Peter Van Loan

[Business of the House, February 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and I believe if you seek it, you will find consent for the motion that follows. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, the hours of sitting and the order of business of the House on Thursday, April 2, 2015, shall be those of a Friday, provided that any recorded division deferred to or requested on that day in respect of a debatable motion, other than an item of Private Members' Business, be deferred until Monday, April 20, 2015, at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[Respect for Communities Act, February 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I must advise that an agreement has not been reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) concerning the proceedings at report stage and third reading of Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at those stages.

[Rise in anti-Semitism, February 24th, 2015]

Mr. Chair, I grew up in a community in York Mills and went to school with a lot of colleagues who were the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors. I, myself, came from an Estonian background. My family had seen waves of Soviet, Nazi, and then Soviet occupation before they fled, and many of those in the family who did not flee met a fate in Estonia in the Soviet Union under the communists, including in their concentration camps, similar to that met by many of my friends' relatives in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and through their empire at the time.

We grew up and we shared those experiences. I remember how poignant that was and how important it was to learn from it all and to recognize those horrors of the 20th century and to resolve never to let them ever happen again. That is why, to me, it has been so unthinkable lately to hear things said that, in my childhood, in my teen years, I never dreamed we would hear people say in Canada and elsewhere in the world. This rising tide of anti-Semitism is indeed very real; it is alarming, and things are said that we have never heard before.

The reason a debate like this is so important, I think, is that when I was growing up, those events of World War II, of learning the horrors of the concentration camps and the Holocaust, were really only 25 years old or a little bit older than that. It was really fresh in people's minds and memories.

Today, we have to recognize that is, now, quite some time ago. We are talking 70 to 75 years ago that people were learning of these things. That is why it is important for us to also remember the horrors that could happen if we do not take an unremitting, uncompromising stand against the hatred of anti-Semitism and the associated horrors that can occur.

I know that my friend comes from a Polish background and also saw many of those horrors happen in that country itself. He referenced Auschwitz-Birkenau. He, of course, in his own experience, has been very much affected by those tyrannical horrors of communism and fascism that really tainted the 20th century as one that almost did not have the worthy name of “civilization” that we would like to think we were, in a modern sense.

I would like to hear his thoughts and his reflections on how that experience influenced us growing up and the changes we have seen happening now and what lessons we should take from all of that.

[Business of the House, February 23rd, 2015]

moved:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practices of the House, any Member rising to speak during the debate pursuant to Standing Order 53.1 on Tuesday, February 24, 2015, may indicate to the Chair that he or she will be dividing his or her time with another Member.

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties, and I believe you will find unanimous consent for this motion.

[Business of the House, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue debating Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015, at second reading. These measures will keep Canada secure from evolving threats.

Of course it is important in the context that we live in today that these important measures to keep Canadians safe and combat terrorism do become law during this Parliament. In order to ensure that happens, the debate will continue on Monday, and thanks to an order of this House adopted earlier this day, we are able to have certainty that we will have a vote on it at that time.

Tomorrow we will have the 10th day of debate on Bill C-32, the victims bill of rights act. That afternoon we will wrap up the third reading debate of these measures, which will place victims at the heart of our justice system.

Tuesday shall be the fifth allotted day, which will see us debate a proposal from the Liberal Party. That evening, we will have a take note debate on the troubling rise of anti-Semitism around the world.

This important take-note debate will be on the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism around the world, and we are very much looking forward to seeing this topic discussed. I want to thank the Minister for Multiculturalism and the member for Mount Royal for their persistence in this initiative.

On Wednesday we will turn to Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, for another day of debate at report stage. It will be the 12th day that this bill has been considered by the House. With luck, the opposition will stop holding up this important proposal and let regular, ordinary Canadian citizens have a meaningful say when people want to come to their communities to set up a drug injection site operation.

Then, on Thursday, we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-46, the Pipeline Safety Act, which aims to establish world-class safety standards for pipelines in Canada.

[Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, that should be more than adequate for me to tell the House that the gap the member is concerned about was actually introduced in the previous piece of legislation that we dealt with in this House, a piece of legislation that the member himself and his party voted for, so I think his indignant outrage should be directed at himself.

[Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, on the question of resources provided to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the gentleman need only go through the estimates provided by the government every year since we formed the government to see that the resources we have provided to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to do its very important work have increased considerably over that period of time. That is because we recognize the importance of the work CSIS does, as well as the work done by its companion agencies.

On the question of disruption, if what CSIS was doing was entirely legal and there was no question of people's rights being infringed, then obviously there would be no need for a warrant. However, in the case of any other activity that might violate someone's rights but would be carried out for a good law enforcement reason, a warrant would be needed. That is what we are proposing here.

The benefit of the disruption is that it allows the diversion of materials, revenue, or resources away from someone planning a terrorist attack. That allows our intelligence services, which are trying to keep us safe, to take away the public security threat while at the same time allowing the course of a plot to unfold.

This not only keeps Canadians safer but also ensures that we have a higher prospect of achieving a prosecution of those who seek to conduct terrorist threats against Canada. It has those two benefits: keeping us secure from the immediate threat and also moving forward with prosecutions. The very best way to deal with terrorist threats is to be able to prosecute those who wish to carry them out.

[Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I reject both the premise and the conclusion of the hon. member's question.

We obviously believe that judges are best equipped to provide the oversight in advance of actions taken here through the requirement for warrants, but we also believe that is not the only oversight necessary. There is the oversight provided by the Security Intelligence Review Committee. They can look at matters after the fact. They can look at the overall pattern of issues and deal with the policy questions that result from them.

However, in terms of every individual action and the actual exercise of expanded powers such as those we are giving, there is a requirement for some ability to assess whether they are truly necessary and whether the threat justifies the exercise of the powers. We believe that having judges take evidence would be the best way of providing that kind of protection of Canadians' rights while at the same time allowing the security agencies to make their best efforts to keep Canadians safe.

It is the right balance and it is the best form of oversight for the kinds of powers we are talking about in this legislation.

[Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, in preparing this legislation, our government did have to deal with the question of oversight. I hear some say that the answer is to have parliamentary oversight of the actions of CSIS.

We took a different approach. We believe that the expanded powers that are to be given should not be dealt with after the fact by politicians but should be dealt with before the fact by independent judges. We thought that was the most effective form of oversight for the expanded powers this legislation seeks to give to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. We think that is actually more effective than simply turning to politicians after the fact to duplicate the work of SIRC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, for after-the-fact review.

It is an important role. SIRC is there to play that role, but we think that these expanded powers, because of their extraordinary nature and the circumstances we are in, also require independent oversight by judges before they are used. That is why these powers can only be exercised under warrants provided by judges.

[Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I will remind my friend that this is not a debate on closure. The government has not moved closure. Closure is a different section in the Standing Orders. We are utilizing a scheduling device.

It is important that the bill pass in this Parliament because we are living in an era when threats continue to escalate and continue to change. The tools and devices that were available to protect us have been demonstrated to be wanting. We have demonstrated that there is a need for more. We have unfortunately learned the hard way, and other countries around the world have also learned the hard way.

We will probably never be able to make ourselves 100% safe and secure, but as a government it is most certainly our duty, as it is the duty of everyone here in this Parliament, to do what we can to make Canadians safe and secure in this country while protecting Canadians' rights and freedoms so that they can continue to enjoy the country that they have enjoyed so much.