Madam Speaker, I apologize for not rising. I am still working on my new knees.
I am honoured to rise tonight in one of the most important debates we have had in this place in the time I have been a member of Parliament, and I am on the horns of a dilemma.
I want to acknowledge that I am standing on the traditional territory of the people of the Algonquin nation. Their patience and tolerance with us is indeed generous, and I say meegwetch.
This is a very difficult debate, and it is difficult for many reasons. One reason for me is that I have not yet decided how I will vote, neither has my parliamentary colleague for Kitchener Centre. We are looking deeply at the Emergencies Act and its implications, including the downsides, which are evident, and the need for it, which remains a question.
This speech will be more legalistic than usual. I am essentially going to go through an exercise of statutory interpretation, compare it with the facts and see where we are. I am actually grappling with two questions tonight: How do we vote, and how do we analyze the legal questions?
In this debate today, and from 7 a.m. until midnight tomorrow, as well as the day after, the day after, and part of Monday too, we are going to hear debate not grounded in statutory interpretation, but filled with a lot of emotion. A lot of charges and countercharges will be heard. Both sides have already generously festooned this debate with wedge issues and red herrings. However, I certainly think Canadians, the citizens of this country, need to know what we are talking about, and I will do my best to bring it home.
The first question is this: What is the Emergencies Act?
It is very important to say it is not the War Measures Act. The War Measures Act, as used by the current Prime Minister's father, Pierre Trudeau, in the FLQ crisis, was an egregious violation of rights and freedoms right across the country. It was a suspension of civil liberties everywhere all at once. It was directed against people of Quebec, and even people with no connection whatsoever to anything radical, who were merely political opponents of the government of the day, were rounded up.
There was an official apology in the last session of Parliament. By the way, when the War Measures Act was invoked in the 1970s, police in Vancouver rode into peace camps and started beating people up, because civil liberties were gone right across Canada, and they did not need to have a reason. This is not that.
The Emergencies Act is the work, which I have to say impresses me, of reflective parliamentarians who gathered in the 1980s, when they had no imminent emergency to which they had to respond. They looked at public welfare, such as a pandemic, and how we would respond to that. Would we need the Emergencies Act, and what kind of emergencies would it be for? They looked at war. They looked at natural disasters, and they looked at the situation the government has now invoked, the declaration we are debating tonight, which is of the public order emergency category.
However, when they did that work, those parliamentarians made it clear that this act, by its very language, meant the military could not be called in. By its very language, it says the Charter of Rights and Freedoms will be honoured, and unlike the War Measures Act, it created parliamentary oversight, part of which we are doing here tonight. For any government using this declaration for an emergency, Parliament must debate the matter and vote within seven sitting days. As well, Parliament will have a committee to continue to oversee what takes place under the Emergencies Act to make sure it conforms to the law. As well, 20 members of Parliament and 10 senators, at any time during the 30-day life of this emergency declaration, can gather and request that we debate it again and vote again.
So, in a minority Parliament, this does suggest that the executive, in others words the cabinet and the Prime Minister, do not have the power to call the Emergencies Act. Obviously, they have done the declaration and it is in effect right now, but there is parliamentary oversight, something that was not present under the War Measures Act.
This is described as a public order emergency. Under the Emergencies Act, that is “an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada and that is so serious as to be a national emergency”.
In analyzing this definition, it turns out that the words “threats to the security of Canada” might not mean what one might take as a plain meaning when we think to ourselves what a threat to security is. No, it is specifically described as being the meaning that we would find in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. We go to another act to find the definition for threats to the security of Canada.
This is fascinating. I think I may be the first one to mention it. Threats to the security of Canada in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act is defined with four points to describe it. I will read only (b) because that is the one that most applies in this circumstance. According to the act, threats to the security of Canada include:
(b) foreign influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person,
The second part of that definition that we get from the Emergencies Act itself says that not only must it be a threat to the security of Canada, such as the one I just read out in definitions from the Security Intelligence Service Act, it must also be so serious as to be a national emergency.
For the national emergency definition, as others have referenced in the House, we go back to the Emergency Act:
3. For the purposes of this Act, a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that
(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or
(b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada
I question whether that test been met, whether that threshold been met. That takes further interpretation based on the facts. I personally, and I found this in the declaration itself, so the government is also troubled by this, am troubled by the foreign influence aspect of what we are seeing across Canada.
The declaration which we are debating tonight includes the point that the protests “have become a rallying point for anti-government and anti-authority, anti-vaccination, conspiracy theory and white supremacist groups throughout Canada and other Western countries.” It says, “The protesters have varying ideological grievances, with demands ranging from an end to all public health restrictions to the overthrow of the elected government”.
That does seem very consistent with our first question about whether this is a threat to the security of Canada, under the meaning in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, when foreign influenced activities within or related to Canada are detrimental to the interests of Canada, such as blocking access to trade, blocking communities and shutting down communities. Also, are they clandestine or deceptive? Yes they are, if the money is coming from overseas, people are using anonymous email addresses and they are sending money into Canada for the purpose of disrupting our nation.
What is that purpose? Where do we find further evidence of what foreign influence might be attempting to visit on Canada, but also on other political regimes? This is from yesterday's Associated Press: “How American cash for Canada protests could sway US politics”. In this article, a series of journalists working for Associated Press makes the case that this convoy and the various protests across Canada under the banner of “freedom convoy” is “really aimed at energizing conservative politics in the U.S. [and elsewhere].Republicans think standing with protesters up north will galvanize fundraising and voter turnout”.
No wonder we have luminaries of the far right south of the border such as Texan Republican Ted Cruz and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the protesters in Canada heroes and patriots. They are the darlings of Fox News right now. Senator Rand Paul said that he hopes the truckers come to the United States and “clog up cities”. In other words, one aspect of what raises this to the level of national emergency is that it also has tentacles. The longer it goes on here, the more it is intended to inspire disruptions in other economies, including our number one trading partner. Does it rise to the level of a national emergency?
This is a harder one for me. Does it rise to the level of a national emergency? We have seen blockades being removed. They were geographically easier. There were fewer people. The logistics of the Ambassador Bridge is not the same as what is going on right now outside this place, and I disagree with colleagues in this place who have said that, if we are here in Parliament, it means it is safe. That is not the case.
Friends of mine in this place and members of their staff have had feces thrown at them as they go back and forth to work. We have had people yell at us and abuse us, as we try to go through the streets. Be that at the moment I am someone with a disability, I cannot get here at all without Parliamentary Protective Service protection and assistance. No, it is not our usual Parliament Hill. We do not feel safe here.
Going to the next point of evidence that I want to bring before us, I am very concerned about the nature of our safety and security here. We are not just any city in Canada. We are the national capital. We have attracted a certain type, and I am not going to put a broad brush on everybody who showed up in Ottawa to support the convey. Clearly there are people there thinking it is sort of like a street party. There are people there who are not politically radicalized, but the thread that runs through all of this is a radicalization with an inherent threat of violence.
That came forward more clearly than anything in the Guardian today, in a very chilling article by a Canadian reporter, who I must say I have known for years. My goodness, Justin Ling is distinguishing himself in this crisis as someone who actually goes out, does reporting and digs up information. Today, in the Guardian, the headline was, “Canada was warned before protests that violent extremists infiltrated convoy”.
The hon. member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner made a point earlier today to excuse the protest. He said, it is not their fault, they were infiltrated. Exactly. According to the article in the Guardian today by Canadian journalist Justin Ling, assessments from Canada's Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, known as ITAC, which is part of Security Intelligence Service Canada, or CSIS, reported before the convoy got near Ottawa that the convoy organizers “advocated civil war”.
Convoy organizers hold up the U.S. January 6 insurrection against a fair democratic election promoting the lie that the election was Trump's and it was stolen from him. They hold that up as their model. According to Justin Ling, CSIS and ITAC warned the City of Ottawa police that this was the nature of what was coming to Ottawa.
It was not a secret. They left with great fanfare to drive across the country. When this is all over, we will have to find out what happened within the chain of command in the Ottawa police to ignore these warnings. Some officers, not all necessarily, all but welcomed the convoy. There are reports from local Ottawa journalists that when they interviewed truck drivers, they said that they only planned to stay a little while but then the police told them they could go park on Wellington, and they would not have to leave for a very long time.
Had those truckers not been truckers, but indigenous people coming to assert rights on indigenous territory, they would not have been allowed to get a single stick into the ground to construct a single thing before being arrested quite quickly, or had they been people of colour, or environmentalists. My goodness, look at how we treat camps of homeless people, moving in brutally. The Emergencies Act has not been needed to knock over lots of homeless people in lots of brutal police takedowns.
We know right now that there is an intention on the part of many of these convoy participants to not leave. I do not want to worry about every social media crank that puts things up on Twitter, but I know that freedom convoy social media is saying to get downtown to Victoria to take the Legislature, and they are not going to leave until all the mandates are gone. Forget public health advice. They are going to demand that the government goes, that the mandates goes. Who knows?
It was also reported in this article about warnings from ITAC that it thought the use of vehicles, trucks and fuel could present a real significant threat of violence.
All too often, those of us here in Parliament have wondered and asked security forces whether anyone knows what is in all those trucks. We do not know, so I think we have, clearly, a situation that has been allowed to become intolerable and dangerous, but I am still not comfortable voting for the motion, and I will tell members why.
The emergency measures regulations, as described, are overly broad. When the Prime Minister said this was coming forward, he said it would be geographically circumscribed to the specific areas where we see that normal lines of authority and protections for public life and health are missing. We have an emergency. That is clear. This was promised to be very limited and specific, but the emergency measures regulations define infrastructure as basically everything and then say it applies right across Canada. The designation of protected places under section 6 of the regulations is far too broad and applies to all of Canada.
That is a concern I have. I also know I have heard many people ask for clarity. At what level of financial donation, or financial support of illegal activities, does one's bank account get seized? I highly doubt the Government of Canada plans to seize the bank account of anyone who made a $20 donation on GoFundMe to the “freedom convoy”. I doubt it. I think we are looking for proximate connection: the kind that will exert the pressure that makes the convoy go away.
Where are the pressure points? They are insurance, finances, registration and the chance to make a living as a trucker when this is all over. I do not think the Liberals intend to go after a $20 bank account donation, but I have not heard them say that. I am not comfortable voting until I see more clarity that circumscribes the overly broad reach of the regulations.
I will also say I hear from many people, virtually all the time, asking how we know this will not establish a precedent that allows a crackdown on civil liberties. I want to read one more section into the record very specifically. This is from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, in the definition that has been transplanted into the motion we are debating tonight. It addresses what is a threat to the security of Canada, and it says, at the bottom of the paragraph of which I have only read subsection (b), it “does not include lawful advocacy, protest or dissent, unless carried on in conjunction with any of the activities referred to above.”
I feel quite secure. I do not plan to get arrested again. It was not fun. It was way outside of my comfort zone and the judge hated me, so I got a much more significant fine than my friend, who is now the mayor of Vancouver. I do not plan to go out and get arrested again, but I believe that non-violent civil disobedience is a vital part of our democracy. It traces its roots all the way back to Henry David Thoreau in the 1800s. It was then picked up by the exemplar of non-violent civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi, and then taken up by Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are reasons why in a democracy we must have peaceful protest and the right and ability to break the law, if we believe that law to be unjust, but that does not include the right to destroy other people's lives and livelihoods in the process. That does not include a right to refuse to take the consequences of one's own actions or to say, “I will go quietly with you, officer.” That is the essence of what I did when I performed non-violent civil disobedience and what my colleague, the hon. Minister of Environment and Climate Change, did before he was in office. He also believed that something as important as the survival of life on earth and the climate crisis was worth giving up his own sense of safety for, by submitting himself to arrest.
These are complicated matters and complicated questions, and I would beg of all of us that we must listen to each other. I am so concerned that so many of my constituents believe it is actually a peaceful protest out there. They think it is. There is nothing peaceful about hunks of metal taking over a city. Trucks do not have charter rights. Honking a horn, as the judge said in granting the injunction, is not an expression of free speech. These trucks should have been stopped before they got anywhere near the centre of our national capital. They were not. That is what constitutes the emergency, but I need the government to show me that the regulations will be tightened up before I can vote for this.
