44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 25, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, this bill is extremely important, and it would provide an opportunity for claims or issues to be brought forward so an independent review process can occur. I think it is a great piece of work our government has done in bringing this forward. We would also collect important race-based data to help with identifying and bringing forward better decisions.
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Mr. Speaker, earlier today we heard an impassioned speech from the member for Hamilton Centre on Bill C-20, specifically mentioning a report from the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security entitled “Systemic Racism in Policing in Canada”. He noted there were 42 recommendations in that report, many of which have not been included in Bill C-20, including ensuring that indigenous people, alongside racialized and Black people, are on oversight bodies.
Could the member for Calgary Skyview comment on his level of support for going further, once this bill goes to committee, to see improvements made that would align more with reports like this?
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Mr. Speaker, these are really important and serious issues. In my time as a police commissioner in Calgary, one of the challenges we saw was with the collection of data and the ability to use it to better understand the challenges we were facing. We can support members of marginalized communities with the challenges that occur when it comes to policing by having a robust system to help bring those complaints forward so we not only have the information but also can make sure we can support them.
I look forward to working with my colleague and other members to have further conversations on how we can strengthen the work, and that will be done at committee moving forward.
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Uqaqtittiji, I have one criticism, and that is that the data collection on racialized communities is not enough.
I wonder if the member agrees that his party made a huge and critical oversight by not implementing the important report recommendations to ensure that systemic racism is addressed, and by not mandating the appointment of indigenous or BIPOC community members to the commission.
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Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to make sure that indigenous voices are reflected and heard. I think this bill would provide an opportunity for Canadians, from coast to coast to coast, with any of the complaints they have, whether with respect to the RCMP or the CBSA, to be able to bring them forward. We must continue to work together with all members of communities who have faced discrimination and racism to make sure that we tackle these issues head on and make sure we have a strong system of complaint where folks can make those complaints, but where they can also be addressed.
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Mr. Speaker, I just want to mention the important work of the CBSA agents who protect our borders and this nation. However, I have heard many stories in my home province of New Brunswick where particularly members of indigenous communities have faced discrimination. Random checks are not quite as random in their experience. I wonder if the member could comment briefly on how important it is to address issues when discrimination arises and ensure people have faith in our CBSA.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Fredericton for her great advocacy and hard work.
This is extremely important. I have seen it, through my time in Calgary as a police commissioner and my time as chair of the public safety task force, and in meeting and talking to community members about their concerns with policing and the challenges that they have had. There were opportunities for them to come forward.
The City of Calgary had an anti-racism hearing for three days to have these important conversations in public. I was part of that and was proud to support that. We have done great work through the public safety task force to make sure that we are working together with communities and members of our community to make sure we address these serious issues.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and privilege to bring the voice of Chatham-Kent—Leamington to this place, and today it is to put some comments on the record regarding Bill C-20, an act establishing the public complaints and review commission and amending certain acts and statutory instruments.
Before I get into the content of the bill, I want to begin by thanking the women and men who wear the uniform to keep Canadians safe.
Canadians expect accountability. They expect law and order, and they expect strong oversight mechanisms to ensure that there is no abuse of power. We recognize that our RCMP and CBSA agents put themselves in the possibility of harm's way every time they put on the uniform.
Canada and the U.S. share the world's longest, undefended border, and we as Canadians share this border with a country that owns more firearms than they have citizens. This is part of a different culture and a different history, and that is not the subject of today's debate.
The point I am making is that the CBSA has received much attention recently, and we look to them for their role in preventing gun violence, particularly in our cities. We ask that they address the issue of criminals smuggling illegal guns into this country, and we know that this activity is often also tied up with drug smuggling and trafficking. We ask that these people, along with law enforcement, put themselves in harm's way to keep us safe, and for that I want to thank them.
Let us look at the content of the bill.
The legislation would rename the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, to the public complaints and review commission, which I will refer to as the PCRC. Under its new name, the commission would also be responsible for reviewing civilian complaints against the CBSA. The bill's goal is to ensure that all of Canada's law enforcement agencies have an oversight body.
What I really do like about the bill is that it would codify timelines for the RCMP and CBSA responses to the PCRC. We have all heard of complaints that went into the civilian body, but then there was no response back. The reports, reviews, recommendations, and the information sharing between the RCMP and the PCRC, and the CBSA and the PCRC would be mandated and codified. The bill also stipulates annual reporting by the RCMP and CBSA on actions taken in response. This would be a further mechanism to ensure action follows complaints. As well, the bill would mandate reporting of disaggregated race-based data, provides for public education and provides for a statutory framework to govern the CBSA responses to serious incidents.
By way of some further background, the bill was introduced in the 43rd Parliament as Bill C-3. However, it did not pass second reading. It was introduced very late in the session and died on the Order Paper when that unnecessary election was called. In the 42nd Parliament, it was known as Bill C-98, but it died awaiting a vote in the Senate.
I want to put on the record that Conservatives have supported this legislation at each stage. I also want to note that this legislation appears to be straightforward and meets its objectives, but the newly created PCRC can only recommend disciplinary action and cannot enforce it. There will still need to be a further step as this process unfolds.
Conservatives believe in upholding the dignity of our borders and ensuring that our Canadian Border Services Agency is properly resourced, both in manpower and equipment. The civilian review commission should improve oversight and help the CBSA be an even more effective agency in its duties and functions, similar to the function of the renamed Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP.
As I stated earlier, Canadians expect effective oversight of federal law enforcement agencies, but what is disappointing is the length of time it has taken to get this done. The Liberals promised oversight in the 2015 election, then squandered two Parliaments in fulfilling their promise. Now, one month before Parliament breaks, the House is supposed to hurry up and pass this legislation. We are supportive, as we have been in the past, but we will review it, and we will do our job in this place. We have always stood for the security of Canadians and will continue to do so.
I live in Leamington, only 45 minutes away from the Windsor-Detroit border. I have crossed that border to the U.S. numerous times. By and large, I have had many good experiences and professional interactions with CBSA staff as I returned to Canada either from travelling to the U.S. or abroad, or just from an evening or afternoon in Detroit.
However, several years ago, while my four daughters were still quite young, my wife did not have such a pleasant experience. It was some time ago, in 2003 during the SARS outbreak, so there are similarities to today's times. My brother-in-law, a Canadian, was working in St. Louis at the time and flew to Detroit to come back to Canada to renew his status paperwork.
While my wife answered the questions asked by the CBSA agent, the agent assumed some information regarding my brother-in-law’s citizenship that he had not confirmed through questioning. Frustrated once he learned of his error, he swore at my young children, and literally threw the paperwork of six people into the van. I was not there; I was tied up elsewhere, so my wife took my four young daughters, a credit to her, into the U.S. to pick Darrell up. This agent now demanded that the paperwork be returned in a different order.
If the PCRC would have been in existence then, it would have heard from us, and this officer’s conduct would have been reported. This is a relatively minor incident in the scheme of things that could have happened, but there is a role for this oversight agency.
This situation occurred 19 years ago, so some time has gone by, but I know that it has been seven years since an idea for this oversight body was introduced in this place. The government campaigned on that promise. Let us hope it will not take 19 years to get this promise to Canadians completed.
Yesterday, in the House, we debated Bill S-4, a bill that enjoyed support at second reading on all sides of the aisle. Bill S-4 was Bill C-23 in the last Parliament, which also did not see the light of day in this chamber, but I digress. It seems that good bills do not receive good priority for this file in this place, but we will leave that for another day.
Bill S-4 asks to improve the efficiency of our court system through bringing in the use of video and other changes to address the huge backlog of cases. This backlog, of course, was exacerbated by the pandemic. We have all heard the expression “justice delayed is justice denied”, and the Jordan decision by the Supreme Court has codified this expression.
My purpose is not to redebate yesterday’s work in this chamber. Bill S-4 is off to committee, and hopefully it will be improved through amendments. Then hopefully it will be quickly returned to this place for third reading. My point in raising Bill S-4 is that during debate, several statistics were tabled during the interventions and I found them troubling.
There has been a 32% increase in violent crime since 2015. There were 124,000 more violent crimes last year than in 2015. There were 788 homicides in Canada last year. There were 611 in 2015, a 29% increase.
As we have heard before, there has been a 92% increase in gang-related homicides since 2015 and a 61% increase in reported sexual assaults since 2015. Police-reported hate crimes have increased 72% over the last two years, and 31,000 Canadians lost their lives to overdose between 2016 and 2022. There have been 7,169 deaths from opioid overdose in Canada in 2021 alone, and 21 people are dying per day from overdoses. Before the pandemic, it was 11.
Thus far, this is the record of the government when it comes to keeping Canadians safe over the past seven years. At their core, Bill S-4 and Bill C-20 are pieces of legislation that take us in the right direction. This cannot happen soon enough. I hope they now receive the priority they deserve.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned that justice delayed is justice denied. One observation I have, and I am not pointing the finger at anyone within the organization, is that the current review process the RCMP has for complaints, whether because of vexatious complaints or faulty processes, seems to be quite long. It can take over a year before someone even has their file updated so that the process begins.
Given the fact that the government does not seem to pay attention to its own bureaucrats when they say they have an issue with passports and need to increase resources and staff, does he feel that the government will be able to successfully implement this new complaints process so it includes both RCMP and CBSA complaints?
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Mr. Speaker, it is a good question. On the positive side, as I mentioned in my remarks, the timelines for responses are codified in the legislation, and those specific timelines will, I am sure, be examined at committee when this piece of legislation goes there. However, there is an open question: Will the government act on the very legislation that it has put in place? The government has shown at other times that it has not. It is therefore incumbent upon all of us to put pressure on the government to hold it to account. That is our job as the loyal opposition, and we will continue to do our job until we form government. Then it will become our responsibility to ensure that proper oversight of our federal agencies sees the light of day.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member highlighted a lot of the positive aspects of this very important bill and the urgency to seeing this pass. It is a very important step forward.
I want to pinpoint the specific piece where he mentioned that he would be supporting the legislation. Can we expect the Conservatives to help us ensure that it passes quickly in the House?
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Mr. Speaker, numerous speakers on our side of the aisle have indicated that we support sending this piece of legislation to committee. We will be seeking amendments to improve it, but we do support it. As I said in my closing remarks, it is a step in the right direction.
I share the member's concern about speed. The bill was announced seven years ago, and unfortunately we are again debating it here now. However, we certainly all want to see it go through all the steps both here and in the other place and become the law of the land.
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- Nov/25/22 12:45:24 p.m.
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Resuming debate.
Seeing as there is no more debate, is the House ready for the question?
Some hon. members: Question.
The Deputy Speaker: The question is on the motion.
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
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- Nov/25/22 12:46:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request that it be agreed to on division.
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- Nov/25/22 12:46:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request that it be agreed to on division.
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I declare the motion carried on division. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
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- Nov/25/22 12:46:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I suspect that if you were to canvass the House at this time, you might find unanimous consent to call it 1:30 p.m. so we can begin private members' hour.
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- Nov/25/22 12:46:48 p.m.
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Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Nov/25/22 12:46:48 p.m.
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I want to make a quick comment. It is funny how things can pass quickly in the House when we really want them to go quickly. I recognize the hon. member for Fredericton for making that comment a bit earlier.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with you that the time went by really fast. I did not think it would be my turn to rise so soon, but I am pleased to do so.
I rise today to speak to Bill C‑294. I already spoke in April about Bill C‑244, which has the same objectives. If anyone wants to read the speech I gave in April, they can safely apply my comments mutatis mutandis to Bill C‑294 because they still hold true. Perhaps that is what people refer to as recycling and it is completely in line with the bill before us today.
Bill C‑294 seeks to combat planned obsolescence, but what is planned obsolescence?
I want to remind members that the term “planned obsolescence” was coined by American businessman Bernard London in 1932 in an essay entitled “Ending the depression through planned obsolescence”.
At that time, we were in the midst of the Great Depression following the roaring twenties. Mr. London complained in his writings that, because of the crisis, consumers had taken to using products until they were no longer useful, until they were completely worn out. London said this was hurting the economy. As a result, companies began to create strategies to replace items as quickly and as often as possible in order to boost sales. This has led to a form of disposable culture: manufacture, buy and throw away. It has had a very significant impact on the environment.
The main pillars of planned obsolescence are as follows. First, goods are designed to be less durable. We see this happening more and more these days. For example, my washing machine is older than I am and I will do everything I can to avoid having to replace it, which is what my washing machine repairman suggested to me, because they do not make machines like mine anymore. The last time I tried to fix it, it cost me $5 because it is a simple part, but modern machines are so complicated and fragile that they break after five years.
Second, fashion is another pillar of planned obsolescence. People are urged to buy something new even if the version they already own is still perfectly good.
Third, an item can be designed so it is impossible to repair, forcing us to buy a new one. That is what Bill C‑244 addresses. I am very pleased that it passed at second reading because it allows people to circumvent digital locks in order to repair goods that otherwise could not be repaired because of a technological barrier.
Today, we are looking at the possibility of preventing new functionalities from being embedded in a device and rendering it obsolete more quickly. The bill before us today would amend the Copyright Act. In general, the Copyright Act seeks to make it possible for creators to earn a living from their art and to protect their works from being copied or used in a manner that they would not permit. That is a good thing. However, the problem is that it also applies to digital works. A digital work is protected by a digital lock that the Copyright Act has prohibited users from circumventing since 2012.
The work cannot be altered without the consent of the copyright owner. That is a good thing, generally, but it does have a negative impact. For instance, some companies have decided to invoke the Copyright Act to prevent people who own devices running on the company's software from downloading new apps that would require access to the operating system in order to function. The legislation already includes an exception to address this aspect and, since the bill before us contains only two clauses, I would like to go through the bill and explain a little more about the legal process that applies here, since we do not often take the time to do so in the House.
Under the former section of the Copyright Act, circumventing a technological protection measure was prohibited. Circumventing a digital lock is therefore prohibited. The legislation included an exception to indicate that it does not apply to the owner of the program, who has the right to circumvent the lock if it is for the sole purpose of obtaining information in order to make that program interoperable with another computer program.
For example, the person who creates software to run a device has the right to break the lock on another piece of software to ensure that their software works if they want to use someone else's product on their device.
The lack of a broader exclusion in the law means that the owner of a product that has computer software becomes somewhat of a prisoner of the original software owner, who grants himself or herself exclusivity over any new software or applications that might be installed.
Take cellphones, for example. As we know, there are plenty of apps available to download that make our phone much more interesting. Technically, this could be covered by the Copyright Act. Apple could say that they do not want a software creator to break the lock on the Apple phone to ensure their application is compatible. Obviously, this is unattractive to Apple because it would make its phones virtually useless and uncompetitive on the market. Apple therefore does not invoke the Copyright Act, but the fact remains that it could.
The amendment in the bill would add to the existing interoperability exception in the Copyright Act by saying that it:
does not apply to a person who...manufactures a product and circumvents a technological protection measure that protects a computer program embedded in another product for the sole purpose of allowing the person to make the computer program, or a device in which it is embedded, interoperable with [it]
This means that external individuals who create programs have the right to break locks on devices they want to connect to to make sure they are interoperable.
Agricultural machinery is one example that I talked about during my last speech on Bill C‑244. Take John Deere tractors, for example. The days of tractors like my dad's old 1958 Farmall are long gone. My dad still enjoys puttering around with it to plant a dozen rows of corn behind the house. Today's tractors are much more powerful and are equipped with GPS.
The lack of an exception in the Copyright Act prevents companies from doing things like creating software that could be added to the tractor's computer to help with spreading different kinds of fertilizer. That is impossible because John Deere holds the intellectual property rights to everything on the tractor.
That means external suppliers cannot add anything to improve the device, nor can external software be added that might, say, extend the useful life of the things we own.
Let us be clear, the bill does not seek to abolish software designers' copyright. That is being maintained. It does not allow it to be copied, either. It does not facilitate unfair competition from predatory competitors. It just ensures that we can maximize the lifespan of products we already own by adding external components.
Two bills on this topic are being studied in the House. Bill C‑244 addresses the issue of repair. Today, we hope to address the issue of interoperability through Bill C‑294.
Quebec is addressing the sustainably aspect, which is another pillar of programmed obsolescence, through legislation that would assign a sustainability score to objects. Bills C‑294 and C‑244 would ensure that people could not invoke federal copyright legislation to get around Quebec's measure. That is a good thing. Now we just have to work on planned obsolescence in fashion. We hope this will be a pillar that will allow us to have an impact on social awareness. I do not think we are at the point of legislating fashion in the House, but there is still a bit of work to do.
I hope that all these other bills will be an incentive to finalize, in good conscience, our work to counter programmed obsolescence.
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