Chris Lewis

“Madam Speaker, it is finally sunny in Ottawa, but to me, this is one of the darkest weeks in the history of Canadian democracy. Bill C-9 is back in the House after a brief stint in the Senate that did not make a dent in the problems with the bill. Predicated on false pretenses, the repeal of the religious defence to hate speech remains. The new hatred offence would still criminalize conduct, contrary to a civil statute. Nothing that minority communities are actually worried about in terms of security would be changed by Bill C-9. The Liberals are ramming it through at the end of the summer sitting as the government-subsidized media is already at the cottage. In the same week, the Liberals are ramming through Bill C-22, a bill that would require telecoms and Internet companies to seize all Canadian metadata, including their geographic location and who they called or texted in the last year, without their having committed an offence and without a search warrant. Bill C-22 would allow the Minister of Public Safety to order Internet providers to break encryption, something that has never been done before, even though every security expert is sounding the alarm that the privacy of law-abiding Canadians would be at major risk. In the same week, the Liberals are also introducing Bill C-34, the digital safety act. Of course, we have to protect children, but that does not mean that we have to deny children their charter rights to access media communications, which is an explicit right, or prevent them from communicating with each other through popular apps. It is a plan that failed in Australia and that will fail everywhere else. Unless we are prepared to implement a Beijing-style, authoritarian Internet surveillance regime, this is unenforceable. Are Canadians ready for that? Obviously, they are not. In the same week, which is the last week before the legislature rises, the Liberals are introducing so-called privacy legislation, which would eliminate the Privacy Commissioner in favour of their so-called digital safety czar, who would regulate, enforce and judge all at the same time. This would be a Liberal government appointee reigning over what we do on the Internet, with unlimited powers over how we communicate and how the world’s most innovative companies do business. Surely by coincidence, the same thing is now happening in England this week, and it just happened in Australia. I was trained in the common law. It was the beacon of hope for any modern civilization. Anywhere the common law went, prosperity followed, but now we have these egomaniacs, career technocrats and misguided lefties who think they know better than everyone telling us how to live for our own benefit and how to keep us safe. I want to be safe from them. Bill C-9 would do nothing to protect the Jewish or Muslim communities. It would not protect any community. This entire thing has been a major Liberal failure. The Liberals wanted to eliminate the Attorney General’s ability to consent to prosecutions. They realized how bad an idea it was and rolled it back. They wanted to redefine the term “hatred”. It is a definition that the Supreme Court used for 40 years. I am proud of this. It is one of the greatest accomplishments of my career that the Liberals have accepted my amendment to keep the old definition of hatred and not dilute it. People would not have to go to jail when they offend someone. Just when I thought we were out of the woods, I saw the digital safety bill that attempts to regulate harmful conduct online. Surprise, surprise. Harmful content would include content that foments hatred. The bill states, “content that foments hatred means content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group”. The Liberals are at it again. We just fixed the definition in Bill C-9, and now they have come back with a digital safety bill to regulate our conduct online and they have a different definition for hatred. Why is it “detestation or vilification”, not “detestation and vilification”, as the Supreme Court says? Where is the extreme or intense emotion that is required by the Supreme Court, like we agreed on in Bill C-9? Where is that in the digital safety act? Why do the Liberals hate freedom of speech so much? The Liberals hate it because they are afraid of the truth. The Senate was asked to fix the new stand-alone motivated offence in Bill C-9, because this new offence that the Liberals dreamt up would not target criminal conduct only. It would target any offence under any act of Parliament. For example, people could violate the digital safety act or the human rights code, and that may attract criminal prosecution. The Liberals are turning our democracy into a banana republic. Earlier, I heard the member for Whitby ask my colleague why she is opposed to a new hate-motivated offence. Does she not want someone to be punished when they engage in hatred? First of all, hatred is already an aggravating circumstance in sentencing, so do not give us that. Second of all, if the Liberals want to introduce another offence, introduce it for criminal offences. Do not penalize civil conduct, thereby putting civil conduct at risk of criminal prosecution. The Liberals tout all of these benefits for the Jewish community, which is my own community. Let me tell the House something about what has transpired here. Everything the Liberals have done to clarify any existing law is already in law. They say they will have to protect people’s ability to enter synagogues and be free from obstruction. We are already free from obstruction in entering a synagogue. Nobody can obstruct me from entering a synagogue. That is called assault. How about intimidation? People should be free from intimidation when entering a school. Of course, that has not stopped the multiple school shootings that have happened in my riding. Nothing is happening about those. It is already a criminal offence to intimidate someone entering a school. It is called intimidation contrary to section 423 of the Criminal Code. Some hon. members: Oh, oh! Roman Baber: Mr. Speaker, they are heckling me because they know I am right. They are heckling me because they cannot handle what they are doing here. I welcome their heckling. I wear it as a badge of honour. The only thing the Liberals would do is eliminate the religious defence to an allegation of hate speech, and it is all because the Bloc says a guy named Charkaoui was not charged for calling for the extermination of the enemies of Gaza. The Montreal police said very clearly he was not charged because “the enemies of the people of Gaza” were not a identifiable group of people so as to attract prosecution under subsection 319(1) of the Criminal Code. It is not because of the religious defence. The religious defence does not apply to incitement to violence. Everyone knows that. The Bloc knows that. The Liberals know that. The religious defence that the Liberals are looking to repeal does not apply. It does not excuse incitement to violence. A religious defence does not apply to statements that are not spoken in good faith. Calling for the extermination of people is not good faith. This is a charade. The main operation of the bill is predicated on a lie. The more lies we get, the more we go down a rabbit hole, like we did with Bill C-9 and Bill C-22, the digital safety act, and as we will now with the changes to the Privacy Act that would eliminate the Privacy Commissioner. Leave us alone and enforce the law. Stop trying to keep us safe. We need to be safe from the Liberal government. I am blessed to represent one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. Every Sunday, thugs come to Sheppard and Bathurst and intimidate local neighbours. They deny us the enjoyment of property. That is mischief. Every Sunday, they try to walk down Sheppard and then make a right into Bathurst Manor or left into Clanton Park. That is intimidation. Every week, we see the arson or firebombing of a Jewish business or a store. Those are called assault or arson. Ryan Turnbull: You do not want to protect them. Roman Baber: Mr. Speaker, the Liberals say I do not want to protect them, but I am pleading for help for my Jewish community. They are telling me that repealing the religious defence would do something about it. It would not, but enforcing existing laws would. That would send a message. We should do that, instead of sending another $100 million to Palestine and instead of hearing the Prime Minister accusing the state of Israel, which is engaged in a lawful, self-defence war, of engaging in genocide in Gaza. That, in fact, fuels hatred against the Jewish community. The Prime Minister fuels violence and hatred against the Jews by engaging in the greatest libel of the 21st century, which is that the state of Israel is engaging in genocide. The Prime Minister recognized the state of Palestine on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. We will never forget that. It was all for electoral politics. We should all be ashamed of the government for the way it is treating the Jewish community and the way it has betrayed all of us. We will never forget it. What the Liberals are doing to usurp Canadian democracy is inexcusable. Shame on all of them.”