Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to speak to Bill C‑20 at third reading.
We worked hard on this bill at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We are finally at third reading, about to send this bill to the other place. It is extremely important that we do just that.
Our role as members of Parliament is to improve bills. It must be said that this bill was introduced by the government. This was its third attempt. Before now, it did not really put in the work to set up a review and complaints commission. We have seen this in previous bills. The government introduced bills so late in the parliamentary session that they never passed. There is a clear need for a complaints commission. Everyone is calling for one. So far, the government has failed to make it a high enough priority to get it through all stages of the parliamentary legislative process.
The bill passed second reading and was referred to committee for study, where there were several delays. It was not the government that caused these delays, it was actually the Conservatives who, on several occasions, prevented amendments from being considered and witnesses from being heard.
Happily, after spending hours considering each amendment, the bill was passed. All the witnesses said that it was really important to improve this bill. At the same time, it needed to be adapted. I want to say that finally, after several delays, my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and I have succeeded, by working together, in getting this bill passed and improved.
I would like to take a few minutes to talk specifically about how the NDP worked to improve the bill. The NDP got approximately ten amendments passed, all of which are quite crucial. We worked with the other parties, the governing party, the Bloc Québécois, the Conservative Party, to pass amendments that had been submitted by the other parties.
Even though the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security had to meet several times, and the Conservatives moved a completely separate motion rather than hear from witnesses and hear such important evidence, even though all these delays slowed down the study of the bill, we are now getting to the final stage. We even hope the bill will pass unanimously this evening and be sent to the other place.
First, this complaints commission will cover more than just members of the public. Internal employees should be well represented. We put forward an amendment, NDP-6, to ensure union representation. When you work in the labour movement, it is important that unions be represented. Workers must have a representation process.
We amended clause 28 of the bill, allowing union representatives of Canada Border Services Agency and Royal Canadian Mounted Police employees to jointly set service standards for the review timelines specified in that section of the bill. We set a one-year deadline for resolving these representation and timeline issues. It is a victory for union representation and assurance of union representation in the service standards initiative.
We did not stop there. We also pushed for greater transparency and accountability. The committee heard from a number of witnesses, including the Breaking Barriers coalition, which wanted to see more transparency and accountability in the bill. We asked that copies of the reports submitted be distributed. The transparency issue was raised in amendments NDP-7 and NDP-14. We wanted all this information to be available, and we worked hard to get these amendments passed.
We also wanted to contribute to the reconciliation process with indigenous peoples, and we submitted amendments NDP-9 and NDP-9.1 to include all reconciliation issues in the bill.
We also wanted to give complainants more time to bring forward complaints, which is key. Initially, before it was improved in committee, the bill said that complaints had to be brought within a year. We wanted to extend that period to accommodate organizations that testified, such as Amnesty International, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and all the other organizations, including the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
We wanted to ban the use of non-disclosure agreements, an issue that was brought up in connection with the Hockey Canada scandals. We wanted to ban non-disclosure agreements, which prevent victims from speaking up. Amendment NDP-23 on that subject was agreed to.
We wanted to definitively prevent intimidation and know why a complaint was withdrawn. The monitoring group suggested that a complainant could provide reasons for withdrawing a complaint, which would be another way to better protect victims. Other proposals of ours were adopted, making the version of the bill amended by the committee more transparent than the original version.
There were other extremely important improvements. I would like to list the organizations that played an important role in improving this bill: Amnesty International Canada, both the francophone and anglophone wings; the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; the Canadian Council for Refugees; the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association; the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council; and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. Because of them, Bill C‑20 will pass at long last, but with extremely important improvements.
We are now hopefully coming to the end of the House saga around Bill C-20, a bill that would establish the public complaints and review commission, which is so important for both the CBSA and the RCMP. We want to have in place a public complaints commission that does its job. We want to make sure those who serve our country at the RCMP and CBSA are subject to the appropriate oversight but at the same time have protections as well.
The bill, as improved by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, would achieve that mandate. We have managed to improve the bill and provide for more transparency and for a better set of checks and balances to ensure victims have more rights and that labour representation is acknowledged and upheld in the bill itself. Also, providing for a longer complaint period is something that is extremely important, as well as banning the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims.
There are so many organizations that provided valuable testimony. I am hoping the bill will pass tonight by unanimous consent, despite the delays that took place through the committee process. The reality is that this bill is much better coming out of committee than it was going into committee. It is necessary. It is important to put this into place. I am hoping that all members of Parliament will vote to send it to the other place this evening.