Melissa Lantsman

Madam Speaker, Claims · 34 wordsbefore we can even talk about this bill in Parliament, we have to talk about whether members of Parliament are even allowed to talk at all anymore. That is what the motion is about. Positioning · 39 wordsA government that claims to defend Canadian rights is using every tool at its disposal to make sure those things cannot even be debated on the floor of the House of Commons. That is what people are seeing tonight.Positioning Claims · 40 wordsThe Liberals are pushing the House to ram through legislation in its current form that nobody asked for, nobody wants and nobody thinks is a good idea, according to the testimony at the committee that they have just shut down. Procedure · 11 wordsLet me be clear about what this debate is actually about, ProcedureReasoning · 16 wordsbecause it is not about the bill. It is about whether lawful access matters. It does. Claims · 13 wordsLawful access is a tool that every police officer in this country needs, Promise · 9 wordsand we are ready to give them that bill, Claims · 7 wordsbut Bill C-22 would not stop there, Positioning · 106 wordsand that is exactly where the government has lost the plot on all this. Tonight, instead of a serious debate on a serious bill, we are listening to the Liberals mount an obnoxiously loud defence of the indefensible. They want to debate whether we should ignore the rights of the House, the will of our constituents and the basic principles of good governance that everybody came here to carry out. The government abandoned those a long time ago, but I know a lot of members of the House come here every day to scrutinize the very legislation that the Liberals are trying to ram through tonight.Positioning Procedure · 13 wordsLet me say this to anybody watching at home at this late hour: ProcedurePositioning · 13 wordsThe Liberals’ argument in this debate is completely disingenuous, and they know it.Positioning Thanks · 18 wordsI appreciate the police chief of York Regional Police. We have an enormously good relationship, a great one.Thanks Claims · 43 wordsI have also met with the commissioner of the OPP and with the Toronto police chief.¹ They have all asked us to help pass lawful access, and we told them we would. Everything they asked for was in part 1 of the bill.² Promise · 10 wordsWe support that and are ready to pass that today. Claims · 50 wordsWe were ready to pass that long ago. It is the Liberals who said no. However, not one of these police chiefs asked for the unprecedented expansion of government surveillance powers, secret ministerial orders, no oversight and a massive erosion of Canadians’ privacy protections. That is all in part 2, Reasoning · 8 wordsand that is exactly what the problem is. Positioning · 49 wordsThe Liberals’ trying to ram it through is a disgrace to the House. The Liberals say the police are demanding it, and I think that is as much of an insult to the police as the last 10 years of their leadership on this file has been, full stop.Positioning Claims · 45 wordsI do not think they can find anybody who says they need every provision in this bill, because it is just not true. We came to the government with a straightforward proposal: Pass part 1 now, give the police chiefs what they are asking for, Promise · 12 wordsand we will support it through the House, every part of it; Claims · 65 wordsthen take time to properly fix part 2 instead of programming a motion that would ram it through the House without any debate. We want to fix it by hearing from the civil liberties advocates who raised concerns in committee, from the private companies and from ordinary Canadians who have every right to be heard by every member of Parliament, every member of the House, Reasoning · 7 wordsbecause the legislation would affect them directly. Claims · 16 wordsThey all sounded the alarm bells at committee. Making this go away would not protect Canadians. Positioning · 5 wordsIt would protect the Liberals.Positioning Claims · 54 wordsThe government said no to us, because the minister presenting the bill cannot even defend it. If we put him in front of a microphone, we will see. He would be blundering all over the place, not answering questions, and giving entirely wrong answers, because he does not know the contents of the bill. Reasoning · 26 wordsIf he did know the contents of the bill, he would admit that it is part 1 that police officers were asking for to protect people. Claims · 17 wordsWhen the Liberals stand up and say that Conservatives are blocking lawful access, that is simply false. Reasoning · 8 wordsEvery member of the House should know that. Positioning · 32 wordsThe culprit is the government’s own stubbornness, its refusal to listen to anyone outside of its caucus, and, of course, it is the minister who is incapable of defending his own bill.Positioning Reasoning · 8 wordsWhat is the Liberals’ response to that refusal? Claims · 88 wordsIt is a motion to cut off debate, to limit how long the bill is discussed, to limit committee study and, in an unprecedented move, to retroactively pass the bill through committee without ever hearing the remaining amendments that were in committee. That has never been done in this place except with Bill C-9, the last bill the government passed through the House.³ My colleague mentioned that she had never seen that happen in her 15 years in this place, ⁴which is longer than I have been here. Reasoning · 5 wordsThis is not procedural housekeeping, Positioning · 13 wordsbut that is what the Liberals are going to make it sound like.Positioning Claims · 30 wordsIt is a very real, very clear threat to the rights and freedoms of all Canadians from coast to coast to coast. The government has heard this loud and clear. Reasoning · 29 wordsThat is exactly why it is ramming this bill through, because its members cannot go off on a summer break and have Canadians raise the alarm bells on it. Claims · 59 wordsThey want to get it through the House. One of the members opposite supporting this motion, and we need to talk about this, is the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. In a previous life, she sat on this side of the House as the Conservative shadow minister for civil liberties.⁵ She participated in nearly every civil liberties debate in this chamber. Thanks · 8 wordsEvery single time, she told Canadians the truth, ThanksClaims · 11 wordswhich was that the government could not be trusted with privacy. Positioning · 11 wordsI agreed with her then, and I agree with her now.Positioning Procedure · 7 wordsThis is what we are talking about.Procedure Claims · 10 wordsThis is a bill that would lower the constitutional bar. Procedure · 6 wordsThis is where it gets serious.Procedure Claims · 46 wordsIt would create secret ministerial orders with no sunlight.⁷ It would open back doors for bad actors who would mandate metadata retention as a direct precursor to AI-driven mass surveillance, and it would weaken the encryption that protects Canadians’ private communications, even with their financial institutions.⁸ Reasoning · 4 wordsThat is the problem. The ask · 15 wordsI think this bill deserves to be debated and the House should give it that. Claims · 25 wordsInstead, the Liberals have rammed it through with what is called the programming motion to sweep this away right before they take their summer break. Procedure · 9 wordsLet us go back to the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong.Procedure Claims · 69 wordsShe also told the House, and I remember it, that members of the Liberal caucus wanted to see her jailed over the views that she held on these exact kinds of topics.⁶ Now she is voting with those same people. She is handing them unprecedented power to conscript private business as instruments of state surveillance and potentially break the encryption that millions of Canadians rely on every single day. Procedure · 4 wordsThis is not hyperbole.Procedure Claims · 21 wordsSignal, NordVPN and DuckDuckGo have all publicly said that this kind of bill would force them to leave the country entirely.⁹ Positioning · 22 wordsWith that kind of testimony at committee, does anybody in this place not think that this deserves more scrutiny and more study?Positioning Procedure · 6 wordsThat is not a talking point.Procedure Claims · 19 wordsThey actually said that. That is a business decision that they are planning to make because of this legislation, Reasoning · 24 wordsand that tells us everything we need to know about how deeply flawed part 2 is and how it strikes at Canadian privacy rights. Positioning · 16 wordsNormally, I might wonder out loud what the people of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong think of all of this, PositioningClaims · 66 wordsbut in this case, I already know because I went there. Just like Canadians across the country did not vote for the construction of a surveillance state, the people of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong did not vote for her to erode their rights in this place. Police unions and police chiefs did not ask for their members to be handed these broad, sweeping powers; they asked for lawful access. Promise · 14 wordsWe are ready to give it to them in part 1 of this bill. Claims · 9 wordsWe asked for that and the Liberals said no. Procedure · 5 wordsThat is the conversation today.Procedure Positioning · 12 wordsWe are not prepared to write a blank cheque to the government.Positioning Claims · 7 wordsI do not think that anybody is. Promise · 50 wordsWe, the members of the opposition, certainly are not prepared to do that as we watch the government of the day erode not only the rights of Canadians but also the ability to debate those rights in the House and the ability to scrutinize a bill that is deeply problematic. Claims · 23 wordsThis is a bill that civil liberties associations, social media platforms and all kinds of private companies have raised the alarm bells on.¹⁰ Promise · 38 wordsWe are certainly not going to do that with no debate, no witnesses at committee, no ability to propose amendments, no oversight mechanisms and no answers from the people who will actually be responsible for implementing the legislation. Reasoning · 37 wordsThe reason that we are talking about this motion in the House is because of the public safety minister’s inability to defend his own legislation in here, out there, at committee and everywhere else across the country. Claims · 10 wordsThe government is programming this motion to save that minister, Positioning · 6 wordsand Canadians deserve better than that.Positioning The ask · 11 wordsThey deserve a debate, and they deserve scrutiny on this legislation.