moved:
That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights that, during its consideration of Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places), the committee be granted the power to travel throughout Canada to hear testimony from interested parties and that the necessary staff do accompany the committee.
Mr. Speaker, it is my great privilege to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague, the hon. member for Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations.
We are moving this motion because we believe it is critical that the justice committee give Bill C-9 proper scrutiny, given the alarming details we have learned in the last few days that the Liberal government has reached a secret deal with the Bloc Québécois to have a full-out assault on the religious freedom of Canadians. There was a story in the National Post on the weekend, revealing that the Bloc Québécois desire to remove fundamental safeguards for religious freedom from the Criminal Code was going to be supported by the Liberals in exchange for Bloc Québécois support for Bill C-9.
In the days since this, the Conservatives have tried to do proper legislative scrutiny of Bill C-9. The Liberals dared to accuse the Conservatives of filibustering and obstructing, but I want to explain two critical things that have just happened.
The interesting thing here is that we had the resources to do our committee's work on Tuesday from 3.30 p.m., when the justice committee meeting started, until midnight. Conservative members were prepared to go line by line and clause by clause through Bill C-9, but the Liberals adjourned the meeting at 5:30, after we had agreed on and adopted only one clause as a committee.
Yesterday, in question period, one of my colleagues, who is a Liberal member on the justice committee, got up and demanded that we continue our work on Thursday, which is today. This morning, I looked at my email and I saw that the Liberal committee chair had cancelled today's committee meeting. The clause-by-clause review of Bill C-9, which the Liberal government said the Conservatives were obstructing, has been obstructed by the Liberals.
I do not ever make the mistake of accusing the Liberals of competence, but they are filibustering themselves. They are obstructing their own agenda. The Conservatives are ready to do the work.
What I suspect may have happened is that the Liberal government has been receiving similar calls and emails to the ones that have been coming in to my office from Canadians who are very alarmed by this amendment and, in general, by what Bill C-9 would mean for freedom of expression and religious freedom. People are alarmed by this. I have received calls from members of the Jewish community, the Muslim community and the Christian community and from Hindus and Sikhs. All of them are saying they do not trust that their religious freedom would be preserved if the Liberal government proceeded with this secret deal it has with the Bloc Québécois to remove fundamental religious safeguards from the Criminal Code.
The Liberal government could clear this up very easily. It could come out and say it is backing away from this and no longer proceeding with its plans to take aim at religious freedom. I would love to hear one of my Liberal colleagues over there say that. In fact, I hear a great deal of chatter from my Liberal colleagues now. If one of them could get up and say they will not be proceeding with these assaults on religious expression and freedom of religion, it would make this country a better place.
We need to do the proper work as a committee. We need to be able to speak to the Canadians who would be affected by this and who are alarmed by this. We need to be able to speak directly to the groups of people who have been excluded from the Bill C-9 study because of the Liberal government's desire to obstruct and filibuster its own agenda.
The reason I am rising with this motion is that we need to proceed with a proper study. We need to go into all of these communities in Canada and speak directly to those people who are so often excluded from the process. I am thinking specifically of people in ethnic communities, who do not necessarily consume mainstream media, and are likely better for it. I am speaking, of course, of people in remote communities, for whom accessing committee proceedings in Ottawa is a great challenge. In doing this, we would be able to have a full accounting of exactly what Pandora's box the Liberal government would unleash on Canadians with its proposed Bill C-9 and the amendments that would remove religious safeguards.
There are going to be, I suspect, some interventions from my Liberal colleagues, who will say, “No, we are not talking about freedom of religion in general. We are just talking about people who conceal hateful, criminal and violent rhetoric in religious language.” I have some news for those members: That is already illegal. There is no protection in the Criminal Code for people who incite genocide. There is no protection in the Criminal Code for people who threaten violence. There is no protection in the Criminal Code for people who incite hatred. These religious defences in the Criminal Code exist for only two particular charges: the wilful promotion of hatred—