Matthew Dubé

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister first met with President Trump after the U.S. election, there was a lot of talk in the press release about further integration at the border. One of the things that was even floated was housing American and Canadian border agents in the same building and having common systems.

When the public safety committee went to Washington in May, we had an opportunity to hear some of the long-term plans of this entry-exit program. If the member and members of the Liberal caucus are not concerned, something is seriously wrong. We are in a situation now where accountability is at its lowest when it comes to national security agencies. Unfortunately, that includes CBSA, which as of now, until the creation of this committee of parliamentarians, is one of the only agencies that has no proper review, much less real time oversight. That is a whole other matter.

I want to understand from the member why, in that context, he would feel comfortable with this sharing of information. President Trump is signing executive orders saying that privacy protection laws no longer apply to people who are not American citizens. We see a situation that almost condones, implicitly and explicitly, potentially the use of torture, with a new ministerial directive that does nothing to alleviate that issue. Therefore, I want to understand why the member could feel comfortable with sharing more information and this further integration, given there is a president who has no respect for the rule of law of his own constitution, much less the constitutions of other countries.

[Parks Canada, September 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, no decision has been made, except for the tender notice on Buyandsell.gc.ca . Therefore, we have to really wonder what the government's intention is here.

This is another example of the Liberals trying to keep their plans to privatize our public infrastructure under wraps. This issue was never raised during the election campaign, apart from the infrastructure bank, which, once again, is more about pleasing their Bay Street friends than really investing in our public infrastructure.

Why are the Liberals so determined to hand our public assets over to their friends on Bay Street?

[International Trade, September 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we want to uphold NAFTA's track record, but that record shows that Canada is the most sued country under NAFTA's investor state dispute settlement mechanism.

Private corporations can sue Canada just because our environmental or health regulations do not suit them, for example. Everyone knows the Liberals tend to favour corporations over Canadians, so can they tell us how having this type of provision in a free trade agreement helps promote democracy, protect Canadians, and keep our environment safe?

[Public Services and Procurement, September 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, in addition to having to deal with the botched Phoenix pay system, public servants have now learned that their privacy was breached because of the glitches in this system.

Commissioner Therrien found at least 11 privacy breaches, including leaked names, employee numbers, and salaries. Enough is enough.

The Liberals have mismanaged this file from start to finish. When will the problems with the Phoenix pay system finally be fixed?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it brings me no pleasure to have to speak to this bill, because it has to do with a crisis Canada is currently facing, the opioid crisis. The United States is also grappling with the same crisis, which has been the subject of many discussions.

Unfortunatley, Bill C-338 fails miserably in its approach. As the NDP public safety critic, I want to point out that the opioid crisis is not so much a public safety issue as it is a public health issue. It is important to make that distinction with respect to Bill C-338, since all it does is propose heavier penalties, like the infamous mandatory minimum sentences we saw so often when the Conservatives were in power. So far, anywhere you look around the world, mandatory minimums have failed completely in terms of their intended objective, that is, to put an end to the scourge facing our society.

Every policy, medical, and legal expert tells us the same thing: the solution to this crisis is to provide more mental health and addiction treatment services and more resources to the hardest-hit communities that are dealing with the consequences daily. For example, the mayor of Vancouver has had a lot to say about this, since the statistics coming out of British Columbia on the number of deaths caused by this crisis are terrifying, especially for a province in a country like Canada.

For nine years we had a Conservative government that said that the solution to drug trafficking and public health problems was to impose harsher sentences, the infamous mandatory minimums. Even in the American states that are commonly referred to as “red states”, where Republicans share many of the ideological opinions of our Conservative colleagues, it was determined that such sentences were a failure. This approach does not work, and it does not prevent the tragedies we are currently seeing.

To see why this is more a public health issue than a public safety one, we can look at supervised injection sites. All across Canada, especially in big cities that are grappling with this crisis and that want to protect citizens struggling with addiction issues, people have pushed for supervised injections sites and other solutions.

During the previous Parliament, the federal government kept plugging its community consultation line as an excuse to pass legislation making supervised injection sites even harder to set up, even though municipal and provincial elected officials representing those very communities were asking it to authorize them. Rather than solve the problem, the government created conditions that endangered public safety. People's lives were put at risk because they did not have the resources to get help if they were dying of an overdose in some alleyway. I do not want to get into too much detail here.

The Liberal government took way too long to move on this, but at least it moved, and while that is commendable, there is still more work to do. The member for Vancouver Kingsway, our health critic, represents one of the first provinces to face this problem, a region with some of the most terrifying opioid statistics of all.

He asked the question again today: when will this government recognize that this is a national health crisis and declare this to be a pan-Canadian crisis? This has yet to be done, even though it is such an easy step to take so as to ensure that governments could begin taking appropriate action to protect Canadians.

I would go so far as to say that for 30, 40, or even 50 years, the approach taken by the right in the war against drugs has always been to take aim at the criminal element. In the meantime, the ones who were truly forgotten were the Canadians who unfortunately are among these statistics and who lost their lives because we, the legislators, were unable to help them.

Having considered Bill C-388, we oppose it, because we believe that the solution does not lie in putting more resources into fighting crime and putting people in jail. The solution is to help them. We must help these people face their substance abuse problems. We must help those who suffer from a mental illness by ensuring that we provide the care they need and want. We must help protect these citizens.

If we want to discuss public safety, we must first discuss public health. That is what the crisis is about. That is what is being neglected in the approach set out in this bill, which, unfortunately, is similar to the approach that prevailed for many years, especially in the years when there was a majority Conservative government. It was a failure.

We are not the ones saying so. The statistics on recidivism and substance abuse are clear. Today's statistics on this problem indicate that this is not just happening in Vancouver, British Columbia. As people know all too well, this problem is unfortunately affecting the entire country. The problem is moving eastward and is starting to become a reality in the maritime provinces and Atlantic Canada. This should be unacceptable in a society such as ours.

Statistics aside, this is also a legal issue. The Supreme Court has found that minimum mandatory sentences are not going to help us prevent recidivism and protect Canadians. The most vulnerable victims of the opioid crisis and other crises related to drug use and drug trafficking are the users themselves.

The government says they are proposing legislation to protect victims and vulnerable populations, but in a drug crisis like this, the real victims, the real vulnerable population, are the Canadians dying from opioids before our very eyes. What this tells us is that, as I have said many times before, this is a public health issue.

Let us stop talking about how long we can put people in prison for. Let us stop thinking that rehabilitation is what is really going to help people recover from their mental health problems. Let us take their needs seriously, along with the needs identified by local authorities, such as the health and justice ministers in the provinces dealing with these tragedies, and municipal officials, such as the mayor of Vancouver, who is asking for help and more authority to develop tools like supervised injection sites to help these people start to heal. That is the approach we should be promoting.

I would like to close by saying that we have concerns about this approach. We recognize that it is a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done to eliminate this problem, which is no longer just a regional issue. It is affecting all of Canada and even North America. These problems are being raised in discussions with American counterparts and between ministers. That proves that we need to take the issue seriously. Let us declare it to be a pan-Canadian health crisis. That would allow the government to do what is necessary. I have said it many times, and the NDP will continue to repeat it, that this is first and foremost a public health issue.

Let us help and protect these individuals, for they are the victims.

[Public Safety, September 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of all talk and no action, the Minister of Finance did not include a single penny in his budget for correcting the mistakes on the no-fly list.

Fifty or so Liberal MPs, including ministers, wrote to the Minister of Finance to ask him to correct the situation. Families have to cancel trips because their children's names are on the list and business people are facing delays on their business trips.

Will the government finally keep its promise and implement and fully fund a proper redress system for the no-fly list and, once and for all, end this victimization of children and business people?

[Privacy, September 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Privacy Commissioner is worried that American customs will subject Canadians to intrusive searches of their electronic devices. Searching an iPhone is not the same as searching a suitcase. It is looking directly into people's private lives.

Could the minister stand and finally confirm once and for all that Liberals will stand up for Canadians' rights at the border, rather than playing right into President Trump's hands by giving more powers to American agents on Canadian soil with bills like Bill C-23? Let us not hear this talk about respecting the law, because the law is completely silent on this issue. Maybe we can get an update on that, while we are it, to protect Canadians' privacy.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, September 18th, 2017]

With regard to policing and surveillance activities related to Indigenous activists since October 31, 2015: (a) which security agencies or other government bodies have been involved in tracking Indigenous protest activities relating to (i) Idle No More, (ii) the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls or other Aboriginal public order events, (iii) the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, (iv) the Northern Gateway Pipeline, (v) the Energy East and Eastern Mainline Projects, (vi) the Site C dam, (vii) the Lower Churchill Hydroelectric Generation Project, (viii) Line 9B Reversal and Line 9 Capacity Expansion Project, (ix) other industrial or resource development projects; (b) how many Indigenous individuals have been identified by security agencies as potential threats to public safety or security, broken down by agency and province; (c) which indigenous organizations, and activist groups have been the subject of monitoring by Canadian security services, broken down by agency and province; (d) how many events involving Indigenous activists were noted in Government Operations Centre situation reports, broken down by province and month; (e) have any Canadian government agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) been involved in tracking Canadians travelling to Standing Rock Indian Reservation (North and South Dakota, United States of America); (f) has there been any request by the Canadian government or any of its agencies to the United States government or any of its agencies to share information on the tracking of Canadian citizens engaging in demonstrations at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation; (g) what are the titles and dates of any inter-departmental or inter-agency reports related to indigenous protest activities; (h) how many times have government agencies shared information on indigenous protest activities with private sector companies, and for each instance, which companies received such information, and on what dates; and (i) how many meetings have taken place between representatives of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project and (i) RCMP personnel, (ii) CSIS personnel?

[Customs Act, September 18th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

That is exactly what is happening. I remember what the Conservative member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound often said when he was asking witnesses questions in committee. He often said that he was prepared to sacrifice some of his privacy for the sake of national security and that he was not too worried about it.

That is easy to say when one is not the victim of discrimination. Once again, I am hearing the Liberals reassure us that we are talking about the basic information that is found on page 2 of one's passport. However, the problem with information sharing, when we create opportunities for privacy violations and we share more and more information within the various government agencies in Canada and with other foreign governments, in this case the U.S. government, is that it becomes possible for officials to sometimes jump to erroneous conclusions based on that small amount of information.

Information such as a person's country of origin, date of birth, or even gender may seem inconsequential, but that may be all it takes in the hands of a discriminatory government agency. When discrimination is involved, even basic information can lead to unfortunate consequences. That is why we need to take the responsibility to protect that information very seriously, and we do not believe that the Liberals or the Conservatives are doing that.

[Customs Act, September 18th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's words about her late colleague. Certainly he will be missed by all of us. On that we can certainly agree.

On a lighter note, and with the member being from Hamilton, I would like to thank her city for the warm welcome we received there this weekend when the NDP caucus was in town.

On a more serious note, and to my colleague's question, as I said in my remarks, the fact is that this bill does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a larger agreement between the Canadian government and the U.S. government to start sharing more information. It is only a first step in a larger program that is going to be rolled out over the next few years.

More specifically, proposed subsection 93(1) of the bill, “Information given to the Agency”, states:

(a) in relation to the conveyance or its travel route, the last place inside Canada from which it departed, regardless of whether the persons boarded the conveyance at that place, the date and time of that departure and any prescribed information

It goes on to talk about “the type of travel document that identifies the person,” and “the name of the country or organization that issued the travel document”.

Let us think about things like that. Say we have a Canadian citizen who is a dual citizen. This is a hypothetical example. Hypotheses are never very safe in politics, but for the sake of debate, let us use one. It is someone from a country that is a target of Mr. Trump's travel ban who uses his or her passport from that country to travel. Now we are sharing information with the U.S., telling it where that document is from and things like that. We are going down that rabbit hole, down that slippery slope. With all this profiling we are seeing based on religious beliefs or country of origin, that is where we start opening Pandora's box.

I have said a few times in my remarks that if we want to go down this path with these agreements with other countries, all the mechanisms that require the accountability of these agencies have to catch up, and they have not, whether it was Bill C-51 or the bills tabled by the government. We are not going in the right direction at all with regard to protecting Canadians' rights and privacy.