Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House, and today we are talking about Bill C-12.
For those who do not know what Bill C-12 is, it is the Liberal government's attempt at a do-over of Bill C-2, the border security bill. When Bill C-2 first came out, there was an outcry from the Conservative Party and civil liberties organizations across the country because of the numerous infringements of the Canadian Charter Rights and Freedoms. It would have been violated by Bill C-2, so the government was forced to take out some of these offensive violations.
Part 4 would allow Canada Post to open mail without a warrant. Part 11 would ban cash payments and donations over $10,000. Part 14 would allow warrantless access to Canadians' personal information on reasonable suspicion, which is a very low threshold. Part 15 could compel electronic service providers to re-engineer their platforms to help CSIS and the police access personal information, like a digital snoop.
Part 16 would allow the government to supply financial institutions with personal information if the info was useful for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes. Again, if there was a reasonable suspicion, they could get all of someone's financial information. What could possibly go wrong when the Liberal government gets someone's financial information? I think we learned that with the Emergencies Act when the government froze the bank accounts of Canadians. It is no wonder Canadians do not trust the government.
I am happy to see all of these violations of people's civil liberties were taken out in the do-over. That is the good news.
The bad news is that the government continues to go against people's charter rights and freedoms. We see a continual pattern of behaviour with the government. With Bill C-11, it tried to shut down people's freedom of speech. Bill C-18 tried to mess with the freedom of the press. The freedom of religion issue is constantly coming up, with the Liberals trying to remove charitable status from churches and the Canada summer jobs program. We have to get to the details of this bill to make sure no funny business has been snuck in at the last minute. It is clear the government continually wants to take away the freedoms of Canadians.
Some improvements could still be made to this bill, and I want to talk about a few of those. The first one is in part 1. Part 1 would amend the Customs Act to allow the CBSA to use facilities free of charge for enforcement and access to goods for export, as it does for imports. The dilemma for me is that with the size of the fentanyl issue, the crime issues and the lack of security at our borders, there is no limit on how long somebody's warehouse or space could be seized to use for this kind of enforcement. Of course, that would come at the expense of whoever owns a warehouse or storage space.
In border towns like Sarnia, there is not always a lot of space available at the border, so that could be even more far-reaching. The same is true for Windsor and a number of the other border crossings we have. I think some limits should be put on part 1 to make sure we do not unduly burden private businesses.
Second, let us talk about fentanyl. Fentanyl is a huge issue in this country. About 50,000 people have died of overdoses. The RCMP and CSIS have indicated that there are 400 fentanyl superlabs. I do not know whether they are being shut down, but Justin Trudeau said a very small portion of our fentanyl goes to the States. The reality is we really do not know, because shipping containers coming in from China are not being scanned and are going through the port of Vancouver and down to Seattle.
The precursors of fentanyl are not controlled or tracked. We do not know where they are going, so the people synthesizing fentanyl in these 400 superlabs are getting those chemicals from somewhere. One thing I like about the bill is that it adds some controls to traceability so we would know where those chemicals are coming in, where they are going and who is buying them. That would be helpful to the police.
I think we should start doing what other ports in the world do, which is scan all the shipping containers. This is very important not just on the fentanyl issue but on the issue of people stealing cars. We definitely need an upgrade in our scanning capabilities.
One of the difficulties I have with putting laws in place in this country is the lack of enforcement of the rule of law. It is fundamental to our democracy, but the law is not really being enforced. We have people committing crimes in the country who are let out because the Liberals put in place Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. Bill C-75 says that we have to give the least restrictive punishment, which is really bail or a fine, at the earliest opportunity, which is right away. We have people trafficking fentanyl or creating it in these labs, and even if they get arrested, they are back out on bail. Bill C-5 lets them have house arrest. How convenient is that for drug trafficking? They have to stay home, but people can stop by.
We need better enforcement of the law, because we know the Liberals are going to create more laws like Bill C-9, for example, which is supposed to address the rise in hate crimes. There are already laws in this country that could help in that regard. There were 113 Christian churches that burned to the ground. There is a law against arson. It should be enforced. Illegally blocking the streets is against the law, but the police are not enforcing it. Death cries to Canadians and various religions are hate speech. They are against the law. Again, it is about enforcement. As for shooting up schools, stealing cars, home invasions and extortions, we already have laws on the books for these things, but if we are not going to enforce them, we are not going to cure the problem. That is exactly the problem with introducing this border security bill. If there is no enforcement of any of the things in it, then it is absolutely meaningless.
There are immigration measures in the bill, and we need to take action on immigration because it is out of control. Most Canadians would agree with that. We need immigration to build houses and for the nation-building projects we want. We have an aging population. We need more PSWs, nurses and doctors than can graduate from the educational institutions in Canada. We need people to come here and help build the country. I love the idea from our leader of the blue seal program, to take the 50,000 doctors and nurses who already live in Canada and get them accredited so they can help out. It is definitely a great idea.
For the last century, people have come here to work and to help build the country, and we want to continue that. What we do not need is more freeloaders showing up to claim asylum and have the Canadian taxpayer fork out $3,000 to $4,000 a month to put them up in hotels in Niagara Falls. That is more money than we give the seniors who built the country. It is more money than we give to Canadians living with a disability.
Then we see that the majority of these claims, after two or three years of putting these people up, are not eligible after we have spent a huge amount of the taxpayers' money. There are 300,000 of these individuals in the backlog. That is $15 billion a year taken out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers for people we did not invite here. I think moving the IRCC office to the Toronto Pearson, Montreal and Vancouver airports to hear their claims right on the spot would be good. Then if they are not eligible, the cost of a plane ticket is a lot less than the cost of putting somebody up for three years.
At the same time, we need to reintroduce the fair and compassionate immigration system we had when the Conservatives were in charge, which did security checks so that we were not letting people into the country who were going to cause the kinds of crime and trouble we are sometimes seeing.
I think the immigration measures in the bill will help out. I do not think they go far enough. My colleague from Calgary Nose Hill has done a great job of defining what ought to be done to fix the immigration system we have. I encourage anyone who does not follow her to listen to what she has to say on that subject.
I want to talk a bit about making the border more secure. The Liberals have announced that they are going to hire 1,000 CBSA agents. The announcement was made months ago and nobody has been hired. We hear now that it might be done within five years. That is not the kind of response we need to get security in the budget.
With that, I will take questions.
