Debates of Feb. 19th, 2022

Emergencies Act

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, lots of words come to mind about that negative interruption. The way the member put the words of his interruption into the record is disturbing.

It is interesting how the Liberal colleagues often talk about how dangerous or scary the protest is, yet I do not think any of them even walked into the protest. When I was at the health committee one day, it ended early because my colleagues were scared to go out in the dark.

Further failures of leadership are clear. Documents have been made available to us in which the Prime Minister convened a first ministers' meeting. Its proposed agenda was to consult premiers on whether to declare this a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act. The documents reveal that the opinions of the premiers were given in confidence. However, since then their positions have been made clear. The Premier of Quebec did not think it was beneficial. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were opposed. I could find no comments for the Yukon, Northwest Territories or Nunavut. If in that consultation the opinions of seven of the 10 premiers were ignored, why bother having it?

As has been pointed out repeatedly, there never has been nor will there be any consultation by the Prime Minister or any of his government officials with the protesters. I will repeat that for the House and all Canadians. The Prime Minister has never spoken to any of the protesters who were there previously and now he has decided to employ and access the Emergencies Act.

Besides the Prime Minister's dismal approval rating, what is the emergency? What steps could have been taken before the government enacted the Emergencies Act that would have made this right, so that Canadians could believe that some suspension of their rights and freedoms would be appropriate?

A public order emergency is described as a “threat” to Canada's security, including acts of espionage and sabotage; “foreign influenced activities” that are detrimental to Canadian interests; terrorist activities; and efforts to covertly or by violence overthrow the constitutional structure of the country. Lawful advocacy, protests, demonstrations and similar activities are not included.

I think I made it clear that walking through the protests I did not feel unsafe.

This public order emergency has given the federal government significant overreach with respect to potentially accessing the bank accounts of not only those involved in the civil disobedience but of those who may have donated to the cause. As we have heard before, does that mean if one were to donate $5 or $10, that person's assets would be frozen? If relatives of a leader of a party in this House had donated to the cause would their assets be frozen? I wonder.

Bloomberg News described it that “banks would be required to report relationships with people involved in blockades and would be given the authority to freeze accounts without a court order, among other measures.” I spoke to Daniel the other day, who is now afraid to donate to any charity and he is now afraid his bank account may be frozen and he will not be able to pay his mortgage. He wonders if these new powers will continue to be used for other causes that raise funds if the government does not agree with their values. He is a proud Canadian with three Canadian flags in his yard.

From the current government we have seen travel restricted, cellphone data collected, military propaganda used domestically, bank accounts frozen and now the Emergencies Act invoked. If those are not multiple infringements upon the civil liberties and the Charter of Rights of Freedoms of Canadians, what is? Canada is now at a crossroads with its democracy. We have a Prime Minister who chooses to vilify, stigmatize and traumatize Canadians with different opinions.

The government has declared a public order emergency with the disagreement of seven of 10 premiers and indeed the vast majority of our country outside of Ottawa has no evidence of a public order emergency. We have seen law enforcement agencies successfully deal with the frustrations that have boiled over at the Ambassador Bridge and a multitude of other border crossings without the Emergencies Act. We also heard about the massive disruptions these blockades at border crossings have caused and the damage that has done to our economy.

However, I cannot fathom that the finance minister tells us how great the economy is at the current time, despite our 5.1% inflation rate and Canadians being priced out of their own lives, all of which was in existence before the last three weeks.

There is absolutely no reason the Emergencies Act cannot be rescinded post-haste and the madness stopped. It is sad that an ideological coalition has the potential to allow the act to continue for up to another 30 days. The left wing thinks that its position is perfectly fine, and there is no issue with that.

These people, who wanted to protest, were ignored. That is the sad reality of how we ended up here.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, I find it interesting. All day long, I have been hearing Conservatives talk about the need for the Prime Minister to engage in dialogue and discussion with the occupiers outside, yet I find it interesting that Jason Kenney, the premier of Alberta, did not engage with the protesters at Coutts. Premier Doug Ford did not engage with the protesters or those who were blocking the bridge in Windsor. Premier Stefanson of Manitoba did not engage with those who were blocking in Manitoba.

Does the hon. member think that all leadership should engage with the protesters or that just Liberal leadership should engage with protesters?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, I think it is fascinating that even the Liberals recognize that the Prime Minister has not spoken or created any dialogue with the protesters. I have to say I think that is shameful and it is quite honestly ridiculous. How can that member opposite possibly say that because someone else does something wrong, they can continue to do wrong things and that makes it right?

Wow, my mom taught me that when I was a kid.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague’s speech. He has demonstrated that the government did absolutely nothing, or very little, before declaring an emergency.

This leaves the impression that this emergency declaration is basically an attempt to save face for the government and the Prime Minister, who did absolutely nothing for some 20 days.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank the Bloc for understanding the untenable situation we are in and the ridiculous nature of using this act. It is very clear that the Prime Minister is attempting to save his approval ratings, which are dismal at the current time and will continue to fall as Canadians realize that he does not represent the true nature of what it is to be a Canadian.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have said it before and I will reiterate it again: It should have never come down to this. The occupiers that have held downtown Ottawa hostage for weeks made it clear that this was their intention from the onset, yet the government did nothing. The member opposite may agree that, instead of showing clear and strong leadership on a path forward, the Prime Minister was missing in action. Now here we are. We have rolled out a red carpet for those who feel it reasonable to overthrow our democratic system. This is an occupation fuelled by hate, disguised as a peaceful protest.

Does the member agree now is the time for action?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, I agree with everything up to the point where she talked about how the Prime Minister has done absolutely nothing. That is obviously, patently true. That point is really important. The difficulty here, as I pointed out in my speech, is the question of how we got here. We got here because of this terrible, unbelievably poor leadership and if we did not have that, we would not have had to come here.

I guess I am concerned that perhaps this pathway was as planned out by the Prime Minister as the protest was.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, given that the Deputy Prime Minister, the prime minister-in-waiting, has opined that she would like to make aspects of the Emergencies Act permanent, such as the expansion of FINTRAC over more control of people's bank accounts and transactions, and given that the thresholds were not met to invoke the Emergencies Act, does the hon. member think, perhaps, the reason for invoking the act was to acquire some expanded, broadened powers permanently and that was the true goal of casting the country into this situation?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, certainly, as I just mentioned previously, that is a concern that I would have as a concerned Canadian citizen. If one is a leader and does nothing and ends up with a ham-fisted approach, was that perhaps the whole raison d'être from the very beginning?

I think that is very possible. I think that Canadians not only want the Liberals off of our backs but we also want them out of our pocketbooks as well.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. parliamentary secretary is rising on a point of order.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have been very patient and I rarely raise points of order, but something that the member for Cumberland—Colchester said really offends me as a parliamentarian and I am going to give him an opportunity to retract his statement.

He belittled members and fellow parliamentarians who are members of the health committee for their reluctance to exit a committee in the dark during the midst of this protest. Although he has gone on at length to explain how he has been unaffected by these protests and feels quite comfortable with them, clearly residents of Ottawa and other parliamentarians do not.

I am going to give him an opportunity to retract that statement and clarify, for the record, that he would not want to belittle the subjective feelings of fellow parliamentarians and members of this House, how they perceive this protest and what it represents to them.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Madam Speaker, on that same point of order, I am the chair of the health committee. Not only did the member belittle members of the committee, but what he said was not true. He knows full well that in order to adjourn a meeting, it requires the consent of the committee or a vote. There was an early adjournment of the meeting. There was absolutely no reference to anyone being afraid of the dark, and what he did was highly inappropriate.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, perhaps the experience of the chair of the committee was different from mine. That did, in fact, happen, so saying that my comments are misleading is inappropriate, because it did happen. Those are the facts, and I think that trying to be factual is a very important thing here. I do not think that is belittling people. That is portraying the facts. People who have not even been out in this protest continue to report what other people have experienced, when I have been out there and colleagues of mine have been out there and experienced it.

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

Madam Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be splitting my time with the member for Shefford.

I must confess something: I am exhausted. I am completely exhausted. I am intellectually, physically and mentally exhausted.

It is 6:45 p.m. on a Saturday night. I should be having supper with my wife and children at home, but I am here, in Parliament, discussing legislation regarding a national emergency, when there is no national emergency. It is over. There are no more people in the streets in front of Parliament. The trucks are gone, the people are gone. The crisis is over.

I have no problem with spending hours and nights talking about housing, seniors, health, climate change or any manner of important topics. I would spend my weekends here. I would camp here, with my sleeping bag. I would sleep in Parliament for all those worthwhile issues that are so important to people.

I am searching for the national crisis. Where is it?

We are still looking. We are looking for the national crisis. We keep looking for it, but we cannot find it. The outrageous truth is that there is no crisis.

I would like to commend the police outside. For 24 hours, they have been doing truly incredible work. I am not sure if members have seen them, but step by step, they have been slowly advancing. They had a strategy. That is the crux of the Bloc Québécois's argument. What tools do they have, now that the act has been in effect for the past few days? What more do they have now?

If they were able to do that now, then the government needs to explain to us how the police managed to carry out this strategy that they were unable to implement before.

I was there in 2001 at the Summit of the Americas. The police did roughly the same thing as they did today. They used pepper spray a bit, not too much. They advanced slowly. They managed to get the protesters under control. It went very well. There was no special legislation.

Commending the police is one thing, but I would also like to commend the interpreters, who will have to work for three or four days because of this totally pointless debate. They are doing an outstanding job. They will be spending the weekend here, and it is very important to salute them.

I would also like to commend the journalists who are outside in the middle of the crowd with their microphones. They are being insulted and shoved around. It is not easy for them. They have done a terrific job.

To begin my speech, even though I have been speaking for five minutes already, I would like to quote British writer Ernest Benn, who said something rather interesting that applies to the crisis we are in right now. He said: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly and applying unsuitable remedies.” I suspect that Ernest Benn did not like politicians very much.

If we apply that to the current crisis, if we say that politics is the art of looking for trouble, we might say that the government started it by allowing the truckers to come here in the first place.

Take Quebec City. They knew the truckers were coming, so they took necessary steps, such as setting up barricades around the National Assembly and telling the truckers where they could park. The mayor of Quebec City even told them he wanted to hear what they had to say and they had the right to be there because their actions were legitimate in a democracy. They were told they had the right to speak, but they were asked to do so without paralyzing the assembly and keeping people from sleeping.

Did Quebec have an emergency measures act at the time? The answer is no. Quebec handled the situation very well.

Again, it is the art of looking for trouble and finding it. How did the Prime Minister manage to find trouble? By letting them set up shop. If Ottawa had done like Quebec City from the start, it would never have come to this.

I also said it is the art of diagnosing trouble wrongly. The Prime Minister's strategy for the last three weeks has been to stay at the cottage and hope things will sort themselves out and the truckers will eventually leave. Well, they did not leave.

Lastly, politics is the art of applying unsuitable remedies, which in this case is the nuclear option of the Emergencies Act. I believe that Mr. Benn was right about that, because national emergency measures were not needed at the Ambassador Bridge. They were not needed in Coutts. They were not needed in Sarnia. They were not needed in Fort Erie, Vancouver, or Emerson, to name them all.

If I park my car in the middle of the road in Longueuil and leave the engine running for an hour or two, eventually a police officer is going to come along and tell me I am violating a bylaw. If I tell the officer that I feel like staying there anyway, another officer will surely show up to issue a fine three or four hours later. If I still say that I am going to stay there, they will tow my car two days later. There are laws for that. National emergency measures are not needed to move some trucks. That is what we saw here.

I listened carefully to Prime Minister Trudeau when he gave his speech to present this legislation—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Order.

I would remind the hon. member that we do not use members' names in the House.

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

Madam Speaker, I apologize.

The Prime Minister said, “Invoking the Emergencies Act is not something we do lightly.” Obviously. He added, “This is not the first, second or third option.” What are the three options that were supposedly considered? We do not know.

During a national crisis, the important thing is to show leadership. When a crisis occurs, a leader acknowledges that it is something difficult, that it is not easy for society, but that they think they should do this or that and that this is the way to go. That is what leadership is. Leadership is making decisions and telling us which way we will go.

As for the decision before us, seven Canadian provinces are against invoking this act. Is this what leadership looks like?

Thinking about that this week reminded me of the film 12 Angry Men. Has anyone seen that movie? It was an international hit adapted from a play by Reginald Rose. 12 Angry Men is a courtroom drama about a man on trial for murder. There are 12 jurors. The film begins as the jurors are meeting. Everyone thinks the defendant is guilty. The evidence is overwhelming. Everyone is anxious to go home, since it has been a long trial. Eleven people say he should be convicted, but one juror raises a doubt. He says no and questions the truth. He says the truth lies in another direction. Over the course of two hours, he slowly convinces everyone of his point of view, of what the truth is. He thinks the defendant is innocent. Now that is a leader.

Seven provinces oppose this legislation. The Prime Minister could have stood up and said that he thinks it is important and that it should be done for such and such a reason. That never happened. At no time did we see the Prime Minister show any leadership. That is what is missing.

I do not have time to talk about the October crisis, but I think members have understood what I am trying to say. This is a useless, totally disproportionate law that is not supported by a large part of the population. I have received thousands of emails from people who oppose it, thousands of emails from people who want us to vote against this legislation—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Unfortunately, we must go to questions and comments.

The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

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

Madam Speaker, I feel like I just attended an excellent bit of theatre. It was a very passionate performance.

My colleague gave the example of parking his car in a no-parking zone in Longueuil. The police comes along, he refuses to leave, and the police give him a fine. He claims that the police would call the towing company to have his vehicle towed. Is he aware that towing companies in Ottawa did not want to touch the convoy trucks for fear of reprisal and that this legislation was needed to encourage them to come tow the trucks away once the police gained control of the situation? It seems fairly obvious to me—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

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

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague, whom I am very fond of, is incorrect. All it would take is a court order. Just order the companies to go tow the trucks, and it is done. There is no need for a sledgehammer or a big club like the emergency legislation before us today.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, I too was at the Summit of the Americas, but it was quite a different situation. There were thousands of people storming the perimeter fence, the crowd was launching projectiles into the fence and there were imported black balaclava-clad professional protesters on hand. We saw none of that here. It was very peaceful. People were welcoming everyone. I certainly felt no potential violence when I was walking back and forth.

The member also agrees that the thresholds were not met to invoke this act. Why does the member think the Emergencies Act was invoked, given that there was no rationale?

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I am going to go in a different direction because I think it is important. There is one thing we have heard very little about in relation to this crisis.

We have heard a lot about extremist groups that infiltrated the protests. This is true and has been documented. These extremist groups exist, and we must combat them. However, there are other ways to do so. We did not need the Emergencies Act.

We have heard a lot about children being used as human shields. The media has really sensationalized this.

There are people outside who simply wanted to express their frustrations over what they have been living with for the past two years. I share that frustration. Everyone is fed up and tired. The health restrictions have been hard on people.

We, as members of Parliament, are relatively privileged. We probably have homes that are big enough to live in. Many of the people who are outside right now live with eight people in a one-bedroom apartment, and it is not easy going through this pandemic with all of these restrictions.

If, instead of tarring everyone with the same brush—this is Canadians we are talking about after all—the Prime Minister had listened to people all along, we might have been able to resolve this crisis in another way.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Madam Speaker, the question I would like to ask my colleague is the following: Should the attack organized against our democracy by the extreme right, and financed from beyond our borders, be taken seriously?

This attack is intended to intimidate our fellow Canadians and force Parliament to close because of security threats. Should it be taken seriously? Should we take serious measures at all levels?

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

Madam Speaker, of course we should. However, there are provisions in the Criminal Code that can help us do it. We do not need an act like the one we are discussing tonight.

We are aware of the situation. In the United States, Donald Trump sends funding across the globe. His influence extends to many countries, and it is considerable. We absolutely must fight back against that.

However, we already have the tools to do that. We do not need the Emergencies Act to fight this. We have done it before, perhaps we have to fight a little harder now, and we will do so in the future as well.