44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 15, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/15/23 12:22:33 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for highlighting recommendation 11 in this report. It is now in Bill S-12 in the Senate.
I wonder if she shares the optimism that I feel. A lot of the matters dealt with in Bill S-12 have already been discussed multiple times in this chamber. When that bill eventually arrives here, does she believe that all parties can work together to get its provisions enacted quickly?
76 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:23:05 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his work on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
I hope the bill is the kind of thing that has unanimous support from all parliamentarians in the House. It talks about how we can better support victims in Canada and what kinds of resources are needed as we move forward. I very much hope we will have unanimous support when it comes forward.
72 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:23:39 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask the member a similar question to one I asked earlier during this debate specifically around the amendment. It gets to the root cause of how victims are not being treated respectfully at times because of a lack of accountability within the minister's office, in this case the Minister of Public Safety.
If the roles were reversed and she was a minister, would she accept staff members keeping her in the dark and not briefing her about something that is impacting victims in Canada?
91 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:24:22 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, on the amendment, we all have a responsibility as we move forward to try to ensure that proper changes are made and things are done in the most effective way. I believe all of us parliamentarians, and in particular ministers, have a huge responsibility to ensure that we are moving forward on and responding to issues of the day.
The amendment put forward today was another opportunity to politicize a horrible issue, something that all of us are very concerned about. I am not even going to reference the individual we are talking about nor the families, because I think we are revictimizing families over and over again. Every time this is mentioned in the House, like yesterday and the day before, it is revictimizing the families, and that is not acceptable.
134 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:25:22 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, while listening to the member's comments, I appreciated the fact that she highlighted a number of the recommendations. In those recommendations, I have found there is a great emphasis on victims. I am wondering if the member could provide her thoughts on why we should be putting more and more emphasis on victims. In the last budget, there was a commitment to additional funding for victims. I would like her general thoughts about victims of crime.
79 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:26:06 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, as I indicated earlier, I found out first-hand what is available to victims as far as support or anything else goes when one of my constituents was a victim of a drive-by shooting. I went to see what I could do to help and found out how little there was, whether it was financial support, emotional support or just being able to get before a committee and share what had happened. There was very little there.
The report from the standing committee, which was a unanimous report, is wonderful work. It is really indicative of how members of Parliament can work together on difficult issues. The 13 recommendations were supported by all parliamentarians on that committee and were put together while doing exactly what I think we need to do more of: working together to do our job of advancing the issues that are going to better protect Canadians.
153 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:27:09 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the hon. member. I know her to be an MP who stands up very strongly for her constituents, and I thank her for that work.
She mentioned the concern she has that the amendment today revictimizes, which I believe was the word she used, the victims of this horrific, vile killer and those who have been impacted by men like him. I would ask her to reflect on the fact that it was the minister's failure to do his job that led the families of those women to be revictimized in the way they were. He has made a number of excuses and has taken no accountability or responsibility for the fact that he did not know that the most vile killer and rapist of children in this country's history was being moved to a medium-security prison from a maximum-security prison.
I feel the public trust in the Minister of Public Safety has been broken. It is certainly important to women that we have a minister who is competent in this regard, but he has failed in this regard. He needs to take ownership over this revictimization. I would ask for the member's thoughts on his failure to protect those families.
213 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has done admirable work on the files that she has had, on these ones and on the other ones before. We have worked together on a variety of different things. I have tremendous respect for my colleague, but I have to say that there are issues that are taking valuable time in the House. We are supposed to be talking about Bill C-35, which would entrench the issues of child care across Canada, to make sure that child care will continue to be available throughout the country and be affordable. I came in totally prepared to be dealing with Bill C-35.
What we are doing is wasting time. That is the wrong wording. We are accepting these recommendations and applauding the recommendations, but we should really be moving on with trying to get the legislation of the government through. That is part of what our job is: to move legislation through. That was what my intention was when I came today, and I would hope that, as soon as this is finished, we will get on to doing that. Issues of what a minister did, should do, or whatever, are issues, I believe, that should not be on the table for our continued discussion. We should be putting our legislation through the House.
220 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:29:49 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would echo the comments of my colleague from Manitoba about the hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek, who, I will also note, is a strong member for her constituents on many issues, including this one.
I just want to follow up on the question from my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound with regard to the amendment.
The hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek was a minister of the Crown, and I just want to ask what her reaction would be if, in a situation like this, staff had kept something from her.
102 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:30:32 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I expect that my reaction would be the exact same as my colleague's reaction.
Today, we have important time to try to get legislation through. We all know that we expect the House will rise. I had hoped it was going to rise this week, but clearly it is going to rise next week.
The minister is responsible, at the end of the day, for his actions, and that will follow. We should not be using House time to discuss something that, at the end of the day, we are not going to be able to take action on.
102 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great disappointment that, yet again, in the last number of days, the Liberal Prime Minister and his cabinet have let Canadians down in quite a tremendous fashion. They have withheld the truth and they have misled the public. They have made egregious errors and taken no responsibility for them. They are making excuses and blaming everyone but themselves. There has been very little, if any, accountability taken, and meanwhile it is the Canadian people and, certainly, our most vulnerable, who suffer as a result.
As such, the amendment the Conservatives moved today in the House is calling for the immediate resignation of the public safety minister, given his long track record of misleading the House and the Canadian people, and in particular his latest quite serious failure of leadership and responsibility in a cabinet position that really, beyond many others, needs the public trust, needs a responsible minister and needs to be beyond reproach in this regard, given the magnitude of the files they are responsible for.
For those who have been paying attention, we are talking about the move of, I believe, certainly the most notorious child rapist and killer in Canadian history, Paul Bernardo. He was recently moved, under the public safety minister's watch, under the Liberal government's watch, from maximum security to medium security. A man who, I would assume almost all Canadians believe, and rightfully so in my opinion, should rot in prison for the rest of his life has now been moved to a medium-security prison with more privileges. The tale that has come out in the last few hours and days about what the minister knew and what the Prime Minister knew, or what they are saying their offices knew, and we will get into that, is just deeply concerning and shows that very little responsibility is being taken.
It is now very unclear whether there is anyone in charge at Public Safety, because it does not seem like there is. Because this issue, what this vile killer did, is so sensitive and has really been burnt into the minds of Canadians, for me, it certainly evoked a very emotional response and a lot of anger at the failure of responsibility and leadership from the Prime Minister and certainly from the Minister of Public Safety, which is why we are calling for his resignation today.
It was on June 1, just a few days ago, that Canadians learned that Correctional Service Canada was transferring this vile killer from a segregated section of a maximum-security prison, where he rightfully belongs until his dying days, to a medium-security prison, a more open, campus-style prison, and he certainly does not deserve that, from my perspective and from the perspective of most Canadians.
Particularly women, but I think most of us, are hesitant to have his name glorified in Hansard or talked about. He does not deserve any of that, so from now on I will just be referring to him as the country's most vile serial rapist and killer of children. So that we really know what we are talking about, this is a man who, in the late eighties and early nineties, repeatedly kidnapped; raped; sodomized; tortured, often recording it on video camera; and murdered young women, as young as 14.
I have a colleague who was of a similar age at the time and who lived in Ontario then. She was telling me that, in school, girls of her age were being told to watch out for a white van and to be careful when they were walking home from school. This is something that is burnt into the memory of women of that age, of women generally, and certainly of parents who had children, particularly young girls, at that time.
He is a really horrific man, and obviously there has been tremendous public outrage at the idea, let alone the fact, that this man was moved to a medium-security prison.
Of course, the minister denied knowing. He came out saying how shocked he was, and it is really frustrating on a number of levels, because we have found, in the last couple of days, that perhaps that is not true at all. It is very well a strong possibility that he did know and failed to act and that the Prime Minister knew and failed to act on this, that they both failed to stop it in any way that they could. The Globe and Mail really outlined this well. I will just quote an article:
The Public Safety Minister invoked the wrath of Parliament and the anger of the families of the victims of Mr. Bernardo on Wednesday after CBC News reported that his office had been told that [this man] would be transferred to a lower-security prison in March. He told the House of Commons [just yesterday] that his office didn’t brief him before the prison transfer happened.
How convenient it is that it did not brief him. We also found out in that same Globe and Mail story, which, I believe, was by Robert Fife and Steven Chase, that the Prime Minister's Office was also alerted months prior to the transfer, and that was confirmed by a Prime Minister's Office spokesperson. They are not even denying it, so I will give them that tiny bit of credit for at least not denying it, though certainly they were not forthcoming in the last number of days that this had broken into public knowledge. As the Globe pointed out, this significantly widens the group of staff, and likely their bosses, the politicians, who knew about this and yet did nothing about it until, oops, the public found out. Now there is shock and disappointment from our elected officials who have been entrusted with public safety and with ensuring that justice is served with respect to the most vile killers in our history. It has not been.
When all this was coming out, I really looked at it with disbelief. How many times are the Liberal ministers and the Prime Minister going to get away with saying, “Oh, I didn't know”, “I wasn't briefed”, “My staff didn't tell me” or saying that the agencies, CSIS and the RCMP, did not let them know and that the information did not quite get to the elected officials? How many times do we have to hear that, as Canadians or as opposition critics? How many times do we have to believe that and just move on like nothing happened?
We have seen this time and time again. With election interference from Beijing, we heard that they just were not quite briefed or that no one picked up the phone and called the former minister of public safety to tell him that my colleague, the member for Haldimand—Norfolk, was being threatened by Beijing and that his family was at risk. They said that CSIS wanted to tell him but had not quite done so, or that his staff had not. It is just a bunch of baloney.
Once, maybe, we would believe them, but two times, five times or 10 times, time and time again on issues of national security and public safety, are we expected to believe them? I do not think so. Enough is enough. We need to have the resignation of somebody in this place. There needs to be some accountability. There needs to be some responsibility taken for the absolute failure to govern.
It is really embarrassing, honestly, to be represented by ministers who take no accountability and responsibility for some of the most critical issues in this country. I want to be clear about why people are so outraged. We have maximum security and medium security. I just want to make it clear why Liberals should have been outraged and moved mountains to stop it, and should certainly have brought forward legislation by now to stop this, but they have not, and I will get into that later.
This individual, when he was in maximum-security prison, had very limited movement. He was heavily segregated. He had very little association with anyone. He had very, very few privileges, and rightfully so. He deserves to be punished for the rest of his life. Maximum-security prison is where he has been for almost 29 years, I believe. Now that he has been moved, under the watch of the public safety minister and the Prime Minister, who knew for three months, into a medium-security prison, he gets to talk to more people; he gets to walk around more and he has many fewer restrictions on him. He does not deserve that. I think everyone agrees, yet here we are; it happened and they could have stopped it. They knew it was coming for three months before it happened.
If someone makes a mistake, that is fine, and if it is the first time, then maybe I would believe them. It is not the first time, but they did not know and were not informed; let us pretend we believe them for one moment. Why is it, then, that they have not brought forward concrete solutions so this never happens again? They have a working majority in the House with the NPD's support. They could have brought forward legislation to signal to Canadians that they will never allow this to happen under their watch, but they have not done so.
Every effort by the Conservatives to move motions to stop this from happening again is shouted down by the Liberals. We have also introduced a bill, a private member's bill from the member for Niagara Falls, and I seconded that bill, that would make sure this never happens again. The Liberals say that it is out of their hands, that they cannot really do anything about it and that the minister is sort of tinkering around the edges now. However, is that really true? I looked at the legislation, and I am seeing a bit of pattern of a soft-on-crime, soft-on-criminals and forget-about-the-victims approach from the public safety minister, the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister.
If we look at, for example, the Liberals' Bill C-83, it was adopted in 2019 and created a standard in section 28 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, and this is important, that required prisoner selection to be made by the commissioner of corrections based on “the least restrictive environment for that person”. That was legislation they passed in 2019. Their bail reform, their soft-on-crime bail reform bill, was also passed that year.
There was a lot of damage done to Canadians in that short time, in favour of criminals at the expense of victims. This is just another one of those bills. In Bill C-83, the “least restrictive environment” for criminals in prison was the standard put forward.
Now what do we have? We have the “least restrictive environment” for the country's most vile serial killer and rapist of children. This is happening, in part, through the legislation that the Liberals put forward. They have created an environment where this is the case. I will say “the least restrictive environment” over and over, because that was the exact intention of their legislation.
In fact, the Liberals repealed a previous Conservative standard that was put in under former prime minister Stephen Harper's government, where it said “necessary restrictions” for criminals and vile killers. In 2019, these guys brought in bail reform and the “least restrictive environment” for those criminals in jail. Now we have that. The mission is fulfilled for the most vile killer in the country.
When the Liberals say that they cannot really do anything about it and that it is an independent decision, they can do something about it. They could repeal this section or probably the entire bill, Bill C-83. If it is anything like this, the whole thing should go in the garbage, but certainly this section. They could have brought forward a bill already, so that it does not happen again. It has been weeks already.
However, again, this was the objective, that the worst people who go to prison in this country get the “least restrictive environment”. When they say that they cannot do anything about it, people should not buy it. That is not true.
Yesterday, my colleague, the member for Niagara Falls, brought forward a private member's bill, Bill C-342, that would keep dangerous offenders, like this individual, in maximum-security prisons. It would replace that legal standard that I just talked about, going from the “least restrictive environment” to “necessary and appropriate restrictions”. It is very measured, very responsible and certainly in line, I think, with Canadian values on things like this.
Second, it also requires that inmates like this individual, who are designated by the courts as “dangerous offenders,” which this individual is, have their sentences made indeterminate, with no fixed length. Certainly, this would include people who have committed multiple personal injury offences and are considered so dangerous to the public, individuals like the one we have been talking about today or those who have been convicted of more than one first-degree murder resulting in a life sentence.
It is very clear. Guys like this should always be in maximum security. That is what a Conservative government would do. I honestly think that the private member's bill is fair, measured and should be adopted unanimously by all parties, especially in light of what has recently happened.
Let us now just really drill into the failure of the minister to take responsibility on this and to try to stop it before it ever happened. Again, this guy is in a medium-security prison, getting to walk around and getting rewarded. He should not be there. He should have been stopped, and yet the minister failed to do this.
I am just going to read this, from the Correctional Service of Canada. The statement it put out said, “The March 2 e-mail contained information notifying them [the public safety minister's office] of the transfer, along with communications messaging to support this.”
That was from Correctional Service of Canada spokesperson Kevin Antonucci in a statement made on Wednesday. He added that in March, three months ago, the final date for the transfer had not been determined. Therefore, the minister's office also received an email on May 25 with updated communications messaging, as well as the fact that the transfer would occur on Monday, May 29.
If we read between the lines of what Kevin Antonucci said, the Correctional Service of Canada is really doing the lion's share of the work here, saying that it sent the message and notified the minister's office that the transfer could be stopped. They are not doing the minister any favours. They are saying that they told him and that they told him twice, and nothing.
We also found out, just last night, as I mentioned, that the Prime Minister's Office was also informed. I will read from the Globe: “A separate statement from the minister's office late on Wednesday suggested that when [the Minister of Public Safety's] team found out about the transfer on March 2, the Prime Minister's Office was already aware of the matter.”
It went on to say, “When a staff member in the Prime Minister's Office was alerted in March by the Privy Council Office about the possibility of the transfer, inquiries and requests for information were immediately made to the Public Safety Minister's Office”.
When the PMO was told, it immediately reached out to the public safety minister's office and asked what was going on. The Minister of Public Safety still had no idea this was going on, and he had no idea the Prime Minister's office was reaching out to his office for information. It is a bit hard to believe. There are only a few options there. The minister is so hands-off that he has no idea what is going on in his file in any regard, he knowingly ignored this or he knew and he has been misleading the public and the House. That is very difficult to believe.
Given the minister's track record, which I am going to go into, I think it is the latter. What is really interesting in what we are seeing from the statements from the Prime Minister's Office and the public safety minister's office is that the blame game is starting. Fingers are being pointed at each other in public statements to The Globe and Mail. That is how desperate they are to deflect blame. No one wants to take responsibility here. It is very embarrassing.
Therefore, I am just going to go through the pattern of behaviour that, unfortunately, the Minister of Public Safety has shown in recent months. This is just within the last year.
In January 2022, and we all remember this, the minister said he relied on the advice of law enforcement to trigger the Emergencies Act. You remember that, Mr. Speaker. However, we later found out from both the RCMP commissioner and the chief of the Ottawa police, when they testified publicly, that they did not ask the government to invoke the act. That was a big one. The minister misled the public in a big way. We will say that it was a large falsehood in that regard of a never-before-invoked, in essence, war measures act that he misled the public about. It was very significant, and he should have resigned then.
Then, on October 12, 2022, he was accused of misleading a federal judge after his office backdated government documents on trademark infringements. The minister said that the legislation concerning this came into effect two weeks earlier than it actually did, so he literally backdated legal documents. The minister said this was just human error. There is a pattern emerging here.
On August 8, the minister admitted at a committee that the RCMP was using spyware to gain information on Canadians, but he promised that the technology was being used sparingly. I am making light of it, but it is just so utterly ridiculous at this point. I am only three points in; we have five to go.
On January 15, the minister said that the safe third country agreement was working, despite enormous increases in irregular border crossers in comparison to the previous five years, and that really nothing could be done about it. Then, two months later, Biden and the Prime Minister of Canada came together in agreement to close Roxham Road. They were not telling the truth there.
Again, on April 25 of this year, he claimed that his legislation would not impact hunting rifles. We know how that went. Of course it did, and so much so that he had to back down. He has permanently lost the trust of firearms owners and hunters in this country, and he will never get it back because of how much he misled the public.
On May 5, the minister said he did not read the report into the People's Republic of China targeting an MP in our caucus. He later said that he was investigating why the report was not passed up to him. How many times are we going to have to believe that?
On May 14, after saying that the PRC police stations operating in Canada were closed, we found out that this is not the case either.
Finally, there is what we have been talking about today. The minister said he had no idea. Despite two contacts from Correctional Service Canada to his office and despite the Prime Minister's Office reaching out to him, the minister is saying he was never told about it. However, he has fired no one for that, which tells me that it is not true. If someone's staff members have failed them so badly, obviously, they cannot be trusted with the public safety file, and they have to go. The minister has fired no one. He is the one who should be fired. The buck stops with him.
What we have been calling on is the following:
...that the Minister of Public Safety immediately resign given his total lack of consideration for victims of crime in his mishandling of the transfer to more cozy arrangements of one of the worst serial killers in Canadian history, that this unacceptable move has shocked the public and created new trauma for the families of the victims and that the Minister of Public Safety's office knew about this for three months prior to [this vile killer's] transfer and instead of halting it, the information was hidden from the families.
That is what we moved today.
I will just conclude that this is about ministerial accountability. We have not seen that in the current Liberal government, despite so many failures. So many times, the government has misled the public and failed to take responsibility. Ministerial accountability seems to be dead in this country under the Liberal government.
Ultimately, I will say in conclusion that the Minister of Public Safety, more than most ministers, requires the public to trust him or her. The minister needs public trust; however, as I outlined today, in very real time, he has misled the public, let them down and broken that trust time and time again. This is the final straw. Unfortunately, it is time for him to resign.
3658 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:51:09 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, earlier this morning, I actually talked about why the Conservatives are behaving in the fashion that they are. The member opposite amplifies that. Here, the Conservatives bring forward a concurrence report with, just so the member is aware, 13 recommendations. I suspect she does not know that. Who knows whether the member actually participated in the committee? Had she participated, she would have recognized that there was a great deal of unanimous support for the concurrence motion.
The Conservatives chose to do this for two reasons. One reason is to filibuster legislation to prevent us from being able to talk about government business. The second reason is to politicize something which the member herself no doubt will be standing up later today in question period to raise. It is about a filibuster. That is the primary reason.
If the member is so concerned about what she is talking about, why was she not upset when Stephen Harper was prime minister and there was the transfer of child murderers from high-security to medium-security prisons?
177 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:52:21 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member asserts that we should not be talking about the fact that the Minister of Public Safety has repeatedly misled Canadians on issues of national security and public safety or that he is currently, right now, maintaining mistruths about what he knew about the worst child rapist and killer in history being transferred to a cozy medium-security prison when he should rightfully rot in a maximum-security prison.
This is certainly about victims rights. The families of the victims who were murdered by this vile killer were caught completely off guard by this. They have been revictimized in having to relive this.
It is our duty as an opposition to hold the government accountable. That is what we are doing today. The member calls it politicization. I call it accountability, which they have none of. If there were accountability, then there would be a minister resigning. We are not seeing that, because ministerial accountability is dead under the Liberal government.
164 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:53:19 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I find it fascinating: We know exactly what my colleague thinks about the Minister of Public Safety, but we know almost nothing about what she thinks about the report we are looking at today.
I would have liked to hear what she has to say about the report. She spoke for a long time, after all. We have here a dense and important report about victims of crime in Canada and how we can help them, but she barely mentioned it in her speech.
I would like to hear my colleague elaborate on the content of the report we are studying today.
104 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:53:52 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I think that the victims should have a minister of public safety who tells murderers like Paul Bernardo that they have to stay in maximum security prisons for the rest of their days. That is something the Liberal government can do today for victims, and it is the right thing to do.
I think we need a new minister of public safety to be able to do that, because this Minister of Public Safety is not telling victims and the rest of Canadians the truth. That is not right.
91 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:54:32 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I feel like I have wandered out of the wilderness into a strange country here today. When we are talking about victims, the justice committee heard from victims and victims advocacy organizations very strongly and came with a unanimous report with 13 recommendations. As I said earlier, there are procedures in the House to hold ministers accountable, and a concurrence report is not normally one of those.
My question for the member is this: What action is she going to take to make sure that the tactic the Conservatives have adopted today does not harm the ability to make progress on the 13 recommendations coming from victims that are contained in this report?
115 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:55:10 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the member is trying to say.
I believe the report from the justice committee in favour of victims was unanimously supported, which is good to see. I think what we could do today, as a House, in favour of victims is to vote for the Minister of Public Safety to resign. If the member wants to put victims' rights first, then we cannot have a minister of public safety who misleads the public and lets down the families of the victims of the worst mass killer and child rapist in Canadian history. He has misled the public about knowing that he had every opportunity to do something about it for three months, but he did not. I cannot really think of a more pressing, current issue today that the public is more outraged about when it comes to victims and public safety than the failure of the government to stop this man from going to a medium-security prison.
Again, this is a tool that we have at our disposal to hold the government accountable. If the government had ministerial responsibility, we would not need to do this. Rather than the member pointing his guns at us, why does he not point his guns at his coalition partner and call on the minister to resign?
220 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:56:26 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member brought up the issue that we are dealing with here, that Canadians have lost trust in the government. They have lost trust in the minister, and they have no confidence left.
The minister's incompetency started when he was minister of immigration, and he ruined that file. The Prime Minister moved him to public safety, and he has completely botched that file as well. I thank the member very much for bringing this to light.
The member articulated very well some of the issues, those we are aware of, where he has failed. Could she explain further what she thinks the next steps are for the minister and the Prime Minister to deal with this matter, so that the public could at least have some confidence in this place to deal with the incompetency of the government?
141 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:57:17 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member and I do great work together on the public safety committee on behalf of Canadians. His speech triggered something in my mind that I would like to share.
This is something we know the Minister of Public Safety has misled us about. What do we not know? What has not been leaked to the media? What are the things he has not told us? I mean, he has not told us anything. He denies all of this. What do we not know?
This is an individual who is responsible for our national police force, the RCMP; CSIS, our spy and intelligence agency; CBSA, our border security agency; and Correctional Service Canada. It is a big, important file, yet he is repeatedly misleading the public, and this is just what we have found out about.
I think it is a good time for a brand new government that would be tough on crime and keep criminals where they rightfully belong. We would put victims of crime first, their needs and priorities first, and the safety of their communities first. We have repeatedly not seen that here.
We have seen it with bail reform and the least restrictive environment there. We have seen it with correctional services changes and the least restrictive environment there. They are all in favour of criminals like the one I have been talking about today. I think it is time for a new public safety minister at the very least, and likely a new government altogether.
253 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/15/23 12:58:42 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member did not answer my question on Stephen Harper. Back in 2009, there was the horrific crime against Tori Stafford. Members can look it up to find out what took place. Stephen Harper's government ultimately transferred him over to a medium-security prison. He was not the first child murderer the Harper government did that with. The public safety minister at the time, Ralph Goodale, had the system reviewed.
Does the member believe that Stephen Harper was doing something wrong by allowing the murderer of Tori Stafford to go to a medium-security prison?
98 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
