moved that Bill C-2, An Act respecting certain measures relating to the security of the border between Canada and the United States and respecting other related security measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, let me begin by congratulating you on your election as Speaker. I know it is well deserved. In my many years of sitting beside you, I know the wisdom that you carry with you each and every day.
I want to also take this moment to congratulate all of my colleagues here who were elected on April 28.
I want to take a moment to thank the people of Scarborough—Guildwood—Rouge Park for the mandate they have given me four consecutive times. If anyone is counting, this time it was with 64% of the vote in my favour. Throughout the campaign, I heard a lot, some of which I will be sharing with the House today.
Permit me to acknowledge the land we are gathered on, which is the traditional territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin people.
On April 28, Canadians gave the Prime Minister a mandate to ensure the safety and security of Canadians. This was reinforced by His Majesty King Charles III in the Speech from the Throne last week. Canadians expect those of us in Parliament to work together and deliver for them. To be truly strong, Canada must be secure. A strong border is essential to our national security, to foster safe communities and our support for the economy. In recognition of this, our government has taken a number of important steps.
In December of last year, we introduced Canada's border plan, an ambitious $1.3-billion investment to strengthen border security. We appointed a fentanyl czar, Kevin Brosseau, to work closely with our U.S. counterparts and law enforcement agencies to accelerate Canada's ongoing work to detect, disrupt and dismantle the fentanyl trade. We made sure to have eyes on the border 24-7, with more officers, drones, Black Hawk helicopters and sensors. We listed seven cartels as terrorist organizations and launched a Canada-U.S. joint strike force.
As part of a national law enforcement operation in early 2025 targeting fentanyl production and distribution, Canadian law enforcement made 524 arrests and seized more than 46 kilograms of fentanyl, 74 kilograms of other drugs, 122 firearms, 33 stolen vehicles and over $800,000 in cash. Just last week, the CBSA released the results of Operation Blizzard, a month-long cross-country surge to intercept fentanyl and other illegal drugs. The operation resulted in 116 fentanyl seizures. Our enforcement-focused plan gives frontline officers the tools they need to secure our streets. We are seeing more busts, more arrests and safer communities.
This is important work, and I want to be clear with Canadians: Our borders are strong and secure, but we can always do more to strengthen them. The reality is that there are always new risks emerging that threaten our national and economic security.
For example, in recent years, transnational crime organizations have become more sophisticated. Increasingly, they are using technologies to evade law enforcement, which is hamstrung by outdated tools.
We need to make it harder for organized crime to move money, drugs, people and firearms and to endanger our communities. We need to ensure Canada's law enforcement is equipped with the tools it needs to stay ahead of organized crime and empowered to crack down on illicit activities. This is essential to maintaining the safety and security of our country.
Bill C-2, the strong borders act, would help achieve just that. The bill would keep Canadians safe by ensuring law enforcement has the right tools to keep our borders secure, combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal fentanyl and crack down on money laundering. It would bolster our response to increasingly sophisticated criminal networks and enhance the integrity and fairness of our immigration system, all the while protecting Canadians' privacy and charter rights.
Let me take a moment at the outset to talk about some of the safeguards that are in place. As we know, when we ran in the election, we did confirm and reiterate our support for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In fact, it was a previous Liberal prime minister and justice minister who brought forward the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As such, it is a foundational piece of the work that we do.
King Charles III, in his Speech from the Throne last week, reiterated our government's support for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the guideposts by which we will work to govern this country. As a result, when we speak about national security legislation, which essentially enforces additional tools for law enforcement, it should be with the premise that the rights of Canadians will not be violated. Privacy rights will be protected. Charter rights will be protected, and due process will always be there for Canadians.
Let me share an experience that I had just last month, days after I was appointed to this role. I travelled to Cornwall to meet with the frontline officers of the CBSA and the RCMP, who work hard each and every day to keep our country safe and our border secure. Those officers shared with me their perspectives and ideas on how this government can best support them in their important work. I hope those officers will see their feedback reflected in the bill we are now debating in Parliament. When I spoke to them, they spoke about some of the challenges and limitations they have and some of the basic tools they are missing, tools they need in order to do their work effectively and efficiently to ensure that our borders are safer. It is a safe border, but we want to make it safer.
The strong borders act would keep Canadians safe by, for example, equipping law enforcement with the tools needed to disrupt, dismantle and prosecute the organized criminal networks threatening our communities. It would grant border officers more powers to search export containers to stop auto theft rings from smuggling stolen cars out of the country. It would update the Coast Guard's mission and responsibilities to protect our sovereignty and conduct security patrols to collect, analyze and share information and intelligence for security purposes. The bill would give us the tools needed to, for example, clamp down on clandestine drug production by stopping the flow of precursor chemicals that are used to make fentanyl. We would go after transnational child sex offenders by sharing more information with domestic and international policing partners and crack down on money laundering to hit organized crime groups where it hurts. Further, the strong borders act would strengthen measures to stamp out immigration fraud, improve the asylum system and protect the integrity of our visas.
My colleagues do not have to take my word for it; let me share some of the perspectives already offered on this bill. First off, the Canadian Police Association, the largest law enforcement advocacy organization in Canada and the national voice for over 60,000 frontline law enforcement personnel serving across every province and territory, said:
[T]his proposed legislation would provide critical new tools for law enforcement, border services, and intelligence agencies to address transnational organized crime, auto theft, firearms and drug trafficking, and money laundering. It's important to emphasize that these are not abstract issues, our members see first-hand that they have real impacts in communities across the country and require a coordinated and modern legislative response.
Mr. Speaker, permit me to share the comments by Marta Leardi-Anderson, the executive director of the Cross-Border Institute at the University of Windsor, who said that the new measures are “long overdue”.
Équité, the national authority on insurance crime and fraud prevention, said:
This legislation directly supports law enforcement and the CBSA in strengthening their ability to combat sophisticated criminal networks threatening the safety and security of communities across Canada.... [T]he enhanced authorities granted to CBSA and law enforcement agencies...will strengthen our collective ability to disrupt illegal operations, including the trafficking and distribution of drugs and firearms funded by the proceeds of auto theft.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, an incredible organization, a national charity dedicated to the personal safety of all children and whose goal is to reduce the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, said that the changes proposed in the strong borders act “would reduce barriers Canadian police face when investigating the growing number of online crimes against children [and] have the full support” of the organization.
Let me also quote from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which made a statement yesterday:
Canada’s legislation related to lawful access is significantly outdated and urgently needs to be revised to align with modern technology. Canada lags behind its international law enforcement partners in the ability to lawfully access electronic evidence associated with criminal activity. Transnational organised crime groups are exploiting this gap to victimize our communities across the country through serious crimes such as human, drug and firearm trafficking, auto theft, and violent profit-driven crime. The provisions contained within the Strong Borders Act are an important step in advancing Canadian law enforcement's ability to effectively combat the ever-evolving nature of transnational organized criminal groups.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada added that the strong borders act is “an important step toward combating auto theft & organized crime. This legislation shows leadership and is a win for Canadians.” The strong borders act is a win for Canadians and deals a blow to transnational organized crime.
When developing the legislation that is before the House, the government had three major objectives: one, secure the border; two, combat transnational organized crime and fentanyl; three, disrupt illicit financing.
To secure the border, we propose to amend the Customs Act to compel transporters and warehouse operators to provide access to their premises to allow for export inspections by CBSA officers, and require owners and operators of certain ports of entry and exit to provide facilities to export inspections, just as they currently do for imports. Just to be clear, currently the law allows the CBSA to do inspections upon exit of goods from Canada. However, there is no compulsion of any of these organizations to provide the adequate space and resources to do the inspection. This amendment would ensure that space will be available for that inspection to take place, which is a critical tool for us to fight, for example, auto thefts.
We are proposing to amend the Oceans Act to add security-related activities, such as countering criminal activity and drug trafficking, and enable the Canadian Coast Guard to conduct security patrols and share information with security, defence and intelligence partners.
We would be amending the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to share information collected under the act with domestic and international partners.
We would be amending the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, and we would secure and extend legislative authorities to cancel, suspend or vary immigration documents and cancel or suspend processing of new applications en masse for reasons determined to be in the public interest. A perfect example of this is the number of applications that came in for temporary resident permits during COVID. We were compelled to process them, because there was no mechanism under IRPA to be able to cancel or suspend those applications. This essentially gives additional tools to the minister of IRCC to do just that.
We would amend the act to disclose information for the purpose of co-operation with federal partners and to uphold the integrity and fairness of the asylum system, including by streamlining the intake, processing and adjudication of claims. As an example here, the sharing of information between federal and provincial partners is critical. However, it does not lead towards sharing of information with foreign actors without the express written consent of the minister of IRCC, which is subject to many multilateral and bilateral agreements that currently exist. It will ensure, once again, the safety and privacy rights of those who come to Canada.
The strong borders act would also create new ineligibility measures to make certain claims ineligible to be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board. For example, it would limit the safe third country agreement provision where someone makes a claim after 14 days when they come through an irregular port of entry; they would no longer be eligible for an asylum claim. Similarly, those who have been in-country for more than a year and have not sought asylum before the one-year period are ineligible. In both cases, the safeguard that is in place is the availability of what is called a pre-removal risk assessment, which would ensure that those seeking protection and those in need of protection will have protection within Canada. It abides by our commitments to the UN convention on refugees.
To combat transnational organized crime and fentanyl, we are proposing to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to change the pathway to allow precursor chemicals that can be used to produce illicit drugs to be rapidly controlled by the Minister of Health. Currently, it can take up to a year. This would happen within days or weeks, which would enable us to be close to changes in precursors and the impact of new precursors on the drug supply. It would be an important tool for us.
We are also introducing amendments to support authorized access to information, to ensure that electronic service providers have the capabilities in place to support legally authorized requests from law enforcement and CSIS. I have already heard some misunderstandings of what we are trying to do. Let me just quickly walk through some of the major components of the amendments related to lawful access.
First and foremost, we are seeking for CSPs to be able to have the capacity to share data. Right now, not all service providers have that capability. This essentially compels service providers to have the capacity to share data. Second, it would enable law enforcement to go to a service provider and ask if the phone number they have is with that company. It is simply a yes-or-no question. If it is with that company, then, if additional information is required, law enforcement would go to court and seek a production order, which is through an affidavit and an application to court, to be able to get, on the basis of what is called reasonable grounds to suspect, authorization to get information on a subscriber, very basic information on a subscriber. It oftentimes includes name, address and phone number, very basic information.
The fourth element is this. If there is a much more serious investigation taking place, where law enforcement believes that something may have happened, it can file, on the basis of reasonable grounds to believe, an application to the court, once again, to seek authorization toward additional investigation. In all of these steps, whether it is on the basis of reasonable grounds to suspect or reasonable grounds to believe, it is through judicial authorization. It is something that I want to be very, very clear about. It is a tool that is so essential right now for law enforcement to be able to investigate many of the crimes that are now evolving in a modern era, where so much information is within individuals' control.
Bill C-2 would enact significant penalties for illicit financing, and it would enable law enforcement and agencies to enforce, in a much stricter way, penalties for any form of illicit fundraising that takes place.
Let me just conclude by saying that we committed to investing in 1,000 new CBSA officers and 1,000 new RCMP officers. They are critical.
The bill that we have brought forward is a response to what we heard at the doors. Many of us heard about the concerns that Canadians have. This is a moment when all of us can come together and ensure that our borders are safer and secure. As a result, our communities and our streets would be safer and more secure. This should be a non-partisan exercise, and I invite our friends opposite, all of the parties, to support this bill.
