Senator Jaffer: Senator Dean, thank you very much for your work on the committee and for a very comprehensive report.

I may have my figure wrong, but besides the minister and officials, I think you had 12 independent witnesses. Would you agree with me that not one witness talked about the “reasonable general concern” test being a good idea, and that they all suggested that it should instead be “reasonable right to suspect?” Would you agree with me on that?

Senator Dean: Thank you, Senator Jaffer. Arguably, with the exception of the child protective services, that would be the case, yes. All of the others were clearly in favour of a higher threshold.

Hon. Raymonde Gagné (Legislative Deputy to the Government Representative in the Senate): Honourable senators, with leave of the Senate and notwithstanding rule 5-5(j), I move:

That, when the Senate next adjourns after the adoption of this motion, it do stand adjourned until Monday, June 20, 2022, at 6 p.m.; and

That rule 3-3(1) be suspended on that day.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

Senator Dalphond: Thank you, Senator Ataullahjan, for this question.

I’m not the expert on the issue, but there is one in this chamber. It’s Senator Jaffer. She made an important declaration at the committee study when she referred to exactly that type of experience and why she is always singled out in the line for a “random” check and sent to the second line. When she shows her green passport, they apologize and say, “Oh, sorry. It’s a mistake. We should not have called you for a second inspection.”

No doubt the system is not perfect. The current system is, according to some witnesses and the personal experience of Senator Jaffer, certainly deficient, because it seems to target some people more than others, especially after 9/11. Regarding the threshold that is being proposed, the evidence shown before the committee has illustrated that it is designed to codify the current practices of the customs officers.

Senator Dagenais asked an important question. He asked how many more employees they will need to teach these new criteria, because it’s a new test. Therefore, it will have to be explained carefully since it’s not a test that has been applied so far. It’s not the reasonable test that has been understood and developed by the courts. It will take time to flesh out.

How many more officers will you need? How many more training sessions? How many hours will you give to the officers to understand that new concept? The response from the border agency representative was, “No problem. We already have the training in place. We don’t need more people. That’s already what we do.”

What they are saying is that what they intend to do is to have this new threshold be equivalent to the current practice. But the current practice is in the guidelines; it’s not in the law. They say now that it’s in the law, it’s valid. I fear that, in practice, what is going to happen at customs won’t change with this new test. The old practices will continue under a new hat.

It’s important to me that we better define and flesh out the concept of reasonable suspicion or reasonable grounds to suspect rather than have a new test. This is the concept that has been recognized elsewhere in the act, so let’s be consistent. Either they change the whole act, or they change it only for computers, which is very unconvincing to me.

Senator Dalphond: I was expecting to be brief, but I appreciate the questions. Regarding reasonable suspicion, the word “reasonable” has been defined by the courts as being objective. So it means the agent has enough indicia to reasonably suspect that something’s happening.

(1640)

And it’s interesting because when the customs agency representative spoke to it, he suggested an example. He referred to someone who is coming back from a country where it’s well known that sex with children can occur. The person has been away for a long period. The person is having difficulty answering the questions, seems to be nervous and is sweating. He decides to send him to the second line.

Many of us felt there were reasonable grounds to do it. If this is the type of person they would like to target, the “reasonable suspicion” test will be the test to apply. I’m not so sure that it’s going to become ineffective.

We have reference to Ontario and Alberta saying that the numbers have been going down since the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Alberta. It was not renewed and, therefore, since April, they have applied “reasonable suspicion” for all travellers coming to Ontario or to Alberta. They say the numbers went down drastically. Well, yes, numbers went down drastically, but who says why? Is that because they are more careful? Maybe it’s a good thing. Is it because they don’t want to enforce it just to come up with the numbers, so they can say, “You see where we are? It’s a different test, and we don’t do as many checks as we used to do.”

All of that needs more explanation. I think we were a bit shortchanged when we asked questions about the rate of success and about the more limited numbers of people who are checked. What kinds of materials are found? What is illegal? We were not provided much information about that. I’m not saying there won’t be any kind of operational impact on the way they do things. For sure, if we have “reasonable suspicion,” it will change things compared to what they do now, because they intend to continue to do what they do now.

Senator Lankin: This might be more difficult for you to answer, and maybe it would be fair to wait until the sponsor of the bill speaks, but do we have any indication whether the government will view these amendments positively?

Senator Dean: I will speculate here just by reading the room. With respect to clarifying and strengthening a requirement to ensure that a digital device is disconnected from the network, the officials told us that would be covered in some regulations and that it is, indeed, the current practice.

I didn’t hear concerns about that being toughened up through an amendment, I will say. Similarly, officials told us that they did have some pre-existing provisions in terms of solicitor-client privilege, but, again, I wasn’t hearing concerns about those being replicated for certainty. There clearly was a difference of views with respect to the legal threshold, though.

[Translation]

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to.)

(At 5 p.m., the Senate was continued until Monday, June 20, 2022, at 6 p.m.)

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of Robert Plamondon and Hélène F. Fortin, external members of the Standing Committee on Audit and Oversight. They are the guests of the Honourable Senator Klyne.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

Senator Ataullahjan: Senator Dalphond, reasonable suspicion— what does that mean? Would that be different for every agent? Who decides?

Hon. René Cormier: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

Afghanistan was already a dangerous place for LGBTQ2+ people well before the Taliban took back control of the country. Since August 15, 2021, the situation has gotten dramatically worse. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the Taliban have committed multiple acts of gratuitous, unscrupulous violence against LGBTQ2+ people since returning to power.

In August 2021, Canada confirmed that it would extend its program to resettle 20,000 Afghans and that a special program would be set up for vulnerable Afghans, including LGBTQ2+ people.

Senator Gold, what is the Canadian government doing right now to bring in LGBTQ2+ refugees from Afghanistan? Rainbow Railroad, an organization that helps LGBTQ2+ people from Afghanistan, says that 300 of them, who are at high risk of persecution, are waiting for emergency evacuation. What is the Canadian government doing to help them?

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: I rise today in support of the adoption of the report. I just wanted to point out that section 99 of the Customs Act, which we are currently discussing, is entitled “Examination of goods.” It states, and I quote:

That means any act of Parliament administered or enforced by the officer.

To inspect a package, a bus, or to ensure that the right rate has been applied, the officer must have reasonable grounds to believe. I would be more convinced if the government changed these other sections of the legislation to say that, for all these other sections there has to be reasonable concern, but no. Regarding the computer, the thing most closely linked to your privacy, the one thing that contains all the data and can describe you more accurately than you can, we cannot decide that it warrants a lower threshold than all these elements that are necessary formalities to prevent a firearm from being imported to Canada.

We are told about pedophilia. It is important. It is serious, but we cannot allow computers to be searched under the guise of wanting to counter pedophilia by accepting a lower threshold than the threshold for allowing packages to be opened to verify whether there are firearms inside. The government is on the wrong track. If it wants to convince us that a lower threshold is possible — as suggested in Canfield by the Alberta Court of Appeal — then I invite the government to amend the other parts of the legislation to have the new proposed test apply everywhere. If there is no consistency in the legislation we cannot justify measures before a court. Thank you.

[English]

The Hon. the Speaker informed the Senate that a message had been received from the House of Commons with Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

(Bill read first time.)

Senator Ataullahjan: I have been listening to the debate, and, at the risk of sounding ignorant, can you tell me what happens when you have a racialized person coming through and their phone is looked at? There is a lower threshold. What happens? I, as a Muslim, will sometimes have a prayer on my phone in Arabic. What happens if the border agent doesn’t understand what that says? How does that impact a racialized person or, in this case, a Muslim?

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise to speak very briefly on Bill S-8, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. I was unable to lend my support to this bill at second reading, and therefore I am taking a bit of your time today to do so.

I will not repeat the essential features of the bill. You have heard them from the sponsor, Senator Harder, and from others.

In a nutshell, this bill aligns our aspirations in the sanctions regime with appropriate legislation in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to ensure that individuals who are sanctioned for various reasons under either the Special Economic Measures Act or the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act are not inadvertently admitted into Canada.

The right hand must know what the left hand is doing, and this is what the bill seeks to ensure.

I think of this as a bit of a cleanup bill, but a bill that is nevertheless urgent in that we must make sure that we are clapping with both hands.

These amendments are essential. For one, the horrifying context in Ukraine — cities and communities decimated, thousands dead, brutal carnage which has been left behind by the invaders, mass graves, people with hands tied behind their back, torture, rape, et cetera.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has displaced close to 7 million people who have fled to Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and also into Canada. Unfortunately, as this conflict sees no end, I fear that more will be displaced.

We also know that Russia is forcing tens of thousands of Ukrainians into camps in Russia. An estimated 200,000 children are among the people who have been removed from Ukraine into Russia. Russia has, in essence, kidnapped them.

This is all horrifying, but if there is one tiny sliver of a silver lining, then it is the alignment of like-minded nation states to come together on sanctioning Russians in different ways.

An example is, of course, the swift and severe sanctions that have been imposed on Russia at SWIFT, and others, too, have been implemented. I am pleased that the government, through this bill and through other proposed changes in the budget implementation act on the repurposing and confiscation of frozen assets, is now taking a more expansive measure to approach our sanction regimes. Both measures will further strengthen Canada’s commitment to holding foreign corrupt leaders, henchmen and entities to account for committing human rights abuses and grave breaches of peace and security.

No one sanction regime imposed by any one jurisdiction can be as effective as when we collaborate and coordinate our responses with other like-minded jurisdictions. But in the least, we need to ensure internal coordination and alignment.

As the sponsor has pointed out, the application of this bill is broader than simply that to Russia and Belarus. It will apply, and can apply, to other sanctioned individuals and entities from places like Iran, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and North Korea.

This bill makes sense in other ways as well. First of all, on the basic point, we don’t want sanctioned individuals coming to Canada. We don’t want their money and we do not want their presence, and Canada should in no way be a temporary or a permanent safe haven for them.

Second, it makes sense to align the Special Economic Measures Act with the Sergei Magnitsky Law. Magnitsky already has inadmissibility grounds for individuals that have committed grave human rights violations, torture and grand corruption. Having sanction regimes that are consistent from one to the other also makes good sense.

Finally, we know that sanctions applied by Canada and by others are having some effect. We know and we have read that there are a few Russian oligarchs who are already speaking out, and we need to tighten the noose every which way we can.

In conclusion, colleagues, for far too long corrupt, brutal and criminal foreign officials and entities have acted with impunity. The government needs more tools to hold brutal leaders to account, and Bill S-8 provides another way to do so. Calling them out is not enough. Sanctioning them is not enough. We must ensure that they never set foot in Canada because I think we all know that once you are in Canada it is extremely difficult to remove an individual.

I will borrow a line from Senator Woo’s speech on Bill S-6 when he urged us to send that bill to the other house. I will urge you to do the same by adding a yellow sticky note and marking it, “super urgent.” Thank you, honourable senators.

Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, my question is also for the government leader in the Senate.

On December 15, 2020, the Trudeau government announced $724.1 million to launch a comprehensive violence-prevention strategy. More than half of this funding was to support at least 38 new shelters and 50 transitional housing for First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples across the country, including on-reserve, in the North and in urban areas.

On Tuesday, The Globe and Mail reported that, as of May 31, none of this funding had been allocated. As well, out of the more than $700 million promised through the strategy, just $12.6 million had been spent on violence prevention, or less than 2% of the total amount announced a year and a half ago.

Leader, could you tell us why this program to support Indigenous women and girls has been such a failure?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo moved third reading of Bill S-6, An Act respecting regulatory modernization, as amended.

He said: Honourable senators, before I begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.

I am pleased to open the third reading debate on Bill S-6, an Act respecting regulatory modernization.

The bill has returned to the Senate following pre-study by seven committees, consisting of over 21 hours of testimony from 48 witnesses, the summaries of which were provided to the Senate Standing Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, which in turn presented its report on Tuesday, and the report was adopted by this chamber yesterday.

[Translation]

I want to thank the members of all the committees for their work on this bill. They made some improvements. The committees also identified some broader questions about the need for faster and more extensive regulatory reforms, to ensure that companies can innovate, prosper and be competitive on the world stage.

[English]

Honourable colleagues, businesses are the backbone of Canada’s economic success. They create the products, services and wealth that have made our country prosperous. As we emerge from the pandemic, Bill S-6 and its successors will help Canadian businesses by ensuring the regulatory system evolves with changing technologies and that they reflect today’s realities.

The modern regulatory system must do two things. First, it must promote business investment and innovation; second, it must ensure the health, safety and security of Canadians and the protection of the environment. That is what Bill S-6 does. It modifies 29 different acts through 46 common-sense amendments to modernize our regulatory system.

For example, the bill proposes a minor change to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act that would allow the agency to deliver services and allow businesses to interact with them electronically rather than through paper-based transactions. This will reduce the administrative burden for businesses and allow them to be more flexible in their interactions with the government.

The bill also contains amendments to the Fisheries Act that would clarify that fishery officers have the authority to use alternative measures to taking fishers to court in response to minor violations. This is an authority that was unclear in the existing legislation.

Such a change could not only reduce the number of lengthy and costly court processes, but also ensure small violations do not result in criminal records and the stigma and barriers that come with them. The use of such alternative measures has been supported by the fishing community and Indigenous groups.

In addition, amendments to the Canada Transportation Act would allow regulatory changes stemming from updates to international transportation safety standards to be integrated more quickly. These are just some examples of the 46 amendments included in the bill.

While the individual effect of each proposal may seem small, they have the potential, taken together, to make a real difference to those who are affected. In fact, many of these changes were proposed by Canadians and by Canadian businesses. What’s more, all of the proposals are cost-neutral, and the associated risks are low to non-existent. Bill S-6 makes sure our system stays up to date, and sets up Canadians and businesses for success in the years ahead.

As honourable senators know, this bill is meant to be a recurring legislative mechanism. While Bill S-6 is billed as the “second Annual Regulatory Modernization Act,” it is in fact the first stand-alone bill under the rubric of yearly updates to regulation that were first announced by the government in 2018.

The Senate can take some pride in being on the ground floor of a process that I hope will grow in ambition, effectiveness and efficiency over the years.

[Translation]

The idea of a recurring legislative mechanism for regulatory modernization is a response to the legislative challenges noted by businesses and Canadians during targeted regulatory reviews and consultations.

[English]

Business stakeholders such as the Economic Strategy Tables and the Advisory Council on Economic Growth have stressed that having such a regularized mechanism in place is critical to improving Canada’s regulatory system.

In addition, the External Advisory Committee on Regulatory Competitiveness, made up of business, academic and consumer stakeholders, has called for further efforts to reduce the administrative burden of regulations and ensure that regulations are future-proofed.

By amending laws that are too inflexible, too specific or simply outdated, this bill is an important reminder of the need for ongoing regulatory review and legislation that stands the test of time. In fact, work on the next annual regulatory modernization bill is already under way and is expected to be tabled in Parliament in 2023.

Let me return to the good work of our committees in their pre‑study of this bill. The content of Bill S-6 was sent to the following seven committees: Banking, Trade and Commerce; Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources; Agriculture and Forestry; Fisheries and Oceans; Social Affairs, Science and Technology; Foreign Affairs and International Trade; and Transport and Communications. I want to again thank all committee members for their hard work. As a result of specific feedback from committee work, two sets of amendments were made to Bill S-6.

The Agriculture and Forestry Committee observed that the provisions of what was then Part 6 of the bill should not proceed in isolation, but was better considered as part of broader consultations on the Pest Control Products Act, which began in March 2022. The government agreed, and that section was duly voted down during clause by clause at the Banking Committee.

In addition, I moved two related amendments that responded to concerns raised by the Privacy Commissioner in a letter that he wrote to the Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee related to the need for memoranda of agreement between Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the agencies with which they share the type of information that is spelled out in Bill S-6. I’m pleased to say that both amendments went forward and are contained in the revised bill before us.

[Translation]

A number of committees observed that consultation processes for future regulatory modernization efforts should be transparent, interactive and inclusive of all relevant stakeholders, not only those already in the regulatory system, but also potential new entrants. I agree with those observations.

[English]

Many of you have also called for a more ambitious regulatory modernization agenda for the government. I also agree with this sentiment. To that end, I organized a briefing for all senators on the Canadian government’s overall approach to regulatory reform, within which this bill, the annual regulatory modernization bill, is only a small part. An important takeaway from that briefing is that the Treasury Board Secretariat has recently established a pilot project to make it easier for individuals and organizations to improve Canada’s regulatory system. I encourage you to check it out at www.letstalkfederalregulations.ca.

There are many moving parts to regulatory reform, only some of which can be addressed through cleanup bills such as Bill S-6. More substantial changes, however, can only be dealt with act by act, which is time-consuming and sometimes politically charged. That is why I believe that the Senate has a special role to play in advocating for regulatory reform and providing leadership on the need for energy, innovation and persistence on this issue. Perhaps we can consider a special study on how we can improve regulatory modernization in Canada and use it as a marker of the Senate’s ongoing attention in this area. That is for another day, and I know other senators have ideas, and I look forward to hearing from them.

[Translation]

Colleagues, your diligent work has been critical in helping to improve this bill and has provided the Senate with an important opportunity to strengthen the regulatory system.

[English]

Bill S-6 will help modernize existing rules to make it easier for Canadians to get things done and to set up regulators, stakeholders and Canadians for success. Let’s send this bill to the other place as soon as possible with a sticky note marked, “urgent.” And then let’s turn our minds to improving the regulatory system writ large. Thank you.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, in April I asked Senator Gold a question about Canada’s emissions reduction targets and the fact that the NDP-Liberal government did not consult farmers on meeting those targets. Fertilizer Canada’s own research shows meeting these targets would devastate the entire sector, costing it $48 billion.

Leader, you were unable to say whether they were consulted or to what extent, but you did say that:

. . . I can assure this chamber that the government’s emissions targets are taken in the spirit and on the basis of advice and reflect Canada’s commitment to do its part to reduce greenhouse gases and climate change.

Leader, did the advice you referred to regarding meeting Canada’s emissions targets include advice from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Natural Resources Canada, or did the government ignore them while preparing its targets just as it has ignored the farmers and Fertilizer Canada?