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Feb/19/22 9:04:49 p.m.
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I would like to get a few more questions in here before the end of the night. I apologize. The hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Feb/19/22 9:05:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Labrador for drawing attention to the distortion that is caused by calling the protest in Ottawa “peaceful”. I made the mistake of walking through the group wearing a magenta mask and had a seven-letter f-word hurled at me. I witnessed journalists being physically intimidated. Did the member ever hear the leaders of the so-called protest condemn these kinds of intimidation that were going on as part of the occupation of downtown Ottawa?

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Ms. Yvonne Jones

Feb/19/22 9:05:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate, but I have heard so many members of Parliament express support for this protest and I find it very disturbing. This is radicalism. These are people who have not shown respect for other Canadians or for the cities that they have occupied. They have not at all upheld the rule of law in terms of respecting other human beings. I am always disturbed when I see any—

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:06:06 p.m.
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I want to try to get one more question in. I know the member for Scarborough—Agincourt has been trying really hard to get a question in.

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Ms. Jean Yip (Scarborough—Agincourt, Lib.)

Feb/19/22 9:06:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, many constituents have heard about the racial slurs against Ottawa residents. This is worrying for many people, especially people of colour. Could the hon. member elaborate on how the Emergencies Act can contain these extremist elements?

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Ms. Yvonne Jones

Feb/19/22 9:06:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no room in Canada for these extreme behaviours and opinions. I really believe that the people who are in the protest are bringing to it all the issues that have plagued them for many years and many decades. This is not the place for it, and their actions have demonstrated that this is not acceptable in Canada. I support the actions of the government and I support the Emergencies Act.

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:07:04 p.m.
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I just want to say we are getting a little long in our questions and answers, so let us keep up the speed. I know we are getting later on in the day and we want to make sure that we get as many people as possible represented. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

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Hon. Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, Lib.)

Feb/19/22 9:07:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I must say that I have been embarrassed for a long time about what has been going on in the country, especially in Ottawa. I have had a lot of friends across the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe who have been calling me, asking, “What is going on in Canada? You guys are such a great democracy; what's happening?”, and so I have been embarrassed. They were in shock at what was going on here. In many countries, there were copycats doing what the protesters were doing here, and I must tell members that those copycats were quelled immediately with water cannons, guns and tear gas, to keep them in line. However, what makes me proud of my country is that, in the last two days, we did not do that. The police in this country were restrained; they were professional and they were patient. They were taking abuse, both verbal and physical, and they also had people reach in to try to get their guns. They were mindful of the children in the group; children who were being used as frontline shields. I have no idea what kinds of parents would do that, but this was a way to make everybody see that they were nice and that they had little children. The children were in the front lines, though. Those are the kinds of things we saw going on here, and the police were very careful and worried about the children. We are asking the question: Why use this Emergencies Act? I have to say that it is pretty easy to see why when we saw the city of Ottawa being occupied for 22 days, and not just by peaceful people who were sitting down singing Kumbaya, but by people who were threatening, verbally harassing and physically intimidating people wearing masks and people of visible minorities, who were scared. Some protesters had volatile materials like gasoline and diesel and were wandering around the city. They were setting off fireworks in a city that has huge high-rises without care or worry whether they would ignite something in the city. They were lawless, and that is the only word I can use. Well, if that is not enough reason to invoke the Emergencies Act in this country, then I do not know what is. We talked a lot about the rule of law, and I have heard everybody invoking the rule of law. Canada is doing exactly that. This is a country of various jurisdictions under our Constitution. The federal government does not, like a great, wondrous matriarch, walk in and impose on every single municipality or province whatever its will is. It cannot do that. Therefore, what it had to do was to try to give the municipalities and provinces the tools they needed to empower them to be able to deal with the lawlessness, and that is exactly what this Emergencies Act is doing: It is helping municipalities and provinces to have the tools they need. I have listened to the mayor of Ottawa saying today that they could not get tow trucks. The tow truck drivers did not want to come, because they were scared. They did not want to come in and tow the rigs that were hanging around. However, with the Emergencies Act, the tow trucks were told that they had to come and do that. Now, that is one simple example of how the resources and tools that the police needed had to come through the Emergencies Act. The Emergencies Act also helps provinces and municipalities take on certain roles that they would not normally take on; for example, the ability for police to come from across the country, including from my own riding, the Vancouver Police Department, of which I am inordinately proud, to help Ottawa. There is the ability to follow the money, find out what foreign entities were funding this anarchy that was going on in our city for 22 days, find out who was sending money to whom and follow cryptocurrency, which was an important part of finding out that there were foreign entities behind all of this. I heard people on the streets, when the police were moving them back, talking about their First Amendment rights and saying, “You cannot arrest this person; you did not read them their Miranda rights.” Come on, guys, do people not watch enough television to know that we do not do that in Canada? That is not Canadian, so we know that there were foreign entities in this country, manipulating what was going on. Who is funding them? Who is paying for them? Where does a person get money to spend 22 days, with food, drink and everything they need? Somebody is paying for that. We have to find out who that is. People talk about sovereignty. Part of that sovereignty is that Canada cannot allow foreign entities to dictate what we do in our democracy. This is a democracy, and in a democracy we have elected governments. I do not care what stripe the government is, but it is elected according to free and fair elections, which is a major part of a democracy. To try to overthrow duly elected officials by mob rule of law, threats and intimidation is anarchy. It cannot be allowed. If these people do not want the government anymore, they have the right to vote against the government in an election. That is what a democracy is about. A democracy has free media and freedom of the press. The press has been intimidated, harassed, pushed, shoved, threatened and frightened, and I want to take my hat off to all of the press, who have been doing the yeomen's work, who have been unafraid and who have been doing what they need to do, because if the media is shut down, we really do not know what is happening and we are prone to listening to disinformation and false news. These are some of the things we are talking about here, and I have to say that when the police kept saying to people to move on and get the children out of here, I looked at what was going in Coutts and at some of these border protests. At the Ambassador Bridge there was a line in front of the protesters, of children linking arms. What country are we in when we do that to children and use them as shields to protect so-called “protesters”. There is a dual reason for it. Not only are children shields, because they know nobody will harm children, but also it makes them look nice, quiet, family-oriented and all that kind of thing. That is not what is true. We are seeing this kind of manipulation and intimidation of media. I must say that we know how much money there is. We look at the border crossings that have been blocked by the trucks, and 95% of our truckers are vaccinated and are going back and forth, bringing food, medicines and everything. We have the ones who did not want to be vaccinated, but freedom applies both ways. Freedom of choice means if someone does not choose to get vaccinated or does not choose to wear masks, they accept the consequences. I taught my kids that. My parents taught me that. We have a choice, but with a choice comes consequences. If, by doing it, it is felt that someone is actually harming others by exposing others to infection, then this is something the government must hear about. When people say they are blocking truckers who are trying to get across the border to bring food and medicines and to keep trade going, which I think was about $511 million a day when we count all the crossings, this is intimidation. This is not about truckers. This is not about vaccine mandates. This is about anarchy, and I think we need to remember that. For someone to say they will bring down a duly elected government and to use language that is threatening to our Prime Minister, who is duly elected, and when people hug and stand there taking photographs with these people, they are also agreeing that it is okay for mob rule to take down a duly elected government. It is not a democracy when people do that. We can look at the judges. We have an independent judiciary, and the independent judiciary is now issuing all kinds of writs against the people who have broken the law. Again, we come back to the rule of law. It cannot be had both ways. One cannot talk about rule of law on one hand, and then, when we impose rule of law because of the jurisdictional issues that make us have to do that, say we are breaking the law or imposing a dictatorship. That is not true. A dictator is someone who stops other people from having their freedoms. The protesters did that. They stopped everybody else from having the freedom to wear a mask, the freedom to go to a hospital to get care, the freedom to take their children to school and the freedom to go and shop. Occupiers closed down businesses. Businesses had to close their doors. They were walking into restaurants, intimidating and roughing up, both verbally and physically, waiters, waitresses and the people who were there. This is not a lawful, peaceful protest, and today, when everyone was singing the national anthem and saying to the police, “We love you,” this is part of a propaganda machine, saying, “Look at us; we are nice people. Look at us; we have a bouncy castle and our children play. We are nice people.” All of us sitting in the House of Commons must know this not to be true. We know what is happening—

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:17:45 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Feb/19/22 9:18:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are three things I would like to address. The member talked about the independent judiciary being active right now. This member must know that the Emergencies Act actually removes the role of judges in FINTRAC and the freezing of bank accounts. This is the shortcut. A briefing one of our members received from government officials specifically says it takes too long to go to judges, so the member should understand that. That is the first item. She also talked about how the media is being treated by some of the protesters, and I agree it is awful. I am going to remind her that back in 2017, VICE reporter Ben Makuch and Justin Brake from The Independent were being pursued in court by the government and facing charges for not wanting to reveal their sources. Lastly, one thing the member did not mention was consultation. Seven out of 10 provinces publicly said they disagree with the Emergencies Act being used. How can she support this?

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:18:49 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou.

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Hon. Hedy Fry

Feb/19/22 9:18:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, judges are currently engaged in looking at those who have been arrested and are actually speaking out and saying what must be done. They have been speaking out loudly about it and saying that certain things must be done. That is going on right now. The point is that Alberta wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, saying that it could not cope and did not have the resources within its municipalities and province to cope with what was going on at its borders. It was asking for help. The federal government then needed to have the tools. It needed to be able to look at jurisdictional issues and say—

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

Feb/19/22 9:19:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things my colleague said in her speech was that tow truck drivers were afraid to do their job, and that the government absolutely needed to use the Emergencies Act to compel them to do it. That said, the Criminal Code does provide for other measures, such as court orders and even Attorney General's orders. Why were those solutions not proposed before using the nuclear option that is the Emergencies Act?

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Hon. Hedy Fry

Feb/19/22 9:20:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that ability to bring in the tow trucks being asked for by a province and municipality is still provincial jurisdiction, and they do not have the powers to do that. The Emergencies Act gave them the authority to do that. We should ask ourselves why tow truck drivers are afraid to do this. It is because they are intimidated by their own so-called trucker convoys. They have protected their driver's licences and truck companies because they are scared. They put on masks so nobody would know who they are. Is that the kind of—

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/19/22 9:20:49 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Feb/19/22 9:20:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the use of the Emergencies Act, even consideration of it, is an acknowledgement of a failure of leadership that has allowed things to escalate unchecked since the beginning. I am hearing concerns. I too am worried this emergency measures legislation could later be used against those truly participating in peaceful protests. What we are currently facing is not that. This is an illegal occupation that has been harassing people for weeks. Does the member agree that action should have been taken earlier to avoid us being here today?

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Hon. Hedy Fry

Feb/19/22 9:21:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is interesting. If the Prime Minister had run out and imposed the Emergencies Act at the beginning of this, everyone would have asked him what he was doing and said that he was a bully. They would have asked him why he was not trying other methods of dealing with it. This is what he did. He talked to provinces and municipalities and tried to work it out with them. He had round tables for quite a few days. Again, we are back to what jurisdictional authority is. The point to remember is that this act is temporary, geographically targeted to places that need it, and proportionate. If we remember that, then we know it is going to end, and it is going to end with an inquiry, which makes it an accountable thing for the Government of Canada to be able to speak to.

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, CPC)

Feb/19/22 9:22:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of very concerned constituents in the freedom-loving riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. The Prime Minister’s emergency decree has struck terror into the hearts of millions of Canadians. They do not understand why this unprecedented and un-Canadian action is being taken. They are wondering if they are going to have their bank accounts frozen for supporting the wrong political party. They want to know if they are going to lose their children for the simple fact of waving a Canadian flag. I wish I could tell them it would never happen in Canada, but it is happening. I wish I could tell them this was not the Prime Minister’s plan all along. Ever since the government announced it was suspending the trucker vaccine mandate, only to reverse course 24 hours later, every action taken by the government and the Prime Minister has been to escalate and inflame. These actions were either calculations or incompetence. Either way, Canadians have lost all confidence in the Prime Minister. The question is how long it will take for Liberal members to find the confidence to speak truth to power. Here is the truth: The only emergency is the Prime Minister’s plummeting poll numbers. The government is pushing conspiracy theories full of more hot air than the bouncy castles on Wellington Street. To justify its fake emergency, it must ratchet up the rhetoric. Are Canadians supposed to believe our democracy was under threat from dance parties and hot tubs? The only thing under threat is the credibility of the government. The Prime Minister has become the boy who cried racist insurrectionist. Canadians can see this clearly, and they are judging the Prime Minister harshly. Even Liberals are openly wondering what has become of the Prime Minister. Two years ago to the day, the Prime Minister said this about a group of Canadians who were blockading critical infrastructure and calling on the Governor General to circumvent the elected government, “Our responsibility is to continue working on a peaceful and lasting solution to this troubling situation.” Two years ago, the Prime Minister pleaded with Canadians for patience. He sent his minister to negotiate with the protesters. Once the political issue had been resolved, the OPP moved in and peacefully removed the blockades. Canadians have the right to ask why this situation is different. Why is the government treating one group of protesters differently from another group of protesters? The one and only answer is politics. The government and its urban elite supporters despise rural Canadians unless they are indigenous, in which case they patronize them. Where were the denunciations of the vigilante mob waving a Soviet flag that attacked motorists? There were none, because the mob was made up of six-figure salaried public sector union leaders and university professors, which are also known as the Liberal donor base. When wealthy, privileged Canadians wave flags of genocidal states, the media holds them up as the heroes who survived the “Battle of Billings Bridge”. When rural, blue-collar workers show up holding signs calling the government Nazis, the media paints them as barbarians at a tiki torch rally. Now the media cheers on the doxing of Canadians, while the justice minister threatens to freeze the bank accounts of people who voted for the wrong presidential candidate. The minister’s comments to CTV Wednesday demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the government cannot be trusted with emergency powers. When asked if people who donated to the convoy would have their bank accounts frozen, the justice minister said, “If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating...to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried.” I do hope the minister can come before the House and explain which other so-called unacceptable views will determine if accounts are frozen. Sadly, we do not need the minister to explain. The media and the other radical activists that the government funds are already hard at work coming up with a progressive enemies list. Wednesday saw the seemingly coordinated effort by the Liberal-funded CBC and the Liberal-funded anti-Canadian hate network to simultaneously publish stories about Christians supporting the convoy. Last week, op-eds in Liberal media explained how the Canadian flag has been tainted because it was waved by the wrong kind of Canadians. The left-wing media and government-funded activists have certainly painted a clear picture of the type of people they believe hold unacceptable views. Christians, patriotic Canadians, even classic small-l liberals have made the urban socialists’ enemies list. The media like to call this a culture war. We have an urban culture that is very conservative when it comes to lifting pandemic policies. We have a rural culture comprised of people who made the decision to trade the benefits of urban living for the benefits of rural freedoms. The mistake is in thinking that this is a war. This has always been a rural David versus urban Goliath but with the slingshots banned by orders in council. This used to be a free country. The people in my riding elected a Liberal member of Parliament for most of the last century. That was until the Liberal Party began to turn its backs on rural Canadians with the long-gun registry. Since then, the Liberals have always chosen to support urban interests over rural interests, but it was only when the current Prime Minister and his woke McGuinty minions arrived that the game changed. Rather than just picking sides, they are seeking a total cultural domination. Tolerance used to mean accepting people, especially when we disagreed with them. The socialists have redefined tolerance to mean the complete submission to radical ideology. This is why the media are trying to recast the word “freedom” as “dog whistle”. That is why they attack the flag. It was a Liberal prime minister who said “freedom is our nationality”. Canada and freedom used to be synonymous, but freedom means dissent is okay. Democracy means not everybody is going to agree and even when 90% of us agree, we must protect the right of the 10% to dissent. When the predecessor party to the NDP voted against the War Measures Act during an actual war fighting actual Nazis, nobody accused them of supporting Hitler. Dissent is the canary in the coal mine of democracy. This emergency decree strikes right at the heart of dissent. With a stroke of his pen, the Prime Minister outlawed protesting on Parliament Hill for 30 days, to start. We are not talking about the streets of Ottawa. We are talking about the lawn. If Ukrainian Canadians want to demonstrate or rally on Parliament Hill in opposition to Russian aggression, they cannot because it is illegal now. The Prime Minister said the order would respect the charter. The charter is not worth the paper it is printed on if people cannot protest the declaration of an emergency order on Parliament Hill. The government claims it needs extraordinary power to stop an imminent insurrection that is a threat to democracy. I know the Prime Minister does not like to spend time in the House and was off in his bunker at the start, but Parliament has been meeting, debating and voting the whole time the trucks were here. When people in other countries hear the word “insurrection“, they imagine military coups or communist takeovers. What they do not imagine is a small group of protesters asking the Liberal-appointed Governor General to form a government with the Liberal-appointed Senate amounting to a dangerous insurrection. Their latest plan to overthrow the government is to politely ask the Governor General to replace the Liberal Prime Minister with a different Liberal member. The Governor General has declined this request. If this is an insurrection, it is the most polite, non-violent, typically Canadian insurrection in history. Protesters in Ottawa politely asked the government to overthrow itself and the government said no, so they threw a weeks-long block party. This bouncy castle insurrection is what the government needed to declare a national emergency for? This would be sad and pathetic were the precedent not so dangerous. It has invoked the Emergencies Act without sufficient grounds. Now it has trapped itself and to justify the power grab, it has to ratchet up the rhetoric further and further. To justify the government’s rhetoric, its media allies encouraged boycotts and vigilante mobs. Two years ago the Prime Minister called for patience and now he is calling everybody Nazis while he sends in the storm troopers to break up the bouncy castles. This has to stop.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Feb/19/22 9:32:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague and friend from across the way. She talked about bouncy castles, the pools that were established and all of the fun that they had. The member opposite sees this as a wonderful protest. She really does not have too much of a problem with it. She does not see the blockade and the many hardships that were caused, whether it was here in downtown Ottawa or at our international borders. There is someone who does. Senator Vernon White was appointed by Stephen Harper. His was a Conservative Stephen Harper appointment as senator. He was also a former chief of police in Ottawa. Does the member not think that he knows what he is talking about when he says that having the Emergencies Act is useful for this protest? In fact, it is a good thing. Would she not agree with such a strong, Conservative senator like that, with his experience?

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Feb/19/22 9:33:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is a tragedy and painful are the millions of jobs that were lost as a consequence of the pandemic, the declaration, the restrictions, the lockdowns and keeping us in Canada and requiring many things that had no basis in science. The John Hopkins University study declared that all of the non-medical interventions had no effect on lowering the death or infection rates. Just as it was an exaggeration to hold people down and make them lose their jobs, so too is it an exaggeration to invoke the Emergencies Act.

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