44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 6:45:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be splitting my time with the member for Shefford.
I must confess something: I am exhausted. I am completely exhausted. I am intellectually, physically and mentally exhausted.
It is 6:45 p.m. on a Saturday night. I should be having supper with my wife and children at home, but I am here, in Parliament, discussing legislation regarding a national emergency, when there is no national emergency. It is over. There are no more people in the streets in front of Parliament. The trucks are gone, the people are gone. The crisis is over.
I have no problem with spending hours and nights talking about housing, seniors, health, climate change or any manner of important topics. I would spend my weekends here. I would camp here, with my sleeping bag. I would sleep in Parliament for all those worthwhile issues that are so important to people.
I am searching for the national crisis. Where is it?
We are still looking. We are looking for the national crisis. We keep looking for it, but we cannot find it. The outrageous truth is that there is no crisis.
I would like to commend the police outside. For 24 hours, they have been doing truly incredible work. I am not sure if members have seen them, but step by step, they have been slowly advancing. They had a strategy. That is the crux of the Bloc Québécois's argument. What tools do they have, now that the act has been in effect for the past few days? What more do they have now?
If they were able to do that now, then the government needs to explain to us how the police managed to carry out this strategy that they were unable to implement before.
I was there in 2001 at the Summit of the Americas. The police did roughly the same thing as they did today. They used pepper spray a bit, not too much. They advanced slowly. They managed to get the protesters under control. It went very well. There was no special legislation.
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- Feb/19/22 6:49:19 p.m.
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Commending the police is one thing, but I would also like to commend the interpreters, who will have to work for three or four days because of this totally pointless debate. They are doing an outstanding job. They will be spending the weekend here, and it is very important to salute them.
I would also like to commend the journalists who are outside in the middle of the crowd with their microphones. They are being insulted and shoved around. It is not easy for them. They have done a terrific job.
To begin my speech, even though I have been speaking for five minutes already, I would like to quote British writer Ernest Benn, who said something rather interesting that applies to the crisis we are in right now. He said: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly and applying unsuitable remedies.” I suspect that Ernest Benn did not like politicians very much.
If we apply that to the current crisis, if we say that politics is the art of looking for trouble, we might say that the government started it by allowing the truckers to come here in the first place.
Take Quebec City. They knew the truckers were coming, so they took necessary steps, such as setting up barricades around the National Assembly and telling the truckers where they could park. The mayor of Quebec City even told them he wanted to hear what they had to say and they had the right to be there because their actions were legitimate in a democracy. They were told they had the right to speak, but they were asked to do so without paralyzing the assembly and keeping people from sleeping.
Did Quebec have an emergency measures act at the time? The answer is no. Quebec handled the situation very well.
Again, it is the art of looking for trouble and finding it. How did the Prime Minister manage to find trouble? By letting them set up shop. If Ottawa had done like Quebec City from the start, it would never have come to this.
I also said it is the art of diagnosing trouble wrongly. The Prime Minister's strategy for the last three weeks has been to stay at the cottage and hope things will sort themselves out and the truckers will eventually leave. Well, they did not leave.
Lastly, politics is the art of applying unsuitable remedies, which in this case is the nuclear option of the Emergencies Act. I believe that Mr. Benn was right about that, because national emergency measures were not needed at the Ambassador Bridge. They were not needed in Coutts. They were not needed in Sarnia. They were not needed in Fort Erie, Vancouver, or Emerson, to name them all.
If I park my car in the middle of the road in Longueuil and leave the engine running for an hour or two, eventually a police officer is going to come along and tell me I am violating a bylaw. If I tell the officer that I feel like staying there anyway, another officer will surely show up to issue a fine three or four hours later. If I still say that I am going to stay there, they will tow my car two days later. There are laws for that. National emergency measures are not needed to move some trucks. That is what we saw here.
I listened carefully to Prime Minister Trudeau when he gave his speech to present this legislation—
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- Feb/19/22 6:53:19 p.m.
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Order.
I would remind the hon. member that we do not use members' names in the House.
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- Feb/19/22 6:53:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize.
The Prime Minister said, “Invoking the Emergencies Act is not something we do lightly.” Obviously. He added, “This is not the first, second or third option.” What are the three options that were supposedly considered? We do not know.
During a national crisis, the important thing is to show leadership. When a crisis occurs, a leader acknowledges that it is something difficult, that it is not easy for society, but that they think they should do this or that and that this is the way to go. That is what leadership is. Leadership is making decisions and telling us which way we will go.
As for the decision before us, seven Canadian provinces are against invoking this act. Is this what leadership looks like?
Thinking about that this week reminded me of the film 12 Angry Men. Has anyone seen that movie? It was an international hit adapted from a play by Reginald Rose. 12 Angry Men is a courtroom drama about a man on trial for murder. There are 12 jurors. The film begins as the jurors are meeting. Everyone thinks the defendant is guilty. The evidence is overwhelming. Everyone is anxious to go home, since it has been a long trial. Eleven people say he should be convicted, but one juror raises a doubt. He says no and questions the truth. He says the truth lies in another direction. Over the course of two hours, he slowly convinces everyone of his point of view, of what the truth is. He thinks the defendant is innocent. Now that is a leader.
Seven provinces oppose this legislation. The Prime Minister could have stood up and said that he thinks it is important and that it should be done for such and such a reason. That never happened. At no time did we see the Prime Minister show any leadership. That is what is missing.
I do not have time to talk about the October crisis, but I think members have understood what I am trying to say. This is a useless, totally disproportionate law that is not supported by a large part of the population. I have received thousands of emails from people who oppose it, thousands of emails from people who want us to vote against this legislation—
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- Feb/19/22 6:55:50 p.m.
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Unfortunately, we must go to questions and comments.
The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.
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- Feb/19/22 6:56:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I feel like I just attended an excellent bit of theatre. It was a very passionate performance.
My colleague gave the example of parking his car in a no-parking zone in Longueuil. The police comes along, he refuses to leave, and the police give him a fine. He claims that the police would call the towing company to have his vehicle towed. Is he aware that towing companies in Ottawa did not want to touch the convoy trucks for fear of reprisal and that this legislation was needed to encourage them to come tow the trucks away once the police gained control of the situation? It seems fairly obvious to me—
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- Feb/19/22 6:57:05 p.m.
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The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.
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- Feb/19/22 6:57:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague, whom I am very fond of, is incorrect. All it would take is a court order. Just order the companies to go tow the trucks, and it is done. There is no need for a sledgehammer or a big club like the emergency legislation before us today.
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- Feb/19/22 6:57:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I too was at the Summit of the Americas, but it was quite a different situation. There were thousands of people storming the perimeter fence, the crowd was launching projectiles into the fence and there were imported black balaclava-clad professional protesters on hand. We saw none of that here. It was very peaceful. People were welcoming everyone. I certainly felt no potential violence when I was walking back and forth.
The member also agrees that the thresholds were not met to invoke this act. Why does the member think the Emergencies Act was invoked, given that there was no rationale?
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- Feb/19/22 6:58:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I am going to go in a different direction because I think it is important. There is one thing we have heard very little about in relation to this crisis.
We have heard a lot about extremist groups that infiltrated the protests. This is true and has been documented. These extremist groups exist, and we must combat them. However, there are other ways to do so. We did not need the Emergencies Act.
We have heard a lot about children being used as human shields. The media has really sensationalized this.
There are people outside who simply wanted to express their frustrations over what they have been living with for the past two years. I share that frustration. Everyone is fed up and tired. The health restrictions have been hard on people.
We, as members of Parliament, are relatively privileged. We probably have homes that are big enough to live in. Many of the people who are outside right now live with eight people in a one-bedroom apartment, and it is not easy going through this pandemic with all of these restrictions.
If, instead of tarring everyone with the same brush—this is Canadians we are talking about after all—the Prime Minister had listened to people all along, we might have been able to resolve this crisis in another way.
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- Feb/19/22 6:59:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the question I would like to ask my colleague is the following: Should the attack organized against our democracy by the extreme right, and financed from beyond our borders, be taken seriously?
This attack is intended to intimidate our fellow Canadians and force Parliament to close because of security threats. Should it be taken seriously? Should we take serious measures at all levels?
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- Feb/19/22 7:00:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course we should. However, there are provisions in the Criminal Code that can help us do it. We do not need an act like the one we are discussing tonight.
We are aware of the situation. In the United States, Donald Trump sends funding across the globe. His influence extends to many countries, and it is considerable. We absolutely must fight back against that.
However, we already have the tools to do that. We do not need the Emergencies Act to fight this. We have done it before, perhaps we have to fight a little harder now, and we will do so in the future as well.
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- Feb/19/22 7:01:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by commending my colleague from Longueuil—Saint‑Hubert for his passionate speech and, more importantly, for finally agreeing to share his time with me.
It is with great concern that I rise today to participate in this historic debate. I would like to begin with a quick question. How do my colleagues feel when they see the images of the charging horses and the confrontations that have been playing on a loop on television for hours now?
Personally, I am wondering how we got to this point. I know that I am not the first one to say it, and that many of my colleagues have already talked about this, but I want to reiterate that we are still against applying the Emergencies Act across Canada.
First of all, I want to remind members that I have a degree in applied policy studies from the Université de Sherbrooke, which has helped make me a staunch democrat. I cannot help but wonder and worry about the message that the government is sending with the use of this measure, which undermines our democratic system.
Second, I will address the risk of radicalization, and third, I will talk about respect for jurisdictions and the demands of Quebec and the provinces and territories. One thing is certain, I will not be standing on a soap box, like some others have tried to do.
From the standpoint of democracy, we must ask ourselves whether this act really should have been invoked. In order to invoke the Emergencies Act, the government must demonstrate two things. First, it must demonstrate that a dangerous and urgent situation exists. Second, it must demonstrate that ordinary laws cannot adequately address the situation.
As to the first condition, yes, there is indeed a dangerous and urgent situation. That situation is limited to Ontario, however, and specifically to Ottawa. The Bloc Québécois is not against applying the act, but it should be applied only where there is an occupation, which did not happen in Quebec. I know other members have already made this point in the debate, but it is worth repeating: This use of this act is not to be taken lightly. Its application must therefore be measured and balanced.
Another thing that worries me is that a broader application of this law than necessary could set a dangerous precedent. At this point, I have a few more questions. For example, why is the Prime Minister determined to apply this law everywhere, especially when he himself has said many times that it will not be used where it is not necessary?
The Prime Minister also stated, here in the House and in the supplementary documents pertinent to the motion, that he was concerned that other blockades would be set up elsewhere in Canada, particularly given the galvanizing effect of social media. As I will argue later, I believe that this legislation is actually one of the things fuelling support for protesters on social media.
No matter how hard I try to look at this issue from every angle, I simply do not see the real and imminent danger of the current situation in Ottawa happening elsewhere. Such historic legislation should never be invoked “just in case”.
I can only assume that the debate would be quite different if the motion had been limited to the province of Ontario. The government could have easily obtained a majority of votes in Parliament. The only reason we are here debating this now is that the government dragged its feet, as it has too often done since the beginning of its mandate.
This could have been addressed using ordinary legislation, with proper coordination and effective collaboration among police forces, as we have seen in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. Why did the government not emulate what was done elsewhere in Canada and in Quebec before invoking the Emergencies Act?
Furthermore, if we look back a bit to try and see what we could have done, we will see that the Emergencies Act was not needed to settle the rail blockades of 2020, the Oka crisis, the crisis at Caledonia, the events of September 11, the COVID‑19 pandemic or any other dispute in Canadian history.
Using the act too liberally or too broadly, or applying it needlessly, poses a real risk of sending the wrong message to the political class, and above all to Canadians.
The government has been aware of the facts for a long time now, since some protesters turned into occupiers who were here to say. It simply continued to say that the responsibility of managing this crisis fell to the Ottawa police. On February 6, the City of Ottawa declared a state of emergency and, the very next day, the Ottawa police asked the province and the federal government for reinforcements. That was more than 12 days ago.
The Bloc Québécois wanted constructive action from the start. If the government had listened even just a little bit, if it had truly wanted to show political leadership, and if it had sat down at the table with representatives, if it had established a plan to intervene or simply helped come up with a plan, we probably would not be here.
I was listening to a constitutional expert this morning. He explained quite clearly that we already had the means to intervene. The highway safety code, the City of Ottawa bylaws, the Criminal Code and a tripartite collaboration would have allowed the different police services to coordinate in order to reinforce existing laws.
The declaration of the state of emergency in Ontario by the Ford government on February 11 had already given significant powers to the Ottawa police and the provincial police. Again, the federal government should have realized that, but instead it decided to bury its head in the sand and hide when the situation was serious.
At this time it seems that the blockades might be over before the Emergencies Act is implemented. We therefore cannot really link the act to the end of the blockades.
What is more, each crisis includes a risk of radicalization. Obviously, we hope that everything will end without violence, but we are also aware that as the number of protesters decreases, the closer we get to the hard core, even extremist, group. These are very likely people who have nothing to do with the spirit of the January 29 protest. The remaining participants in the crowd are increasingly unstable and unpredictable. We are right to wonder what ideas the occupiers will leave with, because they currently feel emboldened by their supporters and have financial backing. We have seen how well organized they are.
This summer, I was reading a book about the new age of violent extremism and radicalization in western democracies entitled Le nouvel âge des extrêmes? Les démocraties occidentales, la radicalisation et l'extrémisme violent, edited by David Morin and Sami Aoun in collaboration with Sylvana Al Baba Douaihy. I am interested in this issue, especially since it was studied last spring at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, of which I am the vice-chair, and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, where I have participated as a substitute. The tone is set from the first paragraph of the introduction, and it has informed my arguments on the effects of the Emergencies Act, which runs the risk of throwing fuel on the fire. In his book entitled The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth History 1914-1991, published in 1994, Eric John Hobsbawn wrote that the century was not ending well. You do not need to be a prophet of doom to recognize that the 21st century is not off to a much better start.
In the last two decades we have seen a wave of Islamist terrorists, several civil and international conflicts, millions of victims and displaced people, a major migrant crisis, the rise of violent far-right populism and the acceleration of climate change. To this bleak portrait we must now add the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a global health crisis.
Furthermore, Quebec said that it wanted nothing to do with this act. The protest held in Quebec's capital showed that problems can be prevented when there is strong political will. I want to commend law enforcement for their professionalism and for their exemplary responses. The question here is not so much about the Emergencies Act itself as it is about the reasons why the situation got to this point. The question answers itself.
I have one last thing to say. When I think of the Liberal government, the image that keeps coming to mind is of a firefighter arsonist. The Prime Minister has favoured the wait-and-see approach. He let the situation drag on and deteriorate but did nothing. True to form, he stood by and watched it all happen. He also insulted and dismissed the protesters by tarring them all with the same brush. Now, he has invoked the Emergencies Act to make it seem that he is putting out the fire he himself started, but instead he is adding fuel to the fire, stoking the flames of hate and division.
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- Feb/19/22 7:10:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I respect the member opposite, but I am going to take strong disagreement with one point that she and her party have made repeatedly in today's debate, which is that there is no crisis.
I think we are in agreement that the blockades still exist outside the chamber, so in Ottawa there clearly is a problem. We know that on February 14, the declaration was put into force. On February 16, we know that in Windsor, there was an attempted resurrection of the blockade, which was thwarted successfully, which was great, but reports are showing that even today the Surrey border is again being closed on account of blockades. Clearly, the protest continues and the problem has not been resolved.
Does the member opposite agree that indeed these tools are required in order to address what is clearly a national problem that must be regulated in order to ensure that the economic security, territorial integrity and the sovereignty of our borders are not compromised by unlawful and illegal blockades?
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- Feb/19/22 7:11:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I think I have demonstrated in my speech that this is not a national crisis, but one that is limited to Ottawa.
Elsewhere, such as in Quebec City, the crises that occurred were resolved, because there was co-operation. Right now, both the police and the governments have all the tools that they need to act. In Quebec City, there was coordination between the Quebec department of public security and the mayor, who had the political will, who showed leadership, and who warned protesters that unruly behaviour would not be tolerated. There was none, because there was coordination with the Quebec City police. This was also the case elsewhere, in different places, and in different positions.
The necessary tools were available, and the Emergencies Act was not. All it does is add fuel to the fire and feed hatred and division.
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- Feb/19/22 7:12:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Shefford spoke thoughtfully about how we got here. She alluded to comments the Prime Minister made, casting a broad brush to all of the folks who came to Ottawa and the millions of Canadians who supported them.
Would she agree that the Prime Minister, had he tried to extend an olive branch, listen and engage in dialogue, it could have at least turned down the temperature, but instead, the Prime Minister escalated the situation?
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- Feb/19/22 7:12:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, indeed, I addressed this issue.
The Prime Minister should not have been acting like a political commentator, making inappropriate comments. He should have acted like a political leader, led an all-party committee to get everyone around the same table, and come up with a peaceful solution.
All he accomplished by doing that, as I said, was to make the situation worse. That is typical of him. We saw it with the Wet'suwet'en crisis. The Prime Minister has this tendency to let things drag on and let crises escalate, hoping that everything will magically resolve itself.
That is not how things work. We need a leader who can bring people together to find solutions in a crisis.
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- Feb/19/22 7:13:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague just mentioned this, but I wanted to give her a chance to elaborate.
When there is a crisis, everyone needs to do some soul-searching to make sure that it is not too late to do the right thing.
I have to wonder whether the protesters became entrenched because they were egged on by certain politicians and also by the words of the Prime Minister, which made people feel abandoned, unimportant and shunned from society.
I would like my colleague to talk about that, but also about how everyone, on both sides of the House, has some soul-searching to do.
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- Feb/19/22 7:14:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou for her important question.
As politicians, we definitely needed to listen to the different voices that were heard loud and clear during the protest. This was not about commenting, taking sides or taking a stand. Our goal was to bring the various parties together.
My colleague talked about the lessons we can learn from all of this. What we need to remember is that we need to listen, but more importantly, that we need to bring everyone together, for example, through the all-party committee we talked a lot about.
We could have brought many people together, held—
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- Feb/19/22 7:15:19 p.m.
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Resuming debate, the hon. member for Banff—Airdrie.
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