Gary Anandasangaree

[National Council for Reconciliation Act, November 29th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, with great respect, Bill C-5 is very relevant to this conversation. Calls to action 32—

[National Council for Reconciliation Act, November 29th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I too share an immense respect for my colleague from Winnipeg Centre. She is well aware of many of the efforts undertaken by the government. I do not believe it is just 13, and that is the reason we need a council that can objectively give us a sense of where we are at with the calls to action.

It does not just end there. Yesterday, for example, I had the honour of introducing Justice O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court. It is another very important move forward in ensuring that our courts reflect the true nature and fabric of Canada.

[National Council for Reconciliation Act, November 29th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I cannot really speak to the second aspect of my friend's question, but I can assure the House that, as a government, we are committed to ensuring that the national council would be supported. When councils of this nature are established, there is a ramp-up period, so often times the budget in the first year may not be the same as in the fourth or fifth year. I can assure the House that our government would continue to support the needs of the national council for reconciliation so it can function to its mandate.

[National Council for Reconciliation Act, November 29th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am very content that the government is moving forward in establishing the council with representation from a range of indigenous organizations. I believe that it is going in the right direction.

[National Council for Reconciliation Act, November 29th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-29, an act to provide for the establishment of a national council for truth and reconciliation. I want to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional unceded lands of the Algonquin peoples.

At the outset, I want to acknowledge the incredible work of many of my colleagues from different parties, including the member for Sydney—Victoria, who is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, the member for Northwest Territories, the member for Nunavut, the member for Winnipeg Centre, the member for Edmonton Griesbach and others, who, over the many years we have been here, have been inspirational in their work and advocacy as we make sure that as a government, we move forward on reconciliation.

Reconciliation is multi-layered, is often complex and is an issue that will take generations to achieve in Canada. Canada has gone through 154 years of colonialism and deeply rooted legislation that often disempowered and displaced first nations, Inuit and Métis across Canada. We have gone from having over 90 indigenous languages to only a handful being spoken today. We have seen the horrific results of residential schools and the intergenerational trauma they have created, and the lasting effects of the hurt and loss. We saw this with the unmarked graves, starting last year, and I suspect we will see it again and again as we unpack this deeply hurtful issue over the next few years. Parliament recently acknowledged what happened with residential schools as genocide, and that, too, is a very important aspect of moving forward and speaking truth to power.

As we look at establishing the national council for reconciliation, it is important to look at history. In 2015, when we took office, the commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented their findings, with 94 calls to action. That was in December 2015. They outlined the bare minimum that needs to be done in order for our path to reconciliation to move forward.

Since then, we have seen a number of different initiatives, including the report of the MMIWG, the missing and murdered women and girls report, and the calls to justice, as well as several other very important findings, including the unmarked graves. These things put additional responsibilities on the government and on all Canadians to address.

The 94 calls to action are an all-encompassing set of guidelines for the federal government, provincial governments and in some cases municipal governments, as well as organizations, particularly national indigenous organizations, and all Canadians. It is important to recognize that reconciliation is not a journey that can just be undertaken by Canada as a government. It needs to be an all-of-Canada effort that includes all stakeholders.

When we talk about reconciliation, oftentimes we talk about what Canada is prepared to do, but it really comes down to how much trust and confidence indigenous people can have in this process. What we have seen in the last seven years is that while we have moved ahead on a number of very important initiatives, we have often seen this relationship be two steps forward and one step back because there is a lot of unpacking to do. As we approach and encounter these issues, it is important that as a government we double down and recommit to working harder to ensure we move forward on this process.

It is an imperfect process. It is an imperfect set of ideas that often may need reflection, and in that I am pleased to share with the House some of my experiences over the past seven years working across party lines with the members opposite.

I do want to start off with our work on Bill C-262, which was a private member's bill brought forward by my friend Romeo Saganash. It essentially called for the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and I was fortunate to work with Mr. Saganash over the couple of years he was actively advocating for Bill C-262. We travelled a fair bit in our committee work and spoke to many individuals: young people, elders, band councils and indigenous organization members. The enormous support the bill had across Canada with indigenous people was remarkable. However, we saw that the same level of commitment was not here in Parliament.

Over time, sadly, Bill C-262 did not pass, but we were able to get Bill C-15 through Parliament in 2021, and basically it is calls to action 43 and 44, and it was able to pass. The second part of UNDRIP is the implementation of a national action plan, and our department is working very hard with indigenous partners and national indigenous organizations, as well as rights holders and many others, to make sure we have an action plan that can really address a review of laws and move us forward on this path.

One of the things that has really humbled me is the work we have done on indigenous languages. There is an act, Bill C-91, which was passed in 2019, and it was a critical moment in Canada because, when we talk about language, it is so fundamental to all of us. Often, I look at the passion with which my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois address the issue of bilingualism and language, and the passion with which many of my colleagues on this side speak to the need to protect the French language.

I think it is so critical to ensure that linguistic minorities are protected across Canada, but often missing in that conversation is the need to protect and save the many indigenous languages that existed prior to Confederation. In many ways, those languages are in their last stages. Medically speaking, they are on life support because we have so many languages that are at a point of being lost permanently.

I know the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London spoke about Oneida Nation on the Thames, and that is one of the groups we met during the development of Bill C-91. It was devastating to see that only a handful of people were able to speak that language, which shows how important it is that Bill C-91 is there. As well, we, along with the support of the New Democratic Party, repealed mandatory minimum penalties just last week, and we implemented the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

These are some measures that speak to the work that has been done, but there is a lot more to do, and I believe the national council would be a very important tool for us to measure objectively what work we need to do. It would measure and report back to the House, as well as to Canadians, on the need to fill in the gaps and to make sure we fulfill all the commitments in the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I look forward to questions and comments from my friends, and I thank them for this opportunity to speak.

[Public Safety, November 28th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to talk about our very smart criminal justice policy.

Serious crimes will always have serious consequences. Bill C-5 is moving past failed policies of the Conservative era, which clogged our justice system and filled our prisons with low-risk first-time offenders, time and resources that should be devoted to fighting serious crimes. In fact, former Supreme Court Justice Moldaver, who no one can accuse of being soft on crime, recently stressed the need for a different approach to less serious offences. Our communities are not safer for it.

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I echo my friend's final sentiments with respect to those who work in the system, especially the chaplains. I was able to meet with many prison chaplains this week.

I want to get to the bill. The substance of the bill is to modernize our court system. Can the member highlight the top three things in the bill that could help make the system more efficient?

[Criminal Code, November 23rd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke for his learned presentation. I think there are some very important elements there. I wanted to just pick up on the issue of access to justice and how this bill would expand that. I know it has been one of those challenging issues that, across provincial jurisdictions, we have had to deal with.

Can he maybe talk about his province of British Columbia and how it has been able to adopt this, how that has impacted access to justice and how that has informed Bill S-4?

[Criminal Code, November 23rd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-4 looks to modernize the court system. My friend is talking about very specific changes to the release conditions. Again, as I indicated earlier, I would be glad to sit down and talk to him about his ideas on this. We may disagree fundamentally on what they look like, but certainly we are able to have that conversation.

With respect to Bill S-4, it is critical in many ways that the accused have their constitutional rights protected with respect to appearances and being there. Virtual appearances just add another element of access in some cases, where appropriate. In some cases it may not be appropriate, and in those cases they will not be able to have virtual appearances.

[Criminal Code, November 23rd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very relevant observation, because what we are trying to do is modernize our court system and our justice system. With Bill C-5, it is the first time in Canadian history. The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada is the first attorney general to repeal many mandatory minimum penalties that were seen to be harmful to indigenous, Black and other racialized communities. It was not based on a focus of keeping people safe, but putting away people who ought to have off-ramps in the criminal justice system.

Bill C-5 is very similar to Bill S-4 in the sense that we are modernizing. We are looking at the 21st century, the science and the technology available and moving forward on very important reforms that will help make sure our justice and court systems are modernized.