SoVote

M. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

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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Context: House Hansard - 34 - Feb/19/22

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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Context: House Hansard - 34 - Feb/20/22

Mr. Garnett Genuis

Feb/20/22 12:01:39 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, in any other situation, the member would understand how problematic it is to cast such broad generalizations about groups of people, as if the protesters had all assaulted journalists and as if the protesters had all engaged in border blockades. This is utter nonsense. The member should know that tens of thousands of people have gone out across this country to engage in protests about these unjustifiable mandates. Many have done so peacefully. Many have done so having no sympathy whatsoever for blockading. I deplore any violence, of course. I hear that a journalist was pepper-sprayed by somebody, perhaps law enforcement or somebody else. Any attacks on journalists are totally unacceptable, regardless of where they are coming from. However, this is not representative of—

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