Senator Batters: As such, then, Senator Gold, would you please ask the Justice Minister, Minister Lametti, to provide us with that confirmation that it is not a requirement of Bill C-13 that Supreme Court justices must be bilingual?

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Hon. Sharon Burey: Colleagues, I rise today following World Hunger Day, which was May 28, 2023.

[English]

I also draw our attention to the dire fact that many Canadian children, youth and adults are experiencing hunger on a daily basis. We know that Northern, remote and Indigenous communities, marginalized and racialized communities and persons with disabilities also bear the brunt of food insecurity.

Food insecurity is defined as inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints. According to the Canadian Income Survey of 2021, an alarming number of Canadians struggle with food insecurity, with almost 20% of households experiencing food insecurity at some point in 2021. This is approximately 7 million people and includes nearly 2 million children. This is a considerable increase from 2020, and these increases in food insecurity mainly affected families with children.

Why is this important? According to the Canadian Public Health Association, food insecurity is a social determinant of health, defined as “the social and economic factors that influence people’s health.” As a pediatrician, I had a front-row seat to seeing the effects of food insecurity on the physical and mental health and academic and learning outcomes of my patients.

According to PROOF, a research group at the University of Toronto, adults living in food-insecure homes are more vulnerable to infectious diseases; poor oral health; chronic conditions like depression, anxiety, heart disease and diabetes; and premature deaths. Simply put, food insecurity results in high costs to our health care budgets.

The 2021 report of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the other place made several important recommendations, including “. . . recognizing that food sovereignty is a precondition to food security . . .” for Indigenous peoples and Northerners.

According to PROOF:

There is a strong body of evidence showing that food insecurity can be reduced through policy interventions that improve the incomes of low-income households.

Food insecurity and poverty are inextricably linked.

There is also evidence that school food programs have been found to improve school attendance, learning and academic performance and likely have positive physical and mental health outcomes, not just for children but for their families as well.

In closing, I urge you, colleagues, to think of the wasted and lost potential of our children, the suffering of Canadians who experience food insecurity and the cost to our society due to increasing health care and other costs and lost productivity. Let us not be afraid to use data and science, respect other ways of knowing from our Indigenous brothers and sisters, roll up our sleeves and get to work. Our children are depending on us.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

Hon. Amina Gerba: Honourable senators, on May 18, we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association.

I would like to pay tribute to the co-founder of this association, which I have the privilege of co-chairing today, our former colleague, the Honourable Raynell Andreychuk.

The Honourable Senator Andreychuk is a visionary who is passionate about Africa. She is an experienced diplomat who spent a good part of her working life in Africa, where she served as Canada’s High Commissioner to Kenya and Uganda and then as Canada’s Ambassador to Somalia.

She was appointed to the Senate in 1993, thus becoming the first woman from Saskatchewan to serve in the upper chamber of Canada’s Parliament.

After taking her place in the Senate, she realized that no one was talking about Africa, except in the context of development aid or the role of some African countries in the Francophonie. She also realized that our country didn’t have a foreign policy on Africa, even though we had such policies for most other areas of the world.

For all these reasons, she thought that we needed to establish direct parliamentary relations with the 54 separate countries that make up the African continent. In her opinion, our country needed to develop a foreign policy for this continent that she had the opportunity to visit and get to know well.

With the help of the late MP Mauril Bélanger, she co-founded the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association in 2003 and, together, they served as co-chairs until 2016.

Over the past two decades, the association has organized bilateral missions to 34 African countries, forging direct relationships with African parliamentarians and promoting our democratic values in the countries visited.

Honourable senators, I am honoured and very proud to pursue the path charted by the Honourable Senator Andreychuk, to hopefully one day achieve a true partnership and rapprochement between Canada and Africa.

Thank you.

Senator Cormier: It’s a short one. Érik Labelle Eastaugh, François Larocque, Michel Bastarache, Benoît Pelletier, Robert Leckey, Michel Doucet, David Robitaille and Mark Power are all experts who have testified before the Official Languages Committee during its pre-study and provided evidence on legal and constitutional issues surrounding the bill.

Senator, with the expertise on that committee — you know the members of the committee — and considering its capacity to invite experts to look at the amended bill, don’t you now trust that the committee, with all that expertise — and some of the members of that committee being there for many years — is well equipped, better equipped and indeed the best equipped to exclusively examine this piece of legislation?

I recognize the expertise of Legal and Constitutional Affairs and the colleagues who are on that committee, but we have been working on this bill — this act — since 2017. We are well equipped to study it. Can you comment on this?

Senator Seidman: Thank you. I’ll just say very briefly I understand why you are asking the question, but I also suggest to you that, for example, we get a budget bill here and we send it to various committees for a reason — because committees have their specialties. They have experts on those committees who can analyze portions of a bill in accordance with those specialties. Legal and Constitutional Affairs has the specialty and expertise to understand those constitutional issues that could be at risk in this bill. So from that point of view, their understanding would be better suited than Official Languages, in my humble opinion.

Senator Plett: Yes, I have a question. The Prime Minister never wanted a public inquiry. He has gone to great lengths to avoid one because he benefited from Beijing’s interference.

Leader, here is the question: The Prime Minister designed this whole farce to absolve himself. According to the polls, a majority of Canadians want the public inquiry, but your Liberal government has basically said that they’re wasting their breath. Isn’t that right? I know you don’t want to answer it, but have the courage to do the right thing.

Senator Gold: No, I’d be happy if there were an opposition that was as independent as you claim to be. I wish there were an opposition that did not put partisanship upon the protection of Canadian national security. I wish we had an opposition or a Leader of the Opposition in the other place who had the courage to read the information as opposed to protecting himself —

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. Environmental regulation and jurisdiction of the environment is a shared one. This government works with all willing provincial and territorial governments with the common objective of reducing emissions, promoting climate change and promoting a transition to a sustainable, greener economy. Nowhere is that more important than in the oil and gas sector, which is in many ways a leader in innovation in this area.

With regard to your question, Canada’s emissions reporting, as you would know, is prepared in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and is based upon science.

With regard to the more specific aspects of your question, I’ll bring those to the attention of the minister.

[Translation]

Senator Seidman: No, I can’t. Thank you.

Senator Cormier: Thank you, Senator Seidman. First, I want to congratulate you and thank you for your dedication and commitment to official languages. You have been on the Official Languages Committee for years, and you have done a lot of work. You are dedicated to the anglophone community in Quebec.

Considering that the Official Languages Committee’s mandate is broad and allows it to examine any matter relating to official languages in general — which includes constitutional language rights guaranteed by the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — considering it is mandated to review the application of the Official Languages Act and the application of its regulations, and considering that the Official Languages Committee has paid particular attention to legal and constitutional questions during its pre-study of the bill, don’t you think that this committee is better equipped to exclusively examine this piece of legislation?

Senator Loffreda: Thank you for the question. The answer is yes because we are here to analyze the bill. As I used to say in my former life, we’re going to have to live with all this for a very long time. It’s not a matter of days, weeks, or months and that’s why we have to do things right. Either we do this properly or not at all. So I believe this is an option we should look at.

I also agree with Senator Seidman, who’s of the opinion that, in addition to the expertise of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee — as is already done at the National Finance Committee and the Banking Committee — we study several bills, with one committee being ultimately responsible for gathering the opinions of others who have some expertise that your committee may not have.

[English]

Senator Seidman: Senator Gold, would you take a question?

Senator Loffreda: Yes.

Senator Seidman: Of course.

Senator Gold: Yes, Senator Seidman.

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. If I understand your question, Senator Quinn, Bill C-13 explicitly refers to the bilingual status of New Brunswick. As I’ve tried to outline in my speech, throughout the whole structure, the DNA of this bill is to promote the substantial equality of both English and French throughout this country, regardless of where folks live.

The reality in this country is that, in areas of provincial jurisdiction, there is a great disparity in the services that are offered, whether in education, government services or, indeed, in the legislature to those who find themselves in a minority language situation. That’s why it was important for the drafters of this bill and the parliamentarians who supported it in the other place that the law reflected the true juridical context within which the lived experience of minority-language communities lives. Those who live in New Brunswick have at least formal equality of status in all respects. Those who live in some provinces have virtually no legal guarantees and certainly not constitutional guarantees. And many who live outside of Quebec would only dream of having the institutions that we in the English-speaking community were able to build over centuries and that still, despite the challenges, serve our community well.

We as legislators have a duty to analyze and study legislation properly, obviously, to make sure that we understand properly what we’re doing. In that regard, I look forward to the committee’s study of Bill C-13.

The law is very clear in its objectives to promote the equality of English and French. It is very clear in the measures it places to enhance what the federal government can do to support English and French across this great country. It is also clear that it does not derogate from rights, whether it’s Indigenous‑language speakers, minority-language speakers or acquired English‑community rights in Quebec.

Senator Gold: I’m sure this question will and can be both asked and answered at committee, but it is clearly in the law. Again, as I have noted, the provisions here that remove the exemption have been in place for federally appointed judges for decades and it is certainly not the case that all federally appointed judges have had to have been bilingual. It wasn’t like that in the past, nor will it be in the future, whether for the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario or Supreme Court of Canada.

[Translation]

Senator Gold: Absolutely.