Hon. René Cormier: Honourable senators, I give notice that, at the next sitting of the Senate, I will move:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages be authorized to examine and report on Francophone immigration to minority communities;

That, given that the federal government plans to develop an ambitious national Francophone immigration strategy, the committee be authorized to:

a)review the progress on the target for French-speaking immigrants settling outside of Quebec;

b)study the factors that support or undermine the ability of French-speaking immigrants to settle in Francophone minority communities;

c)study the factors that support or undermine the ability of Canada’s current immigration programs and measures to maintain the demographic weight of the French-speaking population;

d)study the measures and programs implemented by the Government of Canada to recruit, welcome and integrate French-speaking immigrants, refugees and foreign students;

e)study the impact of these measures and programs on the development and vitality of English-speaking communities in Quebec; and

f)identify ways to increase support for this sector and to ensure that the Government of Canada’s objectives can be met; and

That the committee submit its final report to the Senate no later than March 31, 2023, and that the committee retain all powers necessary to publicize its findings for 180 days after the tabling of the final report.

[English]

Hon. Tony Dean: Honourable senators, I give notice that, at the next sitting of the Senate, I will move:

That the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence be authorized to examine and report on issues relating to security and defence in the Arctic, including Canada’s military infrastructure and security capabilities; and

That the committee report to the Senate no later than June 30, 2023, and that the committee retain all powers necessary to publicize its findings until 180 days after the tabling of the final report.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I give notice that, at the next sitting of the Senate, I will move:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications be authorized to examine and report on matters relating to transport and communications generally, including:

(a)transport and communications by any means;

(b)tourist traffic;

(c)common carriers; and

(d)navigation, shipping and navigable waters; and

That the committee submit its final report no later than September 30, 2025, and that the committee retain all powers necessary to publicize its findings for 180 days after the tabling of the final report.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, I would like to say it’s good to be back here in the chamber again, asking the government leader questions, but I think I would be lying if I said that. But it is good to see all of you. It is good to see all of you, especially those of you in the chamber.

Leader, on Sunday the City of Ottawa declared a state of emergency due to the ongoing demonstrations. Protests have spread beyond Ottawa to cities in other provinces as well. While all this was happening on the weekend, Canada’s prime minister was nowhere to be found, in hiding. Then, last night, when he finally showed up in the other place to speak during the emergency debate, he had nothing constructive to offer on how to resolve the situation peacefully and unite us as Canadians once again.

Last night, government leader, the leader of the official opposition asked the Prime Minister to sit down with her and other party leaders to find a solution — not to meet with the truckers, not to meet with the demonstrators, but to meet with all leaders. He ignored her request.

Leader, if the Prime Minister cannot even sit down with a fellow parliamentarian to discuss this, how does the Prime Minister expect to end this impasse?

Senator Plett: I see nothing has changed over the holidays. You ask a question, and you get an answer that does not even come close to addressing the situation.

Speaking of the National War Memorial, I hope you also took note of all the flowers planted and the guards that the demonstrators have put there.

Leader, after the Prime Minister did his groundhog imitation and turned up again in the House of Commons, he showed no leadership. Canada needs leadership, and we are not getting it from this divisive Prime Minister.

The Trudeau government announced several weeks ago that it intends to extend the vaccine mandate to include interprovincial trucking. Leader, who would enforce this at the provincial borders? The RCMP? Provincial police? Municipal councillors?

Can you confirm, leader, that this foolish idea is now off the table?

Senator Gold: The Government of Canada, in consultation and working with provincial, territorial and municipal governments and others is doing whatever needs to be done to ensure the safety and security of Canadians. Decisions as to what additional measures or relaxation of measures are under active discussion and will be communicated when the decisions are made.

Hon. Salma Ataullahjan: Honourable senators, my question is for the government leader in the Senate.

Senator Gold, Jawed Ahmad Haqmal, an Afghan interpreter saved the lives of Canadian soldiers during the war by intercepting a radio transmission while pretending to be a Taliban commander and effectively neutralizing a planned ambush. He was a marked man from that day onwards, he told me.

Today, Haqmal, along with his pregnant wife, four children and seven relatives have been stuck in Kiev for the past five months after fleeing Kabul. They have an expired Ukrainian humanitarian visa, no money, and no one in the family has a winter coat. They face the growing threat of a Russian invasion. Despite having been told by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada that his claim has been accepted, he remains trapped in Ukraine.

Senator Gold, I have spoken with Jawed and only got a glimpse of his desperate situation. How is the government planning to help Jawed Ahmad Haqmal and his family in Ukraine?

Senator Ataullahjan: Senator Gold, our government has ordered Canadians to leave Ukraine because of security and safety reasons. Additionally, Canada has issued a travel advisory over heightened concerns of a Russian invasion.

Senator Gold, I have learned that Jawed has been contacting friends and family in the hopes of getting money to feed his family. In fact, a reporter at The Globe and Mail has been sending funds for the past five months to pay for his groceries.

Jawed Ahmad Haqmal saved Canadian military lives and has already gone through the gruelling process of escaping the Taliban. Why has the IRCC not prioritized his case?

Hon. Marty Deacon: Honourable senators, my question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

Before Christmas, you will recall that I talked about the importance of the work involved in getting Afghans out of Afghanistan. At this moment, I would like to talk about the ones who have arrived in Canada.

Canada was committed to bringing in 40,000 Afghan refugees who are escaping persecution at the hands of the Taliban. Of the 7,200 people that Canada has admitted so far, many are stuck in limbo and, in fact, are languishing in hotel rooms around the country. I have spoken with some refugees who have been offered asylum and have arrived, but they are still awaiting their permanent resident cards. In fact, I have sat down and tried to complete this daunting paper work online with them.

As you no doubt appreciate, without this document they cannot work, access education for themselves or their children, obtain health care or start a new life. Some of them are incredible and have gotten jobs but cannot go to work. They are highly motivated professionals who, in spite of trauma, are desperate to carry on their lives and start their families. Volunteers, it seems, are carrying a great load in this work.

What is the government doing to expedite this process in Canada for those who have made the harrowing journey to our country so they can make a new life and begin truly contributing to our rich and diverse way of life here in Canada?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. The government is working hard to ensure the proper treatment of all of the applications to which you refer. It is also working very hard to make sure that the living conditions of those who are awaiting the resolution of their applications, the completion of the process, are well taken care of.

It is working with a network of highly trained resettlement assistance program service providers to accommodate as many as possible, and is in constant contact with those service providers to ensure they are meeting the needs of those for whom they are responsible. There are daily reports on the situation in hotels. The government is gathering, through these service providers, input and feedback from those who benefit from the various assistance programs offered to them.

Senator M. Deacon: In January, some Western countries were in talks with the Taliban directly in Oslo. I’m wondering today what the Government of Canada is planning to do, if it is planning to do the same as this group or where they fit in this very important conversation.

Senator Gold: The Government of Canada, in particular through the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is in regular contact with its allies and is keeping a close eye on the situation in Afghanistan and making sure it is doing its part to assist in this humanitarian crisis.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Honourable senators, my question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

As some of my colleagues have already mentioned, we have less than 8,000 of the initial 20,000 Afghan refugees resettled in Canada. We have a problem, Senator Gold, and my question is with regard to the inaction of cabinet in actually following through on the election promise to increase our commitment to 40,000 — a promise that was then placed in Minister Fraser’s mandate letter.

Now many senators face a situation where, in trying to assist people to get to Canada — people whom we have managed to help to get out of Afghanistan — are now caught in limbo in many different countries, Ukraine being one example and Sri Lanka another.

For example, there is a 20-year-old woman very much at risk in another country. In trying to find a place for her in the allotments, what became clear, in speaking to agencies that are supposed to have the spaces allocated to them by our government, is that there are currently no spaces.

Why is that? Because cabinet has not yet officially followed through on that promise to increase the number to 40,000. We therefore have not yet had an allocation of the spaces. In some cases we are able to facilitate bringing Afghans to Canada, including women at risk, but the agencies that can help them don’t have the spaces they need.

My question to you, Senator Gold, and to the government is this: What is the delay? When can we see this very simple, straightforward decision to implement a promise actually fulfilled?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for that question, honourable colleague. Minister Fraser understands the importance of Canada’s linguistic duality. I am told that he is working very hard each week to learn and improve on his French. He has made a lot of progress since 2015.

Not to make excuses, but to put things into context, the entire press conference was translated into French, as is every press conference held in the National Press Theatre.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Senator Gold, in December, inflation rose 4.8% over year-to-year standing. As Liberal MP Lightbound said, standing at its highest point in 30 years. This is a Liberal MP in his honest critique of his government.

Home heating and insurance costs are up. Natural gas prices in Manitoba rose by 26%. Gasoline prices across the country have risen about 33%. The average Canadian family will pay almost a thousand dollars more for groceries this year. Almost 60% of respondents to a recent Angus Reid poll said they are already having a difficult time feeding their families.

Leader, many Canadians cannot make ends meet, yet Minister Freeland refers to legitimate questions on inflation as a false narrative as we see over and over again — and we saw it even in some of the Leader of the Government’s answers here today. How can the Trudeau government be so disconnected from the cost of everyday life in Canada?

Hon. Raymonde Gagné (Legislative Deputy to the Government Representative in the Senate): Honourable senators, pursuant to rule 5-7(k), I move that Order No. 3 under the heading “Reports of Committees — Other,” which deals with the subject matter of Bill C-3 that was passed in December, be discharged from the Order Paper.

Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, I am pleased today to speak to you about Bill S-213, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (independence of the judiciary).

I speak today with a certain sense of déjà vu. It was almost two years ago precisely in February 2020 that I rose in the chamber to speak to what was then known as Bill S-208, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (independence of the judiciary). And it was in November 2020 that I gave my inaugural Senate speech via video from this same desk in this same room on what was then known as Bill S-207, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (independence of the judiciary).

Both Bill S-207 and Bill S-208 were sponsored by our esteemed colleague Senator Kim Pate, and both died on the Order Paper.

This session, it is another esteemed colleague Senator Jaffer who is bringing this bill forward. While I honour and salute both Senator Pate and Senator Jaffer, I wasn’t sure I was going to speak to this bill in its current incarnation. After all, I have made my arguments in this chamber more than once.

The blinkered adoption of mandatory minimum sentences in our Criminal Code ties the hands of our judges. It forces them to impose one-size-fits-all sentences without nuance, mercy or common sense. This approach often robs them of discretion, imagination and flexibility. A mandatory sentencing rubric undermines judicial independence and, in the worst cases, reduces judges to little more than rubber stamps — humanoid algorithms who have to impose a penalty without any reference to the specific facts, specific case or a specific circumstance of a specific offender.

Beyond that, the threat of mandatory minimum sentences often frightens people into accepting plea deals rather than fighting their cases in court, for fear they might receive an especially heavy sentence should they lose. These sentences distort our criminal justice system and undermine public faith in the impartiality and independence of our courts.

So, having said all that and having it said more than once, why did I decide I needed to speak to this bill in its most current iteration? It’s primarily because I wanted to update you all on the case of Helen Naslund, the Alberta woman whose story I first told you in this chamber back in November 2020.

To remind anyone who has forgotten, or to bring up to date those who weren’t here when I last spoke, Helen Naslund was a farm wife who lived near Holden, Alberta. She had endured a lifetime of physical, mental and economic abuse at the hands of her husband Miles, a violent drunk who held Helen a virtual prisoner on their failing family farm. On a September night in 2011, after an evening of violence and threats, Miles finally passed out and Helen Naslund, pushed to the end of her endurance, in fear of what might happen next, took a .22 revolver and put a bullet in the back of his head. Then, with the help of one of her sons, she weighed down and hid the body in a nearby slough.

It took years before neighbourhood gossip gave the RCMP the tip they needed to find the body.

The Crown charged Helen Naslund with first-degree murder. The mandatory minimum sentence? Life in prison, with no parole consideration for at least 25 years. Given Naslund’s age, that might literally have been a life sentence — and a death sentence.

And so, on the advice of her lawyer, and with the agreement of the Crown prosecutor, Helen Naslund pled guilty to manslaughter and accepted a sentence of 18 years — one of the longest ever for manslaughter in the wake of domestic abuse. She might have been able to advance a legitimate argument at trial that she acted in self-defence or that she acted in a moment of extreme emotional disturbance and was perhaps not criminally responsible for her actions. But faced with the real prospect of spending the rest of her life behind bars, she took the deal, poor though it was.

Mrs. Naslund was sentenced in October 2020, and her case immediately provoked outrage from women’s groups, legal academics, retired judges and social activists from across the country and around the world. She even attracted advocates and supporters from as far away as Afghanistan.

Could Helen Naslund appeal her sentence? It wouldn’t be easy. After all, it had been agreed to by the judge, the Crown and her own lawyer — and by the defendant herself.

The test to overturn a sentence agreed to by all such parties is extremely strict, for obvious reasons. A sentence must not just be deemed demonstrably unfit, but rather so unacceptably harsh that the sentencing judge’s agreement to accept it would not only be contrary to the public interest but would bring the administration of justice itself into disrepute. More than that, a defendant has only 30 days to appeal a sentence, and those 30 days had passed.

Our own Senator Pate played a key role in helping Helen Naslund win an unusual extension of the appeal period and in connecting her with one of Edmonton’s fiercest and most effective criminal defence lawyers Mona Duckett.

Last month the Alberta Court of Appeal, in a 2 to 1 ruling, found in favour of Helen Naslund and reduced her sentence by half.

Madam Justice Sheila Greckol, writing for the majority, found that the sentence was so “unhinged” from the circumstances of the crime that it could give reasonable observers the impression that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down. Moreover, Madam Justice Greckol found that the risk of a mandatory minimum sentence had created a power imbalance that had led to what she called a “coercive bargain” which gave the Crown further leverage to extract a guilty plea.

Madam Justice Greckol continued:

. . . a woman subjected to 27 years of egregious abuse may be accustomed to seeing herself as worthy only of harsh punishment. That does not mean the justice system should follow suit.

Helen Naslund is still in prison, but she will at least be eligible for parole next year. Thanks to the hard work of advocates from across the world, including Senator Pate, this one abused wife from a rural Alberta farm has just now received some measure of justice. But the Naslund case should lay bare some of the fundamental problems with mandatory minimum sentences which can themselves become unhinged from the facts of the case, and leave reasonable observers and reasonable Canadians with a well-founded belief that the proper functioning of the justice system has indeed broken down.

What is the point of having judges? What is the point of talking about the principles of judicial independence if we do not trust judges to listen to the facts, weigh the evidence, consider all of the circumstances and justly apply the law?

In a free and fair democracy, the judiciary should not be controlled by government edict. And neither MPs nor senators should be micromanaging our courts. If we want our judges to administer impartial, thoughtful justice, we can’t back-seat drive from behind the bench. Today, I stand again with my friends Senator Jaffer and Senator Pate. And today, I stand with judges and justices across Canada who share an awesome and solemn responsibility. Let us restore public confidence in our courts, remove the partisan politics from sentencing and let those whom we have asked to sit in judgment use their own best judgment when circumstances require. Thank you, hiy hiy.

[Translation]

Senator Simons: I’m sorry, Senator Boisvenu, I have no capacity to answer that question in such granular detail at this point. I simply don’t have access to that data up to date at the moment.

(On motion of Senator Duncan, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Carignan, P.C., seconded by the Honourable Senator Housakos, for the second reading of Bill S-220, An Act to amend the Languages Skills Act (Governor General).

Hon. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu: Thank you for your speech on this bill.

I am always shocked when you try to justify abolishing minimum sentences by using extreme cases as examples.

I will share some current data from Quebec. Between 2015 and 2019, the number of house arrests increased by 22%. Between 2020 and 2021, 5,047 criminals were sentenced to house arrest instead of receiving intermittent sentences, which are served on the weekends.

How can you say that our justice system doesn’t give judges the freedom to hand down more lenient sentences in general, aside from individual cases?

[English]

Senator Simons: Thank you very much for that question, Senator Boisvenu. In the case of house arrest, these are obviously not cases that have those sorts of strict mandatory minimum sentences. House arrest can be an extremely effective way of handling low-risk offenders in the community and helping those offenders to reintegrate and to become functional parts of society again. They have their use and their place.

In the case of first-degree murder, there would never be such a sentence.

[Translation]