44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 21, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/21/22 4:06:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the issue here is not a lack of laws to effectively deal with the situation either here in Ottawa or previously at the four border crossings; it is a lack of law enforcement.
As the former commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police said yesterday, the power to make arrests, seize and tow vehicles, cordon off the city, put up checkpoints and get thousands of additional officers in to assist the Ottawa police already exists in the existing laws of Canada. In fact, he said that it is used practically every Canada Day in this city. It is used practically every Remembrance Day. Clearly the emergency powers were not required for the clearing of the blockades at the four border crossings, because in some cases they were cleared prior to the invocation of the public order emergency and in some cases before the orders had really taken effect.
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- Feb/21/22 4:08:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the issue here is a failure to uphold the rule of law that has been years in the making.
Two years ago the blockades on the CN main line and in western Canada at the pipeline were allowed to continue for weeks. People who tear down statues in front of provincial Legislatures and in other public squares in this country suffer no consequences. I think we have a failure here to uphold the rule of law, and that is what is needed, rather than the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/21/22 4:35:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the best example we have of the core ideology at the heart of these blockades and illegal protests is the cache of weapons and body armour and the plotting discovered by RCMP agents in the province of Alberta to murder police officers and anybody who stood in their way. One simply has to go—
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- Feb/21/22 4:36:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what Canadians simply need to do is look at the social media feeds of the people behind the protests and they will understand very clearly the ideology and thinking behind these illegal blockades and protests.
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- Feb/21/22 5:19:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have listened intently to the member opposite, and I want to point out something we have heard repeatedly during the course of these past four days from the Conservative benches, which is that other steps were not taken prior to invoking this very significant piece of legislation. That is categorically false. A table was convened of all leadership at multiple levels. The RCMP officers were deputized. Ottawa declared a state of emergency. The Province of Ontario declared a state of emergency. Funds were targeted using conventional methods. Cryptocurrency was then being used by the illegal protesters, thus triggering the need to employ FINTRAC.
I am going to address FINTRAC in my question to the member opposite. Thus far, according to the reading I did this morning on my way here, 206 accounts have been frozen among tens of thousands of people in two countries who have donated to these illegal blockades. Is that not, in fact, demonstrating the restraint that has been shown, in terms of the surgical targeting of those who are largely funding this with improper donations, including donations from foreign jurisdictions? Is that not exactly what we should be doing to cut off the supply chain to this illegal blockading?
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- Feb/21/22 5:24:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, every Canadian should have an opinion on this, and I fully respect their opinions. Maybe they are right that it was necessary. That is their opinion. However, I would push back and say that calling for the act when it was needed to get rid of the existing blockades here in Ottawa is not what we are voting on tonight. We are voting on whether it still needs to be in place, and I am not aware of a single protest or threat in this country that still requires the most restrictive, powerful legislation in this country.
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- Feb/21/22 5:35:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague knows full well that this is not over. She knows full well that there are still attempts to ensure that blockades across the country are funded and that they do not stop. What the government needs to be doing right now is ensuring these blockades do not continue and do not reorganize to block the free flow of goods with our neighbours to the south. We must ensure that what happened here in Ottawa does not happen again.
We will re-evaluate, as the days go by, whether or not these measures are necessary. It is in fact the job of the House to do just that, and I look forward to working with my hon. colleagues to make sure that is the case.
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- Feb/21/22 5:37:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my honourable colleague for his staunch defence of his constituents.
I have full confidence in members of cabinet, most notably the Minister of Justice, and the actions they are going to take in the coming days and weeks. I know they will be working diligently to ensure that the charter rights of all Canadians will be protected as they carry out the necessary actions to bring back law and order to the city of Ottawa, as they ensure that everything that needs to be taken care of in Ontario is indeed taken care of, and as I stated before, as they ensure that we no longer have blockades blocking key points of entry into our country.
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- Feb/21/22 5:54:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not an expert, as my hon. colleague is, in FINTRAC and crowd-based funding. What I know is that through cryptocurrency and online platforms, there are millions of dollars from foreign destinations flowing into Canada to support illegal blockades, which is not right. We have very limited information about that. This is not good for our democracy and I am glad—
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- Feb/21/22 5:57:54 p.m.
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Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.
The blockades had been cleared. The Liberals did not need the emergency powers for that.
When it comes to Ottawa, the police have also cleared that out. However, we consistently hear ministers and members from the other side say that they need these emergency powers to end the unlawful blockades in Ottawa. That is what we keep hearing and yet, when we look at the RCMP list that was published on its website, which was retweeted by the Minister of Public Safety just a few days ago, with respect to the laws of the Emergencies Act that the police used, none of them were to clear the unlawful protest. It was the banking power that the RCMP claimed it needed. That is the only power the RCMP has cited.
That makes sense because we know police do not need the emergency powers to clear an unlawful protest. They do not need them to suppress a riot. They do not need them to clear a bridge or a piece of critical infrastructure. All of those powers were readily available to the RCMP and other police forces and to governments, yet they were not used. We are not sure why that is. We have yet to receive a clear answer on that. All we have heard is they needed these emergency powers, these unprecedented powers. As I said, the RCMP only quoted the financial measures.
I want to talk quite a bit about the financial measures because to me this is the most critical piece of the Emergencies Act. We are talking about providing the federal government the power to freeze people's bank accounts if the government does not agree with their political opinion. We heard that first-hand from the Minister of Justice on national television last week. He said that if someone supports a political position he does not like, they should be very concerned. He said that. People can look it up.
Is that really what we are going to do in this country? If there is a protest or some sort of demonstration that the government does not agree with, it can freeze their bank account, or, sorry, it can order the RCMP, who orders the bank who orders them. That is what the Liberals have been saying. It is not them; it is the hands-off.
We are voting on the power to freeze bank accounts of political dissidents today. This is why it is so shocking to me that the NDP, the party of protests, is looking to support the Emergencies Act today. It shocks me. In any social media feed of NDP members of Parliament, we see they have gone to countless protests, yet we see that the New Democrats are supporting the government's ability to freeze bank accounts.
I want to talk about the human impact of freezing someone's bank account. What does that really mean? It means that when they go to the grocery store to buy food, their debit card does not work. When they go to the gas station to fill up their car to get to work, their credit card does not work. When they go to an ATM to pull out some cash to take their spouse out for dinner, no money comes out. When their mortgage payment comes out, when their gas payment comes out, when their MTS bill, if they are in Manitoba, comes out, there is no money in the account. It is frozen. The government can freeze all of someone's assets. That is how significant this authority is, which may be given to the Liberal government today.
It is very unclear. I have received so many emails about this. We know this began as a peaceful protest, one of the largest, if not the largest, pan-Canadian demonstrations we have ever seen as it rolled across the country. Thousands of people turned out to show their support. Estimates say there were 15,000 people on Parliament Hill that first Saturday. Thousands of Canadian families donated small sums of money to voice their support for a political movement that was fighting for their right to bodily autonomy, to make their own medical choices and to hold a job regardless of their health choices. There were thousands of people.
When this was announced one week ago today, the finance minister explained how the government can freeze bank accounts. Do members want to know the terror and the anxiety felt by those thousands of people who participated in a lawful protest that very first day and people who gave $50 three weeks ago to a convoy? Do members want to know what kind of terror that brings to someone?
I have constituents saying they are pulling out tens of thousands of dollars from their bank accounts. I have a veteran, a very dear friend of mine, possibly the sweetest older man people will ever meet, who served our country valiantly for 28 years. Although he is very pro-vaccine, he supports the right for others to choose, so he gave the convoy $50 two weeks ago. He cancelled his credit cards because he is so terrified the government is coming for his money. I have constituents who are hiding cash under their beds. That is how terrifying this power is.
The lack of clarity has been astounding. It was just today, seven days after that initial announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister about freezing bank accounts, that she finally clarified that if it was before Tuesday, February 15, there was nothing to worry about, as it was not retroactive. It was just from that Tuesday.
Why did it take her seven days to make that public declaration? What kind of sadistic pain were the Liberals looking to inflict on people who innocently supported something that they believed in and has given them more hope than anything else in the past two years? It is shameful.
What is really shocking is that there is no due process in this. There is no court order. It is only if someone has been suspected. The CBC reported that today. If someone is suspected of supporting the convoy, they can come for that person's bank account. This is unbelievable.
It is interesting, because the Liberal government is in power now, but there are going to be other parties in power. Do we really want the federal government to have the power to say, “We don't agree with your protest. You can't go buy groceries. We're going to freeze your bank account.”
How many demonstrations are from environmental groups or social justice groups? Let us really think about this. Peaceful protest is one of our rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I stand by every peaceful protest. I stand against illegal blockades, and we have been very clear about that all along. Those have to end, but people have every right to peacefully protest, and thousands of Canadians supported this protest across the country when it was perfectly legal, lawful and peaceful.
The Liberals are asking us just to trust them. “Just trust us, there's parliamentary oversight”, as if that means anything. This Parliament asked four times for those lab documents from the Winnipeg lab with all those shenanigans going on with the Chinese Communist Party. We never got them. He prorogued Parliament. He called a snap election both times to get out of scandals of his own making and he thinks that we are going to trust that parliamentary oversight is going to be enough to keep his government in check? I do not think so.
I will end with this. Our party, the Conservative Party of Canada, will be voting with the fullest power of our ability against giving this Liberal government the power to freeze political dissidents' bank accounts. Absolutely, without question, we will be voting against that. Absolutely.
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- Feb/21/22 6:20:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would just politely point out some confusion. The member talks about leaders seeking political advantage, when it was the interim leader of the opposition who actually emailed her entire caucus to say that political advantage should be sought by not discouraging the blockades. That was on day four.
We have heard from many Conservative members about the threat having abated, but I will ask the member, when we have illegal protesters who have been removed from outside this building, but are staging 30 kilometres away; when we have a blockade that was attempted at Windsor on February 16; when we have a blockade that was successfully reinstalled in Surrey on February 18; and when we have an investigation into a hate group that was at the Coutts border, in his very own province, and the investigation into links between that group and what is happening here is still ongoing, would he agree with me that there is still an ongoing threat to the safety and security of Canadians that needs to be addressed through this legislation?
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