44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 2, 2022 02:00PM
- Mar/2/22 2:11:45 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, these times have been unrelentingly anxious for Canadians, with the pandemic; the conflict in Ukraine and other places, too many other places; economic and social insecurity; and so many other issues.
The impact of all of this is seen in our mental health crisis in Canada. In conversations and correspondence with our Fleetwood—Port Kells community, it is clear that our collective anxiety is being amplified greatly by misinformation, false news, anger and hate on the Internet.
We contribute to this too when partisan rhetoric in the goal of political advantage overrides the need of Canadians for our leadership, certainly through vigorous debate but focused on understanding and serving the common good. Each of us here must be prepared to step in, to correct the record on disinformation, to pop the bubble on conspiracy theories and to call out those who Gordon Lightfoot once described as “the wise and wicked ones who feed upon life's sacred fire”.
We were elected to lead. This is the leadership that our country needs.
176 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 2:49:46 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, inflation caused by this pandemic is happening around the world, but just like we did through this pandemic, we will keep having Canadians' backs. We have and we will continue to make life more affordable for families, seniors and the middle class with increases to the Canada child benefit that match the cost of living; with $10-a-day child care for families, which Conservative politicians voted against; with boosts to the GIS for vulnerable seniors; with more supports for students; and with investments in affordable housing. These are the things that we will continue to do to have Canadians' backs.
103 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 2:53:08 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it has been a long two years. People are exhausted by COVID, and people are exhausted by what is happening in international events. It is really important that we look back over these two years and remember what was best about Canadians.
Canadians stepped up for each other during those darkest times. We were there to support each other. We were there to believe in each other. We actually got vaccinated to a higher degree than just about any other country in the world, all the while supporting our frontline health workers and others. Canadians showed what they are made of during this pandemic. We are going to continue to demonstrate that we remain there for each other.
120 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 3:06:17 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, we were very pleased we were able to relax the rules at the border a few weeks ago based on science and public health recommendations. We know how much Canadians want to travel and to be done with the COVID-19 pandemic.
To put the pandemic behind us, we need to remain vigilant. That is why an antigen test to return to Canada is an easy and much less onerous approach that will make it easier for Canadians to travel in the coming months.
86 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 3:07:32 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, as we have since the very beginning, we will continue to ensure that we are doing everything necessary to keep Canadians safe. That is what has guided us throughout this pandemic, and that has actually led to far better health outcomes and economic outcomes than most, if not all, of our peer countries.
We will continue to do what is necessary to keep Canadians safe at the borders. Of course, provinces and territories will continue to make decisions in their jurisdictions. Our job, as a federal government, is to give them the tools they need, from vaccines to rapid tests to treatments, and to keep people safe. That is what we will continue to do.
117 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 3:08:14 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, all of the provinces in Canada have announced their plan to reduce and eliminate public health measures across the country. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, we are still waiting for the Prime Minister to have the courage to present his end-of-pandemic plan with regard to mandatory vaccination.
Canadians are fed up with Liberal incompetence. When will the Prime Minister finally inform Canadians in a clear and transparent way, without mocking them, about the government's intentions—
79 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 7:15:26 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, over the last couple of years, the issue that I think would have been a wonderful thing to talk about is the heroes of the pandemic and how Canadians stepped up to the plate when we really needed to take on the coronavirus. We are not necessarily focusing on that issue, but rather on a short period of time when people, due to the illegal blockades, caused far too many discussions and debates taking place here in Ottawa. I heard previously of the real heroes and issues of the pandemic. It has been a long, hard two-plus years, and there are so many wonderful things we could be saying about those Canadians and residents who really stepped up to get us through to this point.
Getting back on topic, a couple of days before the government instituted the Emergencies Act there was a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister. I caught wind of it not through the PMO or anything of that nature, but through a Winnipeg Free Press article. I would like to quote the article. It states:
Premier Heather Stefanson pleaded in a private letter to [the Prime Minister] to intervene at the Emerson border blockade just days before she publicly opposed his decision....
In a Feb. 11 letter obtained by the Free Press, Stefanson asked [the Prime Minister] to take “immediate and effective” action as she pleaded for “national leadership that only you and the federal government can provide.”
It goes on:
[The premier's] letter said the situation was urgent and blockades that disrupt “this critical corridor—even temporarily—create potential dangers, impose severe hardships on all Manitobans and cause severe economic loss and damage to Manitoba and Canadian businesses.”
That was just a couple of days before the Emergencies Act. On the Sunday, the fact that the federal government was looking at enacting the legislation was already being talked about through some media outlets, and on Monday it was enacted. I do not think it was of any great surprise.
We saw the City of Ottawa declare an emergency. The Province of Ontario declared an emergency. We had letters such as I just cited from Manitoba. We had a letter a week or so prior to that from the Province of Alberta asking the federal government to get engaged. The need to engage the Emergencies Act was very real, tangible and the right thing to do.
I will go to what we heard from some of the law enforcement agencies. Steve Bell, the interim chief of the Ottawa Police Service, stated: “All of those pieces of legislation and supports we've got from different levels of government have directly and actively contributed to our ability to ultimately say we are in a position to move forward and look to end the demonstration,” meaning the lockdown here in Ottawa.
In another news article, the commissioner of the RCMP stated that the powers given to her officers through the Emergencies Act served as a big deterrent in policing the anti-vaccine mandate protests that occupied the streets of downtown Ottawa for nearly a month. She stated:
We don't have anything in laws that prevent people from coming to protests and we can't turn them away. So for us, operationally, it was all about reducing that footprint in Ottawa and the only way to do that was to stop people from coming in or incentivizing them to leave.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister, the cabinet and in fact not just Liberal members of Parliament but New Democrats, one Green member of the House, which was the former leader of the Green Party, and even the Bloc supported the Emergencies Act. We recognized there was a need for it.
At the end of the day, if we take a look at the Conservatives, it is very difficult to see where they actually were. Many members talked about Conservatives walking out and getting those snapshots onto social media. In fact, I saw one picture of the interim leader at a dinner table with some of the protesters. It was quite amazing to see that.
Some say maybe we should have gone out there and talked to them. I want to give a quote. This is the Conservative guru from the Prairies. The Conservative Party members know him as Jason Kenney, the premier. This is what the premier had to say about negotiating with protesters. The premier was asked specifically about one of the leadership candidates, and I cannot say his name, and whether his comments compromised conduct. The premier stated, “I will never praise people who are out there breaking the law, creating public safety hazards, and I don't think anybody in elected office should do that.” The articles says, “He also said he does not believe anyone from the federal or provincial governments should be meeting with the participants.”
Stick with the facts. That is what I want the committee to be able to do, and hopefully it will be able to do it as quickly as possible.
867 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/2/22 7:28:24 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague for Calgary Shepard.
It is an honour to rise today to discuss this extremely serious matter. The unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act requires the utmost scrutiny, and the committee that will be struck is obviously going to play an essential role. The government's attempt to strong-arm the opposition and rig the committee to deliver a favourable outcome is not shocking given the history of the current government; nonetheless, it is unacceptable.
I want to start today by reminding Canadians how we got into this situation in the first place. When we take a step back to consider the actions taken by the Prime Minister and the Liberal government, the need for strong opposition oversight becomes even clearer.
In the early days of the pandemic, the Prime Minister acknowledged that mandating vaccinations would be a deeply divisive and socially harmful policy. That was about 13 months ago. He then saw an opening to try to move from a minority government to a majority, and decided that dividing Canadians and threatening the social fabric of our country would be worthwhile if it gave him a blank cheque for another four years.
While the Prime Minister has always been keen to divide Canadians and others who do not agree with him, recent months have seen him take it to a whole new level, charging those people who do not like his policies as racists or misogynists, or as holding unacceptable views and taking up space. He has taken to suggesting that hon. members of Parliament, even descendants of Holocaust survivors, are standing with Nazis.
What we are seeing is an increasingly tired, scandal-plagued Prime Minister clinging to the reins of power by stoking fear and division. Common-sense Canadians can see right through this. That is why thousands of Canadians from coast to coast left their homes to protest the Prime Minister's divisive policies and his decision to double down on vaccine mandates and restrictions when many provinces and countries around the world were lifting them.
The protesters came with a very simple message for the Prime Minister: Canadians want their rights and freedoms back, and it is time to allow Canadians to manage their risk tolerance for COVID-19 themselves, just as friends and family in other countries have been doing for months. Instead of speaking with them, understanding their concerns and trying to assuage their fears, the government continued to override Canadians' freedoms with no end in sight, and the Prime Minister resorted again to more name-calling.
Then, in a move I cannot fathom, the government and the NDP refused to support our Conservative motion asking for a plan to lift the mandate restrictions. Two years in, the Prime Minister does not believe that Canadians can be trusted with the metrics the government is using to justify public health measures. This is far from the commitment that the Liberal government made: In an open and accountable government, government data and information should be open by default. I wonder if the Liberals remember that pledge.
We cannot accept illegal activity at our borders or on our streets. Infringing on the rights and freedoms of fellow citizens while protesting the government cannot be accepted as the norm, but neither should we as Canadians accept dangerous and divisive rhetoric from the executive branch of our government meant to incite Canadians who disagree with it. It is clear that the Prime Minister no longer shares the guiding philosophy of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's sunny ways, but instead is relying on the winds of bluster.
This is in large part the backdrop against which the Emergencies Act was invoked. After years of insulting, shaming and marginalizing Canadians who disagreed with the Prime Minister, those Canadians rose up in opposition. The use of the Emergencies Act does appear to have been wholly inappropriate in this matter. Conservatives are extremely concerned that in striking the committee as the Liberals are proposing, they intend to simply stack the deck to skirt over the great many concerns that Canadians rightly have.
It is important to note that the existence of an emergency does not mean that the Emergencies Act is the proper tool to be used. I know that many Canadians impacted by the blockades felt that this was an emergency that required extraordinary intervention, but that is not the threshold for using it. In order to use this legislation, the predecessor of which was the War Measures Act, there can be no other options in our federal or provincial laws. We must not lose sight of this fact.
I have listened carefully to experts, including to police officers who were tasked with cleaning up the mess that the Prime Minister instigated. It is clear that the powers under the Emergencies Act were helpful in clearing the blockades, but again, whether they were used or were helpful is not the test for whether the act should have been invoked. It is whether the situation could have been dealt with in any other way through existing authorities. So far, I have seen no compelling evidence that it could not have been.
We know that the police can compel reasonable assistance from others at any point in time. This authority is laid out in the Criminal Code, and that would include calling tow-truck drivers.
We know that if police see a crime in progress, they are able to act on it even if they are outside their regular jurisdiction. Further, there is a process to deputize police from other departments or areas to act. This was done in Ottawa prior to the Emergencies Act being invoked, and it worked.
The Emergencies Act may have been more convenient, but it was not necessary. Convenience is not the test in the legislation. The increased offences that were granted under the Emergencies Act were not necessary, because there are already viable offences and authorities in the Criminal Code. The border blockades were coming down before the invocation of the Emergencies Act, so clearly it was not necessary in those instances. The financial measures were not necessary to bring down the blockades at our international borders, and we were already seeing crowdfunding platforms that were voluntarily cutting off funds without the need of this legislation. They also do not appear to have been charter-compliant, as individuals were assumed guilty and sanctioned by their banks without any due process.
These are all things that the committee needs to consider, and that we cannot simply allow to be swept under the rug by a committee designed to exonerate the Liberals' actions and justify the NDP's backing of them in an attempt to wipe the egg off their face from when they voted to affirm the act's use, only to have it withdrawn 36 hours later.
The government’s proposal for the structure of the committee is totally inadequate. As I have outlined, this committee has a very serious task ahead of it, and it ought to be credible. I appreciate that the views I have laid out, and that I have heard from my constituents, are likely not going to be universally accepted in this Chamber. However, they are valid views and deserve to be heard and considered.
A strong and represented opposition is essential for the functioning of our democracy. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is beholden to the people of Canada, not to the cabinet, to members of the governing party or to their coalition partners. To try to minimize our role because they do not like what we might say or what we might have said in the past flies in the face of our parliamentary system.
While the Liberals have proved to be too comfortable in criticizing Canadians who disagree with them as holding unacceptable views, and it is their right to say so, no matter how arrogant it makes them sound, they are not the arbiters of acceptability for our parliamentary system. That is a role that is reserved for Canadians at the ballot box, not for the government House leader and the caucus that sits behind him.
While he may have threatened an election over the Emergencies Act, it did not happen and our voices are just as valid in this place, or at committee, as his or any other member's on the government benches.
To quote Sir Wilfred Laurier, a Prime Minister greatly admired by Liberals:
...it is indeed essential for the country that the shades of opinion which are represented on both sides of this House should be placed as far as possible on a footing of equality and that we should have a strong opposition to voice the views of those who do not think with the majority.
I ask the government to take that advice now.
While the government may be inclined to disavow its claimed beliefs for the sake of politics and retaining power, my colleagues in opposition should not have the same concerns. While I have spoken at length about the government’s attempt to vilify Canadians who disagree with it, it is important to remind hon. members that the government has also attempted to curtail the powers of the opposition on multiple occasions. The fact that it is now trying to marginalize the official opposition’s role in the committee because it knows we disagree with it is another link in a concerning pattern by the government to use policy and now procedure to punish those who disagree with it.
We should remember Motion 6, which attempted to marginalize the role of opposition back in 2016 and give the government broad sweeping powers here in Parliament. We should recall the attempts by the government in 2017 to change the Standing Orders so that the opposition would lose numerous tools to hold the government to account. In the early days of the pandemic, the Liberal government tried to give itself the authority, unilaterally and without parliamentary oversight, to raise or lower taxes as it saw fit for up to two years.
When these things happened, opposition parties banded together to say no and oppose the government. The ideological and policy differences that existed then still exist now, but that was not the point. We knew that for our democracy to function effectively, there must be a strong and capable opposition, even if we did not necessarily like what the other parties had to say. It is in that spirit that we should come together now.
In the absence of consensus, the Emergencies Act provides a formula that can be used for striking this committee. While I understand the frustration that some Liberal MPs may have, given that they do not have a Senate caucus, despite the independence of senators appointed by the Prime Minister being questionable, that frustration lies at their feet and at the feet of their Prime Minister who made that decision. They had every ability to harmonize the Emergencies Act with the current structure of the Senate over the past six years, and they did not do so.
Unfortunately, with a closure motion being forced on us to stifle debate, a decision must be made, and I would suggest that adhering to the formula set out in the Emergencies Act will help to ensure a fair and impartial assessment of this incident.
1904 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
