Debates of June 4th, 2024

Report Stage

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is such an honour to rise and talk about this subject matter, as much of what is happening with Bill C-20 relates to the calls for justice that came out of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Before I start, I have to honour the work of the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, who is a true diplomat. He is able to work across party lines, even with parties that are not co-operative, to make things better for people. The member has been an ally for indigenous people and BIPOC people, who have formed the basis for the need for this piece of legislation.

I was not shocked when we heard stories from the member for Edmonton Griesbach. He spoke of the assault of a 10-year-old by the RCMP. The member for Edmonton Griesbach spoke about an incident in Manitoba where an indigenous woman was taken to a home to pursue a relationship, with the permission of the sergeant on duty. This is unconscionable. Also, although not the RCMP, the City of Winnipeg is under investigation for several deaths of mostly indigenous and Black people in Winnipeg. When people have that much power without oversight, there is a problem.

Let us not forget the history of the RCMP. Historically, the RCMP's purpose was to apprehend little children from their communities and ship them to and incarcerate them in residential schools. The whole history of the RCMP's relationship with indigenous peoples in this country has been marked with violence. In particular, indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people have experienced excessive force, rape, beatings and sometimes death at the hands of the RCMP.

I find it shocking that the member for Saskatoon West, who has a high indigenous population in his area, is not standing up for his constituents. Turning a blind eye to systemic racism has resulted in the ongoing crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. There are often reports of total neglect and either overpolicing or underpolicing by police forces, as noted in calls for justice 9.1 to 9.11.

I have hope because I sit on the FEWO committee with women from across party lines who listen openly, can work through differences and spend time learning about matters that do not personally affect them. The fact that there are members of this House who do not see a need to protect all people in their community speaks to systemic racism and the racism even in the House of Commons.

I am glad that all members in the House are voting in favour of this bill, although games were played when members tried stalling and changing the short title. Supporting this bill is necessary.

I want to read comments from the Feminist Alliance for International Action about the RCMP. It said:

The evidence of systemic discrimination and violence against women perpetrated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is shocking, and it is growing. The RCMP’s culture of misogyny, racism and homophobia, identified by the Honourable Michel Bastarache in his report Broken Dreams, Broken Lives, affects not only the treatment of women who are employed by the RCMP, but also the treatment of the women whom the RCMP is intended to serve.

Canada cannot have a credible National Action Plan on Violence against Women, or a credible National Action Plan on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, until we confront the deeply entrenched misogyny and racism in the culture of the RCMP.

An independent, external review of the RCMP, its practices, structure and future, is needed now.

Some members do not see the urgency here, even though all members of this House have agreed to implement all the calls for justice, many of which relate to policing and the failure of police to act. Those were not my words. Those words came out of the Feminist Alliance for International Action.

I can tell members, as I am an indigenous woman in this country, that growing up, we were not taught that police were a safe place to go. We were not taught, should a loved one go missing, experience violence or be in situations of violence, that going to the police was safe. It is no wonder that in our study at FEWO about what is needed to implement a red dress alert system, one of the biggest calls is for overall oversight that is led by indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. That includes police services. When we go missing, nobody looks for us, but certainly the RCMP officer in northern Manitoba looked for an indigenous woman in her jail cell, took her home and assaulted her. He found her there. That is why we need oversight.

Arguments about some good apples and some bad apples are not relevant. This system is not working the same for all people, particularly BIPOC individuals: Black, indigenous and people of colour. We deserve to be treated with respect by systems that have been put in place to protect us. However, the very systems that have been put in place to protect us perpetrate violence against us on our spirits, on our bodies and in the erasure of our lives when our loved ones go missing.

How can we see change? I am talking about “we” as an indigenous woman. How can we feel safe if the very systems that are supposed to be there to protect us instead rape us, hurt us, ignore us and disregard us? Whether it is on the front lines peacefully assembling with axes, chainsaws and guard dogs; walking in the streets going to our jobs; or being harassed and sexually harassed by police officers, we need oversight. I have experienced this, with police officers scoping me out on Facebook after I reported a car incident.

I am glad everybody in the House is supporting this bill. I want to thank the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford once again for his leadership and diplomacy in making sure that all people are treated with dignity and safety in this country.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her impassioned speech highlighting ongoing instances of racism and injustice in our country and within our institutions.

One instance where I see this happening is with the destruction of cultural property in indigenous communities. That has not been treated with nearly the level of seriousness that it deserves. I was just reading a report saying, for instance, that a significant amount of cultural and religious property, in this particular case churches, has been destroyed in indigenous communities. I think this required a stronger response from leaders at all levels.

I have asked the member twice whether she would condemn this destruction of cultural property in indigenous communities. I asked her twice during a debate in February, and she chose not to answer at that time. I wonder if this time, a third time, she would join me in condemning the destruction of churches and other cultural property that has occurred in indigenous communities and call for a stronger response to that destruction.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, this is not surprising coming from the member. We are talking about violence against indigenous people, and it is clear that there are residential school denialists in his party. I am assuming he is one of them. One of the last speeches he gave—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a point of order.

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

Is there a point of order here? I do not know. The member made a claim, but she did not call anybody any names.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member made an outrageous, unfounded and obviously false claim in the House, and I think she should be called to order for that. She did not even claim she had any evidence for her statement. She just said that she suspected that I may have particular views that I have never stated. Come on.

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

We are starting to get into debate, and unfounded accusations go around quite often in this chamber. I do advise members to be very judicious with the words they choose.

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I know the member has very big feelings about indigenous people. I know he has a history of disregarding any discussions on indigenous people. I have articles and facts about what else the Conservatives said was a false claim. I would be very happy to quote articles with residential school denialism comments that came from the member for Carleton, the leader of their party.

I know the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, as I have said before, has trouble controlling his toxic masculinity and often heckles in the House, as he is doing right now, but I welcome the member to read the paper. I welcome the member to learn about the history of this country and maybe explore some of his cultural biases and—

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

We have gone way beyond the time for the question and answer.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, very respectfully to the member, I asked a simple question and the member did not want to answer it. I had asked her twice previously. I guess I will have a chance to ask her twice tonight. It is not a trick question; it is a very sincere question. The question is, for the fourth time, will the member condemn the destruction of churches and other cultural property that has occurred? I see this as a form of violence and racism against indigenous communities. There have been many instances of destruction of churches and other cultural property. If the member had condemned it, I would not have asked the question a second time. Will the member condemn this?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I know the member has trouble talking about the bill because it has to do with dealing with systemic racism and addressing systemic racism in policing for Black people, indigenous people and people of colour. It is unfortunate that at a time when we are talking about making systems better, the member consistently chooses to talk about things that have no relevance to the discussion, as he has in other debates.

I would invite the member to learn about the residential school system in Canada. I would be happy to go for coffee with him. Then maybe we could work through some of the colonial violence that he regularly perpetuates in the House.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Those accusations are really beyond what is acceptable and an apology would be appreciated, because we are accusing other members of perpetrating colonial violence, which is pretty strong wording. I would be very grateful if there was measure in what is said.

The hon. member for Nunavut.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, civilian oversight is particularly important in the bill and the member spoke eloquently about why. Children were taken away from first nations. Métis and Inuit children were taken away from their loving families, from their loving environments. They were thriving and the RCMP were used to take these children to go to residential schools, to environments of hate, environments of violence, environments where they had to be exposed to traumatic experiences that continue to this date.

Can the member explain why this civilian oversight commission is going to be so important to continue to address these systemic, racist, genocidal policies that will help to address and move toward reconciliation with indigenous peoples?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, absolutely, we need oversight to deal with systemic racism in policing, as well as other systems. I know that there is concern about me talking about colonial violence but there is a lot of racism, with all due respect, that persists in the House, an erasure of history. There is the fact that we are talking about residential schools and people are chuckling on that side of the House, including the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

I will not refrain—

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

We have no more time.

The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is rising on a point of order.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for all members in the House. I think I tried to ask a civil, serious question a couple of times. I would like you to clarify your ruling, because the member accused me of regularly perpetrating colonial violence inside the House of Commons.

I do not think any reasonable person would consider that a remotely plausible accusation. Did you or did you not direct the member to withdraw and apologize?

Is she going to respect the authority of the Chair, or is she going to defy the Chair?

If that was your ruling, then those are the choices: respect the Chair or defy the Chair.

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

I did ask the hon. member to be more judicious in her choice of words and to apologize for that specific comment, yes. The hon. member can do it right now or later if she so chooses.

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I will not apologize. With all due respect to you, I will not apologize for telling the truth about this place.

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

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. I really appreciate the opportunity to rise in this place. I was telling people recently what an honour it is to be just a kid from North Kamloops rising in the House of Commons as the child of immigrants. I know that some of the Assistant Deputy Speaker's heritage is from Europe, just as mine is. There was a flag-raising just today recognizing my Italian heritage, which I am incredibly proud of. Unfortunately, I was elsewhere this morning dealing with the Auditor General's report, but I do recognize that.

One of the things that I am always mindful of is the people I grew up with, and someone I grew up with is Jackie Fouillard, or Jacqueline. Her mom, Clara Fouillard, passed away recently. I just read about the obituary tonight, so I want to extend my deepest condolences to Jacqueline and her brother Desmond on the passing of Clara. May perpetual light shine upon her.

I also want to recognize the life of Bernard “Bernie” Worsfold. He is the grandfather to my nephew, and he recently passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's. Obviously, this is very difficult. It is a difficult disease. I was just at the walk for Alzheimer's. My condolences go to Bernie's family. May perpetual light shine upon him.

As to Bill C-20, which is what we are here to discuss, the bill started in the 42nd Parliament, wherein it died, languishing in the Senate. It was again introduced in the last Parliament as Bill C-3. We had a prorogation. There was a prorogation that was obviously before my time, and I know the Liberals have made a lot of noise about the fact that the previous Harper government prorogued.

Interestingly enough, in this case, when it comes to electoral manoeuvres, the Liberals called what I would call a vanity election, though some people called it a pandemic election, hoping for the majority that they so ardently desired. Obviously, that did not work out. Now, unfortunately, we do have the NDP, in its confidence and supply agreement, that has supported them, which brings us here to today in the 44th Parliament, nine years after this promise was made.

Like with so many bills we debate in this House, and it is unfortunate, we deal with things that go wrong. Sometimes we will have motions and those motions will say, “we exhort the government to do this” or “we are establishing a strategy to do this”, and that is something positive, but so often here we are dealing with negative things. This is when things go wrong, and tonight is obviously no exception, because we are dealing with alleged misconduct in some cases, or misconduct that has been proven in other cases. It would be great if we never had to deal with this from our frontline peace officers, but the reality is that we do.

Sometimes, simply put, things go poorly. This leads me to question, obviously, what the standards are that we expect from our professionals. I am speaking, namely, of our frontline police officers and our frontline CBSA officers.

I remember when I was teaching a sentencing course not long ago, before I came to Parliament, that I was always struck, whenever the accused person was a peace officer and they had committed a criminal offence, how different the reaction was from the students. I found that my classes were generally very compassionate when it came to sentencing. They were very measured and typically quite fair in their sentencing proposals. Yet one thing that always struck me, especially when it was a peace officer but sometimes when it was somebody who is in authority or a position of privilege, was that the students would often want to really reflect that when much is given much is expected or, in other words, that there should be harsh penalties, and that is something that I have not forgotten.

When we do have people who are in authority, we have to expect the highest order of ethics from them just as we ought to expect that from people in this House, whether it be how they act in the House, how they act outside the House or what they say within this place.

I would be remiss if I did not recognize that so many of our peace officers do a good job in what they do. My experience is that, generally, people do their jobs; generally, they do it without any sort of prejudice and, at the end of the day, most of them just want to get home. They have families, just like many of us do in this place. So often, as a former trial lawyer, I would see how easy it is to dissect a split-second decision. Therefore, I do not envy the position that peace officers are in, but they do have substantial responsibility and substantial accountability.

With that being said, the CBSA does not yet have an external review commission, which this bill aims to amend. This legislation would rename the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP to the “public complaints and review commission”. This commission would also be responsible for reviewing civilian complaints against the CBSA. As I understand it, this commission would have five members, which would include a chair, a vice-chair and three other members, and my hope is that these would not be just typical patronage appointments. One of my greatest criticisms of the current government has been that so frequently, when it establishes a commission or a board or something like that, the government just gets bigger and bigger. I see that it would have only five members and I really urge the government here to not simply appoint people who have had long-term Liberal memberships and have donated to the Liberal Party, as we have so often seen.

One of the things that I noticed in this bill are the codified timelines for responses. Now, the Jordan decision came out almost a decade ago now, which is hard to believe. That was a case that interpreted the charter right to trial within a reasonable time. Therefore, I am happy to see, if memory serves, that the reasonable time for a complaint made under this proposed piece of legislation would be six months. In my view, that is eminently reasonable, given the circumstances. It would be wonderful if it could be down to one to two months, but that is not always going to be the case.

One other thing that I believe this bill gets right is the informal resolution process. One thing I can recall, as a former lawyer, is that people often are angry. They might be angry with their lawyer or their accountant or, in this case, with the way somebody treated them for a variety of different reasons. We have spoken a lot tonight about racism, in this House. What I have found is that people generally want to be heard. They want their complaint to be heard. They want their feelings to be listened to and to be validated. What I have seen, in my experience anyway, is that a lot of these complaints can be informally resolved. That is why I was happy to see that clause 43 of this legislation has an informal complaint resolution process.

I also see at clause 46 that the commission could take over and prevent any agency or police force from continuing on investigating a complaint, in which case perhaps other people have used a hybrid method. We were talking at SECU today about the proposed commissioner for transparency for foreign interference and the transparency registry and the importance of having independence in that regard. I really do reiterate how important that independence is. It would require that the complaints commission institute an investigation if it is in the public interest to do so. I know that sometimes reasonable people can disagree on what that is, but my hope is that the government would appoint the appropriate people to the commission, who would serve the public well in determining when that public interest is there. We expect a lot from our professionals and as a result we need independence.

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

Madam Speaker, I appreciate many of the comments that the member has put on the record. I too look at the outstanding work, for the most part, that is done by Canada border control and law enforcement officers. However, there is a need to have this oversight and to ensure that there is an independent review committee. This is progressive legislation that would do just that, among other things. I am glad that we are finally able to get a consensus through time allocation, which will now see the legislation pass.

Would the member not agree, given that the Conservatives are voting in favour of the legislation, that, indeed, the sooner the legislation becomes law, the better?

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, the reality is that we do expect a lot from our people, and we should expect it every single day. Frankly, we should expect it with or without the legislation.

It sounds as though the legislation has been contemplated for nine years. I get that people can take different approaches and say someone has done this or that at committee. It sounds to me that it has taken a really long time for the bill to come. Obviously, the government has the prerogative to advance and prioritize legislation. It is going to be voted on soon, so the member will have his wish come true.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, we hear the member say he does not agree with how long it has taken the Liberals to get Bill C-20 to the table, yet we heard about how much the Conservatives filibustered, including having submitted 33 amendments at committee and withdrawing 75% of the amendments they themselves had submitted.

What was the Conservatives' tactic behind filibustering on this important bill? Why are they now agreeing to make sure it gets passed, so it becomes law during this sitting?

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, I only recently started sitting on SECU, for those watching at home, namely, my mother. She is probably the only one who watches CPAC.

I know there was a very contentious issue at the time, and it remains contentious; this goes to part of the member's question in terms of what was happening at committee at the time. If I understand correctly, this was when the Bernardo and Magnotta transfers were being debated, particularly the Bernardo transfer. Conservatives stand for victims and will always stand with victims. Things can be somewhat acrimonious at committee, but, at the end of the day, we are here to discuss this.

Again, as I said earlier, we can say people delayed this or that. There have been times in the past when New Democrats have suggested a number of amendments. All parties have done it. However, I am glad we are debating the bill at report stage; it sounds as though most of us agree on it.