C-55 - PUBLIC SAFETY ACT

Thursday May 2, 2002

 

    Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg--Transcona, NDP): Madam Speaker, I guess I will have to fit my questions into my speech seeing as I did not have an opportunity to ask the minister any questions.

    While the minister is still present, I will start with one of the things raised in the question and answer period concerning the status of reserve military personnel and the way in which the bill provides for them to be able to return to their jobs after being called up in an emergency. I acknowledge that this is not just in Bill C-55 but that it was also in Bill C-42. Even though I do not like most of the bill, I am pleased with that particular aspect of it because we do owe our reservists that much. When they are called up in an emergency situation they should be guaranteed that they can to return to their jobs.

    What I would urge the minister is for the government at some point to go further than this and create a similar regulation or a similar piece of legislation for reservists who volunteer for peacekeeping missions. It seems to me that we would be able to make better use of our reserve forces for these kinds of missions if more people were free to volunteer and were guaranteed that they could return to their jobs after participating in such missions.

    If I heard the minister correctly, those kinds of missions are not covered by Bill C-55, so I am not misrepresenting the case. I urge on the minister that the government at some point should consider this. I know there are plenty of people in the reserve and within the military community at large who feel that this is something that should occur in any event. It would create a situation where better use could be made of our reserves.

    While I am on that topic, one of the things that has always struck me over the years here in the House is how little controversy there has been about the use and the role of the reserve armed forces. This is one of the things that has always been a mystery to me. This is one area of defence spending in which there is no controversy. If the government announced tomorrow that it was going to spend more money on the reserves, there would not be an opposition party that would be critical of it. This has been true for a long time and yet it never happens. This is one thing government after government could have done without the kind of criticism that it might expect on nuclear submarines, on this helicopter, on that helicopter or on whatever. This is the one thing governments could do and there would not be a peep and yet it does not do it.

    Hon. Art Eggleton: We are doing it.

    Mr. Bill Blaikie: Well the government is doing it awful slowly if it is doing it. I guess it is trying to do it in a way that nobody notices.

    We know the problems the military is having with recruitment and with infrastructure. Some of our armories are the only places where we can walk in and feel like we are having a time travel experience. Our armories do not look any different than they did in 1965 when I first started going as a cadet. If I ever want to revisit my past I just have to go there and I will see that absolutely nothing has changed except that the rifle ranges are closed down because proper equipment has not been provided and a whole bunch of other things that used to be there are not there. However I did not get up to make a speech about the reserves. I am here to talk about Bill C-55.

    With respect to Bill C-55, we in the NDP were opposed to Bill C-42 and we are opposed to Bill C-55 in spite of some of the changes that have been made. The minister pointed out changes that have been made with respect to controlled access military zones. The change between Bill C-42 and Bill C-55 is a change for the better in the sense that it does limit in a way what the previous bill did not, and that is the application of this particular power of the minister of defence.

    I understand the difference between being able to designate areas around equipment, personnel and entire areas that contain that which the forces have been assigned to protect. That is fair enough. However what the minister has not answered is whether or not the insertion of equipment or personnel into the area that is to be protected or in close proximity to those which are to be protected could then become a rationale for doing in effect what was possible in Bill C-42.

    In the final analysis this comes down to trust. Do we trust the government not to have a hidden agenda or not to abuse the language that we see in Bill C-55? It is a hard thing to get a hold on. It is a bit like what we talked about when we were debating Bill C-36. If we had been debating Bill C-36 not in a context where protesters had been pepper sprayed at APEC, rubber bulleted at Quebec City, et cetera, maybe we would have had a more trusting feeling about the government when it came to Bill C-36. We still have not been able to build up that appropriate sense of trust so that we can take at face value what the minister says about these new controlled military access zones not being available for purposes like Kananaskis, although the minister has been very clear that it is not intended and cannot be used for Kananaskis. We will know soon whether the minister was telling the House something that is not true.

    With respect to the difference between Bill C-42 and Bill C-55, it seems to me that we have a bit of sleight of hand here in the sense that there is the illusion of more parliamentary involvement than there was in Bill C-42. There was no illusion of parliamentary involvement in Bill C-42. We cannot accuse Bill C-42 of being involved in any sort of sleight of hand. However in Bill C-55 interim orders would have to be tabled in the House of Commons within 15 sittings days and therefore we would have the opportunity theoretically of these interim orders being the object of debate in the House of Commons. I grant that, except that we all know that simply to be tabled in parliament does not mean that it will be debated in parliament or voted on in parliament because the government controls parliament. Except in the situation of minority parliaments or in the situation where we had a much freer political culture than we do now in the House, the government controls parliament. In fact when the Minister of Transport was being interviewed on this he said “It will be tabled in parliament and you know, an opposition MP might be able to move a motion to have it debated and the government might even support it”. The word is “might”.

    What we are saying is that if we really wanted parliamentary oversight and wanted an opportunity for parliament to debate this we would not leave this to the whim of a government that might be sensitive about what it had just done 15 sitting days ago. We might want to mandate that parliament would have to debate it within a certain timeframe, perhaps not 15 days, but perhaps within a certain timeframe after it has been tabled, whatever, but we would not leave it subject to the parliamentary dictatorial powers of a majority government as to whether or not that ever actually came up for debate.

    That is certainly one of the concerns that we have. The fact is that the interim orders themselves, as has been argued by other members in the House, are inferior substitutes for the kind of powers that the government now has under the Emergencies Act, except that the Emergencies Act of course would have to involve parliament in a much more meaningful way than these interim orders potentially involve parliament.

    Quite the contrary to what the government is saying, it may not be that now it has listened to Canadians and now it is trying to involve parliament. It may be that we just have a more sophisticated run around parliament in Bill C-55 than we had in Bill C-42 which was a rather blunt instrument and more transparently contemptuous of parliament than Bill C-55. Of course, if the government wants to claim otherwise, then we look forward to rather extensive study of this in committee, which brings me to my second point.

    There was an emergency, so the government said. Clearly there was an emergency after 9/11. However whatever emergency Bill C-42 was intended to address, certainly could not have been much of an emergency, if the bill could sit on the order paper for months.

    Now the Liberals have been listening to Canadians. I do not remember hearings on Bill C-42 because we never even had the first round of debate in this House about it. It never even got to the NDP and the Tories when it came to the debate on second reading, but the Liberals have been listening. If one were to listen to the rhetoric of the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Transport and the Prime Minister, one would think we had a thorough debate about this. Now we have to get this through by the end of June.

    Four months of idleness on the part of the government with respect to Bill C-42 and now it is a big emergency. We will not be able to have extensive committee hearings. It is the same old show. It is the same as with Bill C-36. Anything that is important, we have to get it through in a hurry. The legislation can sit on the order paper for four or five months with no problem, but now we have to get this thing into committee, have hearings and it has to be all over and done with by the end of June.

    The government really has its nerve when it comes to Bill C-55. It is a parliamentary outrage that it would expect us to say that there is an emergency, as if it has been acting as if there were an emergency when in fact it has not.

    I put the government on notice to the extent that the NDP is able to influence matters here. I get a similar feeling from other opposition parties that we do not see any grounds now for some kind of unholy rush, particularly when Bill C-55 is not a reduced, or ameliorated or amended version of Bill C-42. What we have are entirely new measures inserted into Bill C-55. I am thinking in particular of the measures to do with the revelation of lists of passenger on planes.

    When the government was listening to Canadians, whenever that process took place, that invisible process that happened between when it first introduced Bill C-42 and when it withdrew it, I guess I missed it. I missed all those public meetings where Canadians were saying that they wanted the RCMP and CSIS to know every time they got on a plane and that they wanted to have that information in some big computer somewhere. I do not remember anyone asking for that. Maybe the RCMP and CSIS asked for it. However let us not kid ourselves. It was not something for which that Canadians were calling. The privacy commissioner has expressed very real concerns and objections to this.

    There is a whole new dimension to this bill. We are supposed to pass it because now the government is in a rush. When it came to this, the government was in a coma for four months but now there has been a boom, it has woken up, little lights have gone on and now the rest of us have to just shove it on through. I do not think the opposition will go for that, particularly with respect to this new demand for information.

    A Liberal member of the justice committee was quoted in the paper as saying there was no reason this provision could not be expanded. I am talking now about giving information with respect to lists of passengers on trains, buses and people who rent cars. Why do we not just find out the names of everyone who goes into Wal-Mart. Where does this end?

    I thought this was to fight terrorism. There are ways to fight terrorism, including on planes, that we support. However we do not support using 9/11 to create everyone's nightmare of a big brother, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Not everyone knows; big brother knows the travelling habits of people. The credit card companies probably know already, but that is beside the point. Why does the government not just go there. That is certainly one thing about which we are concerned.

    We think we are being offered a bit of a sleight of hand here as to what a great improvement Bill C-55 is over Bill C-42. We want to see a thorough process when it comes to this bill. For the government to expect that somehow now we will just let this thing go is a very serious mistake on its part.

Mr. Grant McNally (Dewdney--Alouette, Canadian Alliance): Madam Speaker, the Minister of National Defence gave a speech in the House just moments ago. He was quoted in the paper as saying:

The previous bill did have this provision in it where the minister of defence could have designated the entire Kananaskis area, but that's not possible under this new legislation. The only thing that could be protected or cordoned off would be military equipment itself if it were stationary.

    My colleague mentioned sleight of hand and issues of trust in his speech. Does he believe that perhaps part of the sleight of hand with this bill is found in clause 74 under proposed section 260.1, which was referred to by the Bloc member previously? By moving equipment into an area outside of a military establishment these provisions could then be extended to that territory, thereby doing almost a back door application of the same kind of military zones that were mentioned in the previous bill, Bill C-42. Does he see that as a possibility under this bill?

    Although the minister may assure us that we should not worry, that everything will be okay and that is not what is intended here, once it is in law what is to stop this minister or any other minister or the Prime Minister from saying “I do not know” to “Just watch me” once it is in legislation? Would he agree with that possibility in this section of the bill?

    Mr. Bill Blaikie: Madam Speaker, if I recall my own speech correctly, it seems to me I did raise this very matter that there may be loopholes in what we now have in Bill C-55 and that through the location or insertion of a particular piece of military equipment into a particular zone in proximity to an international gathering or whatever this could then be used. As the minister says, of course it could be challenged in the courts after the event.

    I am glad to have the hon. member and his party on board in opposing Bill C-42 and to these measures. I remember when Bill C-36 came before the House the NDP was alone in expressing concerns about these security measures. I welcome the new found concern of the Canadian Alliance about the welfare of people who are protesting against globalization and various other things because it seems to me that a year ago, when we were expressing similar concerns about what had happened to protesters in Quebec City, we were scorned by people in the party of the hon. member. They have come a long way, and it just goes to show that some people are in fact teachable.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): Madam Speaker, I want to get a little more follow up on the issue of the lists, specifically passenger lists on airlines. It was suggested this morning by our Liberal colleague from Scarborough--Rouge River that Canadians do not have any problem whatsoever with the RCMP and CSIS having passenger lists to check if there are terrorists.

    Last night I listened to the privacy commissioner. His point was that there was not a real problem if someone was checking a list and identified a terrorist. Then the rest of the list is ditched. It is not kept on a master computer file or sent to the U.S. or anywhere else. Nor is it kept for a long period of time. However three months down the road it might be decided that alleged terrorists are travelling here and there and perhaps they should be checked out just in case they are doing something wrong, but they will not know they are being investigated.

    Is that one of the real concerns that we should have with regard to the passenger lists?

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    Mr. Bill Blaikie: Madam Speaker, as I said, the privacy commissioner has raised a lot of concerns about this. I am sure he will be before the committee whenever the bill gets to committee.

    This is a new Achilles heel of the government's legislation. It is something that is new. It was not in Bill C-42. It is a new thing and it cannot be passed off as just modified Bill C-42 legislation. It is a brand new requirement and is a brand new power given to the RCMP, CSIS and the government. It is something that the government has yet to convince me or other Canadians is necessary to fight terrorism.

    It might be a convenient tool for a whole variety of purposes, but there are all kinds of convenient tools that we do not provide to government because we value other things. I again refer to what the hon. Liberal MP and chair of the Ontario caucus said about this new police power. He said that it was wide open to what he referred to as function creep. It goes from terrorism to organized crime to ordinary criminality to invasion of privacy of Canadians who are otherwise law abiding. This has a lot of potential for abuse.

    Canadians should be concerned. That is the reason why we need a rather lengthy legislative process on this. Part of the purpose of delay, just to speak to parliamentary dynamics for a minute, is not delay for its own sake. It is not delay to be inefficient or obstructionist. Delay is what gives the public time to find out what is going on.

    If everything was done in a hurry and done “efficiently”, everything would be over before the public figured out what was going on. As far as I am concerned, here is a classic example of the function of parliamentary delay. This needs to be delayed until the Canadian people can be made more fully aware of this new dimension of the legislation that the government has before it. Then, as political parties, we can all make our respective judgments to whether or not the Canadian people are willing to accept that. We cannot make that judgment if it is all over and done with before they realize what has happened.