Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, and this is certainly no exception.
Bill C-12, which was originally conceived of as Bill C-2, has really had a very long journey. Let us be real. The election was in April. We came here in May, and Bill C-2 was the first substantial bill. I had not really dealt with a lot of omnibus bills, and I still remember when the Liberals came to power and talked about the effect of omnibus bills on democracy. They talked about the use of parliamentary tricks, omnibus bills, time allocation and things like that and how they would never, ever do that. We now see the Liberals, to be very candid, have put way too much in one bill. They may have, so to speak, bit off more than they could chew.
When lawful access, for instance, is put into parts 14 and 15 of a bill that touches on the sex offence registry, puts the Coast Guard under the authority of the Minister of National Defence, talks about cash transactions over $10,000, requires mandatory reporting from all sorts of financial agencies and has dramatic immigration reforms, we are going to end up with a bill that is a hodgepodge of policies.
Lo and behold, we dealt with a bill that was largely unworkable at the end of the day. We know it was unworkable because the bill was originally tabled in the form of Bill C-2. It is now Bill C-12. The Liberals can claim that this was a good thing, but the reality is that they had to, word for word, take various parts of Bill C-2 and hive them off into another bill.
In fact, I was at the public safety committee not long ago. We had a legal expert appear, somebody who was an expert in, I believe, constitutional law, and she was asked about lawful access. Lawful access is something lawyers debate. It is not an easy topic to comprehend. I would not disregard anybody in the House if they said they were having trouble wrapping their head around lawful access. What the expert said is that lawful access requires its own bill, yet we had a bill that essentially was forced on us.
The Liberals, to this day, are attempting to shame us into passing a bill on lawful access that throws everything and the kitchen sink into a bill. They expect us to produce a shining, gleaming bill when the privacy commissioner, I believe, was not even asked for input.
For those at home who are watching and do not know, lawful access is about what the government can do without a warrant. It sounds good. Warrants or judicial authorizations can come in many forms; a warrant is one of them. When a person has an expectation of privacy and a search is not prescribed by law, as in there is no law saying someone may search something, then a warrant is needed. Search warrants are the most common ones, but other authorizations might include a production order or things like that.
The Liberals roundly mocked the Harper government when the Harper government introduced lawful access. They said to the Harper government that it was going too far, yet what do they do? They bury lawful access, a critical legal element in this bill, Bill C-2, and then expect everybody will turn a blind eye to what may at least be, and are potentially likely, breaches of section 8 of the charter, which says that Canadians have a right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
The Liberals love to wield the charter when it suits their purposes. However, when it does not suit their purposes, they say that it is okay because it is charter-compliant, as though we are supposed to take their word for it. We have seen where it goes when we are supposed to take the Liberals' word for it.
In fact, we just had the justice minister table Bill C-16 yesterday. I cannot say how many times in committee I brought up the issue of mandatory minimum jail sentences and was laughed at. I was mocked by people like Minister Lametti and Minister Virani. Minister Virani and I had a good relationship, but he would literally defend the lack of mandatory minimums. They would say, “No, we do not want to tie the hands of judges.”
In fact, just the other day, my colleague from Lethbridge was giving an impassioned speech, and I could not believe what I heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice. This was about making sex offence sentencing consecutive. I mean, who is against that? Apparently, the Liberals are against that. She talked about the unconstitutionality. We cannot make this up. She said that it would not be constitutional. What? There is an analogous provision for sex offences against kids, but they do not want to talk about that.
This is the cherry-picking of the charter that we often see. They say they do not want to do that. The cherry on top of that was that they said they do not want to tie the hands of judges. We do that all the time. In fact, we do it in bills that say they must get a warrant or the parameters of what a warrant can be. In one case, we are tying the hands of peace officers. In the other case, we are telling judges what they can and cannot do.
A murder conviction, for instance, has a mandatory life sentence. We are okay with tying judges' hands there. What about house arrest? What about house arrest for sex offences? For years, they told us that was not the case and that it was okay. I brought this up to many ministers at committee, and we were told, nope, they would not tie the hands of judges. However, just yesterday Bill C-16 came out and, look, the Liberals say we should be giving them high-fives. We should be patting them on the backs because they finally listened to the Conservatives.
On one hand, they do not want to tie the hands of judges. On the other hand, they are expecting people to praise them for doing that very thing. This is just unbelievable. We have the colossal failure that was Bill C-2, which has gone so far in the form of Bill C-12. I will be candid. When Bill C-12 came to the SECU, colloquially known as the public safety committee, there were not a lot of amendments because the controversial stuff had been taken out, such as the stuff like Canada Post being able to open our mail.
I will note the member for Winnipeg North still cannot wrap his head around this even though it is plain as day, and his own official said, yes, they can open mail without a warrant. I guess the fact that justice officials said they can open mail without a warrant according to Bill C-2 was not good enough for the member for Winnipeg North. He just wanted to repeatedly say that they needed a warrant, even though they did not, not that I am counting or anything.
Be that as it may, there are a lot of amendments, and there has been a lot of hard work that has gone into this. I recognize the member for Calgary Nose Hill for her exceptional work when it comes to immigration. I was at the table when I believe something like 48 amendments were moved. It was a number along those lines. I was actually quite surprised because, in some cases, the Bloc voted with the Conservatives on these things. It was common sense, like when someone lies about their application, when they commit fraud to get into Canada, they should not then be able to resile from that fraud and still expect the same treatment as somebody who did not commit fraud.
I am saying this as a child of immigrants. I owe everything in my life to immigration. The night of my first election, my mom asked me if I could imagine what my nonno Pasquale, my grandfather, would say if he were observing this. He had to borrow money to buy a chicken on Christmas Day when he first got to Canada.
When we think about these things, nobody on this side of the House is opposed to immigration. Nobody is. The member for Winnipeg seems to disagree. He says that it is true, but it is audacity to say that, when we have members on this bench who immigrated to Canada. That member can be quiet. I am making a point.
That member can be quiet. We can joke around about different things, but that member says that we are “meh” on immigration, when our front bench has people who came to Canada for a better life. Our front bench has people who I would get behind and who would get behind me, and who would fight for families like Bailey McCourt's.
They say that we are “meh” on immigration. My family did not have two pennies to rub together, and I am darned proud of my immigration legacy. I am proud of the legacy of every member in the House, whether they were born here or they came here for a better life.
