44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 16, 2024 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by greeting everyone and wishing everyone a happy and pleasant return. I encourage my colleagues to work for the common good and in the collective interest rather than their personal interest. It is a subtle message. Some will hear it; others, not so much. That is where I wanted to start.
We are talking about Bill C‑379, which seeks to amend the Criminal Code to curb motor vehicle theft. The bill seeks to establish a minimum prison sentence of three years for a repeat offence when a person commits that offence three times.
The Bloc Québécois agrees with the principle. We will vote in favour of the bill so that it can be studied in committee. Our colleagues know how we work. We will determine whether it is good for Quebec and Quebeckers. If that is the case, we will vote in favour of the bill.
We think this could improve things. However, a lot of questions remain about the bill's current wording, such as the aggravating circumstances. The bill would add another aggravating circumstance: the fact that the offence was committed for the benefit of organized crime. We agree with that, but this part already exists. The Criminal Code already contains a provision on that. Adding it serves no purpose. It is probably more of a political statement, a way to claim credit for doing it, than a material change to the legislation. We will study the matter and, if necessary, we will keep this aspect. However, our research shows that this provision exists in the legislation already.
There is also a provision preventing the use of conditional sentences. We do not necessarily disagree with this, but we would like to sound a note of caution and raise questions in committee. We must always ensure that judges have the discretion to use their own judgment. As their title suggests, these people are supposed to have good judgment. We need to trust them to use it. Throwing a young person in jail for a first offence and having them spend three years behind bars alongside career criminals may not always the best option to foster rehabilitation and reintegration. What we want is to reintegrate these people into society and the job market in a way that is constructive. We will study this. I am not saying we will oppose this clause when push comes to shove, but we have questions about it.
We are also backing the bill because we want to support the people on the ground. Bloc Québécois members are constantly on the ground. We have just come back from spending the summer in our ridings. We were on the ground, myself included. I try to visit a different region of Quebec each summer so I can talk to residents about their realities in connection with my portfolio, which is agriculture and agri-food.
This summer, I visited the north shore. My time there was brief, because I had to go home to deal with events in my riding. My riding was hit hard by torrential rains, so I had to cut my trip short. Nevertheless, I was able to spend a few days on the north shore and gauge the mood in the region. That is important.
In passing, I would like to take this opportunity to commend the people of Berthier—Maskinongé for their resilience. They showed tremendous resilience this summer in the face of these very unfortunate circumstances. I would also like to tip my hat to all the local elected officials, who are on the front lines when such things happen. When a city experiences flooding, they are the ones in the trenches calling for aid. People know me and know that I try to be very present and offer plenty of support. I kept in direct touch with all these people, and I tried to support them as best I could. Anyway, I digress.
I was talking about what is happening on the ground. The Montreal police department is asking for harsher sentences for auto theft under the Criminal Code. It has reported some troubling findings. One is that stealing cars is far more profitable and less risky than selling drugs. Of course, we do not want to encourage criminals to sell drugs either, but when we compare the two, it does not seem like auto theft is being tackled very aggressively, which may explain why this crime is so popular and growing exponentially.
In short, as I said at the start of my speech, as legislators, let us work for the common good. When cars are stolen, manufacturers are not particularly affected because the insurance company pays out the claim and the owner buys another car. That means auto theft may even increase manufacturers' sales numbers. The important thing is that we work for Canadians.
Who is going to pay for all this in the end? It is ordinary folks, who will have to pay more for car insurance. We have all seen insurance premiums shoot up in recent years. If they continue to go up, it is our fault, since we are doing nothing about it. We need to fix the problem.
I heard the parliamentary secretary say that not just one jurisdiction is responsible. That is just a way of shirking responsibility. He also said that the government held a summit on car theft. It was all just smoke and mirrors. When the media started putting the pressure on, it became clear that the Liberals had been doing nothing about this issue for far too long. That is the hallmark of this tired Liberal government. It is a wait-and-see government. It sticks its head in the sand whenever there is a problem, hoping that it will take care of itself. This government only acts when it has its back to the wall. Our job as the opposition is to put it in that position and tell it to do something.
Auto theft is surging, particularly because of technology. Take smart keys, for example. They seem like a magic solution to make life easier, but they have actually made it easier to steal cars. All the thief has to do is use an amplifier or a computer that they plug into the on-board diagnostics socket to clone the key's signal. Then they can easily drive off with the car. They park it somewhere for a few days and wait to see if it is noticed. Once they are sure it has not been noticed, they load it in a container, drive it to the port and ship it out. That is the big problem.
The bill before us is interesting in certain respects, but it fails to address some sizable gaps, such as the inspection of containers prior to export. What is the justification for requiring a warrant to open containers at the port, even when they are suspicious? A judge needs to issue a warrant, so that complicates matters. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials say that the port already has a security service, so they are not patrolling those areas.
For the 871,000 containers that left the Port of Montreal in 2022, how many inspectors were there? I hope members are sitting down before I give the answer. According to the Canada Border Services Agency, there were five. There were five inspectors for 871,000 containers. Then they are surprised that auto theft has become so popular and is happening so much. Sooner or later, something needs to be done.
This is the same Canada Border Services Agency that was responsible for the ArriveCAN scandal. This resulted in a shameful waste of public funds because of cronies who lined their own pockets, their buddies' pockets and the pockets of four or five other middlemen. This is off topic, but I need to point out that the same thing will happen with pharmacare and dental plans that go through private companies. The government needs to transfer the money to Quebec and let us manage these areas ourselves.
Getting back to the topic of auto theft, there is a problem with the Canada Border Services Agency. There is negligence. The media even reported that some suspicious containers were not inspected because someone's shift was over or someone was not working evenings or weekends or had something else to do. I am not saying that all this is true. I know the importance of avoiding populism, unlike some other individuals here in the House, but this does raise some serious questions.
As for the Canada Border Services Agency, the Bloc Québécois is on record as saying, and I would like to reiterate it now, that in light of the ArriveCAN scandal, the CBSA should be placed under third-party management. If the government wants to be serious, it must intervene.
Just look at the way the port of Montreal is managed and inspected. There are five inspectors for 871,000 outbound containers; there was a refusal to provide an inspector for a special squad that would have worked on vehicle exports; and there were requests from Montreal's police chief. The penalties for those who export the cars need to be increased. This is something we could have control over.
There is a lot of work to be done on this file. The Bloc Québécois will go to committee with an open mind but also with a lot of questions and a lot of suggestions for improvements, as we always do in the best interest of Quebeckers.
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- Sep/16/24 12:27:02 p.m.
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As you recall, in the 2010 case of Afghanistan documents, the House ordered some 40,000 pages of records to be produced in the original and uncensored form forthwith, even though the complete disclosure of them could have prejudiced Canada and her NATO allies' interest in a conflict zone. That prompted Mr. Speaker Milliken to suspend the effect of his ruling to allow a critical gap to be filled.
In 2021, we were dealing with about 600 pages involving professional and counter-espionage investigations while the motion had embedded a series of safeguards, like having the records vetted by the top-secret-cleared law clerk. That gave your predecessor, Mr. Speaker, the comfort to allow a motion to proceed immediately from his ruling. In the present case, the House adopted the motion for the purpose of making these documents available to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's national law enforcement agency.
To ensure adequate confidentiality for information that might be sensitive in any potential criminal investigation, the June 10 order established a procedure whereby institutions would directly deposit the records with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, who, in turn, would transmit them to the RCMP. The documents were not tabled nor were they meant to be tabled. Instead, the law clerk was directed to prepare a report to the House to be tabled by you. In other words, the documents in question are not open to public inspection. Privacy interests are protected. The documents are, literally, simply being transferred within the federal government from one institution to another institution, the RCMP, through the good offices of our own law clerk.
It is incumbent upon us to act, and act now, in the face of this disregard for the House's authority. To quote page 239 of Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition:
Disobedience to rules or orders represents an affront to the dignity of the House, and accordingly the House could take action, not simply for satisfaction but to ensure that the House of Commons is held in the respect necessary for its authority to be vindicated. Without proper respect, the House of Commons could not function.
I recognize that the government will undoubtedly try to lay the blame at the feet of the public servants who prepared the documents and applied the redactions. However, it is not the public service but the cabinet that is accountable here on the floor of the House of Commons. On September 15, 2021, in preparation for this Parliament, the Privy Council Office provided a briefing note to Paul MacKinnon, then the deputy secretary to the cabinet and a former Chrétien PMO staffer, a former senior staffer for the current Minister of Agriculture and, if I am not mistaken, a brother of the Minister of Labour, to advise that “in the event that parliamentarians press for the release of confidential information, the appropriate minister or ministers should take responsibility for the decision to provide or withhold the information.”
Mr. MacKinnon, in turn, on November 24, 2021, immediately following a question of privilege being raised concerning the Winnipeg lab documents, sent a briefing note to the then government House leader, stating, “Consistent with the principles of responsible government, the ultimate accountability for deciding what information to withhold from or release to parliamentarians resides with the responsible minister. Public servants do not share in ministers' constitutional accountability to the Houses of Parliament but support ministers in this accountability, including by collecting and transmitting documents to Parliament.”
Those are the words of the Prime Minister's own department. We think that it is only fair that the Prime Minister should heed the words of his own officials. The Prime Minister needs to take responsibility for a whole-of-government failure to respect the will of the House of Commons.
That is why the motion I intend to put forward, should you agree that this is a prime facie contempt, would reiterate the House's June 10 order and direct all government institutions that failed to comply with the original order to get their act together and deposit with the law clerk all of the documents we originally ordered, without any redactions this time, and to do so within one week. For good measure, the motion would also express the House's view to urge the Prime Minister, consistent with the spirit of the principles of responsible government, to make his view clear and known to those delinquent government departments that he expects the House's order to be complied with this time.
In the interim, you have an important decision. The House of Commons, Canadians and hundreds of years of constitutional parliamentary government are looking to you to allow us to stand up for the ancient rights of the people's elected representatives.
I know it is customary to reflect and ponder on arguments made on these types of questions of privilege, but this is a very easy decision. We just have to ask ourselves the following questions. Did the House adopt a production order? Yes, it did. That is not a matter of opinion. That is in the Journals and you know that, Mr. Speaker.
Was the order complied with? No. Some provided partial responses. A few withheld documents. Most of them redacted them.
Again, it is not my opinion. It is not a subjective analysis. That is in a report tabled by you, Mr. Speaker, and written by the law clerk on how the government complied with the order.
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- Sep/16/24 3:08:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my fundamental job is to keep Canadians safe. Here is what I have been doing in the last 12 months. I have proposed new offences for money laundering that Conservatives voted against. I have increased the penalties for violent carjackings that Conservatives voted against. I and my colleague the Minister of Public Safety have put forward $160 million to aid the CBSA and law enforcement in detecting and stopping car thefts. Car thefts are down 17% over the last six months compared to last year.
There is still more work to do. We are going to continue to do that work. While the Conservatives shout slogans, we are going to keep Canadians safe.
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Mr. Speaker, the simple fact is that criminals have nothing to fear under the NDP-Liberal legislation. Bill C-48 has done nothing to stop the crime in our communities. Instead of listening to premiers and law enforcement, who have called for bail reform, the justice minister pretends that C-48 is a success. It is an abject failure.
When will the minister stop protecting criminals and start standing up for victims by reversing their catch-and-release policies?
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- Sep/16/24 3:14:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our fishery officers have a very difficult job and they do it every day. The opposition keeps repeating ad nauseam that there is no enforcement happening on the water, but that claim is utterly false and frankly irresponsible. The work is being done—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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- Sep/16/24 6:39:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me thank the member for Nunavut and the member for Timmins—James Bay for bringing this very important debate forward. Let me also express my deepest condolences to those who have been impacted.
We have been struggling with the notion of systemic racism in law enforcement for many years and across different jurisdictions. In this particular case, it was in different areas and involved different police services.
What would accountability and truth look like in these cases? I know there cannot be one particular answer because they are all different, but I would like to get a sense from the member of what she feels justice would be.
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- Sep/16/24 6:40:36 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, that is an important question. The response is a complex one, but some of what needs to happen is a true implementation of the MMIWG and TRC reports. They have made great recommendations to make sure that we do see changes in systemic racism.
We need to make sure there is indigenous oversight of law enforcement. That is another recommendation that has been made for years. Right now, with the current staffing of the RCMP, most of its members have always been people I can describe as having come from privileged white communities that have not been given the history and experiences of indigenous peoples.
Part of the reason systemic racism still exists is that there is still too much ignorance. There is still too much denialism about residential schools, for example. We need to make sure we are opening the eyes of Canada.
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- Sep/16/24 6:42:51 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, that is a great question.
What I think is that when there is proper representation in law enforcement, in the health care system, in the education system and even in Parliament, and I really hope that we have more first nations, Métis and Inuit run for Parliament, there can be major improvements.
I do agree that Inuit, first nations and Métis law enforcement needs to be better supported. When it does exist, it needs to be given better resources. I remember working with the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, the Deputy Speaker, last year because the federal government was not negotiating with law enforcement in her first nations riding. It was not being given equal treatment.
When it does happen, we need to make sure that it is equal, but that its members are given equal resources to exercise their knowledge and their expertise in their first nations, Métis and Inuit communities.
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- Sep/16/24 6:55:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's bringing forward the personal stories he has brought to light this evening. I suspect, knowing the member, he has probably even raised a few of them not only inside the House but also outside the House.
The question I have for the member is in regard to law enforcement agencies in general. I like to think that over the last number of years in particular, primarily because of the calls to action, reconciliation has been on the agenda of many agencies, not only of governments but also of those at arm's length.
Could the member provide his thoughts in regard to the different stripes of law enforcement agencies, like provincial, municipal and the RCMP, and the importance of reconciliation?
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- Sep/16/24 7:29:50 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank the member for using words like “tangible” and for talking about things we need to see happening to help address some of the issues. As I mentioned in my speech, I had done an intervention with the UCCM Anishnaabe Police in northern Ontario because the federal government was not meeting its obligations to ensure that this first nations policing agency was getting the core funding it needed or making sure it had the resources to deal with special teams.
Does the member agree that a tangible solution is to make sure that if the RCMP is getting core funding to do its law enforcement, then the core funding should also be available to first nations law enforcement and Inuit law enforcement so that they are able to do it with the same resources they should be able to deliver on, which they have not been able to because the federal government was not negotiating in good faith with the law enforcement in northern Ontario? As well, does he agree that a tangible solution is to make sure those first nations policing authorities get the same core funding so that they can help protect their first nations and Inuit communities?
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- Sep/16/24 8:23:10 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, my colleague's intervention was very thoughtful. I agree with much of what he was sharing with us, and I wonder whether he could respond to something that AFN national chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak has suggested, which is that part of the law enforcement problem with RCMP officers is that they are neither being taught de-escalation techniques nor being given enough cultural competency training.
One of the other solutions that we need to discuss in the House is to make sure that RCMP officers are both taught de-escalation techniques and are given cultural competency training so they could better serve the people who need to be protected at the community level.
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- Sep/16/24 8:25:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that we should be raising the bar and the expectations that we have as parliamentarians, and as Canadians as a whole, of our Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I believe that the RCMP, as a law enforcement agency, should be a leader in terms of reconciliation and in looking at ways of dealing with the very serious nature of the issue. That is why I was glad a few years ago that they tabled their first-ever reconciliation report. We have a training centre. I say now, because I believe it to be the case, and I would be disappointed if it is not, that there is a great deal of dialogue with the indigenous community on what is taking place in the training of RCMP.
I realize we should never assume, but I would like to think that the bar is high enough that this is a reasonable expectation. Would he not agree?
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- Sep/16/24 8:58:04 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank the member for her important intervention. This debate is addressing what I feel is like the tip of an iceberg, and I think she agrees.
There are so many examples of other issues with RCMP behaviour. In my riding of Nunavut, I have whole communities that will not call the RCMP because they know that the RCMP will not protect that community from the violence that they are experiencing.
We have seen other issues because of the RCMP's behaviour towards indigenous peoples and towards the Black community. There are stories after stories. As complex as this is, I wonder if the member could talk more deeply about what some of the other challenges are, because I do not think it is just law enforcement.
After this emergency debate was granted by the Speaker, I received a ton of social media, mostly in favour of the debate, but I also received a lot of vitriol, a lot of racism, saying, “Arrest them, arrest the indigenous peoples. They are the ones who are behaving badly.”
I wonder if the member has any messages that she can share with Canadians, showing that this is not an indigenous issue. All of Canada must help make sure that it is not just something that we direct at the RCMP.
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- Sep/16/24 9:02:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue. I am deeply moved by his words about our friend, my old friend Jonathan Pedneault, who has now stepped down as my deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada. As my colleague put it so well, Jonathan always makes decisions with human rights issues front of mind.
I think my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue is right. It is up to indigenous peoples to decide for themselves how best to protect their society. We need to hire indigenous people in law enforcement so that first nations can exercise their sovereignty. This issue affects all peoples in Canada.
As a non-indigenous person, I do not think I will ever trust the RCMP. I lived in small rural village in Cape Breton, and I know too well that the RCMP are not there to protect our lives.
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- Sep/16/24 11:55:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, to reinforce something that was indicated earlier today in regards to the RCMP and a number of actions, one of those actions was the first-ever report on how the RCMP needs to work on reconciliation and take specific actions to make a difference in building a healthier, stronger relationship.
It is important, as legislators, that we set a very high bar for our national law enforcement agency, and the expectations that they are moving forward on the issue, and working with and supporting, in particular, indigenous police services.
Would the member not agree that the expectations and the bar do need to be very high for our national policing agency? Part of that is making sure that there is a higher sense of accountability at that level.
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