NDP, Liberals claim Conservative filibustering derailed ministers' testimony on auto theft

NDP and Liberal MPs blamed a Conservative filibuster for derailing plans for a parliamentary committee to hear from two cabinet ministers Thursday about the spike in auto thefts.

Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc appeared before the public safety committee a day after Interpol named Canada as one the top ten sources for stolen vehicles out of the 137 countries sharing data with the agency.

The committee, which has been studying auto theft in Canada since February, has held six meetings and heard from 31 witnesses so far.

But before the ministers could speak, Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois MPs on the committee voted to first deal with a motion put before the committee by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis at a previous meeting.

Genuis objected, saying his motion should be dealt with later. He then called for a number of votes that would have let the ministers in the room speak, all of which were voted down by the other parties.

"If he wants to hear from the ministers, we have no speakers up, we're prepared to vote on his own amendment that he's filibustering," Liberal MP Jennifer O'Connell said. "We're prepared to vote and get right to the ministers."

Speaking for almost a full hour, Genuis said he wanted a vote on his previous motion to be pushed back because it had not been debated enough.

"We have, as the committee has seen, repeatedly moved for us to be able to hear from the ministers," Genuis said.

"It's clear that the Liberals did not want to allow the ministers to appear and they and their coalition partners have repeatedly blocked our attempt to proceed to hearing from the ministers."

After an hour, Rodriguez and LeBlanc were dismissed by the committee chair.

The committee was also set to hear from departmental officials and representatives of the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency on vehicle theft Thursday, but the committee's time was eaten up by discussion of Genuis's motion.

The motion that sparked the debate was introduced by Genuis at a May 6 committee meeting.

At that meeting, an agenda was proposed that set out dates for further study of auto theft in Canada and the statutory review of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act.

It also proposed a timeframe for the study of Bill S-210, a private members bill from Independent Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne.

The committee's agenda asked for a 30 day extension to further study S-210, An Act to restrict young persons' online access to sexually explicit material.

Liberal and NDP MPs said that extension is necessary because S-210 raised significant security and privacy concerns that need to be studied.

Genuis's amendment called for seven changes to the committee's agenda, including the publication of a report on the transfer of Paul Bernardo to a medium security prison, meetings on the decision to transfer Luka Magnotta out of a maximum security prison, and an invitation to the minister of health to discuss drug policy.

Delaying study of S-210

Liberal and NDP members of the committee told CBC News the committee has to return S-210 back to the House for a final vote in the first week of June. They also said the request for additional time to study the bill cannot be made until the proposed agenda for the committee has been passed and Genuis' amendment has been dealt with.

Alistair MacGregor, an NDP member of the committee who missed the morning session on Thursday, told CBC News that extra time is essential because witnesses have not testified on Bill S-210 since it was referred by the House to committee in December.

"I'm getting fed up with the Conservative members playing games on bill S-210," MacGregor said. "If they had stopped speaking and allowed the committee to vote, we could have gone right back to the ministers.

"I would place the blame for today's antics and the other two meetings that we missed squarely on the Conservatives."

O'Connell told CBC News that she has heard numerous concerns from advocates and voters about the provisions in S-210 and more time is needed to study it.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis was accused of filibustering at a parliamentary committee that was supposed to be studying auto theft in Canada. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

"I think the Conservatives are trying to avoid some embarrassment and then also just send it back to the House where it can't face the scrutiny of witnesses and potential amendments," she said.

At the end of the meeting, Genuis said that if the Liberal government releases the Bernardo report, the Conservatives on the committee "will be able to come to an agreement fairly quickly on how to proceed."

A Conservative spokesperson told CBC news that the decision to bring up Genuis' motion for debate was a tactic on the part of the Liberals and NDP to prevent LeBlanc and Rodriguez from testifying.

"After nine years of Justin Trudeau's crime, chaos, death and destruction, his flailing Liberals are doing everything they can to block and delay hearings into their bad policies and catch and release laws that have unleashed a wave of crime and misery across our country," said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's spokesperson Sebastian Skamski.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, has been ringing alarm bells about S-210 for months, saying it's overly broad and proposes powers that extend restrictions beyond pornography platforms to search engines and social media outlets.

He told CBC News that the bill also does not adequately define technologies and methods that can be used to verify the age of people looking for explicit material on the internet, nor does it define how that identity information should be manged.

Geist said that lack of definition opens the door to the use of face recognition technology and the uploading of official forms of identification to websites, compromising privacy and security.

"This is at best a well-intentioned bill that raises enormous privacy, security and expression concerns … It's hugely problematic," he said.