44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 21, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/21/22 8:50:06 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Tobique—Mactaquac.
Canadians across the country are gravely concerned. The Prime Minister is invoking the Emergencies Act for a crisis that he created. He is attempting to use a tool at the government's disposal that was created with the intention of rarely if ever being used. The Prime Minister is using this last resort tool to clean up a crisis of his own creation.
The Emergency Measures Act gives extraordinary powers to government, powers that should only be used when every other effort has been exhausted. Enacting these measures should not be the first or the second thing the Liberal government does to resolve a crisis. We have not seen any action by the Prime Minister to avoid jumping to this extreme measure.
As a former police chief, I have had enough thorough experience in dealing with crisis situations and the de-escalation of such crises. The first step in de-escalation is not to bring in a sledgehammer. The Prime Minister could not even take the first step everyone should use in de-escalation. That step would be listening. The Prime Minister refused to meet with the protesters to listen to their concerns. These are his fellow Canadian citizens, whether he agrees with their opinions or not. He is the Prime Minister of Canada and a good leader listens to his fellow countrymen.
The Emergencies Act specifically states part of the criteria for enactment is that all other measures have been exhausted in attempting to resolve the crisis. How can we possibly vote in favour of this act when the Prime Minister has not even attempted to use the most basic measure of resolving any crisis. Instead, the Prime Minister has inflamed the situation, almost as if he wanted to get to this point. It is quite evident the Prime Minister is not capable of first steps in any crisis he faces. It is in his ideological identity to squash anyone who does not agree with him and unfortunately Canadians from all walks of life know this all too well.
Earlier this week my Conservative colleagues proposed a possible step to end the crisis. We proposed the government provide Canadians with its plan for ending the various federal COVID-19-related mandates and restrictions. This is an example of one of the many actions that was available to the government before deciding on this drastic measure. Providing Canadians with an end plan is not a controversial decision. Many of the provincial governments have already done the same. Many Canadians including many participating in the various protests would have welcomed this action as a sign the government is hearing the wishes of Canadians or some direction or evidence of an end plan. Instead, the government jumped to ignore this measured action and is all too eager to get to this extreme point that we see ourselves in today.
While the Prime Minister has failed to present enough evidence to support the use of the act, I can think of numerous examples when this country has faced a crisis and managed to come out of it without implementing the act. Just last week we saw these protests at several Canadian-U.S. border crossings. These protests created grave economic consequences for the country, including my riding of Oxford. As Oxford has strong ties to the automotive manufacturing section, I had a first-hand account of the consequences of the protest in Windsor. Many automotive manufacturing plants had to slow down or completely shut off production.
My office received numerous messages from constituents who were being laid off due to these shutdowns. The Windsor border blockade was a crisis for many of my constituents. What did not cross my mind or theirs was that the Emergencies Act would need to be invoked to solve the crisis, and in fact it was not. We saw officers peacefully remove the blockades to allow the border to reopen. They did this without the use of the Emergencies Act.
A similar situation occurred in Coutts, Alberta. Again, RCMP officers were able to clear the blockade without any tools from the Emergencies Act. There have been numerous examples throughout Canadian history when a crisis such as this one, or I may say worse than this one, have arose, many of them being of a much more dangerous nature than the current situation.
Another that comes to mind is the crisis we all saw with 2010 G20 riots in Toronto. Some members of the government would be very familiar with this crisis, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness especially as he was the Toronto police chief at the time. Maybe some forget what we saw during that crisis. We saw a bank just down the street from parliament being firebombed. We saw police cars in flames in downtown Toronto. We saw hundreds of businesses damaged by protesters. The Emergencies Act was available to our government at the time. It was not used in that crisis. Why? It did not meet the criteria outlined in the Emergencies Act.
Flaming vehicles and destroyed businesses are what the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, the acting Toronto police chief, was facing at the time. If flaming banks and police cars do not constitute a reason for using the Emergencies Act, I find it very hard to see how road hockey games and bouncy castles do. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness knows very well that the police officers we have here have all the tools necessary to defuse this situation if needed. The Emergencies Act was not needed in Windsor and Coutts, Alberta.
Instead, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness said he was proud to invoke this act. I find it extremely disappointing to hear this coming from a fellow former police chief. No one in this House should be proud to use this act. However, it seems the Prime Minister is all too eager to use it.
Another similar crisis, again during the Minister of Emergency Preparedness’s time as police chief, occurred a year before the G20 summit. In 2009, we saw many Tamil Canadians upset with what they were seeing happening in the Sri Lankan civil war. Canadians shut down northbound and southbound lanes of University Avenue in Toronto for four days. They blocked the U.S. consulate in Toronto and illegally blocked traffic on the Gardiner Expressway. Again, it was not necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. In fact, use of force by police officers was not necessary. The Toronto police chief, the current Minister of Emergency Preparedness, used his training in community policing to help facilitate a peaceful end to the crisis. The police chief even received an award from the Tamil Canadian community for his leadership during the protests.
Again, I fail to see why the government sees it necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act now when it was not necessary in 2010 or even last week. Why were we able to see those crises resolved without such extreme measures? We have several precedents for why this Emergencies Act should not be invoked and we have no reasons for why it should be, yet here we are in this debate.
Let us talk about a time when the government had to react to a similar crisis. It was during the October crisis in 1970. While the War Measures Act was a different act, it did possess many similarities to the one being used today. It is important to compare the crisis of that time to what we are seeing now. In the lead-up to the October crisis, we saw a terrorist organization robbing and bombing several institutions in Quebec. That crisis reached a climax with several kidnappings and the eventual horrendous murder of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte.
That was the context of the last time a Canadian government used such drastic actions to restore order. It does not take much effort to realize that while we may be experiencing a crisis of our own, it pales in comparison to what the government of the day faced the last time an emergency act was implemented.
Invoking the Emergencies Act now, for the purpose of trying to cover up the mismanagement and poor leadership of the Liberal government, would be creating a dangerous precedent for any future crisis the government may face. What is to stop the government from implementing this act every time it has a group of fellow Canadians who disagrees. We have heard members of the government tell us that this Emergencies Act is necessary to dismantle these illegal protests and blockades. I again ask how it was possible that the illegal protests and blockades in Windsor and Coutts were dismantled if they did not possess the required tools.
Furthermore, the act states that the nature of the emergency is one that seriously endangers the lives of Canadians. If we are in such grave danger from these protesters such as those in Ottawa, why would members of the House even have been allowed to convene in the House? The threshold for this act has not been met.
We have heard the Minister of Justice brag about how the mere mention of using the Emergencies Act resulted in protesters in Coutts, Alberta, dispersing from their blockade. The minister was bragging about using the most powerful tool available to the government. He should be ashamed that it has come to this point. He should be ashamed because it means the government has failed miserably.
All Canadians should be ashamed that the Prime Minister has failed them.
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- Feb/21/22 1:10:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague raised a few interesting points in her speech earlier. I do not have time to comment on her whole speech, but I would like to ask her a quick question.
One point she raised really struck me. She made a number of arguments in favour of using the Emergencies Act.
Here is the question I would like to ask her. Why did the government decide to invoke the Emergencies Act here and now in 2022?
How many times has it been used over the past 30 years? How many crises have been resolved without this act? What makes this crisis so much more significant than all the others? Why is the act necessary in this case? Why could the situation not have been resolved without it?
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- Feb/21/22 1:42:58 p.m.
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This was a government that took responsibility and worked hard, every day, on behalf of all Canadians. The country was safe, and there was a sense of confidence in the government. No dream was too big. Our country was the envy of the entire world. We were a country filled with promise, opportunity and a dream, the dream of enabling our children and grandchildren to prosper and earn a good living.
It is now 2022, and I no longer recognize my country, my Canada. Since the Liberal Party came to power, Canadians and Quebeckers have become tired, stressed and disillusioned. They have lost confidence in this clumsy, intransigent government whose respect for and defence of fundamental rights leave something to be desired. They feel a collective disappointment in what is currently going on.
The government wants to invoke the Emergencies Act just because some Canadians were simply asking to speak to the Prime Minister. These are proud, patriotic Canadians who are worried about their future. They simply would like to have a frank discussion and to see the government release a well-formulated plan to improve the situation. These people were only asking for a show of leadership. They wanted to feel that there was a captain at the helm of our country. These people travel the roads day and night, all year long, to deliver food and essential goods to contribute to our well-being. All they needed was support from government.
This government is doubling down on its incompetence. We are all living in a climate of widespread uncertainty. This winter has been very hard. The coming spring holds great uncertainty. What will the summer hold, and what awaits us in the fall, as far as the pandemic is concerned? I wish for a return of hope, the hope that the Conservative team, with its new leadership, will be ready to replace this ineffective, incompetent and worn-out government.
This weekend is a dark chapter in our history. How do we explain this to future generations? How can I explain to my five grandchildren whom I adore—my little Maéva, my little Béatrice, my little Loïc, my little Delphine and my little Arthur—that men and women who were well intentioned, but desperate and too determined, were removed using intimidation and violence, right here in our democratic and peaceful country? This is not the Canada I want to leave as a legacy. There are no winners. We are all losers today.
I do know, however, that all is not lost. We still have the hope and strength to recover from these crises and the unforeseen events that are yet to come. Canadians from coast to coast to coast are going through a difficult time, but if we work together, it will make us stronger, more united and more ambitious.
I think of our Olympic athletes who made us proud over the past two weeks. I think of all the hard-working Canadians in our health care system, and those who go above and beyond for their families and for a better life. I think of all the opportunities we have here in Canada to make our mark and succeed.
We need to remain optimistic. Let us be strong. Let us all be united and stand in solidarity to build the Canada of tomorrow, despite all of the challenges and obstacles in our path and despite the inevitable consequences of having a Liberal government that made poor choices that will catch up to us sooner or later.
Together, we have everything we need to regain confidence in our abilities, to prove to ourselves that anything is possible, to heal our wounds, and to regain the strength and determination that typify all those who defend our freedoms and live in this big, beautiful country full of promise.
As of today, in the House, we all need to make a commitment so that history does not repeat itself. We need to commit to talking to our constituents, explaining to them the path that we should follow to continue with our social initiatives, working to rebuild their confidence in their elected officials, and working to give them back their faith in the future by doing something as simple as listening and showing empathy. We have a duty to talk to each other, respect each other and understand each other.
Over the past few days, I got a lot of emails and calls from people who asked me to be their voice in Parliament, to get things moving, as they said. I sensed their impatience and felt all of the responsibility that comes with the fact that they put their confidence in me to represent them. I thank them for their kind words and their wise and inspiring advice.
I will carry the torch as I humbly represent my constituents and make their lives better this year. I have shown my colleagues all the hope that I have, but I have reservations about fulfilling my hopes under the current government. I am a man of faith and conviction, but I am also a realist, as are Canadians who are no fools.
Since being elected in 2015, the Liberal government may have initially responded to a certain need for freedom, a renewed desire for feminism, a new freedom to smoke marijuana and to be whoever we want, however we want, but let us admit that we are now seeing the consequences of the Liberals' shortcomings. Experts will tell us the full implications, but for now, an entire generation has lost its footing, its roots and its social identity. Sad to say, all this harping on our differences has cost us our unity, our common sense of duty and sharing, our consideration for the needs of the most vulnerable and needy. In many respects, the pandemic has shown us that unfortunately, many have abandoned their roots and those who brought them into the world. That is so sad.
It gets worse. Some people have no idea what is going on. Some pretend they do not know. Many are afraid to contemplate a future in which the Liberal Party has legalized hard drugs and prostitution, as promised in their platform. Some tell themselves it will be okay because we will know what our children and grandchildren are consuming and girls and women will get better treatment. The reality of life on the streets has not changed on the black market. We will witness the spectacle of a society with more and more problems related to mental illness and crime, because the two go hand in hand. We should expect to see more violence. This situation is being managed by a clown, if I may say so, but the fact is, this is just a taste of what may await us.
When I am back in the country, where I was born, where life is good, I should be living my life to the fullest, but I cannot be at peace knowing that many people will suffer the consequences of this Prime Minister's disastrous choices and that all his cronies will use his immoral policies to fatten their bank accounts.
We were born free. We were living in a free and economically prosperous country—
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- Feb/21/22 4:37:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I recognize the member's intelligence and common sense. We now know that invoking the Emergencies Act, as the government is trying to do tonight, is no longer necessary, if it ever was.
Would the member not agree that it would be more appropriate to use this time to gather in a committee to determine which tools could prevent crises like the one we have experienced, instead of resorting to disproportionate measures after the fact?
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