Scott Reid

[Questions on the Order Paper, September 20th, 2022]

With regard to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP): (a) how many Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) does the RCMP possess, (i) in total, (ii) by location, province or detachment; (b) since January 1, 2011, how many AEDs has the RCMP purchased, by year of purchase; (c) since January 1, 2011, what has been the total amount spent relating to the purchase, use, and maintenance of AEDs, broken down by year; (d) are any instruments (such as contracts, requests for proposals, requests for information, or tendering processes) active, in progress, in force, or under negotiation, for the purchase or maintenance of AEDs; (e) with respect to (d), for each instrument, what was the (i) instrument in question, (ii) date it took effect or was made publicly available, (iii) purpose; (f) since January 1, 2011, have any briefing or informational materials pertaining to AEDs been provided to the Minister of Public Safety, the office of the Minister of Public Safety, the office of the Deputy Minister of Public Safety, or the office of the Commissioner of the RCMP; (g) for each instance in (f), what was the (i) date the material was provided, (ii) recipient or office to which the material was provided, (iii) topic of the material provided?

[Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, September 15th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, at Her Majesty's coronation on June 2, 1953, the following sublimely optimistic, traditional formula was repeated: “God bless Queen Elizabeth. God save Queen Elizabeth. May the Queen live forever.”

So long was our late Queen on the throne that it felt almost as if her reign really never would end, and it seemed possible to hope that the Queen really could live forever. She became so intimately woven into our memories that it felt to many people around the world as if she were a member of our own families. I think this happened not just because of the length of her reign, but also because she celebrated with us at every important event in our nation's life and mourned with her subjects at so many collective tragedies.

Her reign started long before most of us were born. When, as a teenager, I first saw her in person at the 1982 event here on Parliament Hill where she affixed her signature to Canada's new Constitution Act, which includes the Charter of Rights, she had already celebrated her Silver Jubilee for 25 years on the throne. From my youthful perspective, she was already an eternal presence.

This same perspective is very much the same for anybody who was less than kindergarten age when the Queen ascended to the throne, which means, demographically, over 90% of the Canadian population and an even higher percentage in some other Commonwealth jurisdictions. There simply is no time in our memories when Queen Elizabeth was not there. She was even woven into pop culture, referred to in songs by the Beatles and Dire Straits among many others. It was in this way that she came to feel like a member of the family to so many people who had never actually met her.

A year ago, when my own mother was in her final days, she kept a framed photo of the Queen at her bedside, just as we learned from the Beatles' song Penny Lane that in the pocket of the fireman was a portrait of the Queen. Her presence, even if it was only in our imaginations, was a comfort. Does it make sense to act as if someone we have only ever seen from a distance is a member of our own family? I do not know. Nothing about human emotions seems logical when we try to examine them logically as opposed to emotionally. However, whether we humans are rational or not, her loss feels to so many of us like the personal blow it is to those who really did know her first-hand.

Of course this circle includes our new King, His Majesty King Charles III. Like his mother before him, and a long line of ancestors before that, he faces the difficult task of assuming the duties that will occupy him for the rest of his life at a moment of great personal loss, and must step into his constitutional role precisely when the rest of us would be in a position to take bereavement leave. There is no reason to envy our monarchs for the terrible burdens they must bear. Under our system, a monarch wears the crown for life and death alone can free them of their duties. As difficult as it is for those who must bear the heavy burden of the crown, it is one aspect of the genius of monarchy that the throne is never vacant and that Charles reigned from the moment the late Queen passed from this life into the arms of her own sovereign.

In his first address as our King, His Majesty made the following observation about his late mother. He stated, “In 1947, on her 21st birthday, she pledged in a broadcast from Cape Town to the Commonwealth to devote her life, whether it be short or long, to the service of her peoples.”

His Majesty went on in his speech to make some very apt remarks on the Queen's unparalleled commitment to this extraordinary long-ago promise. Then he added this: “As the Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the Constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.”

Even though, when viewed from the perspective of 1947, the day when she would assume the throne must have seemed to be far away for Princess Elizabeth, it was no small matter to make such a promise on the very day that she achieved the age of majority. It seems to me, and I think to anybody who stops to reflect for a moment, that it is no less extraordinary for a man of 73, to whom the burdens of age are no secret, to make a similar lifetime commitment. The fact that our new King was willing to so firmly embrace this burden, from which he will never be free, and to deny himself for the rest of his life the pleasures of retirement that are enjoyed, for example, by the former monarchs of Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, is a sign that his commitment to duty is as firm as was Queen Elizabeth's, and for that matter as firm as that of his grandfather King George VI, who was such a courageous and steadfast leader during the darkest days of the Second World War.

I think King Charles will be a good king. The King has already demonstrated himself, more than any preceding Prince of Wales, to be a conscientious servant of all his peoples throughout the Commonwealth. He is intelligent. He is hard-working. His wife and consort, Her Majesty Queen Camilla, is an ideal partner. Of course, he has had an entire lifetime to learn from the best possible role model.

The King is a man of no small accomplishment. He is an author. He is a skilled watercolourist. I was once given a book of his landscape paintings as a Christmas present. He is a businessman as well, establishing the successful brand of high-quality organic products known as Duchy Originals. The profits from these sales, by the way, are donated to the Prince's Charities, which the King built into a formidable network of charitable giving during his long tenure as the Prince of Wales. I assume that at his coronation, which will take place sometime in 2023, the formula will be repeated: “God bless King Charles. God save King Charles. May the King live forever.”

Given the longevity of both his parents and of his grandmother, the much-loved Queen Mum, who passed away only after her 100th birthday, there is every reason to hope that his reign too, by modern or historical standards, will be a long one, if not as long as the extraordinary example set by his mother.

However, like all reigns, it starts in sorrow. The Queen is dead and there will be a permanent hollow place in millions of hearts across the planet, as there always is when someone loved is taken from us.

God bless our departed Queen. I hope she knew how much she was loved by all those people she was never able to meet in her lifetime.

[Adjournment Proceedings, June 22nd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I have a very brief question for the parliamentary secretary. I am aware that he is not in a position to make a statement on behalf of the government, so I will simply ask him to take this back to the Minister of Public Safety.

It is the question that I ended with. Will the government commit to instructing Correctional Services Canada that no second Joyceville construction contract will be issued? If that is done and that instruction is issued, that would end the possibility of a goat farm. It would also end the possibility of any further questions from me, which must be a very welcome prospect for the hon. member.

He is my neighbour and friend. I just want to take this opportunity, as we come to the end of the Parliamentary session, to wish my hon. colleague and friend a very happy summer. It sounds like he has some very nice plans put together. He has a wonderful family to share the summer with, and I wish him the very happiest summer vacation possible.

[Correctional Service of Canada, June 22nd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, a strange sort of slow-motion sparring match has been taking place in the Commons since March 22, when I first rose to ask the Minister of Public Safety about the government's plans for a potential goat farm at Joyceville Institution. I have asked questions over and over again on a very specific matter: Will the government guarantee that it will not permit CORCAN, the profit-making prison industry arm of the Correctional Services Canada, to establish a goat farm?

Various spokesmen for the government, sometimes the minister, sometimes the parliamentary secretary and on one occasion the member for Kingston and the Islands, have answered that there is at present no goat farm and no contract to start building one. A typical response is this one from May 30: “Correctional Service Canada does not possess any goats, and there are no contracts for the sale of goat milk.”

Now, I do not doubt that this is true, but what I want is something different: a commitment from the government that it will absolutely, permanently close off the option of starting a goat operation. There is a real need for a definitive policy statement.

It is abundantly clear that Correctional Service Canada remains very much committed to creating a commercial goat farm. Every time we get a definitive-sounding answer in the House of Commons, like the one I just recited, we get the opposite from correctional services. For example, two days after I was told that there are no goats and there is no contract, CSC restated to the media that while at present there are no plans for dairy goat operations, it would “reassess at a later date”, which means that a goat farm employing convict labour at below-market rates appears to still be on the table.

Meanwhile, a $10-million contract has been issued for the construction of a dairy cow barn at Joyceville, despite the fact that correctional services is legally prohibited from using this milk to feed the inmate community. It is also illegally prohibited from selling it externally because it has no dairy quota. The sole plausible purpose for this cow's milk must be the one that correctional services intended from the start: to feed the baby goats whose own mothers' milk is being sold commercially.

Of course, there is this important detail: The site plan embedded in the $10-million contract contains something labelled “Future Goat Barn. Not in Contract”, and something called “Future Septic System for Goat Barn”. The part of the contract labelled “project description” could hardly be less ambiguous on this point: “It is the intent of Correctional Services Canada to construct two livestock barns, one for Cattle and one for Goats at the Joyceville Institution. The proposed Goat barn will have an approximate footprint of 6500 square meters.” It is abundantly clear that this contract is simply stage one of a two-stage construction project for a commercial goat farm.

While I am confident that Corrections Canada still does not own any goats and still does not have any contract for the sale of goat milk, I ask this once again, as I did on June 10: Will the government order Correctional Services Canada to end the possibility of any future reassessment of the goat farm, and will the government stop spending millions on the infrastructure for that goat farm, the one that it claims it does not want? Specifically, will the government commit to instructing Correctional Services Canada that no second Joyceville construction contract will be issued?

[Public Safety, June 17th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, my question is for the public safety minister. Just before the pandemic, I met with his predecessor on the subject of placing defibrillators in every RCMP cruiser. He agreed with me that this would save 300 lives per year, and he expressed personal pride at the fact that earlier in his career he had placed defibrillators in every city of Toronto police cruiser.

Could the current minister advise the House as to whether RCMP cruisers have been receiving defibrillators since the time of this conversation?

[Correctional Service of Canada, June 10th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, in April, in response to questions regarding a possible goat farm in Joyceville, the parliamentary secretary stated: “Correctional Service Canada does not intend to do any goat milk production.” In May, she told the House: “they were not moving forward with goats.”

However, on June 2, CSC stated that, while it clearly had no plans for dairy operations, it would “reassess at a later date.”

Why will the government not just admit that it is not going to take the goat farm option off the table?

[Public Safety, June 10th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. It was very strange hearing him reciting back to me the same statistics I had just given to him. I pointed out that they been decontextualized by the minister. He simply repeated them. He repeated the same claim about being three times less likely to offend when one has been in a CORCAN program, which is just not true. Someone is one-third as likely to reoffend if they have found employment in a CORCAN program, which makes them 9% more likely to get employment, which is to say it is a very badly managed program if that is all it can do. CORCAN has this bizarre mandate where someone is working and it is treated as a kind of training in place of training. As a result, the training is simply ineffective at its intended purpose. He should know that, and I hope that his boss gets the message.

[Public Safety, June 10th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, in defending CORCAN's plan to rebuild the dairy herd at Joyceville and Collins Bay institutions, the minister and his parliamentary secretary have made claims that are completely divorced from reality.

Let us start with the minister's claim made in April. He said, “offenders who participate in [CORCAN] programs are three times less likely to reoffend and find themselves back in custody.”

This would be impressive if it were true, but what Correctional Service Canada actually says is the following: “Offenders who were employed in the community [post-release]...were almost three times less likely to be revoked with a new offence than those who were not employed.”

In other words, it is getting a job, not participating in a CORCAN program, that cuts the risk of reoffending. How likely is it that participating in a CORCAN program would help offenders to find a job? The answer is provided in the same Correctional Service document. It says, “Offenders employed with CORCAN were 1.09 times more likely than offenders employed in non-CORCAN institutional employment...to obtain a job in the community”.

To be clear, participating in a CORCAN program decreases an inmate's chances of reoffending by only 9%. It is not by two-thirds, as the minister claims. Frankly, 9% is pretty good compared to what happens if an inmate has been in the prison farm program. In 2009, the departmental report stated that, over the previous five years, 99 of the 25,000 offenders released found work in the agricultural sector. That is less than one half of 1%. In three of those five years, only a single former offender found work in the agricultural sector in Ontario, where Collins Bay and Joyceville are located.

Let us turn now to the parliamentary secretary's idyllic description of the prison farm program at Collins Bay. She said, “I can think of few experiences that were more meaningful than engaging with the offenders who are participating in this program. These men were naming baby calves and bottle-feeding them and were well on their way to transitioning to a life free from crime.”

If only this bore any resemblance whatsoever to reality. I note that the parliamentary secretary simply passed over the fact that, over a period of about a year, nearly 20 calves died in the prison farm for reasons officially characterized as “unknown causes”. How these deaths affected these offenders is unclear.

Here is what is actually like to be involved in the prison farm program taking care of cattle. I am quoting from an inmate, now free to report on his experiences at a prison farm. He said:

When I had to go in a take a baby calf away from her mother...they knew what we were doing, and they were going to do whatever was possible to stop that...[and] that affected me. Of course it affected me.... They would cry, the mother and the baby would be talking to each other, and it's—oh my God. And you know that hurt, that affected me.

The Liberals assure us that all inmates who work at the prison farm are volunteers, and besides, they are paid. To be clear, they are paid a maximum of $6.90 for a full day of work. One inmate noted that, after mandatory deductions were taken into account, it took him six months to save enough money to buy a pair of shoes.

Here is one other inmate's description of what it means to be a volunteer. He said, “ I was quietly 'warned' by a...manager here at Collins Bay Medium that the warden would consider any decision to quit work...as going against my Correctional Plan.... So, essentially I have been coerced into continuing to carry out labour for CORCAN Industries.”

This program is a disaster. Why do the Liberals not just admit it?

[Islamophobia, June 6th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, a year ago today, five members of the Afzaal family, out for an evening stroll in London, were struck at high speed, and with deliberate malice, by a pickup truck. Four family members were killed; only the youngest child, then age nine, survived.

As the suspect’s trial has not yet taken place, we cannot know with certainty whether he was motivated primarily by racial hatred, by religious hatred or by some combination of the two. Members will notice that I do not name the suspect. Those who commit the worst crimes should not be remembered by name. Depriving them of notoriety is one of the few tools we have to incentivize other individuals who might consider becoming copycats. It is the four members of the Afzaal family, Talat, Salman, Madiha, and 15-year-old Yumna, who must not be forgotten.

This is not the worst act of anti-Muslim violence in Canada. That melancholy label applies to the 2017 shooting at the Centre culturel islamique de Québec. We now know that the events of 2017 were not unique, and therefore we must always remain vigilant, all of us, on behalf of Canada’s 1.4 million Muslims.

[Constitution Act, 2022 (representation of Quebec), June 6th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, we are talking today about Bill C-246, which provides that the total number of members from the province of Quebec can never be less than 25% of the total number of members in the House of Commons, regardless of whether Quebec's population decreases.

However, if Quebec's population increases and its percentage of representation exceeds 25% of the total number of members in the House, no limits will be imposed on Quebec under this bill.

If Quebec continues to be part of the Canadian federation, which I hope it will, it will have to adhere to the principles under which the federation was created in 1867. These principles were the subject of a month-long debate in the Parliament of the Province of Canada in 1866, when the broad strokes of what would become the Constitution Act, 1867, were debated and approved.

The biggest compromise that was made at that time was an agreement under which the three parts of the country that existed at the time, namely, Quebec, Ontario and the maritime provinces, would have equal representation in the upper chamber or Senate and would be represented by population in the lower chamber or House of Commons.

It is hard to overstate the importance of what the founders considered to be inseparable twin principles. The expression “representation by population” was used 186 times in the debates on Confederation in the legislative council and assembly of the Province of Canada. If this agreement had not been reached, then Confederation never would have happened.

To make this point, I am now going to turn to a few quotes from the time. This is in a volume of The Confederation Debates, which I played a role in editing, the first edition published since the 1860s. It is an English-language edition.

I am quoting first from George Brown, who stated:

Our Lower Canadian friends have agreed to give us representation by population in the Lower House on the express condition that they could have equality in the Upper House. On no other condition could we have advanced a step; and, for my part, I am quite willing they should have it.

This goes back and forth in French and English. I am not sure if it was originally in French, but I am going to quote it in English because that is what I have in front of me.

George-Étienne Cartier stated:

In 1858 I first saw that representation by population, though unsuited for application as a governing principle as between the two provinces, [Upper and Lower Canada], would not involve the same objection if other partners were drawn in by a federation. In a struggle between two—one a weak, and the other a strong party—the weaker could not but be overcome; but if three parties were concerned, the stronger would not have the same advantage; as when it was seen by the third that there was too much strength on one side, the third would club with the weaker combatant to resist the big fighter.

This was greeted with cheers, apparently. I note that he was prescient. Alberta and Quebec have worked closely together throughout the history of the 20th and 21st centuries of this country.

He goes on to say, “I did not entertain the slightest apprehension that Lower Canada’s rights were in the least jeopardized by the provision that in the General Legislature”, by which he means the House of Commons, “the French Canadians of Lower Canada would have a smaller number of representatives than all the other origins combined.”

Finally, I turn to John A. Macdonald. In the same speech in which he refers to the Senate as the chamber of sober second thought, he said, “To the Upper House is to be confided the protection of sectional interests; therefore is it that the three great divisions are there equally represented, for the purpose of defending such interests against the combinations of majorities in the Assembly.”

He goes on to say:

In the formation of the House of Commons, the principle of representation by population has been provided for in a manner equally ingenious and simple. The introduction of this principle presented at first the apparent difficulty of a constantly increasing body until, with the increasing population, it would become inconveniently and expensively large. But by adopting the representation of Lower Canada as a fixed standard—

That is, 65 seats for lower Canada or Quebec, and then the rest based on equally sized ridings.

—as the pivot on which the whole would turn—that province being the best suited for the purpose, on account of the comparatively permanent character of its population, and from its having neither the largest nor least number of inhabitants—we have been enabled to overcome the difficulty I have mentioned.

All of them were in favour of representation by population in the lower House.

The proposal at the time was that Quebec would hold 65 of the 181 seats in the House of Commons, or 36% of the total. This accurately reflected its share of the population. Quebec held 24 of the 72 seats in the Senate, only 33%. This means that Quebec was slightly under-represented in the upper house.

However, the relative population of the provinces has, over time, changed in ways that Sir John A. Macdonald and the other authors of the Constitution did not anticipate. Quebec's population grew considerably, but not as fast as some of the other provinces, including the six that had not yet joined Confederation at that time.

As a result, various amendments were made to section 51 of the Constitution Act, 1867, where our electoral formula is set out. The formula was adjusted in 1915; otherwise, Prince Edward Island's number of seats would have dropped below four in 1946, then again in 1952, 1975, 1985 and 2012. This year, it is being adjusted again so that Quebec will not lose a seat.

The end result is that Quebec is now represented in the Senate by the exact number of senators that its population would warrant, which is 24 senators out of 105, or 22.9% of the senators for a province with 22.9% of the Canadian population. That seems entirely appropriate to me.

Quebec will never have fewer seats than the number to which its population is entitled. In fact, in the event that Quebec's population dips below 22% of the Canadian total, it would become overrepresented in the Senate, where the numbers would never change regardless of any change to the populations in the provinces. Here, in the House of Commons, we have exactly the same situation, thanks to the anticipated changes to the Constitution, which I hope will be adopted.

There are many other aspects to Canada's seat distribution formula that I find problematic, but in at least one province, Quebec, the initial agreement still works as it should.