Bernard Généreux

[Emergencies Act, February 20th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, what I am seeing today, and what I have been seeing from the beginning of the debate two days ago, is that the NDP has lost its bearings concerning this motion. I am putting it politely. The NDP always stood up for all Canadians. It always defended Canadians, but today it is joining forces with the government to vote in favour of this motion. That is totally unacceptable.

[Emergencies Act, February 20th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I was the first to condemn the vaccine mandate for truckers on December 15. I can assure the House that I have not changed my mind. As the hon. member for Louis-Hébert said earlier, the government used the election to sow division between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in Canada. It is still doing so. The Liberal Party members are doing the same thing now. It was not necessary to impose this requirement on the truckers, since the government tolerated the situation for two years. The government did not present any valid studies to show that the truckers were coming into Canada with COVID. There was absolutely no need to impose this requirement.

[Emergencies Act, February 20th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. The reality is that Ottawa was under siege. We never said that it was not. The problem is that the Ottawa police and city council did not act promptly, although they had all the legislation at their disposal to undertake the operation to clear the convoy. Other provinces did so in four different places before the Emergencies Act was invoked. Everything was cleared by means of the existing laws.

[Emergencies Act, February 20th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, we are here on a rare Sunday evening in the House because this is a historic moment for Canada.

We are, of course, talking about the unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act, a law that was introduced by Brian Mulroney's Conservative government. It has never been used to this day, because the sponsor of the act made it clear that it was meant to be used only in the event of a threat to “the ability of the Government of Canada to [manage a situation that affects the] security and territorial integrity of Canada”. There are four types of emergencies for which the Emergencies Act may be invoked: a public welfare emergency, a public order emergency, a national emergency or a war emergency.

The Mulroney government adopted this new act in the 1980s because it was seeking to limit the powers not only of its own government but also of any future government, to ensure that no individual rights could be violated through the former War Measures Act. Yes, that is the act infamously invoked by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1970, in a dramatic move that is still talked about 50 years later.

Clear guidelines have been established to justify invoking a public order emergency. In our opinion, the Liberal government has not met the criteria set out in the act. That is why we will be exercising our right, as parliamentarians, to vote against confirming the proclamation issued last week by the government.

Of course, as one might expect, the government argued that the trucker convoy in Ottawa had forced its hand and that resorting to emergency measures was necessary to remove them. I beg to differ.

The reality is that the government does not know what it is doing. On February 11, the Prime Minister himself declared that local and provincial law enforcement had all the means necessary to respond to the situation on Wellington Street and neighbouring streets in Ottawa. However, three days later, he suddenly acted as if the house was on fire and whipped out the emergency measures without offering much by way of explanation.

I invite my colleagues to consult Hansard to confirm all the questions we have asked, including calling on the government to provide justification for its decision to invoke the Emergencies Act. The government has had five days to explain itself. However, it has not been able to do so satisfactorily, as my colleague explained a few minutes ago.

The order states that the federal government wants to stop Canadians from entering protest areas. However, the provinces had and still have this power, as we saw during the pandemic. As just one example, the Quebec government even split my riding in two in the spring of 2020, restricting movements from the Montmagny—L'Islet RCM to Kamouraska, with the help of the police. The Ontario government was similarly able to limit movements between certain regions, which it did.

Whether one is for or against it, the fact remains that the provinces already had the power to restrict people's movements for various reasons. Since the municipalities are creatures of the provinces, the Ontario government could exercise its own powers without the federal government using the Emergencies Act.

The House may recall that the Prime Minister pledged the emergency measures would be geographically targeted, but now we know they apply across the entire 5,000-kilometre breadth of this country.

The government also pointed to the threat of foreign political interference to give itself the power, in this order, to deny access to any foreign national entering Canada with the intention of participating in the convoy's demonstrations. Here again, the government already has this power. Our borders have been closed to foreign nationals for almost two years, thereby preventing them from coming to Canada for any reason deemed non-essential.

Even before the pandemic, travellers were required by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to justify the purpose of their trip, be it business or tourism. Any non-Canadian entering Canada as a tourist may be questioned by the Canada Border Services Agency to verify the accuracy of such a claim. If the authorities find that the purpose of the trip is other than stated, the traveller may be automatically sent back across the land border or, in the case of arrival by air, may be detained until they board a flight back to their country of origin.

There is a lot of redundancy in the measures invoked in the government's proclamation. We think that they were adopted by a government in panic mode that was desperately trying to appear as though it was doing something after the negative media coverage of the truckers' blockade in Ottawa.

Like all members of the House, we have seen that, over the past three weeks, there were a thousand and one reasons for the Ottawa police to take action and remove the blockade from the main road running east-west in front of the parliamentary precinct. Police could have taken action as of day one of the protest by enforcing the city's noise, idling control and parking bylaws, but nothing was done.

The Ambassador Bridge blockade in Windsor had major economic impacts across the country. However, last weekend, the RCMP and OPP were able to get the situation under control by arresting protesters even before the Prime Minister invoked the Emergencies Act. There were also other protests in other parts of Canada, and all of them were dealt with using laws that were in place at the time and are still in effect.

The Liberal government's argument that the convoy on Wellington Street would not have been cleared if it had not invoked the Emergencies Act simply does not hold water. Practically every protester arrested in Ottawa since Friday is currently facing charges of mischief or counselling to commit mischief, two offences that have been in the Criminal Code for years. To my knowledge, among the hundreds of individuals arrested, not one was charged with an offence under the Emergencies Act. To sum up, the government used a cannon to kill a fly.

I do not want to diminish the importance of what is happening in Ottawa. On the contrary, the repercussions on the residents have been awful, as we can all agree. That being said, as Conservatives, we have serious concerns about the precedent that the government is setting by adopting coercive measures that we are simply not used to seeing in a free and democratic society.

One of them is the measure to direct designated persons to render essential services such as towing. To my knowledge, the only people who can be compelled to render anything are members of the Canadian Armed Forces, under penalty of being charged with desertion. In fact, some professional bodies, such as physicians' associations, might also have their own rules of conduct. However, at no time during the pandemic did we see the federal government invoke a state of emergency or emergency legislation to get people to work overtime.

With the Emergencies Act, who knows if the federal government will one day see fit to order Canadians to render services against their will. The Liberals may well say that these measures are temporary, but once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is very hard to put it back in.

We also have concerns about the Government of Canada giving itself discretionary powers to block or seize the bank accounts and credit cards of individuals who have supported the protest in recent weeks. Some of the convoy organizers may have broken Canadian laws, and they will have to answer for their actions in court, which is entirely appropriate. A judge could seize their assets and force them to pay fines and penalties to reimburse municipalities or other victims of their actions, such as businesses that were forced to close.

However, this usually happens after the defendants have been through criminal or civil trials, not before. The burden of proof for those affected by these emergency measures will be reversed. The onus will be on them to prove their innocence, whereas under normal circumstances, it is the Crown that must prove their guilt.

I did not donate to the convoy, and I obviously condemn the disruption caused to the residents of Ottawa, to all the businesses, to all the workers adversely affected by the closure of the Windsor-Detroit bridge, and to many others.

I have to wonder whether crowdfunding sites are doing enough to verify the identity of donors, and whether it is too easy for people to donate in someone else's name. This has happened.

One of my colleagues tweeted that a woman in his riding had donated $50, and now her account is frozen. She is a single mother.

How is the government identifying these people? How will it sort out this mess if it turns out that these people have been falsely accused?

Invoking this legislation was unnecessary. Clearly, the government screwed up and wanted to take an unnecessary step far too quickly.

[Celebrations in Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, February 17th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today. With 58 different municipalities in my riding, there are plenty of opportunities to celebrate, especially since many of those municipalities have reached a very venerable age.

Over the years, generations of people have pulled together to make their community their own. In the current health crisis, many committees have gone the extra mile to find different ways of celebrating.

I want to formally pay tribute to them. First, the seigneury of Rivière‑du‑Sud in Montmagny is celebrating 375 years. Berthier‑sur‑Mer, Rivière‑Ouelle and Cap‑Saint‑Ignace are celebrating 350 years. Sainte‑Hélène de Kamouraska and Sainte‑Anne‑de‑la‑Pocatière are celebrating 175 years. Saint‑Pamphile is celebrating 150 years and Saint‑Joseph de Kamouraska is celebrating 100 years.

I will take some time in the coming weeks to visit them and offer a commemorative gift. I wish all the residents of these municipalities a happy anniversary.

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, February 15th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Furbacco family, three future citizens of my riding, have been waiting for months to get their permanent resident cards.

While other applicants have skipped ahead of them in line, the Furbaccos have experienced unending delays now exceeding 180 days. As a result, they have been unable to renew their health insurance cards in Quebec, despite the fact that they are working and paying taxes here.

Does the government think that is right? What will it do to resolve the problem?

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 9th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I just saw on Facebook that in Rivière‑du‑Loup, in my riding, the price of gas is $1.66 a litre for regular and almost $1.90 a litre for premium. That is unprecedented in Canada.

My colleague referred to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has said that it is time to stop spending money and that it is not getting us anywhere because inflation keeps soaring.

I would like his opinion on that.

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 9th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said it is time for the government to stop spending money, like the $100 billion in the latest budget. I believe the Parliamentary Budget Officer is an independent officer of the House of Commons. What does my colleague think of the PBO's recommendation?

[The Economy, February 3rd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, my constituents are literally in distress. We are not just talking about unemployed people who are unable to get their EI benefits, because that is a crisis in itself, but we are also talking about full‑time workers and people who earn a very good living but are no longer able to make ends meet.

A litre of gas costs $1.61 in Rivière‑du‑Loup today. Grocery store prices are up 8% due to inflation, as are heating costs. The price of everything is going up at an unbelievable rate. Meanwhile, the government is sitting on its hands, unable to solve the problem.

Dealing with inflation is urgent. What is the government going to do?

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleague to take a deep breath. Quebec receives the majority of Canada's equalization payments.

That being said, my question relates to another subject. My colleague was talking about Abitibi and its fly-in, fly-out workers. There is no need to go that far. I live in La Pocatière. Many people who work in La Pocatière live in Quebec City and commute a little over 100 kilometres every day.

Right across the province, we need employees and people to come and work in our areas. I would like to ask my colleague what measures he would have liked to see in the budget or in the 2021 economic and fiscal update to help keep people in his region.