House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 43% of the vote.
Public Safety March 21st, 2017
Mr. Speaker, the reeve of Emerson, Manitoba, says another 29 asylum seekers illegally crossed into his community on Sunday night alone. We also know that refugees are illegally crossing into Quebec with American visas issued at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia.
Canadians are tired of the Liberals' inaction and denial. Where is the plan? When will the Liberals finally take action and regain control of our borders?
Sexual Assault March 21st, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I recently hosted a meeting in my riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka with local advocacy groups and the mayors of Huntsville and Bracebridge to discuss an alarming report in the Globe and Mail.
The report revealed one in five sexual assault claims in Canada is dismissed as unfounded by the police. My riding has some of the highest numbers in the country, with more than half of sexual assault allegations being dropped. We must work together to address these disturbing and unacceptable statistics.
We should be looking at alternative models of addressing sexual assault allegations, including the Philadelphia model. This model was implemented 14 years ago, and allows front-line groups, which understand trauma, to review reported sexual assault cases directly with police.
I am encouraged that communities and advocacy groups in Parry Sound—Muskoka and across the country are working together and learning from one another to find effective solutions to support sexual assault victims. Let us all help our communities to reduce and eliminate sexual violence, and bring perpetrators to justice.
Operation UNIFIER March 20th, 2017
Mr. Chair, I would like the hon. member to expand on the legal framework, because I hear apologists who take the Putin line ask, and we heard it in this House just a few minutes ago, why we should care about Crimea as it is primarily Russian. Perhaps the hon. member can describe in more detail the legal framework that was based on the fact that the major powers guaranteed the sovereignty and the borders of Ukraine at the time it gave up its nuclear arsenal at the breakup of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the hon. member could delve into that a bit.
Operation UNIFIER March 20th, 2017
Mr. Chair, I thank the hon. minister for her remarks, which were a tour d'horizon of the previous government's support, and obviously the support of the minister and the government as well.
I was in Ukraine, as the hon. minister knows, from February 28 to March 3, on a humanitarian mission with One Free World International. There are over one million displaced persons in Ukraine right now. They have been displaced by the horrific war that is still going on. It is not a cold war, but a hot war in the Donbass region. I visited the military hospital. Many Canadian doctors are there, working overnight shifts because there are young men who need their help after being in the war zone.
I also met with a number of Ukrainian officials. They worried about the corruption in their society still and how Canada could help them.
I have a three-part question for the hon. minister. I know we have Operation Unifier, which is amazing and should be continued, but how can we help combat corruption? How can we help make sure Ukrainian soldiers can better defend their homeland? How can we help the displaced persons who need our help?
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act March 20th, 2017
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. minister for his interventions, but I also want to remind him about some of the other testimony we heard at the committee stage from people Liberals like to call experts and like to defer to. I am thinking of Professor Roach, for example, and others in the privacy realm, who said that this bill—and it is only reinforced by the amendments the Liberals are proposing—actually creates a triple lock on the ability of the committee to do its job properly. It is a lock that is dictated by the Prime Minister's Office and is further dictated by the minister, and it prevents the committee from gaining access to information in a timely manner to do its proper job of oversight.
Would the minister care to comment on that?
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act March 20th, 2017
Madam Speaker, how can the hon. government House leader justify watering down the government's own bill when promising in an election to have a meaningful parliamentary oversight process?
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act March 20th, 2017
Madam Speaker, very simply, the hon. House leader knows full well that the hon. Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, as well as other members of her caucus, have been on the record decrying this very parliamentary motion when they were on this side of the aisle, when they were in opposition. Indeed, I am quite concerned that it is being used on a measure that relates to the national security of our country and the parliamentary oversight that is being proposed by the bill. Certainly we have not debated it long enough. There have been a number of meaningful amendments by the government. I would like to know how she can square the Liberals' opposition to these kinds of motions when they were in opposition with what they are doing today in the House.
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act March 8th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member. During the election campaign, the government promised a national security oversight process. However, under this bill, the committee will not have all the necessary powers to ensure the security of our country and protect the interests of our citizens.
My hon. colleague, the NDP critic, and I face a very difficult situation together where we want to support the legislation, but the amendments that are being proposed here further weaken the legislation. We cannot abide by that and we do not support that.
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act March 8th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I will repeat again. If we are going to go through the trouble of creating a parliamentary oversight committee, which was, one could argue, the will of the people as a result of October 2015, then make it work. We want it to work.
We accept the will of the people. We are democrats on this side of the House. We accept the democratic will. We are saying to the hon. member and his party, “Fulfill your promise.” Do not get into this Potemkin village parliamentary oversight committee, which does not have the powers it needs to do its job. What is the point?
That is the point I am trying to make as the Conservative Party critic. I am saying this not only for myself and not only for our caucus but that was the testimony we heard at committee from the experts that the hon. member and his colleagues seem always to agree with and want to be subservient to, unless they disagree with the government's proposal, in which case they ignore the experts.
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act March 8th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join in the debate on this very important bill as the public safety critic for the Conservative Party of Canada, the official opposition. Let me state at the outset what should be obvious, but in this place, sometimes one has to state the obvious. As Conservatives, we support the review and accountability of our national security bodies. That is a position that took a few twists and turns over the years, because obviously, prior to the last election, the previous prime minister was not enthusiastic about a parliamentary oversight committee, perhaps. There were other means by which he wanted to ensure that there was accountability.
The election is over, of course. There is a new government. The Liberals are purporting to follow through on their promise to create a parliamentary oversight committee, but here is where we get to, as Shakespeare would put it, all sound and fury signifying nothing.
We have gone through this whole process of creating a new parliamentary oversight committee. Heck, they even hired the chairman, via the PMO, before the bill was even passed. We have gone through this whole process. We had all the committee hearings. We listened to the experts, and the government is not listening to the experts. This is a government that says the experts are always right, except when the experts disagree with the government. Then we do not listen to them. That is exactly what has happened in this case.
I want to make it clear that the devil is not only in the details; the devil is in the fundamental misappropriation of the bill to promise something to the electorate and then not deliver. That is my problem with the bill. It is the same problem the member for Victoria has with the bill. The legislation before us has some key flaws, and it makes it impossible for us on this side of the House to support it.
What is more, and this was alluded to by the member for Victoria as well, my NDP friend, some of the amendments introduced by the government House leader weaken this legislation even further. The committee proposed by this legislation, evidently chaired by the member for Ottawa South, through an announcement by the PMO, places far too much control in the Prime Minister's Office and far too little control with Parliament and parliamentarians.
First of all, the Prime Minister picks all the members of the proposed committee. Yes, there is some consultation with the leaders of the opposition parties, but ultimately, the membership is dictated by the PMO. What is more, not only is the membership dictated by the Prime Minister, but the information the proposed committee will receive is also dictated by the party in power. The Prime Minister, the relevant minister, can decide that information is too sensitive to be shared with the proposed committee, despite the fact that the members of this committee are all hon. members and are sworn to secrecy. How can the committee review the actions of our security services if the information they receive is heavily redacted and is vetted and approved by the political masters, the political actors?
The second problem is in the nature of the committee. This is not the usual parliamentary committee. By virtue of the way the legislation is structured, it does not have the authorities and the privileges of a parliamentary committee. In fact, the Minister of Public Safety or the Prime Minister can edit the reports of the committee, or indeed block them entirely. This is very disturbing, to say the least. If problematic information were to come to light during an investigation by the proposed committee, the minister or the Prime Minister could bury that information, and the committee would have no recourse.
This seems to me obviously to defeat the purpose of enacting this legislation in the first place. If there is any sort of serious problem, Canadians ought to know about it. Even if some details need to be kept classified, and I acknowledge that fact, Canadians need to know what their government is doing in their name. This is a major concern. This is not a minor quibble.
If we are going to implement parliamentary oversight, we need to do it right. It needs to be real and substantial oversight. It needs to be parliamentary. Otherwise, this is simply a Liberal Party communications exercise, and this is not something the Conservative Party can support.
This brings me to the consideration of the report stage motions before us today. Some of these motions are innocuous. One might question why they were brought forward, but quite frankly, the result is benign. I am thinking of Motions Nos. 1 and 2, in particular.
However, there are other motions that are far more disturbing. For example, Motion No. 4 adds to the classes of information that are inaccessible to the proposed committee. This particularly relates to subclauses 14(c) and 14(d). Removing information directly relating to law enforcement investigations that may lead to a prosecution essentially removes all RCMP participation in this committee. Quite literally, any action taken by RCMP National Division may lead to a prosecution. That is the reason it exists, yet this could be removed from the committee's purview.
My hon. friend from Victoria mentioned the concerns raised at the committee in the testimony of the Information Commissioner, Professor Kent Roach, and Ron Atkey, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, about how the flow of information would be subject to what they call the triple lock. They coined the phrase. There would be not one lock on the information, not two locks on the information, but three locks on the information by virtue of successive clauses that would make it impossible for this committee to do its job. This is, indeed, a very problematic piece of legislation.
Of course, there have been discussions at committee, and I believe that the threats are still very real. CSIS recently released a report that concluded that radical Islamic terrorism remains a serious threat to Canada. It said that ISIS and al Qaeda are still recruiting Canadians and are still threats. Therefore, engaging in political posturing on an issue as important as national security is simply not appropriate. We need to make sure that CSIS, the CSE, and the RCMP have the tools they need to keep Canadians safe, and one of these tools is ensuring that there is public confidence that these brave women and men are doing their jobs appropriately.
If we are going to be debating national security issues, then let us debate the issues. Let us not have this debate, where this bill is being gutted by the government that proposed the bill in the first place. I would rather be talking about issues such as border crossings and all the other issues that face this country.
It is for this reason that I must say, more in sorrow than in anger, that Conservatives will be opposing the amendments that further weaken this bill. Therefore, if the will of the House is that those amendments pass, we must oppose the bill in general.