Madam Speaker, it is, as always, an honour to stand in this chamber and address the issues that are impacting Canadians. However, I stand in this chamber tonight to speak to an issue that should make every one of the 338 members of the House take a moment to pause: the invocation of the Emergencies Act, an act passed in 1988, which was the successor to the War Measures Act.
If I could, I want to talk a bit about the history and why it is so important to understand that, in the context of where we are this evening. The War Measures Act was invoked three times in the history of this country: World War I, World War II and the FLQ crisis, under former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
I find it incredibly troubling that this is the context in which we find ourselves today. Wars and murdered politicians is the context for the debate that we find ourselves in here today.
The invocation of the War Measures Act was an extreme measure to deal with significant issues. I do not think there would be a member of this House who would not agree with the need for a mechanism like this to exist, because the reality is that there are instances where significant action needs to be taken. We see this Liberal Prime Minister invoking this Emergencies Act, taking and granting himself and his government unprecedented authority that includes significant things that suspend, for example, due process.
The members opposite do not necessarily like to consider the precedent of the decisions that they make. The precedent is being set by the invocation of this act that it is okay to suspend due process, a fundamental aspect of a modern democracy to ensure there are not things like unreasonable search and seizure. Although the members of the government talk about the Emergencies Act being subject to the charter, there are aspects of it that are allowed to be overridden because of what the Emergencies Act allows. It is important to acknowledge those things as we enter into this debate.
We see there is this seemingly flippant approach to such a serious issue, which is setting a precedent, that I would simply ask this question of the members opposite and members of the NDP who have indicated that they are going to support this: If this were former prime minister Stephen Harper who had invoked this act, would they be celebrating it? Would they be laughing in their seats? Would they be poking fun and seemingly enjoying the fact that they are taking away the right to due process and that they are suspending certain aspects of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms? That is an important question that I hope every member of the Liberal Party and every member of the NDP considers carefully.
An unprecedented step was taken three weeks after the Prime Minister did nothing but inflame tensions in what is a time that Canada, I would submit, has never been more divided. The context for this is the fact that there are and continue to be protests taking place in the streets of Ottawa. The members opposite do not like to listen to this because it is inconvenient to their narrative, but I, along with my Conservative colleagues, have condemned the blockades, illegal activities and hateful imagery associated with it. The members opposite do not like that because it disrupts the divisive narrative that their leader continues to forward.
We have done that while also being the only party in this country that has been willing to actually acknowledge the fact that over the course of the last number of months there has been an unprecedented level of division that has alienated Canadians.
Now that is funny. The member opposite just said that we have somehow stoked these tensions. That member, I expect, when he goes to a Liberal caucus meeting next time around, would be quick to accuse—