Pierrette Venne

[Anti-Terrorism Act, November 28th, 2001]

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I cannot concentrate because members opposite are making strange noises.

[Anti-Terrorism Act, November 28th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, to continue this debate at third reading, I will begin by saying that, even though the minister did not heed their recommendations, we do want thank the witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights during the last few weeks to enlighten us with their expertise.

At second reading, the Bloc Quebecois had decided to support Bill C-36 in principle, because it was and still is necessary to take measures that will enable us to fight terrorism effectively.

Like any opposition party acting responsibly, it is with optimism that we supported this government bill. However, while the Bloc Quebecois voted in favour of the spirit of this bill, it did express serious reservations regarding several of its provisions.

Among these reservations was, first of all, the absence of a sunset clause, as my colleague from Berthier—Montcalm just mentioned. This bill being a special measure that contains major irritants regarding various aspects, including preventive arrest and the powers conferred on the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of National Defence, the Bloc Quebecois proposed a sunset clause whereby all provisions of the bill would automatically have ceased to apply after three years, except those related to the implementation of international conventions.

In fact, in the Patriot Act and in the Loi sur la sécurité quotidienne, the United States and France adopted sunset clauses that repeal these acts in whole or in part after a period of three years. Moreover, the Canadian Bar Association, the Barreau du Québec, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Association des avocats criminalistes, the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, the Senate committee as well as ministers and Liberal members called for such a sunset clause.

But it seems that the American and French examples and the great support for our position were not good enough to sway the minister. Her minimal sunset clause deals with only two provisions in the legislation and it will apply not after three years, as we suggested, but after five. Even at that, it is not a real sunset clause, because it provides that a resolution passed by both houses will be enough to keep the legislation alive.

The government will not need to introduce a new bill and have it go through second reading, committee and third reading stages, the way it should be if this were a real sunset clause. In short, the minister's amendment does not really change the bill. It just shows the government's contempt for elected representatives by bypassing the parliamentary process.

In any case, whether we have a sunset clause or not, it does not change the fact that—

[Public Safety Act, November 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, how can this government justify ramming through legislation that grants to one single minister the power to designate an entire province as a military security zone for up to two years?

[Public Safety Act, November 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-42 gives the Minister of National Defence, on the recommendation of his chief of staff, the sole right to order military security zones.

How can the Prime Minister justify having one individual, based solely on his own judgment, being able to decide on such important measures?

[Anti-terrorism Act, November 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the most disturbing part here is that almost all the witnesses who appeared before the justice committee did so for absolutely nothing, because our justice minister, stubborn as usual, totally ignored the concerns of all these witnesses as well as their valuable and legitimate recommendations to improve the bill.

The minister has not only ignored their representations before the standing committee on justice, but she has also rejected out of hand the recommendations brought forward by the special Senate committee on Bill C-36.

For the information of our listeners, so that they can really understand how little the minister cared about the House and Senate committees and all Canadians, she stated this on October 18, in her introductory speech, at the first sitting of the standing committee on justice. I quote:

I also welcome consideration of possible refinements to the provisions you find in this bill. We must ensure that the bill is the most balanced and effective response possible.

And just before leaving the committee, at the end of the session, she added to this by stating:

On behalf of the solicitor general and myself, I also want to underscore how important it is for you to provide us with your best advice in some of these areas.

Therefore, it's going to be very important for you, in terms of the work you do, to help us make sure that we do have the most effective and fairest law. I know you will take up this challenge expeditiously and seriously

As for taking that challenge seriously, we have. Can the same be said of the minister? I am not so sure.

All of the amendments proposed by the Bloc Quebecois were based on the recommendations made by the large majority of the witnesses who came before the standing committee on justice, as well as those contained in the Senate report, of course.

Of all our amendments, just one was retained, but not in its original form. As for the other three opposition parties, their proposals suffered the same fate as ours. Considering that, the minister must take MPs for fools, when she makes a statement about being prepared to listen to us and benefit from the witnesses' expertise in order to improve her bill.

Besides, as regards promptness, again we can say mission accomplished. The bill we are debating is the most important one, in terms of curtailing rights and liberties, on the legislative agenda since the sad and famous War Measures Act of 1970.

According to projections, the legislative process should be completed before the Christmas recess. This shows how effective the government's steamroller is.

However, innocent people have become the victims of the biker war and, more generally, of organized crime in Quebec. Yet, Bill C-24, which deals with organized crime, is still waiting in the other place.

The situation is obviously urgent, but considering the impact of the measures considered, we had the right to expect something other than a slapdash legislative process.

Mark Fisher, a member of the Labour Party in the British parliament, said the following about the English anti-terrorist act, during the second reading stage last Monday. I quote:

When the House does something precipitous, it rarely acts wisely.

Referring to increased powers that the justice minister is giving to the officers of CSIS and to himself, the solicitor general simply said:

Canadians demand those measures.

We can question his sources of information, and I hope that it does not come from CSIS, because the facts are quite different.

I do not know if the solicitor general reads the electronic mail he receives, but if he is on the same mailing list as we are and nevertheless says a thing like that, there certainly must be someone in his office who is hiding information from him, because almost every message we have received expressed vigorous opposition to the provisions of Bill C-36.

Moreover, when a bill like this is called nonsense and act of treason, to quote only those two examples, there can be no doubt about the opposition of Canadian citizens to the state's interference with individual liberties.

I would now like to talk about the motions we have before us at report stage.

First, Motion No. 1 by the member for Lanark—Carleton proposes that the definition of terrorist activity be amended by eliminating any reference to political, religious or idealogical purposes. Members of the Bloc considered those references inappropriate and we certainly are ready to support Motion No. 1.

Motion No. 2 by the member for Calgary Centre would set out the criteria to be used by the solicitor general in recommending that an entity be placed on the list of terrorists. I think this is appropriate.

In the second paragraph of this motion, the member for Calgary Centre suggests that these criteria should be debated in the House before being adopted. We agree with that. However, I think that a vote should be held following this debate. I imagine that this is what the member for Calgary Centre wished, but I did not see it in the text of the motion.

As for Motion No. 3 by the same member, it would compel the solicitor general to give answers to the organizations listed. If he does not do so, with the present amendment, the organization will not have to pay to go before a federal court. There again, we consider that this motion is appropriate and that we will be in a position to support it.

As for Motion No. 4, I consider it superfluous since the right to a lawyer is already recognized. There is a paragraph added that reads as follows:

In any proceeding under this section, the presiding judge may appoint counsel to represent any person subject to the investigative hearing.

Notaries have a saying that if it is too strong, it won't break”. As far as I am concerned, this is the case here. We can obviously support it because it is already recognized.

These were my comments on the amendments before us.

[International Court, November 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, with the United States perhaps about to capture Osama bin Laden, President Bush has just signed an order allowing his country to create special military tribunals for the purpose of trying foreign nationals, thus bypassing the American criminal justice system.

Does the Canadian government intend to make a strong argument to the U.S. government in favour of having the perpetrators of the attacks tried before an international civil court and nowhere else?

[Saint-Hubert Airport, November 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the service was restored today.

I would like to ask the minister what he intends to do to help out the businesses whose viability is in jeopardy because of his department's inability to provide the services necessary for proper functioning of the operations at Saint-Hubert airport?

[Saint-Hubert Airport, November 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for several years, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency carried out the customs processing and immigration screening of U.S. passengers on chartered flights at Saint-Hubert airport. The stepped up security since September 11, however, has meant that charters are no longer landing at Saint-Hubert, which has reduced its volume of foreign traffic by over 80%.

What is keeping the Minister of National Revenue from restoring Customs service at Saint-Hubert airport?

[Independence of the RCMP, November 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, to conclude this debate, I would like to make a few comments. First, I strongly doubted that this motion would find an attentive government ear. The government would have had to eat humble pie and acknowledge that it had interfered inappropriately as the result of its improper relations with the RCMP. However, the statutory codification we are proposing is the only way to ensure that the mega mess of November 1997 could never recur. However we can legitimately ask ourselves whether there would be government support for this.

In view of the increasingly extraordinary discretionary powers the ministers are giving themselves with each new bill, the policy of silence that reigns throughout the government, its lack of respect for parliament during this crisis and its closer co-operation with the media than with parliamentarians, an unbridled arrogance toward the opposition, especially that part of it representing Quebec's interests, through its mockery of the unprecedented consensus in Quebec over Bill C-7, it is not surprising that the Liberal government wants to dilute the mandate of the RCMP to make it its political police, as was the case in the 1970s when the RCMP was given the task of ridding Quebec of the sovereignist heresy.

Moreover, as if the obstacles faced by this motion were not enough to have it tossed under the table, it will not even be voted on, as several members pointed out earlier.

I have always believed that motions and bills presented by members of parliament should be votable items, otherwise we feel that we are treated unfairly and that our initiatives have little importance. It is easy to quickly lose faith in the system. We get to the point where we wonder if it is worth investing so much effort in drafting motions or bills and in preparing speeches to defend them.

By working on issues that may well not be acted on, we waste our energy, effort and time, and also those of the House. In such a context, a member does not bring any added value to parliamentarism. For example, since the beginning of the 34th parliament, in 1988, when I was first elected, 1,670 private members' bills have been introduced and, out that number, 17 have received royal assent and been enacted. One can imagine the interest that a motion like this one, which is not even a votable item, is likely to generate with the government.

With a system that kills initiative in this fashion, it is not just members of parliament who become frustrated, but also the public which, given such situations, is becoming increasingly cynical about our role.

Recently, on two different occasions, I talked to people about my private member's initiatives. When I told them that all private members' initiatives must go through a draw to be included in the order of precedence, these people were flabbergasted.

Members can easily imagine these people's reaction when I explained that, once an item had been selected, it had to go before a committee that would choose, depending on its mood, a few of these initiatives to make them votable items. Then, even if this motion had been selected to become a votable item, given the probabilities that I just mentioned, the chances of getting actual results are very slim to say the least.

Sadly, I can only conclude that private members' business is used much more to kill time than to help our society move forward in a democratic fashion.

[Independence of the RCMP, November 5th, 2001]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should, pursuant to recommendation 31.3.1 of the interim report of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission on the events that took place during the APEC conference, set out in writing the nature and scope of the RCMP's independence in its relations with the government.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin this hour of debate on Motion No. 391, which I presented.

While the September 11 events did have a significant impact on the business of the House since the reopening of parliament, the fact remains that even if certain issues have lost some of their priority, they remain as important as they were before September 11.

All the questions relating to interference by the Prime Minister's entourage in RCMP operations during the APEC conference are among these issues. First, since the events that triggered the motion before us occurred over four years ago, I will briefly review the facts.

From November 19 to November 25, 1997, the city of Vancouver hosted the APEC conference. During that event, which was attended by officials from various regions of Asia, the RCMP was the police force responsible for security. That essentially meant ensuring the security of 75 persons, including 12 who required a maximum level of protection.

During the last day of the summit, when conference participants were at a retreat at the Museum of Anthropology, located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, students and others voiced their opposition to the political systems of certain APEC members.

The events that followed and involved protesters and RCMP officers resulted in the filing of 52 formal complaints against the actions of these officers. These 52 complaints were grouped into 17 categories reflecting as many situations and events.

On December 9, 1997, the chair of the RCMP public complaints commission launched an investigation into these complaints. Following that investigation, a panel made up of three members was established on February 20, 1998, to hear the complaints. The hearings began on April 14, 1998 and ended in December of the same year, following the resignation of its members.

On December 21, former justice Ted Hughes was appointed interim commissioner to head an inquiry, which ended in the presentation on July 31 of an interim report of 453 pages plus appendices.

I must criticize the fact that, three months after its release, the report is still unavailable in French. Once again the government is failing to comply with its own laws.

Since the production of the report, apart from the fact that the RCMP, through Commissioner Zaccardelli, has publicly admitted its responsibility, the Hughes report has practically fallen into oblivion.

The terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11 have certainly not helped. However they must not serve as a pretext for the government to avoid matters that might embarrass it.

Given the excessive powers that could be given to the police under the bill, it is all the more important to set out the nature of the relations between the RCMP and the government, if it is to avoid finding itself in hot water once again.

In addition, it is useful to point out that the RCMP's mea culpa was expressed four years after the events in question, and the recognition of its errors has cost the taxpayers nearly $10 million.

The point of this motion is therefore to provide for the codification of police independence in order to set standards for the RCMP's relations with the government.

Despite the fact that this motion will likely never be acted on, for reasons I will explain later, we hope that it will, at least, ensure that the report does not end up forgotten on a shelf under a pile of dust, something that is too often the case for reports criticizing the activities of the government.

To get right to the heart of the matter, let us start with subsection 5(1) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, which provides, and I quote:

The Governor in Council may appoint an officer, to be known as the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who, under the direction of the Minister, has the control and management of the Force and all matters connected therewith.

We see immediately from this that the RCMP is not totally independent from the government. Despite the legislative power the solicitor general retains over the force, the RCMP in fact enjoys substantial independence under common law.

At this point, what appears at first to constitute a conflict with the principle of independence does not in actual fact cause a problem. On the one hand, unless it should become a private police force, which is most certainly not what we want, the RCMP cannot exist independently of a connection with the government. Hence the necessity that it be under the auspices of a department, in this case the department of the solicitor general.

As Commissioner Hughes states in his report, even if the nature and scope of the independence of the RCMP has no clearly defined basis in legislation, the existence of that independence is acknowledged. In a supreme court judgment, Regina v Campbell, it was clearly established that, when its actions are aimed at enforcing the law or carried out within the framework of a criminal investigation, the RCMP is generally totally independent of the executive power.

In this connection, the following is an excerpt from Justice Binnie's decision:

While for certain purposes the Commissioner of the RCMP reports to the Solicitor General, the Commissioner is not to be considered a servant or agent of the government while engaged in a criminal investigation. The Commissioner is not subject to political direction. Like every other police officer similarly engaged, he is answerable to the law and, no doubt, to his conscience.

As far as the law is concerned, we agree with the judge. As far as conscience is concerned however, I prefer to abstain from an opinion. Regardless, along the same lines, in a reference to the Commissioner of Police in R. v Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ex parte Blackburn, in 1968, Lord Denning stated as follows:

He must decide whether or not suspected persons are to be prosecuted; and, if need be, bring the prosecution or see that it is brought; but in all these things he is not the servant of anyone, save of the law itself. No Minister of the Crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that; or that he must, or must not, prosecute this man or that one. Nor can any police authority tell him so. The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and to the law alone.

Once the premises have been established, the following holds. First, the government must not under any consideration exercise direct authority over the RCMP when it is carrying out its mandate of law enforcement. Second, the RCMP must be accountable.

We can see that despite all of its independence, the RCMP remains dependent on the government to some degree. It must maintain some sort of contact with the government. This is where things get more complex because, while everyone agrees on the issue of independence, there is no consensus when it comes time to define what constitutes an appropriate relationship between government and the RCMP, both in academic terms and legal terms.

Keeping in mind that a state expresses its power of persuasion over its citizens through police authority, it is in the public's interest to ensure that no government be able to interfere in the business of the RCMP. Let us not forget that we live in a constitutional state. If we allow the government to interfere in federal policing activities whenever it sees fit, this constitutional state will give way to a police state.

Conversely, the situation would be just as bad if we gave carte blanche to the RCMP without requiring it to be accountable. In this case, we are talking about the state exercising control, not influence, as was the case with APEC. No matter how we look at it, it is both inevitable and necessary that the state and the RCMP maintain some sort of link.

If we consider all of this as it applies specifically to the APEC events, clearly, the government's intervention, or rather, interference according to the Hughes report, was inappropriate. Obviously the RCMP was not present in Vancouver as a part of its mandate to fight crime. Its mandate was limited to providing security for an international events. In order to carry out this mandate, it had to work in close co-operation with government officials. However, this co-operation should have been based on security considerations, rather than political interests. Unfortunately, we now know that this was not the case. We now know that the problem with the involvement of the RCMP at the conference occurred at two levels.

First, as Commissioner Hughes points out, the performance of the RCMP was noteworthy for its glaring lack of professionalism and standards of acceptable competencies.

He felt that there were two reasons for this: a failure to co-ordinate planning and operations, and an inability to anticipate events.

In addition, in his final remarks, he mentioned that the conduct of the police was inappropriate in the circumstances and completely contrary to the charter. This alone is extremely troubling and worthy of attention. Worst of all is the possibility that political interference may have been one of the causes of this mess.

In his report, the commissioner emphasized that he did not agree with the contention of counsel for the complainants that, in ensuring the personal attendance of Indonesian President Suharto, the government would have taken care to see that he was not embarrassed. Hence the premature takeover of the Museum of Anthropology, the extent of the security perimeter and the noise-free zone.

Questions still remain. Even if the action taken was not related solely to preparations for President Suharto's visit, the commissioner still concluded that demonstrators' rights were violated by the intervention of Jean Carle who, as director of operations in the PMO, also served as liaison between the PMO and the RCMP.

Whatever the reasoning, the result was the same: Carle's interventions had the same repercussions as what could be described as interference in RCMP security operations.

Even at that, certain doubts remain because, when describing the reasoning behind Carle's actions and, therefore, those of the government, Commissioner Hughes used the phrase “I do believe”, which is a very subjective way of putting things. In short, the second observation can only be that the RCMP violated charter rights, following government interference.

That having been said, it is vital that the government set out in writing the nature of its relations with the RCMP. This morning, the Bloc Quebecois is calling on it to comply fully with recommendation 31.3.1 of the interim report of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission on the events that took place during the APEC conference. This recommendation reads as follows:

The RCMP should request statutory codification of the nature and extent of police independence from government with respect to:

1. existing common law principles regarding law enforcement; and

2. the provision of and responsibility for delivery of security services at public order events.

Above all, and in the circumstances, the RCMP must be accountable under law and it is with this in mind that we are putting forward this motion, which is fully consistent with this principle.

Since the next G-8 summit will be held in Kananaskis, Alberta, from June 26 to June 28, 2002, it is vital that the government comply with recommendation 31.3.1, as formulated, of the Hughes report.