44th Parl. 1st Sess.

February 19, 2022 07:00AM

Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Feb/19/22 11:46:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I guess the political left does not want to defund the police anymore. This summer, I was at a friend's party and met a young couple who were in the process of making dramatic last-minute changes to their wedding plans. They had been planning to get married in the beautiful century-old Catholic church that was the heart and soul of the community of Morinville, Alberta. It was the church in which she had grown up. However, the church had been burned to the ground a few weeks before in a likely act of arson, protest and terror. Morinville is about a 45-minute drive from where I live. On the morning after that fire, I drove out to see the situation. When I got there, the fire was still burning. While I watched, local fire crews had to do the painful work of knocking down parts of the structure to preserve public safety and avoid the risk of further spread. In addition to the threat of a burning building, there was also a gas line under the church and apartments nearby. Although no one was hurt in this attack, the additional risk of an explosion and risk to human life were very significant. This violent and dangerous act in Morinville was not an isolated incident. In the summer of last year, acts of arson destroyed more than a dozen churches of various denominations, with innumerable other acts of vandalism or attempted violence happening as well. The Prime Minister answered a question from the media about what happened in Morinville, but did not proactively issue a single statement about this wild rampage of destruction in western Canada. The Prime Minister's close friend and former adviser Gerry Butts called these acts “understandable”. Two days ago, there was an extremely violent attack on a Coastal GasLink pipeline work site in B.C. The responding RCMP officers were blocked from entering the road by spiked boards, downed and tarred stumps and trees lit on fire and had smoke bombs and flaming sticks thrown at them. Meanwhile, additional violent protesters broke into the work site armed with axes and flare guns. These protesters toppled heavy machinery, cut fuel lines and smashed site vehicles and set them on fire with workers still inside. On this incident, the public safety minister said, “I’m deeply concerned to hear reports of violent confrontations at a work site”. I would say respectfully to the minister that this was not a matter of violent confrontation; it was a premeditated violent attack on working people who were just trying to do their jobs. What is the climate in which such acts of violence against places of worship and energy workers have come to take place here in Canada? The much venerated David Suzuki has said that pipelines will be “blown up”. The current sitting Minister of Environment in the Liberal government once attacked the home of Alberta's then premier Ralph Klein. He climbed on the roof of his private home as part of an activist stunt, apparently terrifying the premier's wife, who was home alone at the time. Other members of the House, including the former leader of the Green Party and the former NDP MP who is now the mayor of Vancouver, have been arrested for more benign acts of law-breaking. I believe in the rule of law. The rule of law means that everyone is equally bound and protected by law. Whether they are sitting in a protest camp on Wellington Street or sitting in the federal cabinet, whether they drive a truck to work or work in the federal public service or whether they belong to a populist pro-Trump movement or a democratic socialist climate alarmist movement, such people have an obligation to follow the law and also have a right to be protected by it. When the law is selectively applied to penalize people based on their political views, that is by definition a violation of the rule of law. While calling out illegal blockades of critical infrastructure and other forms of law-breaking by protesters, we must also acknowledge that the rule of law is being threatened by a government that is woefully inconsistent in the way it treats protesters, and that this inconsistency is based on the political preferences and biases of the people in power. This brings the law into disrepute. At the heart of the idea of the rule of law is a contract: I will follow the law and I will have the protection of the law. When people are told to follow the law but do not have the fair and equal protection of the law, then we are no longer speaking of rule of law but of rule by law. Rule of law is where the law rules. Rule by law is where laws are used by powerful people to dominate others. We need to appreciate the difference. The Oka crisis, 9/11, the violent G7 and G20 protests, the blockades from two years ago, the series of attacks on places of worship and the violence targeting energy workers were not cause for the use of emergency powers. When this hammer is being used to target working people engaged in civil disobedience in response to unjustified and unscientific vaccine mandates, we see that the contract at the heart of what it means to be a rule-of-law society seems to be fraying. If I had seen the church I was about to get married in burn to the ground, if I had lost my job or access to vital services because of vaccine mandates or if I had seen acts of lawlessness ignored, defended and even perpetrated by senior leaders in this country, then I would find it a bit rich for the government to say that the current situation constitutes a unique national emergency. The contract at the heart of a rule-of-law society is fraying, and we see a Prime Minister with an incredible personal record of corruption, the only Prime Minister in history to violate ethics law on multiple occasions. He is now claiming that other people should be subject to severe and disproportionate consequences for so much as donating to the convoy even weeks before any blockading began. It seems to me that the most important question for Canada today is not just about the particulars of this moment, but about how we got here. We got here because of the arbitrary and inconsistent application of decisions by the government, the demonization of people who disagreed and the decline of our democratic institutions, leading people to believe that their voice cannot be heard any other way. If we are going to come together as a country and address the pain and division that have been sown, then we have to ask ourselves why the voice of a mother crying because her son lost his business and died by suicide because of COVID restrictions is not heard as loudly as the sound of a horn honking on Wellington Street. Why is it that a community of refugees from Egypt who had their house of worship burned to the ground in Surrey last year could not even get a statement from the Prime Minister, but potential for violence from this convoy led to a national state of emergency? We have to address the lack of empathy that clearly permeates our halls of power and the lack of concern for working Canadians who have lost jobs and opportunity as a result of pandemic policy, as well as the broader attack on their livelihoods that we are seeing through government policy. It may be hard for some people here to fully understand what many Canadians are going through, but I ask members to spare a thought for people like the NDP leader's brother-in-law. The NDP leader may not be prepared to stand up for his brother-in-law, but I will be here to stand in the breach—

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House Hansard - 34