Mr. Speaker, let me take this opportunity, because I have not spoken in the House when you have been in the Chair, to congratulate you on your appointment to the Chair. I know you will serve the members of the House very well and I am sure you are learning on the job very fast.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-6, an act to establish the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and to amend or repeal certain acts because it is an important bill. We have obviously looked at the bill and studied it as closely as we can. We know that at this point it is at second reading. We will look at the bill in principle and then it will be referred to the committee where we will go through it very closely.
The Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has been in place for about 10 months. It is concerning that the minister and her office has been there for 10 months without the authority of this legislation. That is not a good sign. We would have preferred to have seen the legislation come forward at a much earlier date so that it would be clear what the mandate, role and responsibilities of this department are all about. However, it has taken 10 months to get to this point. I think it does deserve very close scrutiny.
Members may feel that at a certain level this is just a routine matter of creating a department and transferring certain responsibilities. As members of the House, and certainly we in the New Democratic Party, we take our responsibility seriously because it is a new department.
It has a significant function. It has broad powers conferred upon the minister. We intend to scrutinize the bill very carefully to ensure that there is adequate oversight for what those responsibilities are and that there is scrutiny through the committee, and possibly amendments will come forward to improve the bill.
The NDP in general supports the creation of this department. It is important to have a clear function and responsibility for public safety and for emergency preparedness in this vast country that we live in where we are subject to all kinds of natural disasters. Certainly, we saw the devastating impact of hurricane Juan in Halifax.
I know that the member from Halifax was very involved in supporting her constituents and the people of that city. One of the issues that came up at that time, as well as other situations that have taken place in Canada, is the need to have a clear federal responsibility and role in coordinating a rapid and responsible response to people when they are in distress and when they need help.
When people are hit, whether it is a hurricane, a flood, the fires in Kelowna or some other kind of emergency, they want to know that all of these vast resources that are available within various government agencies and departments at various levels are there when people need them. We certainly understand the need for this department.
What is important is the need to ensure that there is full coordination, cooperation and resource sharing among the three levels of government. I note that Halifax is the only city where the three levels of government are housed in one building, and maybe it was easier to facilitate that kind of arrangement. That did happen, but that is not the case in other cities. We have seen it play out where, with the best of intentions, different levels of government may have different procedures or operations for how to respond.
We might have one agency doing one thing and another agency doing something else, and one level of government doing one thing and another level of government doing something else. That is something that is very critical in the establishment of this department. We need to assure people on the ground in local communities that when they are hit they know that all levels of government are working with one purpose and one intent, and that is to provide support, relief and resources that are needed.
All of us have seen that our Canadian armed forces are always there in those kinds of situations. The men and women of our forces go to extreme lengths to ensure that they provide the help that is needed in a local emergency. We have seen that across the country.
There are issues of overlap and jurisdiction. From that point of view this new department with a minister in place will be an important thing to have established in order to work out those kinds of procedures.
This is a good development. The bill is generally supportable. We should also recognize that this department and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness cover areas that have to do with security.
We have seen post-September 11 an enormous amount of emphasis on legislation, on various procedures and incredibly broad powers conferred on cabinet ministers, on the government itself, and on various agencies like the RCMP and CSIS around security. I would point out that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Correctional Service Canada, the National Parole Board, the Canada Firearms Centre, and the Canada Border Services Agency will now be under this new department.
We in the NDP do have concerns about parliamentary oversight and ensuring that this new department, if it is established, as it pertains to security issues, does not take us further down a road where people's civil liberties would be eroded. My community of East Vancouver is a diverse community made up of people from all parts of the world. Many immigrants have settled there as I know is true in most of the ridings that we represent in the House.
I am alarmed at the number of stories and experiences that I have heard about from individual Canadians and families who have been experiencing discrimination based on what I believe is racial profiling. My private member's bill makes it clear that racial profiling would be illegal in Canada. We have seen an increase in the targeting of Canadian citizens and permanent residents based on security concerns.
We have had other legislation and other debates on the lack of accountability and transparency. One only has to think of what happened to Maher Arar and the public inquiry that is now underway. That inquiry is investigating the role of some of those agencies that will now be under this new department. What role did they play in terms of sharing information with other intelligence agencies in the U.S. or possibly elsewhere that led to the imprisonment of Mr. Arar for such an extended period of time?
I raise this because I do think the idea of emergency preparedness and public safety are important public policy considerations. We must pay attention to the broadening net that is taking place in our society. We must respond to the real security concerns of Canadians. Canadians want to see defence and proper security.
More people are expressing their concern about legislation that has already passed and what it will mean now to have a department of public safety and emergency preparedness as it may relate to some of these security concerns. We in the NDP want to express that because it is something that we are monitoring very closely.
Our justice critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, will be examining this bill in committee. I know that he will be examining it very carefully from the point of view of how these agencies operate and how the minister responsible for this department will ensure that things that are done in the name of security and not infringing more and more on the liberties that we enjoy in our democratic society.
One of the intents of this bill is to avoid conflict between intelligence agencies. This is something that we have been extremely distressed and concerned about in some of these cases that have happened. In fact, if this bill, by creating this department, helps avoid that kind of conflict between agencies, where they are actually working at cross-purposes or with very little knowledge about what one or the other is doing, then we would certainly encourage and support the idea. We would applaud that development of better cooperation.
Again, I think we have to go through this bill. We have to examine it very carefully ensuring that this kind of department, that can very broad powers even in an emergency, does not infringe on the liberties of people, that there be a balance. I think it is something that members of the House may individually struggle with. What is the correct balance in terms of maintaining the public good and maintaining public safety, and yet ensuring that people are not being unfairly targeted, whether it is at the border, at airports, or through intelligence gathering?
For example, I have heard of cases where Canadian citizens have been denied the right to fly on Air Canada because their name appears on a list. Where does this come from? Why are people being targeted? There is no reason given.
I recently dealt with a situation where a man from Toronto travelled by Jetsgo from Toronto to Victoria. He paid for his ticket. He got to Vancouver and decided that he would continue his journey to Victoria. He paid for an Air Canada ticket and his name appeared on a list. He had ID, the whole thing, but he was suddenly taken off the flight list and no reason was given.
We have heard that the Department of Transport has intentions to bring in a no fly list that would apply to Canadians on domestic flights. This is something that is of huge concern. It brings us into this area of security and public safety. Yet there is a great sense of unease about what is taking place. Our job as parliamentarians and guardians of the democratic principles in our country is to ensure that legislation meets the test of protecting democratic values and principles.
That is why a bill such as this, that on the surface may appear to be fairly innocuous and supportable, actually requires serious examination in the broader context of security changes that have fundamentally changed for many people in this country the way they live and the way they can move freely about the country, and the fact that they may be under some sort of monitoring by security agencies.
We find that incredibly disturbing. We want to ensure that, first, we understand what is taking place and, second, that there is an accountability to legislation, to a parliamentary review, and back to a minister such as the one that would be at the head of this department.
I would say that the NDP at this point is generally in support of the principles of this bill. We understand that there is a need to have a clear federal role and responsibility in emergency preparedness and public safety. It is something that I think needed to happen many months ago when the minister was first appointed. The legislation is now trying to catch up to the reality of having that minister in place.
We will examine the bill very carefully when it gets to committee. It is very possible that our member for Windsor—Tecumseh will have some suggestions for changes in terms of accountability and the oversight that is involved in the six security agencies that are now within this department. We will be doing that when it gets to committee.
