44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 4:10:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, regarding the invocation of the Emergencies Act, I must ask how someone so irresponsible can be entrusted with such great responsibility.
Our country is more divided than ever before. Over the past two years, we have seen the government divide Canadians for political gain over and over again by pitting one region against the other, pitting east against west, pitting Canadians against each other, eroding trust in our institutions and flouting the rule of law.
The primary responsibility of the Prime Minister is to maintain peace, order and good government. What grade should the Prime Minister get? He gets an F in my book. We do not have peace. We do not have order, and I think all Canadians know the answer to the third question. That is right. It is an F.
The Prime Minister has decided to invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time since its inception 34 years ago. This legislation gives the government unprecedented power and control over the lives of Canadians, and it should only be used in the most exceptional of circumstances. It should not be used where existing laws are sufficient.
The threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act has simply not been met. It is not even close. This is a clear case of government overreach. So far, the Prime Minister and his ministers cannot even articulate a coherent reason.
The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation is such that it:
(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
and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.
The Emergencies Act is there to address certain types of extreme threats to Canada only when all other existing options will just not work The act is not there to allow the Prime Minister to arbitrarily, and without reason, curtail the rights of all citizens.
The Prime Minister says that the issues that have arisen over the past three weeks cannot be dealt with under existing legislation. Experts disagree, saying that existing Criminal Code provisions are sufficient, and extraordinary powers are an overreach.
Here is an example. The justice minister is justifying the Emergencies Act as needed to compel tow truck drivers to remove illegally parked vehicles, but there is a problem with that. Paragraph 129(b) of the Criminal Code already gives the police this power. It applies to anyone who:
omits, without reasonable excuse, to assist a public officer or peace officer in the execution of his duty in arresting a person or in preserving the peace,
The Criminal Code also already contains other sections that address unlawful assembly, harassment, intimidation and mischief.
Our country has experienced many crises in the last 30 years that were resolved without the need for Emergencies Act overrides. It was not invoked during the 2008 financial crisis. It was not invoked during the Oka crisis in 1990. It was not invoked in the aftermath of the Ottawa shootings that tragically ended the life of Corporal Nathan Cirillo in 2014. It was not invoked during 9/11. It was not during invoked in 2020, when rail crossings were being blocked across the country for weeks on end, disrupting supply chains, the delivery of goods and livelihoods.
It has not been invoked to deal with the opioid crisis. Most recently, it was not used during the greatest crisis that this country has faced since the Second World War, which is the COVID pandemic. In fact, it was not even used last week to clear the Ambassador Bridge, the Emerson border crossing or, for that matter, any other crossing. The crossings were clearly cleared peacefully, without violence and under existing laws.
Why invoke the Emergencies Act? Why suspend the rights of all Canadians? Sadly, we do not know why. The Prime Minister will not tell us his reason for this historic and unfettered power grab.
It is clear the the Prime Minister has lost of control of this situation and is desperate to save his political skin. Yes, the sunny ways of 2015 have given way to the dark, cloudy haze of 2022. He has lost control, and we should not be surprised in the slightest.
Here is why. When a government reduces sentences for serious offences, as this government has, when a prime minister tries to cut his friends at SNC-Lavalin a special deal to avoid criminal prosecution, when a government abandons the fundamental adherence to the rule of law, when certain politicians call to defund the police and the Prime Minister does not even immediately and strongly repudiate that terrible idea, what happens? What happens is lawlessness, and that is what has happened here. That is right: lawlessness.
Parliament has been surrounded by trucks that have blockaded the streets of Ottawa, cut off the free flow of traffic, made downtown residents' lives miserable, subjected them to honking noises 24-7, shut down businesses and cost people their livelihoods, all because of the weak policies of the Prime Minister.
As we have seen in Coutts, Windsor, Surrey and even in my home province of Manitoba, law enforcement has been able to peacefully clear border protests through negotiations without resorting to any Emergencies Act provisions. In fact, Manitoba and many other provinces are telling the Prime Minister that this step simply is not necessary and may even inflame the situation.
However, the government is insisting on triggering this draconian legislation that dramatically expands the ability of the state to interfere in the private lives of Canadians, a law that includes requiring banks to freeze an individual's bank account without due process.
The fact of the matter is that the governments in the different provinces already have the powers they need to deal with blockades and street protests. This was confirmed last week when the Minister of Emergency Preparedness actually said that police already had all the tools and resources they needed. Why then, a few days later, invoke the Emergencies Act?
This is a prime minister who thought it was a good idea to take an all-expenses-paid trip to the Aga Khan's island, a prime minister who embarrassed Canada by dancing through India with a known terrorist, a prime minister who paid $10 million to Omar Khadr and who gave his friends at WE Charity a $500-million contract in exchange for $500,000 in speaking fees for his family.
This is a prime minister who has been cited, not once but twice, by the Ethics Commissioner for ethics violations; who tried to pressure the first indigenous Attorney General in our history to cut a special deal for his friends at SNC-Lavalin, to go easy on them because of criminal charges they faced; who pretends to be a feminist while removing strong women of colour from his caucus for simply disagreeing with him; who flew to Tofino for a vacation on the very first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, after spending years pretending to care about reconciliation; who personally mocked indigenous protesters for simply wanting clean drinking water; and who spent years dressing up in blackface, so many times he cannot recall how many times he did it.
Now, just last week, in response to a reasonable question, he shamefully said to the hon. member for Thornhill, who is Jewish, that Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas and people who wave Confederate flags. What an insult to the member, to the Jewish community, to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, and to the brave Canadians who served in World War II and helped defeat the Nazis.
To make matters worse, he has refused to apologize. Such comments and actions are far, far beneath the office of the Prime Minister.
Conservatives are the party of law and order. We believe any illegal blockades must end quickly and peacefully. However, the actions of the Prime Minister, of invoking the Emergencies Act, could have the exact opposite effect.
The great American poet Maya Angelou wrote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Canadians should heed this advice.
I ask again, how can someone so irresponsible be entrusted with such great responsibility as the invocation of the Emergencies Act? The answer is simple: They cannot.
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- Feb/19/22 4:21:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the important things about debate is that we need to stay on point. The real point of debate today is whether or not the threshold has been met for the invocation of the Emergencies Act. That threshold is that these matters “cannot be...dealt with under any other law of Canada.” That threshold simply has not been met. In fact, international affairs professor Leah West at Carleton University said that she does not think the act applies. She said, “I have serious doubts that this definition is met.” When the leader of the NDP speaks about this, it sounds like he would rather go to the dentist than vote for this legislation.
I really think we need to stay on point, and I do not believe the threshold has been met.
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- Feb/19/22 4:24:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I can only reiterate that the point we are debating today is really a binary one: Has the threshold been met or has it not? We cannot just invoke draconian legislation like the Emergencies Act without that test being met. It is clear that the government has not been able to make the case that the threshold to invoke that legislation has been met. The reality is that existing laws were used to clear the Ambassador Bridge and other checkpoints across the country.
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- Feb/19/22 4:38:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
Earlier today, I was taken aback by certain comments. I almost fell off my chair, even though it is very sturdy. Two members of the Liberal caucus, the members for Hull—Aylmer and Don Valley West, told us that they were not 100% certain that invoking the Emergencies Act was the right thing to do. The blues will show that those were their very words.
My question for my hon. colleague is very simple: Does he believe, as I do, that before invoking the Emergencies Act, it is vital to be 100% certain that it is the right thing to do?
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- Feb/19/22 4:41:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Mirabel.
First of all, I would like to say that I will be doing something that I normally do not do. Rather than ad lib my speech, which is something I tend to strongly favour for parliamentary debates, since it makes them much livelier, I will be reading it from beginning to end.
That is my way of trying to help out the support staff in the House who are working very hard right now so that we can do our jobs. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them very much.
Today we are debating something exceptional. I am not talking about the situation, but about the Emergencies Act itself. The act is exceptional. The act is an ex post facto law. That means that it applies after the fact. This is a complete departure from the basic principle of natural justice that a person should not be subject to arbitrary laws imposed by a government that can decide that an action is illegal after the fact, especially retroactively.
When it proclaimed this act into law in 1988, Parliament defined very clear criteria for invoking it, specifically to justify deviating from this basic principle and to avoid undermining the foundations of democracy, which state that citizens should be protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Those criteria are precisely what members should be looking at today.
The only question that matters is this: Keeping in mind that these criteria were rigorously set out to protect the bulwarks of justice and democracy, are we satisfied that the invocation criteria have been met?
The government's backgrounder is quite enlightening on these invocation criteria:
The Act contains a specific definition of “national emergency” that makes clear how serious a situation needs to be before the Act can be relied upon. A national emergency is an urgent, temporary and critical situation that seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians or that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada. It must be a situation that cannot be effectively dealt with by the provinces and territories, or by any other law of Canada.
Basically, not only does it have to be proven that the act is useful, but it also has to be proven that it is necessary. It is not enough that the situation be serious; the conclusion must be that the only possible response to the emergency is to invoke the Emergencies Act.
The problem is that I have listened to the speeches given so far by the members who support the use of the act. I have listened to them in good faith, in case I hear an argument that makes me doubt my own position. I have heard nothing persuasive so far. I feel like listing off the greatest hits of some of the arguments that I have heard since the beginning of debate and offering my thoughts in response.
Unfortunately, we have heard a lot of speeches where members have tried to justify using the act because, for example, the situation has prevented the public from enjoying the beauty of Ottawa, or because people have not been able to go to museums, or because businesses have not been able to open.
It may seem a bit ridiculous to bring up these arguments that have been used in this debate. I am only doing so because these arguments have not just been raised a couple of times.
Several members have tried to justify their choice using arguments that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, even remotely in the same league as a national emergency situation. To me, that exposes just how flimsy the arguments in support of invoking the act are.
Another argument we have heard is that 72% of the population agrees with invoking the act. I actually find it frightening that anyone is justifying the use of this exceptional measure on the basis of a survey. Obviously, nowhere in the criteria I listed earlier does it say anything about how, if a certain percentage of the population likes the idea, then invoking the Emergencies Act is justified. Thank goodness for that.
That said, here are my thoughts on the survey results. I am absolutely certain that the 72% support is not specifically for the act. I think it is actually indicative of people's desire to see the situation resolved one way or another. It reflects people's reaction to the appalling lack of government leadership in managing this crisis. Ultimately, the government's use of the Emergencies Act is merely a pathetic attempt to cover up its incompetence.
Nevertheless, we have heard some arguments that seem convincing, and they deserve some more attention.
In his questions and comments today, the member for Windsor West emphasized several times that the situation at the Ambassador Bridge has not been completely resolved. He pointed out that although some traffic has resumed, there are still obstacles and barriers. He mentioned that families were prevented from accessing health care, for example.
He asked my Bloc colleagues what we had to say to those families. He asked whether we should not support the Emergencies Act for them. Obviously, I have all the compassion in the world for those families, but I still believe that invoking the act is not the solution.
As evidence, the authorities have been able to use the emergency measures since Monday, and yet, according to the member himself, the situation has not been resolved. Moreover, the blockades were shut down for the most part using the legal means already available before the emergency order was invoked.
It is not the use of the act that is the issue here, but rather the misuse or incomplete use of the resources that were already available, and those families should not be led to believe that invoking the Emergencies Act will solve their situation.
The leader of the NDP and many of his colleagues have also argued that the situation is urgent, particularly because many of the occupiers have started calling for the current government to be overthrown, which would be outright sedition.
I did most of my studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal. There was a protest almost every week calling for the government to be overthrown. Luckily, no one asked to invoke the Emergencies Act. If they had, Montreal would have been in a constant state of emergency.
Seriously, though, I doubt that the criterion of a serious and real threat to the sovereignty of Canada applies here. If we hold to Max Weber's definition, the government is not about to lose its monopoly on legitimate violence, and we are not facing an insurrection.
As for territorial integrity, I realize that Ottawa residents are patriotic, but, even though Ottawa is the nation's capital, I doubt that taking over an area of a mere three square kilometres constitutes undermining the territorial integrity of a country that covers 10 million square kilometres.
We have also heard the argument that the police officers have said that they would not have been able to do everything they have done without the Emergencies Act. I have heard police officers say that the act was useful, but I have not heard them say why it was necessary.
My colleagues in the Bloc have brilliantly explained how existing legislation would have allowed meaningful action to be taken without the use of the Emergencies Act. Before Monday, there was nothing stopping the different police forces from working together to achieve the results we have seen in the past 24 hours.
What is more, it is not the role of the police to justify the use of the act. It is the role of parliamentarians. I think simply citing the police without tangibly and clearly establishing what legal vacuum the Emergencies Act is filling is a weak argument. I even see it as an abdication of the parliamentary role.
The member who primarily used the opinion of police officers to justify his support for the act said in response to one of my colleagues that he was not 100% sure that using the Emergencies Act was the best thing to do. The Emergencies Act is the type of legislation that calls for us to be more certain than that when the time comes to apply it and to have at least tried to resolve the situation some other way first.
Another argument made by a colleague this morning was that the Emergencies Act has probably discouraged protesters from joining the occupiers who are already here. I find the slippery slope of even considering the Emergencies Act as a deterrent, and a preventive one at that, particularly dangerous.
In fact, from Monday to Friday morning, while the act was in force, nothing discouraged protesters from partying, barbecuing, or getting into a hot tub in the middle of the street. What served as a deterrent was not the act, but rather a start of a coordinated police response at long last.
I would like to quote Jim Watson, who said this morning that this police operation should have happened on day two. The point is not just that it should have happened, but that it could have happened even without the Emergencies Act.
Lastly, it was argued that we should support the Emergencies Act because it was requested by the City of Ottawa and the Government of Ontario, which have also enacted their own emergency legislation.
Provincial approval is a safeguard governing the application of the act, not simply a justification for invoking it. Again, the criteria for invoking the act are well defined, and the mere fact that a province requests it is not one of them. If it were, there would be the unfortunate risk of unwarranted use of the act when a province loses control of a situation without first demonstrating that all possible solutions have been tried and that the province is genuinely out of options.
Basically, I am not convinced. I am still waiting to hear an argument that will change my mind by Monday, but I must admit that I have my doubts. The government has not met its burden of persuading us that we have no choice but to use the act, as the act itself requires, so I find it hard to see how I could support it.
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- Feb/19/22 4:52:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I remind members that the Emergencies Act states that the government must have done everything possible. However, before invoking the act, the government made no attempt to co-ordinate the various police services. That is proof that the nuclear option, as some members are calling it, was used without justification. The work was not done.
The only measure not permitted under existing legislation is the requisitioning of tow truck services. My colleagues demonstrated that. The invocation of the Emergencies Act is smoke and mirrors and an attempt to remedy the government's poor management of the crisis.
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- Feb/19/22 4:54:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the War Measures Act was created with several scenarios in mind, but nothing specific. One of the tenets of a law is that it must not apply to a specific situation. It must be devised for general application to prevent it from being abusive.
That is why there are criteria for determining whether the Emergencies Act may be invoked. I do not see how it is useful to think of a very specific situation where the act could apply because it was designed to be broad and there are safeguards to ensure that the principles of natural justice and democracy are respected. There is no need to even consider potential applications, because the act is already designed to address that.
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- Feb/19/22 5:07:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague something that really builds on the question that was asked of the member for Kingston and the Islands. The member for Kingston and the Islands asked this hon. colleague's colleague about the Emergencies Act. I really hope that this gets through. That is this. The member for Kingston and the Islands said that the Emergencies Act was necessary to use to bring in other police officers.
If we look at the Ontario Comprehensive Ontario Police Services Act, which I was able to research in about 45 seconds, it says under section 21(1):
In an emergency, the Minister may make an agreement with the Crown in right of Canada, or of another province, or with any of its agencies for the provision of policing.
This would seem to fly directly in the face of the statement from the member for Kingston and the Islands. Could this hon. member please comment on that?
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- Feb/19/22 5:40:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member referred to being in favour of peaceful protests, but under these regulations, the Emergencies Act order requires financial institutions to cease dealing with designated persons. Designated persons is defined as anyone associated with a protest.
Keeping in mind that we both support peaceful protests, could the member explain what a designated person means in the act? Is it a protest organizer? Is it a protest attendee? Is it a donor? Is it someone who tweets in support? How far does the act go?
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- Feb/19/22 5:41:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to go back to the Emergencies Act, which builds in parliamentary oversight to this process and which allows at any time for 20 members of Parliament to request a vote to revoke these provisions. As the previous member asked what about laws that were already in effect, what I think is really true here is that the Emergencies Act gives us the power as a government, as a society to enforce existing laws and regulations to prevent those who would use force, violence and intimidation to get around those laws. If anyone is using their resources to prolong these demonstrations, blockades and occupations, they will fall under the provisions of the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/19/22 5:53:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this gives me an opportunity to respond to this question, which has come up a number of times. I want to specifically direct the hon. member to the Report to the Houses of Parliament: Emergencies Act Consultations. It outlines all of the measures taken by the government in respect to addressing the situation we have seen.
First and foremost, I think that starting on January 31, there were direct conversations with the mayor of Ottawa. There were numerous conversations with the premiers, including Premier Ford in Ontario. There were consultations with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
I can go on. This is an eight-page document that I hope the hon. member can go through to look at the work we did prior to invoking the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/19/22 5:54:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, since Friday, apart from a small hiccup yesterday, I have been listening to what has been said about the protest.
I have a question about what members have been saying since this morning. Are we to understand that, from now on, every time law enforcement agencies need to join forces, coordinate and collaborate, the federal government can invoke the Emergencies Act?
That is what is happening; after three weeks, law enforcement agencies are finally coordinating their efforts.
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- Feb/19/22 5:55:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know my hon. colleague is a trained lawyer, as am I. We have all heard some concerns raised by the general public that the invocation of the Emergencies Act may set a precedent, so I am curious about his thoughts on that.
I would particularly be interested in his views on the converse of that, which is if we did not act in these circumstances, what kind of precedent does he think might be set by people using economic hostage taking to try to force a change in policy of a democratically elected government. Is he concerned about that also setting a bad precedent in this nation?
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- Feb/19/22 6:09:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was impressed that my colleague for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill followed the line of the legislation from the Emergencies Act over to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act for the definition of “threat to the security of Canada”.
In these debates, we have not identified what it is that required the public order emergency, if it was required. I am very drawn to the fact that what we are looking at here is foreign influence that is affecting Canadian democracy in a negative way. Under “threats to the security of Canada”, subsection (b) states these are:
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.
It specifically does not include normal legal protest. I would ask the member to expand on that.
Are we actually bringing in a public order emergency because of the specific protest in Ottawa, or are we wanting to look at a network that is across Canada, and even global, that chooses to rely on disinformation and fearmongering to create divisions and undermine democracy?
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- Feb/19/22 6:22:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my response to that question is that we have legal provisions and mechanisms and laws sufficient to enable law enforcement officers to deal with all aspects of criminality, all aspects of law enforcement in this country, without the imposition of such a heavy-handed act, which should only be used for national emergencies. This situation is not a national emergency.
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- Feb/19/22 6:25:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, essentially the director of public prosecutions has sections that he could tap into to address these issues. Section 10 of the Director of Public Prosecutions Act allows the power to be directed and for these types of investigations to be done. We have the FINTRAC system, and there are other mechanisms that were not utilized before the Emergencies Act was negligently invoked.
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- Feb/19/22 6:26:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe section 129 of the Criminal Code could have been utilized to get tow truck drivers to remove vehicles from the streets, so we did have sufficient mechanisms in our criminal laws to deal with that issue. Therefore, the Emergencies Act was unnecessarily invoked.
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- Feb/19/22 6:26:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am always grateful to have the opportunity to address the House of Commons, especially in this seminal moment in Canadian history. I did not want to do it this way, but I did come back to my riding. I thought it important to understand very clearly what the national emergency was, and I will come to that more in the rest of my intervention.
There are many difficulties with the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and to be debating something that has already happened is somewhat counterproductive. However, that will be an important part of the mandatory review of the entire process as we go forward. The two main issues, as I see them, really boil down to how we got here and what the justification is for the Emergencies Act.
There are those here who wish to muddy the waters as to the legal justification for using the Emergencies Act, and I do believe that there are people out there who have that very important skill set. That will form part of the review as well. The question we need to start with is how we got here, and this, in my mind, has been the most dismal display of leadership I have ever seen.
As many in the House have been, I have been a part of sporting teams, committees and leadership positions in the medical community, and I have served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. One thing that is very crystal clear is that when we encounter those who do not fully agree with our position or support what we think is important, then that moment in time represents a significant opportunity for dialogue. Also, as a physician, I think the opportunity to discuss options and negotiate with patients presented itself to me on a daily basis, and I will be so crass as to say that this is communications 101.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, I have been shocked and appalled with respect to the language used by the Prime Minister when commenting upon those who have been vaccine-hesitant. I have been concerned about vaccine hesitancy since the beginning of the pandemic, and certainly I took the opportunity to review the scientific literature on the topic of vaccine hesitancy. There are innumerable papers, and I have had the opportunity to review them, and there was absolutely no mention of division, stigmatization or name-calling. The language used in these scientific papers would be more along the lines of building relationships, building trust and understanding the other person's position.
Chris Voss, who is a famous FBI negotiator, during one particularly difficult case, spoke through an apartment door for six hours with no response. In the end, the fugitives and the hostages emerged suddenly. The fugitives commented, “you calmed us down.... We finally believed you wouldn't go away, so we just came out.”
I think it is important people know I have been in Ottawa for the last three weeks, since the protests began, and every day I walked to work. I realize, as has been brought forward by others, I am a white man. I understand that. I have never been accosted, accused or threatened. I wear a mask, but sadly, Canadians who do not agree with the Prime Minister have been vilified, stigmatized and called names. Let us keep that in mind.
Even on Wednesday evening just past, I left my office at the corner of Bank and Wellington, and I walked all the way up to the Byward Market during the protest. Indeed, I did not feel unsafe. Nobody even spoke to me. Was this a public order emergency? Certainly, I do believe there are other avenues to deal with this situation, and certainly, as I have mentioned previously, I returned here to Nova Scotia and there is absolutely no public order emergency here. Life is going on as normal, and I think parliamentarians portraying what is going on in Ottawa as a public order emergency are a little misguided.
This isolated issue here in Ottawa does not a national emergency make. I have heard many Liberal colleagues talking about how dangerous or scary—
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- Feb/19/22 6:32:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, lots of words come to mind about that negative interruption. The way the member put the words of his interruption into the record is disturbing.
It is interesting how the Liberal colleagues often talk about how dangerous or scary the protest is, yet I do not think any of them even walked into the protest. When I was at the health committee one day, it ended early because my colleagues were scared to go out in the dark.
Further failures of leadership are clear. Documents have been made available to us in which the Prime Minister convened a first ministers' meeting. Its proposed agenda was to consult premiers on whether to declare this a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act. The documents reveal that the opinions of the premiers were given in confidence. However, since then their positions have been made clear. The Premier of Quebec did not think it was beneficial. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were opposed. I could find no comments for the Yukon, Northwest Territories or Nunavut. If in that consultation the opinions of seven of the 10 premiers were ignored, why bother having it?
As has been pointed out repeatedly, there never has been nor will there be any consultation by the Prime Minister or any of his government officials with the protesters. I will repeat that for the House and all Canadians. The Prime Minister has never spoken to any of the protesters who were there previously and now he has decided to employ and access the Emergencies Act.
Besides the Prime Minister's dismal approval rating, what is the emergency? What steps could have been taken before the government enacted the Emergencies Act that would have made this right, so that Canadians could believe that some suspension of their rights and freedoms would be appropriate?
A public order emergency is described as a “threat” to Canada's security, including acts of espionage and sabotage; “foreign influenced activities” that are detrimental to Canadian interests; terrorist activities; and efforts to covertly or by violence overthrow the constitutional structure of the country. Lawful advocacy, protests, demonstrations and similar activities are not included.
I think I made it clear that walking through the protests I did not feel unsafe.
This public order emergency has given the federal government significant overreach with respect to potentially accessing the bank accounts of not only those involved in the civil disobedience but of those who may have donated to the cause. As we have heard before, does that mean if one were to donate $5 or $10, that person's assets would be frozen? If relatives of a leader of a party in this House had donated to the cause would their assets be frozen? I wonder.
Bloomberg News described it that “banks would be required to report relationships with people involved in blockades and would be given the authority to freeze accounts without a court order, among other measures.” I spoke to Daniel the other day, who is now afraid to donate to any charity and he is now afraid his bank account may be frozen and he will not be able to pay his mortgage. He wonders if these new powers will continue to be used for other causes that raise funds if the government does not agree with their values. He is a proud Canadian with three Canadian flags in his yard.
From the current government we have seen travel restricted, cellphone data collected, military propaganda used domestically, bank accounts frozen and now the Emergencies Act invoked. If those are not multiple infringements upon the civil liberties and the Charter of Rights of Freedoms of Canadians, what is? Canada is now at a crossroads with its democracy. We have a Prime Minister who chooses to vilify, stigmatize and traumatize Canadians with different opinions.
The government has declared a public order emergency with the disagreement of seven of 10 premiers and indeed the vast majority of our country outside of Ottawa has no evidence of a public order emergency. We have seen law enforcement agencies successfully deal with the frustrations that have boiled over at the Ambassador Bridge and a multitude of other border crossings without the Emergencies Act. We also heard about the massive disruptions these blockades at border crossings have caused and the damage that has done to our economy.
However, I cannot fathom that the finance minister tells us how great the economy is at the current time, despite our 5.1% inflation rate and Canadians being priced out of their own lives, all of which was in existence before the last three weeks.
There is absolutely no reason the Emergencies Act cannot be rescinded post-haste and the madness stopped. It is sad that an ideological coalition has the potential to allow the act to continue for up to another 30 days. The left wing thinks that its position is perfectly fine, and there is no issue with that.
These people, who wanted to protest, were ignored. That is the sad reality of how we ended up here.
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- Feb/19/22 6:41:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, given that the Deputy Prime Minister, the prime minister-in-waiting, has opined that she would like to make aspects of the Emergencies Act permanent, such as the expansion of FINTRAC over more control of people's bank accounts and transactions, and given that the thresholds were not met to invoke the Emergencies Act, does the hon. member think, perhaps, the reason for invoking the act was to acquire some expanded, broadened powers permanently and that was the true goal of casting the country into this situation?
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