 200 FLQ attacks. He never mentioned the 10 Quebeckers who died as a result of terrorist attacks.

He never mentioned that it was the Quebec government, with the support of three opposition parties, that requested the presence of the army. He certainly did not mention that the army was under the supervision of the Sûreté du Québec for the arrests. He did not say a word about the fact that the people who had been unjustly and arbitrarily arrested were subsequently compensated by the Quebec government.

He did not report the words of notorious separatists, such as René Lévesque and Camille Laurin, applauding the presence of the army. He did not mention the FLQ's constant threats of murder and kidnapping. He did not mention the 3,000 people who gathered at the Paul Sauvé Arena in Montreal, where they raised their fists in the air and chanted, “FLQ, we will prevail”.

Because of these deliberate omissions, the House will not be able to properly commemorate the 50th anniversary of the October crisis. The Bloc Québécois's motion was a missed opportunity, 50 years after these tragic events. The Bloc Québécois's motion could have given the House an opportunity to highlight the resilience of Quebeckers, who did not want terrorism to move their society forward.

If the Bloc's talking points had been based on facts and on all of the facts, they would have acknowledged that these events did not put an end to Quebec nationalism but, in a way, gave the movement some momentum. The sovereignist fervour continued to grow in the 20 years following October 1970.

I am a bit embarrassed to say this and show my age, but my parents brought me to my first political rally when I was 10 years old. This was back in 1976, and we were celebrating the victory of the Parti Québécois. There have been two successful referendums since. I say “successful” because I did not blindly follow in my parents' footsteps. I saw the light. All of this is because Quebeckers said no.

In the years that followed, the separatist fervour grew. That cannot be denied and we could have talked about it here. Quebeckers clearly showed that they wanted no part of the violence that they had been dragged into by the FLQ, and they voted for their future with maturity. Quebeckers decided for themselves.

They acquired that maturity because of everything they had gone through in the years leading up to the October crisis. We cannot just pick and choose the bits of history we like. That is the problem with the Bloc Québécois's motion and the speech its leader gave today. That is why, as a Quebecker, I am very disappointed with this motion.

Today, the Bloc Québécois members are only picking the bits of the story that suit them. They are omitting big parts of it. Basically, it is as if the Quebec of today were a house, and they were only talking about one of the walls. They forgot about the foundation, the roof and all the rest. I agree that we need to talk about that wall, but if we want to talk about the story, then we need to talk about the whole story.

Earlier this week, however, the Bloc supported a successful motion in the House acknowledging the horrible tragedy that occurred in France when a teacher was beheaded in a cowardly terrorist act. Why then did neither the Bloc Québécois nor its leader mention Pierre Laporte in their motion today and in their speeches?

Pierre Laporte was a lawyer, a journalist committed to fighting corruption. He was an MNA for nine years, minister under Jean Lesage during the Quiet Revolution, and deputy premier under Robert Bourassa, but above all he was a family man. He was playing with his nephew in front of his house when his life was turned upside down. He was kidnapped, and his body was found a week later. He was the last victim of the FLQ murderers.

We must not forget Pierre Laporte. We must not forget that the October crisis is essentially the sad anniversary of the execution of a minister and an elected official at the hands of the terrorist organization that was the FLQ.

Mr. Laporte was not the only victim. It is important to remember contexts and names.

From 1963 to 1970, the FLQ planned terrorist acts, ran training camps and had weapons and cells to house hostages; they carried out 200 criminal attacks, armed robberies, bombings, threats and shootings, not to mention the attack on the Montreal Stock Exchange, which resulted in injuries. In 1969, 27 people were wounded in that attack.

Today, I listened to my Bloc Québécois colleagues name the people who had been arrested. I will give a list of people they forgot to name: the night watchman, Wilfred O'Neil, who died; Sergeant Walter Leja, who died from injuries sustained while disarming bombs planted in schools and on busy streets; Leslie MacWilliams and Alfred Pinisch, store manager and clerk respectively; Thérèse Morin, a worker; Jacques Corbo, a 16-year-old boy who was cravenly used by the FLQ to plant a bomb and died; Robert Dumas, a police officer; and Jeanne d'Arc Saint-Germain, a public servant.

That is another list we must not forget, names the Bloc Québécois members should have added to their lists of people who were arbitrarily and unjustly arrested, and who were compensated for it. The Bloc forgot to mention those people, but I do not want to forget them any more than I want to forget Pierre Laporte. On this, the 50th anniversary of the October crisis, we must remember all the facts, not just the facts that serve our purposes.

I want to read a quote from October 5 of this year. This is by Lysiane Gagnon in La Presse: “[E]ven though FLQ members portrayed themselves as defenders of the working class, all the people killed in FLQ attacks leading up to October were low-income earners, the working poor.”

Nor must we forget the kidnapping of James Richard Cross, a British diplomat in Montreal. He was threatened and abducted from his diplomatic residence. He was not released until two months later. He spent two months malnourished, mistreated and living in squalid conditions. He talked about having to sleep standing up and handcuffed in the dark. It was a traumatizing experience for him and his loved ones. The Bloc Québécois leader did not talk about that today. My Bloc Québécois colleagues did not talk about that today. The motion does not even mention it. That would have been an important thing to mention.

Had the motion made it possible to speak of the events of the October crisis in honour of the 50th anniversary, we would not have heard the platitudes of the Liberals, who did everything to avoid talking about the October crisis, and we would have focused on the events of that crisis. It would have allowed my Bloc Québécois colleagues to give their speeches, to say what they wanted to say to the government and to make their demands. It would also have allowed us to remember the victims of the October crisis, the victims of the FLQ and everything since the October 1970 crisis that has shaped the Quebec of today, because many things have changed in Quebec since then. I have the whole story right here and I invite members to read the entire story of the October crisis. I could speak about this for a long time, but I have very little time left.

Therefore, I would like to speak about October 15. This is the date that the National Assembly of Quebec resumed its work. It is a day that we must remember because there is a direct link to today's motion.

On that day, the Premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa mentioned having requested the army step in:

Therefore, we have requested the help of the army to allow the police forces to continue protecting public buildings and the population. ... Quebec's democratic system is under threat. ...and it is our first and vital responsibility to safeguard it.

The house leader of the Bloc Québécois said, “Mr. Speaker, the premier's appeal to us is certainly perfectly understandable and justified under the circumstances.”

On October 30, the leader of the Parti Québécois wrote in his Journal de Montréal column that the army was occupying Quebec and that it was unpleasant but probably necessary in times of crisis. That all took place after the Government of Quebec requested the help of the army to support the Sûreté du Québec as the October 1970 events unfolded.

Once again, due to the limited time I have, I will unfortunately not be able to recall the whole thread of historical events, but if we had a complete day dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the October crisis, we would have been able to talk about those events. We could have talked about the victims' families, the people who were killed by FLQ terrorist actions.

Unfortunately, in his motion and his speech, the leader of the Bloc Québécois did not mention Pierre Laporte. He never mentioned James Richard Cross. He did not say a word about the 200 attacks by the FLQ. He never mentioned the 10 Quebeckers who died because of the terrorist attacks. He never said that the army's presence was requested by the Government of Quebec itself, with the support of the three opposition parties. He also did not say one word about the fact that some people who were unjustly and arbitrarily detained were compensated by the Government of Quebec.

Finally, the 50th anniversary of the October crisis should have allowed us to remember Pierre Laporte, who never had the chance to see his children grow up and his grandchildren be born and grow up.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It being 5:54 p.m., 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. As usual, if a member of a recognized party present in the House wants to request a recorded vote, I invite them to rise and so indicate it.

And one or more members having risen:

Several members having risen, pursuant to order made on Wednesday, September 23, the division stands deferred until Monday, November 2, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect if you were to canvass the House, you might find unanimous consent to call it 6:09 p.m. at this time, which would allow us to begin private members' hour.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Is it the pleasure of the House to see the clock at 6:09 p.m.?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Accordingly, the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before we move on to private members' business, the Chair wishes to make some brief remarks.

This week, the House has begun debate on items sponsored by private members. I would therefore like to make a brief statement regarding the management of Private Members' Business.

As members know, certain constitutional procedural realities constrain the Speaker and members insofar as legislation is concerned.

Following the establishment or the replenishment of the order of precedence, the Chair has developed a practice of reviewing items so that the House can be alerted to bills which, at first glance, appear to impinge on the financial prerogative of the Crown. The aim of this practice is to allow members the opportunity to intervene in a timely fashion to present their procedural arguments.

The order of precedence having been established on February 27 and reinstated after prorogation, I therefore wish to inform the House that there is one bill which preoccupies the Chair. That is Bill C-214, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (qualifying environmental trust), standing in the name of the member for Calgary Centre.

The understanding of the Chair is that this bill may need to have been preceded by a ways and means motion.

As members know, there are certain constraints on changes to taxation measures in the absence of a ways and means motion. If a bill requires such a motion and one has not been adopted, according to our rules, the bill cannot remain on the Order Paper.

I therefore encourage hon. members who would like to make arguments regarding the requirement of a ways and means motion for Bill C-214 to do so at the earliest opportunity.

In this case, there is some urgency, as a bill requiring a ways and means motion cannot be debated and would be dropped from the Order Paper. The Chair would like to deliver a ruling on this bill as soon as possible. If a ruling has not been given when this bill reaches the top of the order of precedence, I will ask that it be dropped to the bottom of the list, in order to allow the member for Calgary Centre to substitute a new item in the event Bill C-214 is found to be out of order.

I thank hon. members for their attention.

I will not be taking any time away from the usual hour that is permitted for the taking up of Private Members' Business.

Instruction to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

moved:

That the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development be instructed to undertake a comprehensive study of federal policies and legislation relating to freshwater, and more specifically focusing on: (a) the key legislative instruments of federal freshwater policy, including but not limited to the Canada Water Act, the Fisheries Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, and the Impact Assessment Act; (b) the key organizational components of federal freshwater policy, including but not limited to Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Infrastructure Canada, Transport Canada, Public Safety Canada, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, and Global Affairs Canada; (c) the relationship between the federal government and the provinces, territories, Indigenous peoples, and local governments relating to freshwater protection and management; (d) various international treaties governing Canada's freshwater interests and obligations; (e) present and future research needs relating to freshwater management and protection; (f) the pressures on Canada's freshwater resources, including with respect to climate change, flooding and drought; and (g) the creation of a Canada Water Agency; and that the committee (i) begin its study no later than 30 days after the adoption of this motion, (ii) schedule no fewer than 10 meetings, (iii) report its findings and recommendations to the House within one year following the adoption of this motion.

Madam Speaker, I rise in the House this evening to support my motion, which asks the House to send the message that now is the time to undertake a comprehensive, non-partisan study of all of the federal policies related to water. To be clear, however, the ultimate responsibility for this resource falls on the provinces.

I have always had an interest in, a penchant for, the issue of water.

It is always hard to know why we are drawn to one subject rather than another. My interest in this issue may be because my riding of Lac-Saint-Louis is surrounded by large bodies of water on three sides. They are the St. Lawrence River to the south, Rivière des Prairies to the north and Lac des Deux Montagnes, which marks the end of the Ottawa River, to the west.

When I arrived in Parliament, I was very surprised to learn that no one talked about water. We did not talk about the federal government's role in protecting what is by far our most precious resource. At the time, we were just barely beginning to talk about climate change. In passing, I want to mention that the real problem with climate change is the impact that it has on water.

Of course, greenhouse gases are invisible. Floods and droughts caused by climate change are not invisible. Water was talked about in the 1980s and 1990s, but pretty much only in the context of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. At the time, there was concern that that agreement would one day open the door to massive exports of our water to our neighbour to the south to satisfy its thirst. If I am not mistaken, NDP members of Parliament did a lot of work on this issue, introducing bills to prohibit the possibility of such exports.

When I arrived in Ottawa, I stumbled across the Experimental Lakes Area program, which at the time came under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The Experimental Lakes Area is a wilderness laboratory made up of 58 lakes. It has been and continues to be the site of some of the world's largest real-time experiments on the effects of pollution on our aquatic ecosystems. Over the years, the work of the Experimental Lakes researchers has greatly and concretely benefited several regions of the country, notably Quebec and Ontario, which are home to hundreds of thousands of waterways, including the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.

It is thanks to the studies done in the Experimental Lakes Area that we ended up removing phosphates from laundry detergents. It is also thanks to the studies done in the Experimental Lakes Area that we have the Canada-United States air quality agreement to fight against acid rain, as well as the Minamata Convention on Mercury of the United Nations. It is thanks to the researchers at the Experimental Lakes Area that we were able to save billions of dollars that might have gone toward removing nitrogen from wastewater. The research at the experimental lakes showed that that type of approach would not solve the problem of algal blooms.

Without any interference in provincial jurisdictions, a scientific research project funded by the federal government made several advances in the healthy management of our aquatic ecosystems. There are many other examples where the federal government is making a significant contribution to protecting our freshwater without any interference into provincial jurisdictions.

For example, Health Canada sits on a federal-provincial committee whose mandate is to recommend and revise drinking water standards. These standards are not imposed by the provinces. They are voluntary, but I would like to note that Quebec is taking very seriously the new standard on lead concentration in drinking water. Quebec is taking action to have the water lines changed throughout the province, especially in Montreal.

In addition to Health Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, there are at least a dozen other federal departments or agencies that have a particular responsibility in connection with water management in Canada, again while respecting provincial jurisdiction. However, there is one area that falls exclusively under federal jurisdiction: drinking water in indigenous communities. The government has been paying special attention to this file since it was elected in 2015 and successfully so when it comes to the goal of eliminating lengthy boil water advisories once and for all.

It is interesting to note that there are no long-term or short-term boil water advisories in Quebec's indigenous communities. The study that I am proposing could be used to identify the factors that make such an outstanding track record possible.

One other department is involved in the safe drinking water for first nations portfolio and that is Public Services and Procurement Canada. It is responsible for managing the tendering process for the purchase or construction of wastewater treatment plants in indigenous communities.

Of all the federal departments involved in protecting and managing water in Canada, let us not forget Infrastructure Canada, which funds water system upgrade projects and the construction of wastewater treatment plants. It also allocates funding under the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund and the climate change mitigation substream of the green infrastructure stream of the investing in Canada infrastructure plan.

Environment Canada is home to the Canadian Meteorological Centre, at the corner of Sources Boulevard and Highway 40. My colleague from Repentigny is surely familiar with this centre, since she drives past it every time she travels between her riding and Parliament. The Canadian Meteorological Centre regularly shares its expertise to help the Government of Quebec predict the spring freshet, which is causing more and more damage in our communities, mine included, as a result of climate change.

There is also Natural Resources Canada. As its website indicates, this department has a team of scientists who provide data to emergency responders and municipalities to help them make decisions. This team collects data through radar satellite images and produces maps in near-real time for emergency workers responding to crises like floods, for example.

I mentioned there was a limited number of federal agencies and departments involved in managing our freshwater reserves, while the provinces retain primary responsibility for this resource. As I have already said, there are at least a dozen, and maybe even close to 20.

The purpose of this proposed study would be to better understand these federal bodies' individual roles and how they interact in order to create a more rational, more effective federal water policy that will better support the other levels of government. This study is not intended as a Trojan horse for invading or infringing on areas of provincial jurisdiction over water.

Water is not like other issues when it comes to jurisdiction. Water does not follow the same rules as other elements that can be managed in silos. Because of its nature, water requires the provinces to work together. Take, for example, the Ottawa River. It flows into Lac des Deux Montagnes, then into the St. Lawrence River and Rivière des Prairies before continuing east to Montreal and on past Sorel.

Water requires collaboration between regions. Water requires collaboration between countries in order to ensure our common water security and the right to water for those in the world who are lacking in this vital resource.

The European Union is a partnership of sovereign countries with long histories and great cultures that think big when it comes to meeting today's challenges. It understood the need to work together to ensure its water security in an era of climate change. In 2000, the EU adopted the EU Water Framework Directive, which establishes a framework for an overall community water policy.

We need to get our house in order when it comes to federal freshwater policies.

Climate change, pollution and urban development are jeopardizing our water resources. The impact is not limited to a single geographic area. Waterways flow through different regions. Regions and provinces will need to work together more and more to ensure our common water security.

This study will help shape the future of this collaboration, including collaboration among scientists, whether they are located at the Université de Montréal, the University of Alberta or the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.

Members of Parliament from all regions and across party lines need to be at the table, virtually speaking, considering the current pandemic. Regardless of the mode of communication, everyone needs to be at the table so to speak, as the Europeans are, for example.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the speech given by the member, as well as the work he has done on the environment committee in this Parliament and in previous ones, and his advocacy on freshwater issues.

In his speech tonight, the member talked about a variety of things. There are so many facets to freshwater protection that occur in a country as large as Canada. One thing I did not hear a lot about was first nations, particularly concerns about treaty rights. I am from British Columbia. Many treaties have not yet been negotiated.

The member talked about respecting provincial jurisdiction. What about treaty rights? What about first nations, especially in my area of the Okanagan? Many of the Indian bands, particularly the Penticton Indian Band and the Osoyoos Indian Band, have a very strong connection with the water and protecting salmon.

I would like to hear what the member has to say in regard to his motion.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question.

I did mention the issue of drinking water in first nations. Also, in the motion, we talk about the different departments that have a role to play in water management and protection in Canada. One on the list is Crown-indigenous relations.

I am very familiar with the issue, but more with regard to Alberta. A number of years ago, I piloted a study at the environment committee on the impacts of oil sands development on the watershed in the Athabasca region. I remember discussions around Treaty 8, and how that factored into protecting the rights of indigenous people from pollution from oil sands development.

That is certainly an issue that should be raised at committee, if we undertake this study.