44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 16, 2024 11:00AM
- Sep/16/24 2:11:15 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, nine years of this Liberal government equals nine years of inflationary spending, nine long years where the Liberals, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, have cost Quebeckers dearly.
We might even say that there is no Bloc Québécois in Parliament, just a “Liberal Bloc”. This “Liberal Bloc” voted for the largest-ever expansion of the federal government. The “Liberal Bloc” voted to bulk up the bureaucracy in Ottawa with an extra 100,000 public servants. The “Liberal Bloc” voted for $500 billion in spending to expand the most centralist federal government in history.
That is why we do not have a Bloc Québécois in Parliament, but a “Liberal Bloc” that is using Quebeckers to waste and centralize their money here in Ottawa. The “Liberal Bloc” is out of touch with Quebeckers. What is the Bloc Québécois good for, or rather, who is it good for? It is good for the Liberal Prime Minister.
Fortunately, the common-sense Conservatives hear Quebeckers loud and clear. They are going to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
212 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 5:09:57 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, right now the Bloc Québécois members have a serious determination to make: Do they stand with the Liberals in centralizing more power in Ottawa and removing the powers of citizenship under Quebec's rules? I do not believe that the 1,095 cumulative days is a good test for determining citizenship.
57 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 9:24:17 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I will try to answer as much of the member's question as I can. I wrote down notes. Hopefully I have it all.
As the critic for Crown-indigenous relations and indigenous services for the opposition, it is part of my job, my mandate, to develop policy that will be put into our next election platform. I note that some of the things I mentioned today were from previous policy documents that we had released in previous elections. They talk about giving more power to indigenous police services and essential services, about funding them correctly and about restorative justice practices. Something our party, myself and others on this side of the House are talking about today is the direction our party is moving in regarding indigenous justice and indigenous policing.
I mentioned funding, as well as essential services and ensuring that the “Ottawa knows best” approach is not the one we continue to lead by. It has to be grassroots-led and about listening to the voices that are telling us what their issues are. That goes to the justice piece of my speech when I was talking about how each individual community might have different visions of how they wish to run a justice system, whether it is through restorative justice, through their law enforcement and policing side or through indigenous police services. Perhaps they want other aspects of the law enforcement angle.
Giving power back to these individual communities is key, but to the member's point, as I talked about, it is about ensuring proper funding so that we do not have an unlevel playing field between indigenous and non-indigenous police services or even in the justice system in general.
289 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 9:29:54 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the work we in the opposition have been doing with indigenous communities and leaders shows our commitment to listening to voices on the ground level and reducing and hopefully eliminating this “Ottawa knows best” approach.
We have already announced a number of policies that will take control of communities away from Ottawa through a resource charge, which will allow communities to keep the tax revenue generated on their land rather than sending it to Ottawa. We will announce many more. However, the crux of my speech was about getting rid of the “Ottawa knows best” approach because it has not worked for 155-plus years. If we continue on this path, it will not work for another 155 years, and we will continue to have these conversations.
We need to provide optional legislation, if needed, for those who want to do different and unique things, and strip down the “Ottawa knows best” bureaucracy that continues to fail indigenous people. One part of this is listening to the voices that want to empower indigenous people to become police officers through indigenous police services, but we need to ensure that they are on a level playing field and not handcuffed when they need to do their jobs appropriately.
214 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 9:47:34 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I believe that any initiatives that bring the communities to the elected officials to let them know what exactly their communities need are going to be beneficial, and that is the key. It is really about communication. Indigenous-led initiatives are the ones that are going to make a difference within their communities.
Here in Ottawa, we do not necessarily know what people in their communities back home are needing, and obviously we are not necessarily responding to all of their needs right here in Ottawa. We need to hear from them. We need to make those channels more readily available, so any initiatives that make that communication easier are going to be beneficial.
116 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 10:31:23 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for sharing some of the history of the land he represents, as well as the history of the name of his riding. It was actually quite interesting.
One of the things I have found very shocking and frustrating, as I have listened to countless speeches from the Liberal government on this, is the way that the government brags about all the money that it has committed. As my colleague highlighted in his speech, the Auditor General's report is pretty clear that the government has spent money, but with no results. My colleague mentioned the Auditor General's report, and he does tend to go through those pretty thoroughly.
I am just wondering if he has any further insights that he could share with us about how this is just another case of the Liberals promising while patting themselves on the back, giving an Ottawa-knows-best answer, yet when push comes to shove, there are no real results. We still have first nations communities across the country that do not have clean drinking water after nine years.
186 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 10:44:02 p.m.
- Watch
Uqaqtittiji, I appreciate the work the member does at the indigenous and northern affairs committee. We have something in common, in that we are both indigenous, from indigenous communities, and I think we have had very similar experiences with colonialism and the impacts of genocidal policies on indigenous peoples. As politicians, we also get to listen to all the politicking that goes on, not just in Ottawa, and how that impacts our constituents in our communities. We have already had enough studies and reports. Part of the wording that I used when I called for the emergency debate is that there has been report after report and recommendation after recommendation. It is time for action.
Can the member commit to ensuring with the current Liberal government that we will finally see tangible results because of the actual implementation of the MMIWG calls for justice, as well as the TRC calls to action?
152 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/16/24 11:44:47 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I know the hour is late. It is almost midnight here in Ottawa, but I cannot think of a more important conversation for us to be having as a country than this one right now. I want to start by thanking my colleagues, the member for Nunavut, the member for Winnipeg Centre and the member for Timmins—James Bay, whose interventions tonight have really done justice to a difficult and important topic.
This is an issue that touches many in northern B.C., the region that I am so honoured to represent. Because of the topic of tonight's debate, I want to start, as others have, by expressing my deep condolences to the families of the six indigenous people, five men and one woman, who lost their lives at the hands of police in just 11 days this month. I also want to use my time tonight to give voice to the anger, pain, dismay and frustration felt by the family members of Dale Culver. Dale was a 35-year-old Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en man who lived in Prince George but had family roots throughout the northwest.
On the evening of July 18, 2017, the police in Prince George received a call from someone about a suspect, a Caucasian male wearing dark clothes, who was looking into parked vehicles. They said that he might have a weapon and that he might have a partner working with him. The police attended the scene and saw Dale Carver, a clearly indigenous man, on a riding his BMX bike. They called at him to stop, and when he did not, they chased after him, grabbed him by his backpack and pulled him off his bike onto the ground. What happened after that can be read in the B.C. Prosecution Service's report, but the details are horrifying given the violence that was inflicted upon this young man. The report talks about the officer kicking and punching him and spraying him in the face with pepper spray. The officer called for reinforcements, and when those reinforcements showed up, they did the same. They punched him in the head. They kicked him many times. They pepper sprayed their gloves and then put them over his mouth.
Twenty-nine minutes after the altercation, Dale was dead. There were bystanders filming the incident on their cellphones. One of the officers demanded that the bystanders delete the videos from their phones and tried to grab one of the phones out of a bystander's hands. Those bystanders did so because they were threatened by this officer, so there was very little evidence when this case went to court. At one point when he was on the ground, I will add, Dale cried out, “I can't breathe. I can't breathe.”
Two of the officers were charged with manslaughter, something very rare, and it did go to court. The first autopsy and pathology report found that blunt trauma to the head was a likely contributing factor in Dale's death, and through a series of events after that, the prosecutors ended up commissioning a second opinion on the pathology report, which came back with a different conclusion. In the end, the charges against the two officers were stayed. The third officer, the one who grabbed at a cellphone and demanded that bystanders delete the videos, was just recently convicted of obstruction of justice.
We have heard a huge outcry from the families, from the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs and from the regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Terry Teegee, about the process, about the struggle that indigenous people have in obtaining justice and about the shortcomings of the independent oversight bodies that exist. They are calling for change, and their calls for change relate directly to what is being discussed tonight.
Dale's death, of course, is part of a pattern. It is part of a larger picture. It is a picture that this place, the House, has talked about before, has debated before and has held hearings on before. It makes me think of other stories I have heard from northwest B.C. It makes me think of a remote detachment in our region that saw fit to hang a flag with the thin blue line symbol on it in the detachment. This was brought to my attention out of concern for what it represented; it is a symbol that people in the House will know, and as the Calgary Police Commission has described, as having a “contentious history with roots in division, colonialism and racism”.
It makes me think of another story from the same community, where a young constable was posted. Community members found on his Facebook page a photo of him wearing an Afro wig, with a raised fist and the caption “Black and proud”. He is a Caucasian officer. Another post showed him in colonial dress in front of a Union Jack, with the caption “Now, what's to be done with these pesky natives stirring up trouble in the colonies?” It makes me think of my colleague's comment earlier about the importance of better screening in the recruitment and hiring of RCMP officers.
Of course, these stories make me think of a recent audio recording played in a Smithers courtroom. The recording was made after arrests on November 19, 2021. This of course involved land defenders on a road in a remote part of northern B.C. The recording is of several RCMP officers heard laughing about police violence, mocking arrestees and making derogatory comments about symbols worn by two indigenous women to honour and remember murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. They said, “Do they have [effing] face paint on too? They're not orcs?” Orcs, of course, are fictional monsters from The Lord of the Rings. These are peace officers who were recorded saying this about indigenous people.
Perhaps most disturbing was a clip that caught an officer describing an indigenous arrestee as “that big [effing] ogre-looking dude, he's actually...autistic.” Then he goes on to describe one of the officers grabbing this individual by the testicles and twisting. These are the stories that are part of this picture.
I could get into the parliamentary report on systemic racism in policing in Canada. It has been mentioned already this evening. I think everyone in the House is aware that this is a problem. I heard my Conservative colleagues calling it something else, but with the same effect: that these are systemic biases. They are entrenched biases that affect society and the ability of people to obtain the justice they so rightly deserve. We know these systems of discrimination affect not only indigenous people but also others, and we cannot act urgently enough to see the changes that are needed. That is what I want to say.
I will add this final point, which is that the media built up today, the first day back in Parliament, as a day of division, rancour and expected conflict in the House. What I have heard tonight is quite the opposite. I think there is the basis here for something that could be very important, and I call urgently on my colleagues for us to take this opportunity to ensure that the steps are taken. We need to do better. We need to do better by indigenous people and we need to do better by police officers. Systemic biases do not help the police do their jobs better. They do not help women in the police forces do their jobs better.
With that, I will end by again thanking you, Mr. Speaker, for agreeing to this debate and thanking members for their contributions tonight. Let us not let this go without action.
1315 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
