44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 17, 2022 10:00AM
- Feb/17/22 6:26:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize for not rising. I am still working on my new knees.
I am honoured to rise tonight in one of the most important debates we have had in this place in the time I have been a member of Parliament, and I am on the horns of a dilemma.
I want to acknowledge that I am standing on the traditional territory of the people of the Algonquin nation. Their patience and tolerance with us is indeed generous, and I say meegwetch.
This is a very difficult debate, and it is difficult for many reasons. One reason for me is that I have not yet decided how I will vote, neither has my parliamentary colleague for Kitchener Centre. We are looking deeply at the Emergencies Act and its implications, including the downsides, which are evident, and the need for it, which remains a question.
This speech will be more legalistic than usual. I am essentially going to go through an exercise of statutory interpretation, compare it with the facts and see where we are. I am actually grappling with two questions tonight: How do we vote, and how do we analyze the legal questions?
In this debate today, and from 7 a.m. until midnight tomorrow, as well as the day after, the day after, and part of Monday too, we are going to hear debate not grounded in statutory interpretation, but filled with a lot of emotion. A lot of charges and countercharges will be heard. Both sides have already generously festooned this debate with wedge issues and red herrings. However, I certainly think Canadians, the citizens of this country, need to know what we are talking about, and I will do my best to bring it home.
The first question is this: What is the Emergencies Act?
It is very important to say it is not the War Measures Act. The War Measures Act, as used by the current Prime Minister's father, Pierre Trudeau, in the FLQ crisis, was an egregious violation of rights and freedoms right across the country. It was a suspension of civil liberties everywhere all at once. It was directed against people of Quebec, and even people with no connection whatsoever to anything radical, who were merely political opponents of the government of the day, were rounded up.
There was an official apology in the last session of Parliament. By the way, when the War Measures Act was invoked in the 1970s, police in Vancouver rode into peace camps and started beating people up, because civil liberties were gone right across Canada, and they did not need to have a reason. This is not that.
The Emergencies Act is the work, which I have to say impresses me, of reflective parliamentarians who gathered in the 1980s, when they had no imminent emergency to which they had to respond. They looked at public welfare, such as a pandemic, and how we would respond to that. Would we need the Emergencies Act, and what kind of emergencies would it be for? They looked at war. They looked at natural disasters, and they looked at the situation the government has now invoked, the declaration we are debating tonight, which is of the public order emergency category.
However, when they did that work, those parliamentarians made it clear that this act, by its very language, meant the military could not be called in. By its very language, it says the Charter of Rights and Freedoms will be honoured, and unlike the War Measures Act, it created parliamentary oversight, part of which we are doing here tonight. For any government using this declaration for an emergency, Parliament must debate the matter and vote within seven sitting days. As well, Parliament will have a committee to continue to oversee what takes place under the Emergencies Act to make sure it conforms to the law. As well, 20 members of Parliament and 10 senators, at any time during the 30-day life of this emergency declaration, can gather and request that we debate it again and vote again.
So, in a minority Parliament, this does suggest that the executive, in others words the cabinet and the Prime Minister, do not have the power to call the Emergencies Act. Obviously, they have done the declaration and it is in effect right now, but there is parliamentary oversight, something that was not present under the War Measures Act.
This is described as a public order emergency. Under the Emergencies Act, that is “an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada and that is so serious as to be a national emergency”.
In analyzing this definition, it turns out that the words “threats to the security of Canada” might not mean what one might take as a plain meaning when we think to ourselves what a threat to security is. No, it is specifically described as being the meaning that we would find in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. We go to another act to find the definition for threats to the security of Canada.
This is fascinating. I think I may be the first one to mention it. Threats to the security of Canada in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act is defined with four points to describe it. I will read only (b) because that is the one that most applies in this circumstance. According to the act, threats to the security of Canada include:
(b) foreign influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person,
The second part of that definition that we get from the Emergencies Act itself says that not only must it be a threat to the security of Canada, such as the one I just read out in definitions from the Security Intelligence Service Act, it must also be so serious as to be a national emergency.
For the national emergency definition, as others have referenced in the House, we go back to the Emergency Act:
3. For the purposes of this Act, a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that
(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or
(b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada
I question whether that test been met, whether that threshold been met. That takes further interpretation based on the facts. I personally, and I found this in the declaration itself, so the government is also troubled by this, am troubled by the foreign influence aspect of what we are seeing across Canada.
The declaration which we are debating tonight includes the point that the protests “have become a rallying point for anti-government and anti-authority, anti-vaccination, conspiracy theory and white supremacist groups throughout Canada and other Western countries.” It says, “The protesters have varying ideological grievances, with demands ranging from an end to all public health restrictions to the overthrow of the elected government”.
That does seem very consistent with our first question about whether this is a threat to the security of Canada, under the meaning in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, when foreign influenced activities within or related to Canada are detrimental to the interests of Canada, such as blocking access to trade, blocking communities and shutting down communities. Also, are they clandestine or deceptive? Yes they are, if the money is coming from overseas, people are using anonymous email addresses and they are sending money into Canada for the purpose of disrupting our nation.
What is that purpose? Where do we find further evidence of what foreign influence might be attempting to visit on Canada, but also on other political regimes? This is from yesterday's Associated Press: “How American cash for Canada protests could sway US politics”. In this article, a series of journalists working for Associated Press makes the case that this convoy and the various protests across Canada under the banner of “freedom convoy” is “really aimed at energizing conservative politics in the U.S. [and elsewhere].Republicans think standing with protesters up north will galvanize fundraising and voter turnout”.
No wonder we have luminaries of the far right south of the border such as Texan Republican Ted Cruz and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the protesters in Canada heroes and patriots. They are the darlings of Fox News right now. Senator Rand Paul said that he hopes the truckers come to the United States and “clog up cities”. In other words, one aspect of what raises this to the level of national emergency is that it also has tentacles. The longer it goes on here, the more it is intended to inspire disruptions in other economies, including our number one trading partner. Does it rise to the level of a national emergency?
This is a harder one for me. Does it rise to the level of a national emergency? We have seen blockades being removed. They were geographically easier. There were fewer people. The logistics of the Ambassador Bridge is not the same as what is going on right now outside this place, and I disagree with colleagues in this place who have said that, if we are here in Parliament, it means it is safe. That is not the case.
Friends of mine in this place and members of their staff have had feces thrown at them as they go back and forth to work. We have had people yell at us and abuse us, as we try to go through the streets. Be that at the moment I am someone with a disability, I cannot get here at all without Parliamentary Protective Service protection and assistance. No, it is not our usual Parliament Hill. We do not feel safe here.
Going to the next point of evidence that I want to bring before us, I am very concerned about the nature of our safety and security here. We are not just any city in Canada. We are the national capital. We have attracted a certain type, and I am not going to put a broad brush on everybody who showed up in Ottawa to support the convey. Clearly there are people there thinking it is sort of like a street party. There are people there who are not politically radicalized, but the thread that runs through all of this is a radicalization with an inherent threat of violence.
That came forward more clearly than anything in the Guardian today, in a very chilling article by a Canadian reporter, who I must say I have known for years. My goodness, Justin Ling is distinguishing himself in this crisis as someone who actually goes out, does reporting and digs up information. Today, in the Guardian, the headline was, “Canada was warned before protests that violent extremists infiltrated convoy”.
The hon. member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner made a point earlier today to excuse the protest. He said, it is not their fault, they were infiltrated. Exactly. According to the article in the Guardian today by Canadian journalist Justin Ling, assessments from Canada's Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, known as ITAC, which is part of Security Intelligence Service Canada, or CSIS, reported before the convoy got near Ottawa that the convoy organizers “advocated civil war”.
Convoy organizers hold up the U.S. January 6 insurrection against a fair democratic election promoting the lie that the election was Trump's and it was stolen from him. They hold that up as their model. According to Justin Ling, CSIS and ITAC warned the City of Ottawa police that this was the nature of what was coming to Ottawa.
It was not a secret. They left with great fanfare to drive across the country. When this is all over, we will have to find out what happened within the chain of command in the Ottawa police to ignore these warnings. Some officers, not all necessarily, all but welcomed the convoy. There are reports from local Ottawa journalists that when they interviewed truck drivers, they said that they only planned to stay a little while but then the police told them they could go park on Wellington, and they would not have to leave for a very long time.
Had those truckers not been truckers, but indigenous people coming to assert rights on indigenous territory, they would not have been allowed to get a single stick into the ground to construct a single thing before being arrested quite quickly, or had they been people of colour, or environmentalists. My goodness, look at how we treat camps of homeless people, moving in brutally. The Emergencies Act has not been needed to knock over lots of homeless people in lots of brutal police takedowns.
We know right now that there is an intention on the part of many of these convoy participants to not leave. I do not want to worry about every social media crank that puts things up on Twitter, but I know that freedom convoy social media is saying to get downtown to Victoria to take the Legislature, and they are not going to leave until all the mandates are gone. Forget public health advice. They are going to demand that the government goes, that the mandates goes. Who knows?
It was also reported in this article about warnings from ITAC that it thought the use of vehicles, trucks and fuel could present a real significant threat of violence.
All too often, those of us here in Parliament have wondered and asked security forces whether anyone knows what is in all those trucks. We do not know, so I think we have, clearly, a situation that has been allowed to become intolerable and dangerous, but I am still not comfortable voting for the motion, and I will tell members why.
The emergency measures regulations, as described, are overly broad. When the Prime Minister said this was coming forward, he said it would be geographically circumscribed to the specific areas where we see that normal lines of authority and protections for public life and health are missing. We have an emergency. That is clear. This was promised to be very limited and specific, but the emergency measures regulations define infrastructure as basically everything and then say it applies right across Canada. The designation of protected places under section 6 of the regulations is far too broad and applies to all of Canada.
That is a concern I have. I also know I have heard many people ask for clarity. At what level of financial donation, or financial support of illegal activities, does one's bank account get seized? I highly doubt the Government of Canada plans to seize the bank account of anyone who made a $20 donation on GoFundMe to the “freedom convoy”. I doubt it. I think we are looking for proximate connection: the kind that will exert the pressure that makes the convoy go away.
Where are the pressure points? They are insurance, finances, registration and the chance to make a living as a trucker when this is all over. I do not think the Liberals intend to go after a $20 bank account donation, but I have not heard them say that. I am not comfortable voting until I see more clarity that circumscribes the overly broad reach of the regulations.
I will also say I hear from many people, virtually all the time, asking how we know this will not establish a precedent that allows a crackdown on civil liberties. I want to read one more section into the record very specifically. This is from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, in the definition that has been transplanted into the motion we are debating tonight. It addresses what is a threat to the security of Canada, and it says, at the bottom of the paragraph of which I have only read subsection (b), it “does not include lawful advocacy, protest or dissent, unless carried on in conjunction with any of the activities referred to above.”
I feel quite secure. I do not plan to get arrested again. It was not fun. It was way outside of my comfort zone and the judge hated me, so I got a much more significant fine than my friend, who is now the mayor of Vancouver. I do not plan to go out and get arrested again, but I believe that non-violent civil disobedience is a vital part of our democracy. It traces its roots all the way back to Henry David Thoreau in the 1800s. It was then picked up by the exemplar of non-violent civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi, and then taken up by Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are reasons why in a democracy we must have peaceful protest and the right and ability to break the law, if we believe that law to be unjust, but that does not include the right to destroy other people's lives and livelihoods in the process. That does not include a right to refuse to take the consequences of one's own actions or to say, “I will go quietly with you, officer.” That is the essence of what I did when I performed non-violent civil disobedience and what my colleague, the hon. Minister of Environment and Climate Change, did before he was in office. He also believed that something as important as the survival of life on earth and the climate crisis was worth giving up his own sense of safety for, by submitting himself to arrest.
These are complicated matters and complicated questions, and I would beg of all of us that we must listen to each other. I am so concerned that so many of my constituents believe it is actually a peaceful protest out there. They think it is. There is nothing peaceful about hunks of metal taking over a city. Trucks do not have charter rights. Honking a horn, as the judge said in granting the injunction, is not an expression of free speech. These trucks should have been stopped before they got anywhere near the centre of our national capital. They were not. That is what constitutes the emergency, but I need the government to show me that the regulations will be tightened up before I can vote for this.
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- Feb/17/22 6:46:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to assure my colleague that the oversight and certainty she is looking for are certainly there within the regulations. This is meant to target individuals who are breaking the law. Of course, the issue of proportionality, as well as reasonableness, is embedded in the regulations and I invite her to reflect on that. It is important to distinguish between those who may have innocently donated or with the right intent and those who obviously donated with the intention of breaking the law. I want to remind her there is an element of reasonableness already embedded in the regulations.
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- Feb/17/22 6:47:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would say to my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, that he should read the emergency measures regulations. There is no certainty in here. There is no precision. It is far too broad. I could read into the record critical infrastructure and how it is defined to include ports, piers, lighthouses, canals, tramways and bus stations. However, this is not in any way specific to the circumstance we are in right now, and that is what makes me have a good deal of resistance to voting yes, while I do think we need to do more because we have a current emergency.
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- Feb/17/22 6:48:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's intervention tonight. I also appreciate the pain she is in and certainly hope she is well soon.
The order in council released by the government authorizes the government to do the following. As I think this would add to the member's concerns around certainty, I will quote what is in the order in council:
...other temporary measures authorized under section 19 of the Emergencies Act that are not yet known.
The government is authorizing itself to do things. It essentially asks the House to hand it unlimited authority. We have seen in the past, in matters such as the documents from the Winnipeg lab, that the Prime Minister has little or no respect for parliamentary oversight. The SNC-Lavalin scandal again demonstrated his lack of respect for the independence of our justice system.
How does the member feel about adding that particular section of the order in council to her list of reasons why she would be very apprehensive about supporting the Emergencies Act?
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- Feb/17/22 6:49:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the fact is that we will have the opportunity over the next four or five days to find what is wrong here. Members of Parliament understand that something must be done about what has currently happened. Where we are now is not about the city police not having the original jurisdiction, which could have prevented this. It is an entrenched, well-funded, well-supported effort that is not only successfully shutting down the centre of Ottawa, but I feel successfully menacing the parliamentary procedures in this place.
We have an opportunity through this debate for government members to come forward to clarify that they are not, in the order in council, giving themselves a blank cheque. One of the Quebec members from the NDP made the point that this is not a blank cheque, but I think it could be tightened up so we actually know the limits of what we are about to approve, which should be geographically confined, as well as specific to the circumstances.
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- Feb/17/22 6:51:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. I know she is a great democrat, perhaps one of the best in this House.
She gave a detailed, nuanced and constructive analysis. We have not heard a lot of constructive comments or a focus on dialogue from the government these days.
My democracy is suffering too, under the circumstances. I am very concerned about the fact that the government is responding so radically with the Emergencies Act.
Could my colleague share her thoughts on the government's arrogance, lack of planning and demagoguery, especially since it announced it was invoking the Emergencies Act?
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- Feb/17/22 6:51:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. I agree that the debate is emotionally charged on both sides. This does not help our society find a solution that will bring our country, our provinces, together. I am disappointed in the level of discourse and the demonizing of those with different opinions. We must have a minimum level of respect for each other in all of our debates in Canada. That is essential. That is one of the things that defines Canada. We are not a country that gets divided over dog whistles.
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- Feb/17/22 6:53:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say, over the last couple of days, I have heard, first of all, inaccurate and complete anti-indigenous racism in the rhetoric around what is going on outside. This is not a peaceful protest. This is an illegal occupation. To be stigmatized within what is going on out there is absolutely damaging and violent to indigenous people from across this country.
I want to read something to the hon. member very quickly. It was written for The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi. She writes:
There’s a lot going on in the world right now. If you’re not Canadian, then the protest in Ottawa might not be top of your list of things to worry about. But I’m afraid you should be worried. You should certainly be paying attention. What’s unfolding in Ottawa is not a grassroots protest that has spontaneously erupted out of the frustration of local lorry drivers. Rather, it’s an astroturfed movement—one that creates an impression of widespread grassroots support where little exists—funded by a global network of highly organised far-right groups and amplified by Facebook’s misinformation machine.
We know that the Soldiers of Odin and the yellow jackets are involved in this. They are posing a threat to our democracy. Our democracy is under threat. I would like to caution the member when referring to indigenous people as examples when we are talking about an alt-right, white supremacist movement fuelled and funded by the white supremacist movement on the other side.
Does the hon. member agree that is not a fair—
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- Feb/17/22 6:55:16 p.m.
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The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.
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- Feb/17/22 6:55:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I made that point earlier today to the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, who was trying to say that somehow it was hypocritical that the government did not crack down on Wet'suwet'en people, who he referred to as protesters. Those were Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs with legal rights derived from the Constitution of this country and Supreme Court of Canada decisions. I could not agree more with what she said, and I will add nothing to it except to thank her for making those points.
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- Feb/17/22 6:56:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her speech, which is always eloquent. I think we all learned something from her today.
What should a responsible leader, a prime minister, wait for before declaring an emergency? What kind of egregious harm should befall a country and its citizens before we do something, or do we stop it where it is?
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- Feb/17/22 6:56:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I feel as though the city of Ottawa and many Canadians are in the situation of a battered wife, where the police ask if her husband has used a gun on her or hurt her yet. We are menaced by an occupation, and we do not want to wait any longer to have this problem solved. We found guns in Coutts. We know that this group has been infiltrated by the alt-right global network, which the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre referred to earlier.
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- Feb/17/22 6:57:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will splitting my time with the hon. member for London—Fanshawe.
I will start by acknowledging that we have all been in the pandemic for two years, and frustrations are mounting. People certainly want to be to able to get on with their lives. To some extent, this has culminated in what we have seen over the last few weeks. However, make no mistake: We really do need, as parliamentarians and indeed as an entire country, to acknowledge the intense gravity of the situation we find ourselves in. This truly is a watershed moment in Canadian political history, because we are now, as a House, being asked by the government to confirm the declaration of a public order emergency that was proclaimed on February 14 of this week.
This is something that has never happened before. This is the first time that this act has been invoked in this way. I and, I suspect, many members of Parliament have been receiving concerns from constituents who are concerned over this drastic step. I owe it to the great constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford to talk about this extraordinary time and why we have found ourselves here.
We need to have a serious conversation about why we find ourselves in a place where the enacting of the Emergencies Act is suddenly a necessary action, because it should never have come to this. The use of the Emergencies Act, even the consideration of its use, is an acknowledgement that we have had a failure of leadership from many different levels of government. The citizens of Ottawa rightly feel abandoned by their own police. The provincial government has not been there, but more importantly, the federal government has not been there. That is what I am here to focus my remarks on.
We are now two and a half weeks into an occupation. It might have started off with many people who joined this movement thinking it was a protest. Certainly people have that cherished right in our democracy. The right of citizens to peacefully assemble, protest, make their views known and push for change is very fundamental to a well-functioning democracy,
However, what we see in Ottawa and what we saw at many of Canada's border crossings were not protests. They were not peaceful assemblies. They were occupations and they were blockades. They started having a very negative impact on residents, on small business owners and on workers. That is where the line was crossed.
People in Ottawa did not feel safe in their own homes. We saw reports of attempted arson in some of the buildings. We know that people have been suffering verbal abuse on a daily basis. Sometimes it has been physical. They have had to deal with all sorts of noise complaints and ongoing pollution from idling trucks. The city of Ottawa, our national capital, has seen some of our most precious and honoured national monuments defiled and, in some cases, completely walked over. It has been completely unacceptable.
The border blockades have impacted far more people. We know that trade between Canada and the United States numbers in the millions of dollars every day. Factories in southern Ontario had to shut down, impacting families there. Many agricultural manufacturers, processors and producers out in the Prairies and across Canada were negatively impacted by the blockades. They was having an impact on those people.
It is those people we need to keep our remarks focused on to answer the question of why we are here today, suddenly debating the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act, of course, was first brought in as a piece of legislation all the way back in 1988. Pursuant to section 17(1) of that act, we have had a public order emergency declared by the Liberal government. There are a few things that come about as a consequence.
Now the government has the ability to designate specific areas and declare that any assemblies in those areas will henceforth be unlawful. This would include the downtown core of Ottawa so that the main thoroughfares can be cleared of all of those trucks and so that the residents can get their lives back. It will also include some of our critical infrastructure, notably our ports of entry with the United States, the Windsor Ambassador Bridge; Coutts, Alberta; and Emerson, Manitoba being the most recent examples. However, we also saw disturbances in Vancouver and in other ports of entry, such as Sarnia.
The act is going to allow the federal government to direct essential services, such as mobilizing tow trucks to help with clearing those streets. It is going to give FINTRAC the ability to cover crowdfunding. Also, the federal government is going to have the extraordinary power of freezing the commercial bank accounts and personal bank accounts of people who are funding these illegal occupations. It is a very real and extraordinary attempt to cut off the funding that is supporting the occupation of Ottawa and all of this misery. As well, it is going to give the RCMP the power to act as provincial police officers and municipal police officers and enforce their respective laws.
I certainly have personally wrestled with the invoking of the act, wondering if I am doing the right thing in supporting it, but what gives me some level of comfort, and I want to be very clear to the constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, is that this is not a blank cheque. The powers we are granting to the government will be carefully reviewed on an ongoing basis. I will not hesitate to withdraw my support if I feel the government is overstepping its confines. By that I mean that the application of these powers has to be specific and it must be in relation to the disturbances that we are seeing from the blockades and the occupation. These powers must be used only in relation to that situation, and they must be quickly withdrawn once public order has been restored.
It has taken a long time to get to the point where we find ourselves now. I am very proud that my caucus colleagues in the NDP and I have been trying to push the government to take this crisis seriously, because the warning signs were there from the beginning. As the public safety critic, I was able to initiate a study at the Standing Committee on Public Safety into crowdfunding platforms and their possible involvement in funding movements like this. I was also able to move a successful motion to call upon the RCMP, the CBSA, the Ontario Provincial Police, Ottawa police and the minister for public safety to eventually come before our committee to explain how we got to this point. Why did we have such an intelligence failure and lack of coordination over the last two and a half weeks, bringing us to the point where we now have to use the sledgehammer of the Emergencies Act?
Of course, I have to recognize my colleague, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, and his private member's bill to basically ban symbols of hate, which we unfortunately have seen evidence of in this occupation. Also, our leader was able to initiate an emergency debate in the House of Commons so that we could give parliamentarians their first opportunity to focus on this situation.
In conclusion, Parliament is where we make the laws of this country. It is the pinnacle of our democracy, and every single one of the 338 members who serve in the House of Commons was duly elected to this place to make laws and to hold the government to account on behalf of the citizens in their ridings. To try to subvert that is an affront to the people who participate in our democracy, and we must uphold that cherished right.
I will end by saying that it is with great reluctance that we are going to be giving our support to these emergency powers, but I can assure people that we will not take our eye off the ball and we will not hesitate to withdraw our support should any powers be used past their intended purpose.
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- Feb/17/22 7:07:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague and I have the privilege of working together on the agriculture committee. I always find him to be balanced, reasonable and quite eloquent in his remarks. I did not catch all of his speech, but I did catch the tail end.
I have often heard members in this House, particularly Bloc Québécois members and Conservative members, say that they want to see more leadership from the Government of Canada. Of course, this member would know that policing is inherently in the municipal jurisdiction and the the provincial jurisdiction, and that really the role of the federal government would be to impose some of the measures we have seen today. Ultimately, the very last resort would be to call in the army.
Can the member at least opine on what he has heard from leadership? The Conservatives are calling for the government to acquiesce to what the protesters are calling for, while the Bloc members say that this should not apply in their jurisdiction. What does the member think, in terms of leadership from the federal government? Does he agree with this as a step to giving the tools to the provinces and municipalities to address the situation at hand?
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- Feb/17/22 7:08:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy serving at the agriculture committee with my colleague.
Specifically with respect to the last two and a half weeks, I would say that history will not be kind to municipalities, to the province and to the federal government. There was a failure at all levels, but the federal government had an important role to bring all of those separate pieces together. There was a failure in intelligence and there was a failure in coordination. It was as though we were just asleep at the switch in figuring out how bad this situation was eventually going to become.
Yes, I am glad that we are now taking this important step to reassert control and to give people their lives back, so that workers, small business owners and residents can actually enjoy their lives again.
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- Feb/17/22 7:09:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been waiting awhile to speak, and I want to speak on behalf of my constituents of King—Vaughan.
I have been flabbergasted today by the number of emails I have received from the constituents of King—Vaughan. I would like to share this one with the hon. member: “The freedom convoy is not asking that people do not wear masks if they choose to. They are not telling people not to get vaccinated if they choose to. They are not telling people not to stay home; if they don't feel safe, they should. They are simply saying that we should have the freedom of choice to do what we feel is best for us as individuals. That right, that freedom, is what our brave and heroic veterans fought for us in the wars. This is the right of our country to be free and strong.”
I would like the member's comments, please.
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- Feb/17/22 7:10:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I very strongly agree with individual rights, but we also have responsibilities that come with those rights. The responsibility we have as individuals goes beyond our personal selves and out to the larger community as a whole.
We have just gone through two years of an incredibly deadly pandemic. I know we have had our failures, but we have had success in dealing with this disease in comparison with other jurisdictions that have had a more libertarian approach. This is about saving lives and about making sure that we get through this pandemic together. There have been tough choices that people have had to make, but with that individual freedom comes a greater responsibility to the community as a whole. That is how I would answer that question.
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- Feb/17/22 7:11:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for sharing that he is finding this difficult, that he is troubled about it and that it is not easy for him to approve this measure. I appreciate his honesty.
However, he also said that he was not giving the Liberals and the government a blank cheque by supporting this measure, which I do not understand. How is the NDP's support not a blank cheque? What kind of measures would it take for his party to see reason and reject the use of this act? What would it take to change his mind?
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- Feb/17/22 7:11:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is not a blank cheque, because in reading the act, we can see that there is considerable room for Parliamentary oversight. Furthermore, all it takes is for 20 members of Parliament to indicate that they no longer wish to have this act in force. If they submit a letter, we can initiate debate, and debate will conclude with a vote on whether these powers should remain in force, so there is that strong parliamentary democracy oversight. As I said in my speech, if I feel the government is overstepping its bounds, I will not hesitate to withdraw my support for this current course of action.
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- Feb/17/22 7:12:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today. I feel that we are standing at a crossroads.
I have heard so much frustration and disappointment from people in London. They are frustrated by this pandemic that will soon mark its third anniversary. People are frustrated that they have sacrificed and struggled to help one another. They have done the work that we asked them to do to keep people safe. To them, I want to give my thanks. I want to tell folks in London that I understand their frustration. I am tired of this pandemic too. I share in the wish for this to be over, but I also see the bigger picture here.
People are not just frustrated because of the pandemic. This is much bigger than that. They are frustrated that, even though people are working harder than ever, sacrificing more and more, their government has offered less and less. There is a growing sense throughout Canada that our elected leaders are not listening and do not appreciate the struggles of Canadians. The protests that we have seen in our streets and our communities are a symptom of that frustration. It is understandable why someone would feel like that, because for years now successive Liberal and Conservative governments have asked Canadians to do more with less, to pull themselves up by their boot straps when they do not even have shoes. Today, many people feel that their government has let them down, especially when they needed support the most.
These last few years have been tough on my community, like so many, but within this last year we experienced the loss of the Afzaal family to an extremist act of hatred and violence. In spite of that, I saw my community come together in incredible acts of love and kindness. That is what I hold on to tonight.
I grew up in a very political household and watching my mother at community meetings and standing up for what she believed in, fighting for a better world, truly shaped how I saw my role in the world. I knew that I benefited significantly from the systems and programs that people and governments had created for me and that I had a responsibility to pay that forward. I came to this place because I wanted to make the necessary changes for people, to pay it forward.
As people continue to struggle, I fear that we will lose that sense of community and that people will turn away from each other more and more. The more people struggle, the less they have for themselves, the less they feel they can give to others. The more they have to fight for the little that they have and the less that they have to fight for, the greater the divide between the richest in this world and the rest of us, the worse this will get. People will turn on their governments and they will turn on each other, because they believe their governments have turned on them.
Canadians are looking for answers and they are looking for solutions. The system has been rigged and they want to do something about it. Solutions offered by right-wing politicians and extremists online must be called out as entirely, completely unacceptable.
I am often in awe that Conservatives seem to provide simple solutions to the complex problems that we face. This is not unique to Canada. We saw these simple solutions offered in the U.K. on the vote for Brexit. They said that life would get better, but it did not. We saw many simple solutions offered by Donald Trump, just south of us, ones based on racism, sexism and fear. They did nothing for working Americans. Their lives did not improve under his administration. We see these so-called solutions being offered in this House as well. Lift all public health measures and let neighbours and friends fend for themselves. Simple solutions are often the most dangerous.
I hope that this protest will end shortly but the reasons for it will not go away. Look at any crisis. It takes a long time to get to that critical point, and it takes even longer to fix it.
Let me be very clear. Nothing makes the racism, the hatred or the threats of violence that we have seen in Ottawa over these past days acceptable. However, to truly address the causes that have led to so many people feeling disenfranchised, to feeling like they are not being heard or that they are abandoned by the government, resulting in their resolve to occupy the streets in Ottawa or critical infrastructure across Canada, we have to address the systemic issues at the heart of the matter.
New Democrats are offering alternatives to move forward, rather than what is offered by the right wing that has allied with them. There are concrete measures the government can make to address rising inequality in our country. We can tackle rising drug costs with a national pharmacare plan. We can tackle the housing crisis that is impacting every community in Canada, and my home city of London, by getting the Canadian government back into the business of building housing. We can take on poverty and disparity in our streets by establishing a guaranteed basic livable income.
We can address the lack of education and access to it by making post-secondary education accessible, removing those financial barriers. We can take on the growth of low-paid insecure work by updating labour codes, creating a living wage and tipping the scale back in favour of Canadian workers. We can sign trade agreements that protect Canadian jobs, instead of making it easier to ship them overseas. We can strengthen and safeguard workers' pensions, ensuring pensioners can retire with dignity and security. We can ensure the rich pay their fair share and close tax loopholes.
Many people are rightly concerned about the impact of the Emergencies Act. It should have never come to this. The use of the Emergencies Act, and even the consideration of it, is an acknowledgement of failure of leadership from all levels of government, including the Prime Minister. They have allowed things to escalate unchecked since the beginning, and I share the concern of many Canadians and people from my constituency that the government may misuse the powers in that act, so I want to be very clear. We will be watching and we will withdraw our support if at any point we feel these powers are being misused.
People in communities across our country are feeling the impacts of the convoy. Health care workers, retail and grocery store workers, truck drivers themselves, small business owners and residents have been harassed, intimidated and even assaulted during these illegal occupations. Thousands of workers have been forced to stay home from their jobs, making it harder for them to feed their families and to pay their rent. Canadians have been missing the national leadership they need during this crisis. They are tired of jurisdictional excuses, and they just want this to stop. We owe it to them to use every tool available to stop these occupations that are harming Canadian workers and their families and to work on a plan to get this to end.
I want to reassure my constituents that the NDP is taking the use of the Emergencies Act very seriously. We will not give a blank cheque to the government. We also believe the federal government, and all governments, need to take responsibility before things are allowed to escalate further. We cannot abandon Canadians to deal with this on their own.
Over the coming days we need to see action from our police in ending this occupation and returning the streets back to our communities. Over the coming weeks New Democrats will remain vigilant in watching and protecting Canadians' rights and freedoms, and holding the government to account. In the next few months we will push for more supports to remain until the pandemic is over and to call for a science-based approach to see us out of this pandemic.
Better is possible, but it will take tough and courageous choices for us to get there. It is not too late to make a better world.
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