Randall Garrison

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, February 6th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. There is a veritable smorgasbord of things on which I disagree with him in terms of his characterization of what has been going on.

Even though the bill is about establishing a complaints procedure that would benefit Canadians and members of the Canada Border Services Agency and makes clear how we should deal with problems that occur at the borders, I take issue with the member's remarks on Roxham Road.

The solution at Roxham Road is very clear, and that is to terminate our safe third country agreement with the United States. Since the current President of the United States has added other countries to the list of those from which people cannot make refugee claims or claim asylum in the United States, we will perhaps see more people coming across the border at these illegal border crossings, as the Conservatives like to call them, which are, really, irregular border crossings. It is never illegal for refugees who are in fear of their lives to make a claim in Canada. The problem is our agreement with the United States, which says refugees cannot do that at border crossings.

The solution, which the Conservatives and the Liberals seem to fear, is to suspend our safe third country agreement with the United States. That would direct this traffic where it should be: to the regular border crossings.

Would the member agree with me that a much simpler solution is to suspend our agreement with the United States?

[National Defence Act, February 6th, 2020]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-203, an act to amend the National Defence Act (maiming or injuring self or another).

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a bill that I had sincerely hoped to see adopted in the last Parliament.

The bill aims to remove a significant barrier to members of the Canadian Forces receiving the mental health assistance they need. It would do so by repealing subsection (c) of section 98 of the National Defence Act. This is the archaic section of the National Defence Act that makes self-harm a disciplinary offence in the military code of conduct.

The problem of death by suicide of Canadian Forces members is not going away. We are still losing more than one serving member per month to death by suicide, 17 in 2019 alone. We have lost 212 regular members over the last 15 years and of course the number is much higher when we include reservists and veterans.

Again, I am arguing that removing this section would send a strong message that self-harm is a mental health issue and not something to be addressed by discipline.

This is a matter I first brought forward in the last Parliament as an amendment to Bill C-77, the military justice bill. When that amendment was ruled out of order, I offered this private member's bill as an alternative way of taking the actions necessary to send a positive message to Canadian Forces members struggling with mental health issues. Despite support for my bill by opposition parties in the last Parliament, the Liberals blocked it from moving forward.

Today, I am introducing the bill in a minority Parliament, once again hoping MPs will now listen to the voices of the hundreds of families that have lost loved ones to death by suicide, that MPs will join together in this Parliament to tackle the ongoing challenge of death by suicide in the Canadian Forces and that MPs begin by passing this legislation.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Implementation Act, February 5th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, sometimes British Columbia and Quebec seem oceans apart, even though it is all land in between, but when it comes to free trade, there are a couple of things that we have in common.

One of those, of course, is that we produce aluminum in British Columbia as well. The second one, which is very important to me, is dairy on Vancouver Island.

I wonder if the hon. member sees the same concerns that I do. Whenever we cut into dairy production in Canada, we endanger not only the income of farmers but also the quality of our dairy products in Canada because of the lower standards in the United States, and we endanger our food security locally and our ability to supply our own markets with good, high-quality food as well. That is a very big issue on Vancouver Island.

I wonder if the hon. member shares those concerns.

[Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Implementation Act, February 5th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member on his thoughtful intervention on free trade. I share his frustration that parliamentarians were presented with a finished deal. We have to decide what is good, what is bad, but it is a take it or leave it.

Would the member agree with me that we might look to other countries like the U.S., which has a much more robust process, earlier when considering trade agreements, which require the negotiators to table their objectives in the House so there could be a discussion among parliamentarians on where trade agreements are heading?

With perhaps the U.K. and China negotiations coming down the road, would the member agree that we need a better process here to involve Parliament sooner in trade negotiations?

[Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Implementation Act, February 5th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech with a great deal of interest. I am perplexed by his argument that the NDP and the Bloc somehow joined together to block progress on the bill. What we have asked for is simply a full debate on it.

The member is concerned about how we move forward. If Parliament had been involved at an earlier stage, if the government had come to Parliament and presented its negotiation goals in this free trade agreement so we could have discussed it as a Parliament and presented reports on the economic impacts of this deal long before the present, we would have been able to move quicker at this point. Does he agree with me? Do we need a better process for involving Parliament in trade deals?

[Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Implementation Act, February 5th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, I welcome you to the chair.

My question for the hon. member is about trade deals in general.

My perspective is that we can see some improvements in this deal, mostly brought by Democrats in the United States, not by the Liberal negotiators. We got rid of proportionality and investor-state provisions. There are some things that are clearly of concern, like dairy on Vancouver Island and the protection of it, and the protection of the aluminum industry in Canada.

My real concern is what happens in trade negotiations in Canada. In the House, we only get the finished deal at the last minute to comment on. Would the member agree with me that what we really need is a better process for involvement of parliamentarians at an earlier stage in trade negotiations?

[Business of Supply, February 4th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member back to the House. We have had some good exchanges over the years here.

I would like to ask her a question about the larger context. This debate is larger than just the decision of the Parole Board. This debate is about the circumstances in which the decision was carried out.

Earlier I talked about attitudes toward violence against women and treating violence toward domestic partners as somehow being a lesser threat to the public than others and treating sex workers as somehow less worthy of the safety and protection than others in our society. Would the member not agree with me that as well as those narrow questions which must be answered about the Parole Board, there are some larger issues at play here about attitudes toward gender-based violence?

[Business of Supply, February 4th, 2020]

Shame. Shame on you.

[Business of Supply, February 4th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I have to point out once again that I always perversely enjoy it when the Liberals and Conservatives argue about who does the worst job, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a very tragic incident that resulted in a loss of life that none of us want to see repeated.

I know the hon. member well and I respect him. Does he think the fact that the victim in this case was a sex worker is as important as the questions his party is raising around the conditional release system? I happen to believe the safety of sex workers and the operations of the Parole Board are equally important questions for us to look at. Does he share that opinion?

[Business of Supply, February 4th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Victoria for her impassioned question, to which I think there is no easy or simple answer.

When we were passing the legislation to, what I call recriminalize sex work since the Supreme Court decriminalized it, if we had listened to sex workers and allowed them to have safe places to conduct their work, then it appears quite clear that this specific incident would not have happened. The violence that had been perpetrated against other sex workers would have been reported to the police, as it should be able to be reported, without repercussions on the sex workers or the place at which they carry on their work.

Therefore, because we did not listen and because we recriminalized sex work after the court decisions, we are placed in a situation where we are confronted with violence against women on a very regular basis, usually against those most marginalized, either by sex work as their primary occupation or by engaging in sex work in support of addictions or because they have no other alternatives. There is a whole variety of reasons that women end up in these situations, but we failed to listen to any of their voices and failed to keep them safe.