Mr. Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-20, which deals with changes to the handling of complaints filed in connection with the level of service delivered by customs personnel or their possible misconduct.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House for a second time this week, since I did have the opportunity to give another speech earlier in the week on the government's budget. I do intend to talk about the government's budget again, because it will bring me to Bill C-20. Members will soon see the connection.

The budget presented by the Liberal government this week was in fact historic. I say this because never before has a budget interfered so much in provincial jurisdictions or disregarded provincial powers to such an extent. In my speech, I criticized the government for not looking after its own jurisdictions and instead interfering in areas that are not under its responsibility. I also called out the Prime Minister for acting like the new self-proclaimed king. Perhaps he is inspired in part by his monarchist leanings and his somewhat theological view of Canada.

That being said, in the case of Bill C‑20 I must commend the government. That may surprise some people, but instead of always criticizing the government's bills, sometimes we have to acknowledge when they get it right. I am taking this opportunity to do just that. Obviously, once is not a habit and sometimes it is the exception that proves the rule. In this bill, there is certainly an exception. The exception is that the Liberal government is doing its job, it is minding its own business. It feels good to see a government staying within its jurisdiction. We would like to see more of that, I must admit. If that happened more often, this country might be better off. We are not going to deny it.

What exactly is Bill C‑20 all about? Sometimes ordinary people have to travel overseas. The vast majority of us have gone to another country. When we want to enter a country, the customs officers ask us all sorts of questions. How long are we staying? Where will we stay? Why are we here? They want to know if the travel is justified.

Customs officers work to try to prevent threats to national security. They want to know whether people are entering the country with good intentions, whether they are authorized to enter the country and whether their visit will be positive, rather than dangerous or threatening to the country. Customs officers do extremely important but also extremely sensitive work. That is why they are granted sweeping powers to ask us questions, search our luggage without a warrant or take us aside and detain us for a little longer. These are indeed considerable powers, which ordinary citizens may sometimes find intimidating. When they stand before a customs officer, most people always wonder whether they are guilty of something or whether they put something in their luggage that could be dangerous. Perhaps people do not have the right to bring lead pencils into that country. I am joking, but I think that members know what I mean. We never know the exact rules or all the laws of every country that we visit.

It is the same sort of thing for people who come here. Plus, there is an added challenge. People coming here often do not know what recourse they have against any abuses they might experience. They find themselves somewhat powerless in the face of a customs officer's authority. This authority is nonetheless a good thing, since the job of customs officers is ultimately to protect us from security incidents or, at the very least, from people who might break the rules and harm society's overall well-being by transporting dangerous objects.

For example, no one wants to see an individual pass through customs only to realize a little later that he is a member of an organized crime group and has come here to commit murder. Perhaps there are foreign agents infiltrating our country to exert undue influence, or people transporting drugs. These are all things we do not want to see happen. For these reasons, it is important that customs officers have the authority they need to do their job. However, situations can arise where these people abuse their power.

We hope that such situations are kept to a minimum whenever possible, but we know—considering the many cartoons about it—that some administrations in other parts of the world are less strict than our officers are here. We have almost come to expect to see abuses when we go through customs.

That is not what we want to see in the country where we live. We live in a western country, a G7 nation, that theoretically respects people's rights. In fact, ours is a country with a Constitution. Some well-known rights were enshrined in that Constitution by the current Prime Minister's father. Although we may disagree on these rights, or at least parts of them, we nevertheless hope that the people called upon to uphold the Constitution, once it takes effect, will respect it.

To digress just a little, that is also why we hope that this government will respect its own Constitution. When the government draws up budgets, it sometimes meddles in matters that are not its concern.

In the case of customs officers, these individuals are also government representatives, so they must remain above reproach as much as possible and as needed. When an officer opens someone's luggage and turns everything inside out, as customs officers are entitled to do, they are invading someone's privacy. Officers open people's suitcases and see what they wore the day before, whether they did their laundry and so on. These things can be a little uncomfortable. We always hope these procedures are carried out with respect for human dignity.

The same is true when an officer decides to search an individual. For example, a customs officer may decide to strip search someone to see if that individual has hidden prohibited items inside their body. Officers might even inspect that individual's genitals. No one wants customs officers to comment on anything like whether the person showered yesterday or how little they are interested in that person. They also should not say anything about the size, shape or colour of an individual. All of these things would be completely inappropriate in circumstances where the person being searched is in a vulnerable situation.

That is what Bill C‑20 tries to fix. Let us hope it is adopted. It is about recognizing that customs officers have rights and they need to enforce the law and protect society and the country. However, this power must also have limits and be regulated.

In the past, passengers could file a complaint. That recourse already existed. The problem is that a complaint about a customs officer or service was dealt with internally. It seemed like there was a lack of transparency or like there could sometimes be a certain form of institutional bias. For example, in my riding, we often heard people complaining about the noise and speed of the trains. They had to file their complaint with the company's police service. People felt like they were being jerked around. They file a complaint with CN's police service and CN is the one that is going to look into the complaint. The perception is that the complaint does not get treated the way it should.

That is what Bill C‑20 seeks to do. It seeks to ensure that, from now on, an independent body will have the authority to resolve complaints. If people want to go directly to the independent authority, then they can do so. They can also file their complaint the old way by submitting it directly to border services, where it will be addressed internally first. Later on, they can file an appeal with this completely independent authority, which will be run by civilians, not by former customs or RCMP officers. It will be the same authority that already exists and that independently handles complaints against the RCMP, the federal police service. It will do the same work, but with the name change, it will also be able to independently handle complaints about alleged abuse committed by customs officers.

I will close by saying that this is a constructive measure that will strengthen the public's confidence in the system. Most importantly, we need to ensure that customs officers, who do an exemplary job of performing very important work for our community, have the resources that they need. Even though this does not excuse inappropriate behaviour, we know that sometimes people can make mistakes when they are burnt out.

Xavier Barsalou-Duval

$503,105.00