Debates of Feb. 19th, 2022

Emergencies Act

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

Mr. Speaker, at one point the hon. member asked how we got to this point. She then proceeded to blame everybody else, including Ontario Premier Doug Ford, but failed to place any blame on her own Prime Minister for wedging, stigmatizing and dividing people, calling them racist, misogynist and extremist, and asking whether we have to tolerate these people. What we are seeing in this country, in the manifestation of protests across the country, is a logical conclusion to the identity politics the Prime Minister has played.

I want to ask a question specific to the Emergencies Act. The order in council released by the government authorized the government to impose other temporary measures authorized under section 19 of the Emergencies Act that are not yet known, which basically gives the Prime Minister and the executive branch of government unfettered power over their citizens. How could anyone, even on that side, logically support that?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I find a question of that nature on the Emergencies Act very unusual coming from someone in the Conservative Party. It was his own party that wrote the law. I have huge respect for the work that was done by former prime minister Mulroney and the minister—

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

On a point of order, the hon. member should know that I am not referring to the act. I am actually referring to the order in council.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We are getting into debate.

I will let the member for Châteauguay—Lacolle finish her answer.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to how we got to this point, there are these things called jurisdiction and due process. Policing needs to happen at the municipal level. When it fails there, it must be the province. The municipality is the creature of the province, and the province did not do its job.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are all familiar with the saying “do as I say, not as I do”.

That is what the Liberals are doing right now. It is important for them to have polls to back them up so they can justify resorting to the Emergencies Act. The member for Châteauguay—Lacolle said earlier that over 70% of Quebeckers support its use.

However, she forgot to mention that only 347 people were surveyed for the poll. The Quebec National Assembly unanimously opposed the use of the Emergencies Act. Seven of the 10 Canadian provinces are also opposed to the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Does this mean nothing to the Liberals?

What bothers me the most is when the member talks about the rule of law. The rule of law is the opposite of arbitrary law.

Which of the laws in force today is so inadequate as to justify enacting the Emergencies Act?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, manipulating statistics is a common tactic.

The Bloc Québécois members are okay with it when it suits their purposes, but not when it does not. However, Canadians are looking at the situation and seeing with their own eyes what is happening outside.

They are also seeing that all levels of government are assuming their responsibilities as they should. In fact, I would like to commend the Legault government for what it has done to date.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we are looking at a situation that is completely out of control. In my province of Alberta, 13 armed insurgents have blockaded our infrastructure. We can look outside of the House of Commons. Where we are is very, very upsetting, and we never should have been in this situation.

How are we going to make sure that we have put things in place so this cannot happen again? What is the government doing to ensure that this cannot happen in the future?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there are different processes laid out in the law, including setting up a joint committee of parliamentarians and senators. I certainly look forward to seeing that progress and hope to see the hon. member on that committee.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say hello to all of my colleagues on this Saturday morning. It is unusual for the House to sit on a Saturday, but our entire country is dealing with a situation that is quite out of the ordinary.

We are here to participate in a very important debate on the use of these emergency measures. I am not a lawyer. I do not know and cannot figure out all of the little details, but in my opinion, we need look at only two things. First, the Ottawa Police Service said yesterday that it would be unable to put an end to what is happening in Ottawa and the national capital region without the special measures set out in the Emergencies Act.

Second, we are here on a Saturday morning. Yesterday, it was not safe enough for MPs or senators to come to Parliament. We made an unusual decision to cancel a sitting of Parliament, which is why we are here on a Saturday morning to hold this debate.

All of the party leaders in the House—the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberal Party—agreed with the Speaker of the House of Commons that something was happening here, that it was not safe, and that parliamentarians could not come to work. That is very uncommon.

What I would really like to talk about is the other measures applicable to the funding of extremist groups.

I was born in Montreal into one of a few Black families in my area, in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in a francophone city, a francophone province, an English country and a largely English continent. I like to consider myself a minority within a minority within a minority within a minority. It offers me an interesting view of things.

I can see the way the dominant view is carried out because that is the dominant view. It is natural; it is in the air. However, I can also step back a bit and just see things a little ex centrum, or off centre. I have always felt that is a strength. I always think it is an ability to see life a bit more fully: three dimensions instead of two and more colour than just in black and white.

When I saw what was happening in the lead-up to this convoy, there were things that I was able to see that I do not think other people would see as clearly. Perhaps I am wrong, but give me a chance to explain it.

We know the convoy organizers are the same people who have tried to organize other protests about random issues. In 2016, we had Motion No. 103 against Islamophobia. They tried to rally folks and spark a grassroots protest against the motion. I am talking about Tamara Lich, Benjamin Dichter, James Bauder and Patrick King. Those very same people tried to get Canadians up in arms so they could spread their white supremacist way of thinking.

They failed in 2016, so they tried again last year with the United We Roll campaign. Again, there was not much buy-in.

This time, they succeeded for one good reason: Canadians are tired. Everyone is exhausted. Nobody likes the pandemic, nobody likes restrictions and nobody likes lockdowns. The virus does not care what we think. Canadians are exhausted, and these people took advantage of that general sense of fatigue.

The people who showed up to express their disagreement with mandatory vaccination, lockdown measures and all the other measures implemented by federal, provincial and municipal governments have the right to do so. I am not talking about those people.

The people I am talking about are the organizers who exploit that exhaustion to recruit people on social media and spread messages of hate. We know very well that algorithms enable groups on social media to use extremist statements to attract other people, who then make more frequent appearances online. There is no way to avoid that. When people are constantly exposed to hate, they eventually start buying into that way of thinking.

In 2016, when Motion No. 103 was moved, the movement engaged some 10,000 people on Facebook, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. They spread their message and, at one point, they had almost 200,000 subscribers, which was unheard of.

They hit gold. They now have what is estimated to be over a million people on Facebook. This one million people they have identified do not know what is about to hit them. They are going to get messages over and over again, hateful messages, intolerant messages and misinformation, and guess what? They are also going to be solicited for money. Look at the money that has come in.

All of us in the House face very strict financing rules. With the transparency and financing rules, we can only give a maximum of $1,650. That is a good thing. When we give to a charity, there is a whole bunch of transparency and reporting when it happens. Guess what happens when these folks give through crowdsourcing? There is nothing. There is no transparency, not at all. They raised $16 million on one site and another $16 million on another, 40% to 50% of which, it is estimated, came from outside the country. The names are ridiculous. It says Mickey Mouse gave and so did the current Prime Minister. He obviously did not contribute. That is not good.

The financial measures we have are for good reason. If nothing else, it was worth putting them in the orders. I hope that legislation will follow so that on a permanent basis we can get this kind of wrong money out of the Canadian political system.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we heard the justice minister, just two days ago, talk about the financial measures that the member opposite referenced and say that they are going to be used to target people who have political views, not hateful or intolerant views but views that he finds unacceptable. They are going to be targeted by these financial measures included in this law.

The concern that we should have in this place—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

It's foreign interference; you're right.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, while the member for Winnipeg North knows not to interject, he talks about foreign interference. We are talking about Canadians having Canadian bank accounts frozen because they have political views that the justice minister does not like. That is not a liberal democracy. It is, frankly, illiberal and I would like to know how the member opposite can, in good conscience, support this kind of gross overreach and infringement on Canadians' charter rights.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

With great ease, Mr. Speaker, because this money is not going to normal political speech. Let them give donations to those who want to support this, but they are giving money that is anonymous, that is unverified and that can come from foreign sources to get to politics through the back door as opposed to the front.

Who were the people collecting and distributing this money before it was shut down? Are Lich, Barber and King the people we want to have access to this funding, which people gave in good faith because they wanted to talk about vaccine mandates but is being used for completely different purposes? There needs to be some transparency on it.

If the hon. member had listened to me carefully, he would have heard me say that this is a great temporary measure now and that we should pass a law to deal with this going forward.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech, which contained some very interesting nuances.

My question is about the truckers who were on the street. Once again, there are not many left this morning. Does my colleague really believe that the measures that have been implemented, such as seizing bank accounts and trucks or closing mortgage accounts, will have an impact on truckers, most of whom are from here, by which I mean Canadian?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question.

Again, the answer is yes. In the news, we clearly saw a trucker who was part of the blockade here in Ottawa saying that he had to leave because he had received a notice from his bank informing him that if he did not leave the illegal blockade, his assets could be seized. He added that he employs 55 people.

It has worked. It will prevent potential blockades from happening in Windsor. We also heard from the Ottawa Police Service and the Windsor Police Service that with these measures, they finally had the ability to prevent—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Order. It is time for questions and comments.

The hon. member for North Island—Powell River.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I hope all of us in the House are taking on the serious responsibility of the decisions we are making here.

The member opposite and I have had conversations about both of us being parents to children from the BIPOC community and how worrisome it is. On this planet and in this world in which we live, when we send them out the door, just because of who they are, we do not know that they are always safe. As we talk about implementing this act, I wonder if the member could talk about how we will make sure we are accountable for every step and be rigorous so that we protect all people in this country.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what I really like about this piece of legislation, and I would like to congratulate Brian Mulroney and his government for having introduced it, is that the Charter of Rights applies to it at all times. It is fixed for a certain amount of time and parliamentarians have to come together to talk about it. I have every confidence because it is targeted, it is appropriate and especially it is time-limited.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we find ourselves here, this morning, discussing another attempt by the Liberal government to make a mad grab at power, a gross overreach. We have seen it before.

We know that the Liberal-NDP alliance have started their heckles because they want to silence me, just like they want to silence people they do not agree with.

We know that, at the very beginning of this pandemic, the first thing the Liberal government attempted to do was make a mad grab at power. It wanted the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money and to raise taxes, to tax Canadians as it saw fit, without parliamentary oversight, for nearly two years.

Her Majesty's loyal opposition was awake at that late hour, and we stepped up. We stopped that overreach. Here we are, at an early hour on a Saturday morning, in an extraordinary sitting of this place, while the government looks to use extraordinary processes to attack people they disagree with. We heard from the justice minister. He said it on TV for all to hear that, if people have political views that he disagrees with, the government is coming for their bank accounts.

If people agree with the justice minister and have the same distaste for the same politicians, maybe this time they are not worried. However, what about the precedent that it sets when a future government that has a different political view goes after the bank accounts of their enemies or people it disagrees with?

We, in this place, have a responsibility to safeguard the rights of all Canadians. We have heard a lot of talk about the impact in downtown Ottawa, so I want to start with that. The residents of downtown Ottawa have seen protests and celebrations in their neighbourhoods for years. It is a feature, normally, of living at the heart of Canada's democracy. As of late, it has been anything but. Many of them are now represented in a class action lawsuit against the protesters.

I would like to, for the House, share what their lawyer, a fixture in the human rights legal community, has to say about the government's invocation of the act:

[This] seriously infringes on the Charter rights of Canadians.

That is the lawyer representing the folks downtown in Ottawa. He said:

...I am acutely aware of the trauma experienced by Ottawa residents, I fully agree that the Emergencies Act is a dangerous tool that was not required.

Who better to pronounce on the urgency of the situation in downtown Ottawa than the human rights lawyer who is representing the downtown Ottawa residents?

Let us talk about the other remedies that have been used to address people as part of this movement. At the Ambassador Bridge, the Windsor border crossing, we saw police of jurisdiction resolve the blockade of our international border. They did it over a two-day period without the use of the Emergencies Act. In Coutts, Alberta, we saw the same result with the existing resources and the existing laws. The police of local jurisdiction there, through police intelligence, identified that there were weapons and ammunition at a nearby site, and they effectively interdicted it without a shot being fired, using the local laws and the local resources. It was not an emergency.

We had the greatest public health crisis in more than a century, which the government presided over, and an economic downturn, the worst in a century, which the government presided over. It deemed neither emergencies. We have an opioid crisis where people are dying on our streets every day, and the government does not declare that an emergency. It is not taking extraordinary steps to deal with that.

However, it goes back to that power grab and it goes back to a pattern that we have seen with this Prime Minister. Every time that he finds someone he disagrees with, and this is no exception, he dismisses them, he degrades them and he dehumanizes them. This includes millions of Canadians because they disagree with him. He said they hold unacceptable views and they take up space. He said they are mostly misogynists and racists. The majority of Canadians, millions of these same Canadians, have said that any signs or expressions of hate or intolerance are unacceptable. They condemn them and I condemn them.

Anyone who commits an illegal act is individually accountable for that, but we have laws to address that. The charges that are being laid in Ottawa are for mischief and “conspiracy to commit”. We do not require an Emergencies Act to deal with these things. We have a public order operation taking place on the streets of Ottawa. It is not an national emergency.

However, it sure was a great opportunity for this Prime Minister to do those things that he does best: to divide Canadians. That is not the job of a Prime Minister, and it is a shame that he finds common cause among the government benches and with the third party in the House. History will not be kind to those who approve of this illiberal power grab. That is not who we are as Canadians.

Many of the folks who are protesting at different places across Canada, who are raising their voices, are tired. We are all tired of COVID. They wanted a plan. They wanted to know how far until we get to that off-ramp because many of them, including those I have met and spoken to in front of this place, are vaccinated. Some of them are not. They just want to know when it is going to be over.

We gave the government an opportunity to present a plan. We asked for it a year ago. We did it again in the last week. The government refused to provide a plan. Meanwhile, those who are following the science, science presented by people like Dr. Moore in Ontario, have signalled when the COVID measures will end in the jurisdictions that they are responsible for.

Before these folks arrived in Ottawa or at those other locations in Canada, Dr. Tam, representing the Public Health Agency of Canada, said that the government needed a new plan. We have not heard that from the government, because this is a great opportunity to pit neighbour against neighbour, family member against family member. It is an opportunity this Prime Minister never misses.

We are wide awake this morning. We have seen what the government has tried to do and we are here to say that it is not acceptable. It is not our Canada. Folks who want to protest absolutely have the right to do that. Folks who want to use their right to freedom of expression absolutely have a right to do that, and there is a place for that on the lawn of Parliament Hill.

The folks who are moved through the public order measures out front, or who have moved on days ago after visiting the seat of our democracy, need to come to the appropriate places to protest, which are the lawns of their city halls and provincial legislatures and the lawn of Parliament Hill, and exercise their rights, balanced with the responsibility of doing so in a lawful way. That is what Canadians do. They do not try to effect extraordinary measures that subvert the regular rule of law and the charter rights that Canadians hold sacred.

This Prime Minister knows better. His ministers know better and the back benches know better. Let us find out, when we vote on this, if they are prepared to tell Canadians that this really is a country that respects the rule of law, a liberal democracy. Let us find out what Canada really stands for.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to hear the member opposite, with whom I served on the ethics committee, talking about a Liberal democracy. There are different tactics that can be used to discredit one's adversary. There is discrediting someone with a constant barrage of insults and slurs. There is distraction, deflection or “whataboutism”. All of these are used to divide people.

Which tactic is he using today?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I talk about a Liberal democracy because the government of this country is represented by the illiberal party of Canada, it would appear. The tactic I am using today is reminding the government of the foundation of our democracy, which is the rights of Canadians. When citizens are afraid of their government, and that is the goal the government seeks, they have got it backwards. The government should be afraid of its citizens because our citizens hold the power. That is the key to freedom.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes for his comments.

I would like to ask him a simple question.

Why was the Quebec government able to control and resolve a similar situation in two days, without using the Emergencies Act?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the premier of Quebec was able to effect that result in the same way that Toronto was able to effect the same result as they did in Montreal or in Quebec City, which was by using the existing laws of the local jurisdiction and using their existing resources. That is exactly what could be done here in Ottawa. It is what was done in Windsor, it is what was done in Coutts and it is what is being done elsewhere. We are seeing the government try to confuse Canadians and conflate a couple of issues so it can make an unjust grab at power.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I really hope we are going to get out of this is a full inquiry into the complete breakdown of law in Ottawa that allowed this thing to metastasize, and the fact that dark money was used from America and the Cayman Islands. These issues have to be fully investigated.

I know the interim Leader of the Opposition thought this was a real opportunity to let this thing drag on, and said day after day to go out, meet and talk with the leaders. Chris Barber is a vicious racist who likes truckers as long as they are white. Tamara Lich is a woman who wants to break up our country. I know some of the Conservatives do not have a problem with that. Pat King is a man who talks openly about shooting the Prime Minister of the country. I have never, ever heard a single Conservative stand up and say that those views are fundamentally wrong. There is a problem in our nation when we decide that it is okay to burn down the house of democracy to watch the Prime Minister jump out the window, or to support people who talk about killing the Prime Minister.

I want to hear the member condemn that language.