Debates of March 2nd, 2022

Government Business No. 9—Parliamentary Review Committee pursuant to the Emergencies Act

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

The member cannot use names.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I apologize.

This is simply not true. No such investigation exists. The interim Leader of the Opposition, instead of seeking a solution to the problem, said, “I don't think we should be asking them to go home...we need to turn this into the [Prime Minister's] problem.” With this type of rhetoric, a willingness to mislead Canadians and a willingness to support an ongoing occupation of our capital to serve political goals, how can they reasonably be trusted to chair a committee reviewing the very action taken?

We invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial authorities to address the blockades and occupation to keep Canadians safe. We did this at the behest of the provinces and we did this to support others across the country who needed our help. It allowed our government to mobilize essential services, allowed the RCMP to swiftly enforce local laws and provided enhanced power to stop the flow of money. These measures were targeted, temporary and proportionate. We invoked them only after exhausting other measures, and they were the result of close consultation with the provinces and territories.

To be clear, the Emergencies Act is expressly governed by the rights and freedoms set out in the charter and no one should tell us otherwise. The specific measures provided by the Emergencies Act were limited and subject to numerous checks and safeguards. One such safeguard is the requirement for a parliamentary review committee to be established, which is what we are discussing today.

We have had productive discussions with other parties in the House about how to structure the membership of this joint review committee in a manner that is reasonable, fair and appropriate. Now is the time for reckoning and to review and understand the circumstances of what brought us to this point and how it was handled. We have proposed a reasonable approach to this review and to this committee's structure. Unfortunately, after supporting the illegal blockades and occupations, the Conservative Party is now refusing to do what it should, which is to support the timely creation of a fair structure for this committee to do its work. What Canadians need now from their Parliament is an honest, efficient and thoughtful review of the invocation of the act, its implementation and its outcomes.

We have seen the spread of lies and misinformation and we do not need that when it comes to something as fundamental as this. We are talking about trust in our institutions and in our democracy. We are talking about ensuring there is public trust in our processes and indeed in our Parliament. We must not trifle with this. It is an opportunity for all parliamentarians to do what is right and allow a review to look at things honestly. Surely, if everyone in the House has acted in good faith throughout this occupation and acted in the best interests of Canadians, no one should have anything to worry about in terms of what comes out of this review. It should be easy for the opposition to accept the proposal we have made.

Under this proposal, as everybody knows, the committee would have 11 members. It would mean three Liberals, two Conservatives, one Bloc, one member of the NDP and four senators representing all groups in the Senate. The committee would be chaired by three co-chairs: a Bloc MP, an NDP MP and one senator. That is pretty balanced, in my view. The chair would not be a Liberal, whose government invoked the Emergencies Act, or a Conservative, whose party, as we heard before, led the way in supporting protesters and the protests.

The Conservatives inexplicably refuse to support this balanced proposal. They have insisted from the start that they co-chair and are now demanding that both co-chairs be Conservative. Their bias in cheering on the illegal occupation cannot, should not and must not extend to chairing the committee. Canadians are going to judge us long after we are gone from this place. If the government is prepared to cede the chair of this committee to the Bloc and the NDP without fear or favour, what is stopping the Conservatives from doing exactly the same thing?

Were they here, I would appeal to my colleagues from across the floor, those who are uncomfortable with misinformation, with harmful rhetoric and with pandering to PPC voters, to vote in favour of this motion to show Canadians that the institution of Parliament and the review of the Emergencies Act and the actions taken come above petty partisanship.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to comment on a quote my colleague noted and make a correction. On February 10, our leader stated that she understood and was passionate about the convoy. However, she did make a statement that the blockades had to leave and that we would continue the fight for their freedoms.

I do not know where the member was going with that statement, so I would like some clarification. We did call for the blockades to come down, we did call for the convoy to end and we said that we would take on their fight here in the House. Could he comment on that, please?

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would be glad to respond.

If I understand correctly, there was an email sent by the interim Leader of the Opposition in which she said she thought this should be made the Prime Minister's problem and that they should not be encouraging these individuals to leave Ottawa. Unless the email was a fabrication, unless the email was a lie or unless she changed her mind, that is on the record as something the interim leader of the Conservative Party said.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member for Vancouver Granville could help me out, because I am having trouble understanding what the Conservatives are actually doing in delaying this committee. It does not make much sense to me. I am sure it is not just about being the chair and the perks that might come with that, so it must be about something else. Is it about delaying so we forget what has happened here in Ottawa and so that the role of the Conservatives in supporting the blockade becomes a distant memory, or is it about becoming chair so that they can somehow limit the inquiry so we do not look at those questions?

I am having trouble understanding, and I wonder if the member has seen any indication from the Conservatives of why they are taking this tactic in the House.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. It is a question that has plagued me for the last couple of days as well, and I am led to wonder the very same things.

Could it be that there is something that the Conservative Party does not wish to have revealed during the course of the review? Could it be that there are deep concerns about it possibly alienating the potential voters they seek to curry favour with? Could it be something else? I do not know the answer to the question, but it is my hope that this process and the committee itself will unearth the very answers that we seek.

Therefore, like the hon. member, I too am perplexed as to why a party that is so keen for accountability is so desperate to delay the very thing that will give us the accountability that this House deserves.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, earlier I was sure I was lost. I walked into the House and then turned around and left because I was sure I had walked into a day care centre. I did come back eventually, though.

We in the Bloc Québécois do not care who the chair is. The important thing is that the work begins, but especially that there is a consensus on the formation of the committee. That is the most important thing. Getting the committee off the ground may be the only part of the Emergencies Act that will be used properly. In terms of inspiring confidence in Quebeckers and Canadians, we are off to a very poor start.

We need to have the least partisan committee possible. Nothing I am hearing from either the Conservative side or the Liberal side is inspiring confidence at this point.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his comments.

The reality is that the Conservative Party has decided to politicize the situation that we went through here in Ottawa. The way we can act now is to have a committee that will look at the situation with the Bloc Québécois and the NDP co-chairing the committee. We can work together to find the answers.

The member is right: The people of Canada are looking for answers to important questions, like what happened here in Ottawa, but also across the country where the convoys had repercussions.

We have to get going and find answers as soon as possible for Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, over the last couple of years, the issue that I think would have been a wonderful thing to talk about is the heroes of the pandemic and how Canadians stepped up to the plate when we really needed to take on the coronavirus. We are not necessarily focusing on that issue, but rather on a short period of time when people, due to the illegal blockades, caused far too many discussions and debates taking place here in Ottawa. I heard previously of the real heroes and issues of the pandemic. It has been a long, hard two-plus years, and there are so many wonderful things we could be saying about those Canadians and residents who really stepped up to get us through to this point.

Getting back on topic, a couple of days before the government instituted the Emergencies Act there was a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister. I caught wind of it not through the PMO or anything of that nature, but through a Winnipeg Free Press article. I would like to quote the article. It states:

Premier Heather Stefanson pleaded in a private letter to [the Prime Minister] to intervene at the Emerson border blockade just days before she publicly opposed his decision....

In a Feb. 11 letter obtained by the Free Press, Stefanson asked [the Prime Minister] to take “immediate and effective” action as she pleaded for “national leadership that only you and the federal government can provide.”

It goes on:

[The premier's] letter said the situation was urgent and blockades that disrupt “this critical corridor—even temporarily—create potential dangers, impose severe hardships on all Manitobans and cause severe economic loss and damage to Manitoba and Canadian businesses.”

That was just a couple of days before the Emergencies Act. On the Sunday, the fact that the federal government was looking at enacting the legislation was already being talked about through some media outlets, and on Monday it was enacted. I do not think it was of any great surprise.

We saw the City of Ottawa declare an emergency. The Province of Ontario declared an emergency. We had letters such as I just cited from Manitoba. We had a letter a week or so prior to that from the Province of Alberta asking the federal government to get engaged. The need to engage the Emergencies Act was very real, tangible and the right thing to do.

I will go to what we heard from some of the law enforcement agencies. Steve Bell, the interim chief of the Ottawa Police Service, stated: “All of those pieces of legislation and supports we've got from different levels of government have directly and actively contributed to our ability to ultimately say we are in a position to move forward and look to end the demonstration,” meaning the lockdown here in Ottawa.

In another news article, the commissioner of the RCMP stated that the powers given to her officers through the Emergencies Act served as a big deterrent in policing the anti-vaccine mandate protests that occupied the streets of downtown Ottawa for nearly a month. She stated:

We don't have anything in laws that prevent people from coming to protests and we can't turn them away. So for us, operationally, it was all about reducing that footprint in Ottawa and the only way to do that was to stop people from coming in or incentivizing them to leave.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister, the cabinet and in fact not just Liberal members of Parliament but New Democrats, one Green member of the House, which was the former leader of the Green Party, and even the Bloc supported the Emergencies Act. We recognized there was a need for it.

At the end of the day, if we take a look at the Conservatives, it is very difficult to see where they actually were. Many members talked about Conservatives walking out and getting those snapshots onto social media. In fact, I saw one picture of the interim leader at a dinner table with some of the protesters. It was quite amazing to see that.

Some say maybe we should have gone out there and talked to them. I want to give a quote. This is the Conservative guru from the Prairies. The Conservative Party members know him as Jason Kenney, the premier. This is what the premier had to say about negotiating with protesters. The premier was asked specifically about one of the leadership candidates, and I cannot say his name, and whether his comments compromised conduct. The premier stated, “I will never praise people who are out there breaking the law, creating public safety hazards, and I don't think anybody in elected office should do that.” The articles says, “He also said he does not believe anyone from the federal or provincial governments should be meeting with the participants.”

Stick with the facts. That is what I want the committee to be able to do, and hopefully it will be able to do it as quickly as possible.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is not often that I agree with the member for Winnipeg North almost entirely. I would like him to spend a minute or two expanding on why we need to move forward quickly with this.

All of us here have been swamped with phone calls and emails from people concerned about the use of the Emergencies Act. One of the good things about the Emergencies Act is that it has this committee embedded in it. We need to move forward quickly with this, and we need to move forward fairly. This proposal we have before us has a chair from the NDP and a chair from the Bloc, two parties on opposite sides of the debate, plus a member from the Independent Senators Group.

Can the member comment on the need to move forward quickly and fairly so Canadians can have these answers?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that we could not have activated that committee back on Monday. We recognize and appreciate that with the Bloc and the New Democrats, one party did oppose it and the NDP supported it. We have both sides co-chairing and then there will be a chair from the Senate.

Given the biases from the Conservatives and how they were tainted, I believe it was the responsible thing to do. It is in the legislation. We know a committee had to be struck. There no doubt could be things that have taken place that we can learn from and improve the legislation going forward. We know the Conservative Party. It does not matter what happens, but I can almost guarantee there will be a minority report coming from the Conservative Party condemning the government. That is an absolute almost given.

The Conservatives are the party that has turned this thing into a circus at times because they are flip-flopping all over the place on the issue. They say one thing in here, and then they go and say something else outside the chamber. To see that we can follow the social media comments coming from the Conservative Party of Canada.

That is why it is unfortunate. The committee could be dealing with this. Hopefully, eventually, we will see the Conservatives come onside and look at ways in which we might be able to improve the legislation and the use of it in the future.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg North knows how much I appreciate him, and I know he feels the same way.

I can understand why he was confused about the Bloc Québécois's support for the emergency measures. We supported the idea of taking the appropriate measures at the right time and in accordance with provincial and federal jurisdictions. For more than three weeks, we were suggesting solutions and asking questions in the House. The members on the other side of the House did not seem to hear us, however. That explains why my colleague is confused.

As I was listening to his speech, I was trying to think of a suggestion, a step forward, some small way to get this committee off on a less partisan foot. I struggled to think of anything, though, so I figured that I would give my colleague an opportunity to tell us what the government could do to get this committee off on the right foot.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it will, in fact, be the membership of the committee that will ultimately determine how effective the committee wants to be. If there is a highly politically charged agenda going into the committee, there is very little that the committee can do outside of trying to steer it.

I served on legislative committees in the past at the provincial level. They operated on a consensus basis. To see a consensus report come out of this committee, I would give full marks and credit to every single member. It would be a challenge to do that, but it would be a wonderful thing to see: an actual report based on consensus where there are no minority reports. This would not be a consensus and then a minority report, but an absolute, true consensus report on ways in which we could improve the legislation.

I do not believe that the legislation is totally perfect. Let us see if there are ways in which we can improve it.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer to the observations that have been made on the hate symbols and extremist, ideologically motivated displays of racism and intimidation, in person and online, that were part of this illegal occupation. There have also been comments about the wilful blindness of the Conservatives to these displays of hate, in spite of them being reported by journalists and organizations that monitor hate speech in this country.

Does the member think that it should be an important aspect of the review to understand how dangerous online spaces influenced those who participated in the clear hate messaging by the organizers? Does it not require a balanced and careful review by the committee?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, given the cost and social consequences of the illegal blockades, whether it was the seizure of downtown Ottawa or at the international borders, which cost billions of dollars a day, and factoring in the extreme right and many of the racial attitudes expressed in places outside of Ottawa, I would like to think the committee would ultimately make its decision in terms of the scope of it. I am hoping, and will try to be optimistic, that we will see that consensus. I will cross my fingers, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague for Calgary Shepard.

It is an honour to rise today to discuss this extremely serious matter. The unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act requires the utmost scrutiny, and the committee that will be struck is obviously going to play an essential role. The government's attempt to strong-arm the opposition and rig the committee to deliver a favourable outcome is not shocking given the history of the current government; nonetheless, it is unacceptable.

I want to start today by reminding Canadians how we got into this situation in the first place. When we take a step back to consider the actions taken by the Prime Minister and the Liberal government, the need for strong opposition oversight becomes even clearer.

In the early days of the pandemic, the Prime Minister acknowledged that mandating vaccinations would be a deeply divisive and socially harmful policy. That was about 13 months ago. He then saw an opening to try to move from a minority government to a majority, and decided that dividing Canadians and threatening the social fabric of our country would be worthwhile if it gave him a blank cheque for another four years.

While the Prime Minister has always been keen to divide Canadians and others who do not agree with him, recent months have seen him take it to a whole new level, charging those people who do not like his policies as racists or misogynists, or as holding unacceptable views and taking up space. He has taken to suggesting that hon. members of Parliament, even descendants of Holocaust survivors, are standing with Nazis.

What we are seeing is an increasingly tired, scandal-plagued Prime Minister clinging to the reins of power by stoking fear and division. Common-sense Canadians can see right through this. That is why thousands of Canadians from coast to coast left their homes to protest the Prime Minister's divisive policies and his decision to double down on vaccine mandates and restrictions when many provinces and countries around the world were lifting them.

The protesters came with a very simple message for the Prime Minister: Canadians want their rights and freedoms back, and it is time to allow Canadians to manage their risk tolerance for COVID-19 themselves, just as friends and family in other countries have been doing for months. Instead of speaking with them, understanding their concerns and trying to assuage their fears, the government continued to override Canadians' freedoms with no end in sight, and the Prime Minister resorted again to more name-calling.

Then, in a move I cannot fathom, the government and the NDP refused to support our Conservative motion asking for a plan to lift the mandate restrictions. Two years in, the Prime Minister does not believe that Canadians can be trusted with the metrics the government is using to justify public health measures. This is far from the commitment that the Liberal government made: In an open and accountable government, government data and information should be open by default. I wonder if the Liberals remember that pledge.

We cannot accept illegal activity at our borders or on our streets. Infringing on the rights and freedoms of fellow citizens while protesting the government cannot be accepted as the norm, but neither should we as Canadians accept dangerous and divisive rhetoric from the executive branch of our government meant to incite Canadians who disagree with it. It is clear that the Prime Minister no longer shares the guiding philosophy of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's sunny ways, but instead is relying on the winds of bluster.

This is in large part the backdrop against which the Emergencies Act was invoked. After years of insulting, shaming and marginalizing Canadians who disagreed with the Prime Minister, those Canadians rose up in opposition. The use of the Emergencies Act does appear to have been wholly inappropriate in this matter. Conservatives are extremely concerned that in striking the committee as the Liberals are proposing, they intend to simply stack the deck to skirt over the great many concerns that Canadians rightly have.

It is important to note that the existence of an emergency does not mean that the Emergencies Act is the proper tool to be used. I know that many Canadians impacted by the blockades felt that this was an emergency that required extraordinary intervention, but that is not the threshold for using it. In order to use this legislation, the predecessor of which was the War Measures Act, there can be no other options in our federal or provincial laws. We must not lose sight of this fact.

I have listened carefully to experts, including to police officers who were tasked with cleaning up the mess that the Prime Minister instigated. It is clear that the powers under the Emergencies Act were helpful in clearing the blockades, but again, whether they were used or were helpful is not the test for whether the act should have been invoked. It is whether the situation could have been dealt with in any other way through existing authorities. So far, I have seen no compelling evidence that it could not have been.

We know that the police can compel reasonable assistance from others at any point in time. This authority is laid out in the Criminal Code, and that would include calling tow-truck drivers.

We know that if police see a crime in progress, they are able to act on it even if they are outside their regular jurisdiction. Further, there is a process to deputize police from other departments or areas to act. This was done in Ottawa prior to the Emergencies Act being invoked, and it worked.

The Emergencies Act may have been more convenient, but it was not necessary. Convenience is not the test in the legislation. The increased offences that were granted under the Emergencies Act were not necessary, because there are already viable offences and authorities in the Criminal Code. The border blockades were coming down before the invocation of the Emergencies Act, so clearly it was not necessary in those instances. The financial measures were not necessary to bring down the blockades at our international borders, and we were already seeing crowdfunding platforms that were voluntarily cutting off funds without the need of this legislation. They also do not appear to have been charter-compliant, as individuals were assumed guilty and sanctioned by their banks without any due process.

These are all things that the committee needs to consider, and that we cannot simply allow to be swept under the rug by a committee designed to exonerate the Liberals' actions and justify the NDP's backing of them in an attempt to wipe the egg off their face from when they voted to affirm the act's use, only to have it withdrawn 36 hours later.

The government’s proposal for the structure of the committee is totally inadequate. As I have outlined, this committee has a very serious task ahead of it, and it ought to be credible. I appreciate that the views I have laid out, and that I have heard from my constituents, are likely not going to be universally accepted in this Chamber. However, they are valid views and deserve to be heard and considered.

A strong and represented opposition is essential for the functioning of our democracy. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is beholden to the people of Canada, not to the cabinet, to members of the governing party or to their coalition partners. To try to minimize our role because they do not like what we might say or what we might have said in the past flies in the face of our parliamentary system.

While the Liberals have proved to be too comfortable in criticizing Canadians who disagree with them as holding unacceptable views, and it is their right to say so, no matter how arrogant it makes them sound, they are not the arbiters of acceptability for our parliamentary system. That is a role that is reserved for Canadians at the ballot box, not for the government House leader and the caucus that sits behind him.

While he may have threatened an election over the Emergencies Act, it did not happen and our voices are just as valid in this place, or at committee, as his or any other member's on the government benches.

To quote Sir Wilfred Laurier, a Prime Minister greatly admired by Liberals:

...it is indeed essential for the country that the shades of opinion which are represented on both sides of this House should be placed as far as possible on a footing of equality and that we should have a strong opposition to voice the views of those who do not think with the majority.

I ask the government to take that advice now.

While the government may be inclined to disavow its claimed beliefs for the sake of politics and retaining power, my colleagues in opposition should not have the same concerns. While I have spoken at length about the government’s attempt to vilify Canadians who disagree with it, it is important to remind hon. members that the government has also attempted to curtail the powers of the opposition on multiple occasions. The fact that it is now trying to marginalize the official opposition’s role in the committee because it knows we disagree with it is another link in a concerning pattern by the government to use policy and now procedure to punish those who disagree with it.

We should remember Motion 6, which attempted to marginalize the role of opposition back in 2016 and give the government broad sweeping powers here in Parliament. We should recall the attempts by the government in 2017 to change the Standing Orders so that the opposition would lose numerous tools to hold the government to account. In the early days of the pandemic, the Liberal government tried to give itself the authority, unilaterally and without parliamentary oversight, to raise or lower taxes as it saw fit for up to two years.

When these things happened, opposition parties banded together to say no and oppose the government. The ideological and policy differences that existed then still exist now, but that was not the point. We knew that for our democracy to function effectively, there must be a strong and capable opposition, even if we did not necessarily like what the other parties had to say. It is in that spirit that we should come together now.

In the absence of consensus, the Emergencies Act provides a formula that can be used for striking this committee. While I understand the frustration that some Liberal MPs may have, given that they do not have a Senate caucus, despite the independence of senators appointed by the Prime Minister being questionable, that frustration lies at their feet and at the feet of their Prime Minister who made that decision. They had every ability to harmonize the Emergencies Act with the current structure of the Senate over the past six years, and they did not do so.

Unfortunately, with a closure motion being forced on us to stifle debate, a decision must be made, and I would suggest that adhering to the formula set out in the Emergencies Act will help to ensure a fair and impartial assessment of this incident.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here today because the Conservative Party was not willing to accept that they should not have a leadership role as a chair on this committee.

If we need evidence to support the fact that they should not, we need not go any further than the member's speech. He even talked in his very own speech about the reasons he does not believe that the government should have used the Emergencies Act. He is drawing the conclusion of the work that the committee should do before the committee has even been struck.

Does he not appreciate the fact that a party that has such an entrenched position probably should not be exercising the role of chair in that committee?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a completely asinine argument. The job of the official opposition is to hold the government to account and to make sure through robust debate and robust challenging of their decisions and of the policies they implement that the best thing happens for Canadians.

Suggesting that the opposition should not do its role and should align itself with an NDP chair who is complicit in implementing the act in the first place is not actually putting an opposition MP in the chair. It is putting a coalition MP in the chair. This is bypassing the actual adversarial effect of what our democracy is supposed to do when we challenge each other to get the best results for Canadians. I simply do not understand why the Liberals want an audience instead of an opposition.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my colleague's comment, but only up to a point.

The Bloc Québécois wants this committee to be created, and it wants to get an explanation for the government's choice to invoke the Emergencies Act. The Bloc's own analysis shows that the criteria for invoking the act were not met.

I would like the committee to reflect on what the inappropriate use of this act means for the future. Does this mean that future governments will be able to use the act anytime they run up against any kind of difficult situation?

At some point, there will be a real emergency, the government will invoke the act, and people will think it is just some minor thing like the last time. That is what worries me because people will not get the right message.

Can my colleague tell me if he thinks the committee's findings will enable the public to better evaluate the use of this act in the future?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, what do we have here? We have a Liberal government that through its members' rhetoric and tone and the way they talk to Canadians, does an amazing job of sticking up for, and rightly so, the rights and freedoms and the jobs of the people here in Ottawa who were impacted, but with no consideration for the jobs that were lost by everybody who came here to protest.

The situation we end up with is that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, according to the Liberals, are going to co-chair this committee. The Liberals would not even have been able to do this if it were not for the support of the NDP. Now the Liberals and their NDP coalition partners, who have been propping them up all along, are going to basically decide who gets called as witnesses, who gets to speak at the committee and whose testimony they are going to adopt at the committee as the basis of the report.

Any other political entity in this Parliament that supports this motion will be complicit in that. It is a dangerous precedent, because bypassing the official opposition and the role that it has here in Parliament is a dangerous precedent to set.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to follow the whip of one's own party when joining debate on this issue. I do not want to re-thread the same ground that he has already covered. I have already basically chopped off half of what I wanted to cover, but I want to specifically focus now on the actual parliamentary review committee.

I have heard all types of things being debated in this House on what will actually be done by this committee. I want to go back to what the law says and what the motion actually says, because I want my constituents back home, the residents of my riding, to understand exactly what it is that we are debating.

The House has already weighed in on the subject, on the wisdom of using the Emergencies Act. We had a vote on it and we are on the record. The Bloc and the Conservative Party are on the record, and so are the Liberals, the Greens and the New Democrats, so our parties have already kind of determined for ourselves, and each individual MP has, whether it was wise to use it or not. The act is very specific. Part 6 of the act is the parliamentary supervision section of the Emergencies Act. It says the following in subsection 62(1):

The exercise of powers and the performance of duties and functions pursuant to a declaration of emergency shall be reviewed by a committee of both Houses of Parliament designated or established for that purpose.

I have heard members in this chamber say that it would be a discussion about the protest, the blockades at the border, how it happened, the use of racist language and the grievances of the protesters, but what we are talking about here is not about keeping citizens accountable: We are talking about keeping government accountable.

The Liberal government has a record of not being willing to be kept accountable by Parliament, by citizens or by anybody. It has repeatedly done this before. In the past six and a half years I have been here, there have been motions pushed forward by government House leaders to try to restrict the ability of members to do their work both in the House and in committees, and beyond. I remember a sitting on a Saturday. We had to sit on Easter Saturday to prevent the government from obtaining almost absolute powers to tax and spend.

This is the same government. It tried to force through Standing Order changes as well. These are the same people who are now trying to jury-rig or jerry-rig this committee in order to have the outcome they want, and it is a predetermined outcome, I believe.

I also want to draw the attention of my constituents back home to the fact that this committee's meetings will be held in private. The law requires it under subsection 62(4):

Every meeting of the Parliamentary Review Committee held to consider an order or regulation referred to it pursuant to subsection 61(2) shall be held in private.

That is the most interesting part of this committee's work. It will be to review all of the internal documentation. I truly hope it will include the opinion of the Department of Justice of Canada on whether the threshold was met in enacting the Emergencies Act for its usage.

Every single one of those meetings will be held in private. Furthermore, even the motion reiterates that an oath of secrecy will be required of every single member of the committee, all the members who are elected or Senate members, and every single single staff member or witness who will be participating in the dissemination of this information at the committee. It would be incredibly difficult thereafter to produce a report on the government's conduct—not the citizens' conduct, but the government's conduct—in calling for this Emergencies Act.

I also want to draw to the attention of my constituents and the House that it is this motion, motion No. 9, that specifies February 14 and February 23. Those are the actions that will be reviewed by the committee members.

Many members have heard the issues that we on the Conservative side have with the way the chairmanship of this committee will be structured. I want to draw the attention of people to the fact that the co-chairs of this committee will be voting chairs. They will be able to move motions at committee. I have been at my share of parliamentary committees, including a joint committee with the Senate. I have never seen a meeting function well when a chair is able to move motions and is able to vote. In this Parliament I was briefly able to chair the public accounts committee, which I think is considered by all accounts to be one of the most neutral committees in this Parliament. As chair of that committee, I tried to bring absolute neutrality to the task in ensuring that we left our partisanship at the door. Both sides, both opposition members and government caucus members, had one goal in mind, which was the proper administration of government and the proper administration of funds. While we had maybe differing interests, the end goal was exactly the same, which was to ensure that taxpayers' money was properly stewarded. It would have been totally impossible to function properly had I, as chair then, been able to move motions myself and to vote on matters. It strikes me as odd that this is something that would be done in this particular situation.

Members have cast aspersions on whether a member of the Conservative Party or a member of the Liberal Party should be chair or not be chair. I think the members who are elected to be chairs of these committees will leave their partisanship at the door. I truly hope that, especially on something as important as this. There was a Bloc member who mentioned the fact that future generations and parliamentarians will look back to this committee and this particular instance and will determine whether this was a wise use of the Emergencies Act and whether the threshold had been met. One would hope that whatever report comes out of this will set the standard for when the government can and cannot, or should or should not, use the Emergencies Act.

I want to draw the attention again of constituents and members of the House to the inquiry section of the Emergencies Act. A lot of what members have been talking about so far is actually covered by the inquiry that must, under section 63 of the act, be called by the government 60 days after an emergency ends. That is the situation where we will see every act, every decision and every protest and blockade that happened in this country in the lead-up to the government's claiming it needed to use the Emergencies Act. The inquiry is the situation where we will also be able to judge the wisdom of what various citizens were doing all across our country, and I am sure there will be criminal court proceedings that will be partially completed by then, or well under way by then, that will be used by the inquiry judiciously in the determination of fault where there may be fault and in finding whether the government wisely used its power and whether the threshold had been met.

Again, that is for the inquiry. What we are talking about with the parliamentary review committee here is judging whether the government was wise to do it.

These are the things I felt needed to be said: This would not be a balanced committee. This would not be a committee that is going to ensure accountability. I have sat at those House leader meetings. I heard the member for Vancouver Granville say they were productive discussions. They were not productive. They were not productive in any way. If they were, we would not have debated briefly a motion from the government side to stop and shut down debate.

It is the government's responsibility to run the calendar of the House of Commons. The Liberals are in charge. They are the ones who determine how many hours of debate everything receives. It is not the responsibility of the official opposition or any of the opposition parties to ensure the government's agenda gets through. I have a great deal of respect for the colleagues in the other opposition parties, but they do not need to help the government push this through. We are here to keep the government accountable, specifically the cabinet, and the government caucus members can take up that responsibility as well.

What we are seeing here is an attempt by the government to engineer a preferred outcome. That is what its members would like to see, and I have tried to stick specifically to my concerns around the motion and what the Emergencies Act says must happen, because that is what my constituents want to hear. This is not about litigating what happened before February 14. This is about litigating what happened between February 14 and February 23, and I think we owe that to people in my riding.

There is a Yiddish proverb that applies here, and I want to make sure I get it in. Members know my great love for everything Yiddish and Hebrew, and for proverbs as well. It says, “When you sweep the house, you find everything.” I think by sweeping through legislation and the actual content of the motion, my constituents back home in Calgary Shepard will see this is an attempt by the government to set a predestined final destination for the report, one that will absolve them of any sins.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated very much the proverb, particularly that when we start to sweep, we start to find things.

Given that the opposition is actually supposed to be Her Majesty's loyal opposition, surely there would be an interest in getting to the business of sweeping to find out what actually went wrong quickly. Why is there this need to hold back the committee from actually starting the important work, recognizing the government will not have any of the chairs?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to remind the member for Vancouver Granville that it is the government's responsibility to set the hours of debate on the motion. It could have done this last week. It could have done this Monday. It could have had evening sittings on the motion in order to ensure that it passed. When we do bad-faith negotiations, like I believe the government House leader has done, this is the result.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Calgary Shepard for his remarks, because I think he once again has betrayed some of the contradictory positions the Conservatives are taking here.

The member professed to believe in the importance of accountability under an act that was passed by a Conservative government, yet the Conservatives have been standing in the way of the committee getting under way because they are saying they should be chair. Then he said he does not want a predetermined outcome, but in his speech he said this committee should not look at anything that happened before the Emergences Act was implemented. Once again, the member is showing the contradictions in the Conservatives' position.

Would the Conservatives not agree that if accountability is so important, we just need to get on with the business of getting this committee going?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I am not the one who is saying we should not look at anything that happened before. It is clear in the act and the motion what is supposed to happen. The motion specifically refers to February 14 to February 23, and in the act in section 62, and I invite the member to read the sections of the Emergencies Act I am referring to, it says:

62(1) The exercise of powers and the performance of duties and functions pursuant to a declaration of emergency shall be reviewed by a committee of both Houses of Parliament designated or established for that purpose.

The act, the law, tells us what to do, and the motion is specific only to those dates. That is what I am reading. That is what we are voting on here.