44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 21, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/21/22 10:11:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for buying breakfast at the last opportunity we had. As a true fiscal Conservative, I thought it was great for him to offer that.
Again, I have to go back to my comment at the front end of my speech, I do believe that law enforcement had the tools to deal with this situation outside of the Emergencies Act. We have seen many protests throughout our country's history. We have seen crowd control become necessary in a number of situations.
I would have liked to have seen the government look to other options to support policing. As the Prime Minister has said, the Emergencies Act should not be the first, second or third resort. It remains unclear, on this side of the House at least, what those first, second or third resorts were.
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- Feb/21/22 6:25:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this being Family Day in Ontario, I want to start by wishing a happy Family Day in particular to my family, my wife Vanessa, my son Mason, who is probably playing video games right now and my two very young ones, Vivian and Frankie, who are probably watching this. I cannot wait until I get to leave today and come home, but they had better be asleep by the time I get there. I will see them in the morning.
I have been listening to this debate for the past four days, and I have heard a lot of different things being said in the House. I want to get into the details of those, but before I do, I want to take the opportunity to thank the men and women from police forces across the country. The manner in which this operation in Ottawa particularly was handled was nothing short of the gold standard in terms of how policing operations, such as this, need to happen. I thank them for everything that they did to make Ottawa stay safe during the removal of the occupiers.
I will start by saying I have been perplexed since the beginning of this with the position of the Conservative Party of Canada. It is the party that tells people it stands up for law and order, but the way that it has been responding to this particular issue is absolutely astounding. I am not even talking about this vote or this debate. I am talking about the way that it has responded to everything that has happened within the last three to four weeks.
Members have been encouraging occupiers not to leave, telling them to stay in Ottawa because what they are doing is working, when they know full well that they are breaking the law. That brings me to a very important point. It is this concept of the difference between an occupation and a protest. We have heard, day after day, Conservatives get up in the House and talk about this as a peaceful protest. The member who spoke shortly before me, the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, said it was a lawful protest. It was not a lawful protest. This was an occupation.
I find it remarkable that they would take this position. The irony is that the longer it went on, and the more they encouraged it, the more emboldened those outside became. I have a ton of respect for the NDP member for Windsor West who got up time after time when people, in particular Conservatives and the Bloc, would say there were no problems at the Ambassador Bridge. There were no problems in Windsor. Everything there was fine. He must have corrected the record about 20 to 25 times in the past four days that it was not the case. He said it was only a two-kilometre drive from where he was sitting, but somehow they were not able to take the word from him.
I have heard a number of outrageous and false statements in the House over the last four days. I will start with the one that probably got the biggest reaction out of me. The member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex referred to what was going on over the last three weeks as “Canada Day times a thousand”. She said that. She is quoted in Hansard. Members can see the video. She said that it was like Canada Day times a thousand. Can members believe that? I wonder if the residents of Ottawa feel the same way.
The member for Regina—Wascana, who replaced Ralph Goodale, said in the House, sitting right over there, that he did not see any problem. He said he walked up Metcalfe Street and did not see al Qaeda or the Taliban, as if that is the standard by which the party of law and order measures what an emergency is.
The member for Haldimand—Norfolk said that we somehow live in an authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorship. This is a parliamentary democracy. She is sitting in the House.
The member for Foothills said all that the occupiers at the Coutts border crossing wanted was to be heard. Thirteen people were arrested in conjunction with the seizure of weapons and ammunition.
The member for Abbotsford, although he is just one example, as so many of them said it, referred to what is going on right now as martial law. Martial law is when the military is literally walking on the street. Martial law means the military has taken over the civil duties of the police. That is absolutely ridiculous.
I have heard from a number of members, including the member for King—Vaughan, who talked about bank runs, suggesting that there will be bank runs out there, because people suddenly want to take all the money out of their accounts. If that happens, it would be based on the misinformation that they have been spreading.
The member for Grande Prairie—Mackenzie talked about suspending civil liberties. That is conflating the War Measures Act, the previous act, with what we actually have in the Emergencies Act.
I want to talk about the Emergencies Act. The Emergencies Act was actually brought in by a Progressive Conservative government. Do not for a second think that those who are sitting across the way are actually a part of that party. Maybe you are, Mr. Speaker, but the rest of them are not.
The bill was seconded by my predecessor, Flora MacDonald, a true Progressive Conservative. It was nothing like the War Measures Act. The only connection it had to the War Measures Act was that it was meant to remove it.
It specifically says, and this is how it differs, that it is temporary. It is for 30 days or less, and it is subject to quick Parliament review. It takes 20 members to sign and ask for another debate. It is targeted and used only where needed. The War Measures Act was not. The Emergencies Act is proportionate. The responses used by the authorities within that act need to be proportionate to what the emergency is. The War Measures Act did not have that.
Most importantly, it upholds civil liberties. It upholds the Charters of Rights, which the War Measures Act did not do.
The member for Grande Prairie—Mackenzie said it suspends civil liberties, but that member knows better, because that was the War Measures Act and this is not the War Measures Act, despite the fact that many Conservatives have no problem conflating the two.
What does the invocation of the act accomplish? The most important thing, to me, and I have not heard anybody else saying that any other piece of legislation could have handled this, is that it made it illegal to bring a child into what was going on out front of this place.
It made it a criminal offence to do that. Why would anybody be against that when we saw what we witnessed out there for three weeks?
It restricted entry so that it allowed police to set up checkpoints, like they did around Ottawa, so that if someone's intention, their sole intention, is to come into Ottawa to participate in this demonstration and this occupation, they would not be allowed to do so.
It allowed for the seizure of money and trucks, and I will say, when it relates to the seizure of money and particular bank accounts, it is temporary and it needs to be continually reviewed.
To get to the point of the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, the RCMP issued a statement today that said it has only turned over to financial institutions the names of the organizers and the names of those who had trucks or vehicles on the streets that were not removed. The member did not read the RCMP statement from today. If a member does not believe that to be true, they are blatantly saying the RCMP is lying to the public.
It also allowed for officers who were outside Ontario to be brought into Ontario, to be used in a jurisdiction outside their home province. I know Conservatives will say that all of this stuff could have been done with other laws, but guess what? Nobody else did it. The province did not want to do it.
In order to bring officers from Quebec into Ontario, there would have had to have been an agreement between the Ontario minister responsible and the Province of Quebec. They did not do that. What did Doug Ford do? He asked the federal government to please invoke the Emergencies Act so it could take care of this. That is exactly what happened.
I want to talk about some of the people who support this motion today.
The Conservative Party of Canada has a new-found admiration for Tommy Douglas. They have invoked his name more in the last four days in the House than I think they have since Tommy Douglas himself was here. By the way, Tommy Douglas's opposition was to the War Measures Act, not to the Emergencies Act.
I will read a quote from a modern-day NDP leader who is actually talking about the Emergencies Act. This is—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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