44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 3, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, the third petition is in support of Bill S-223. This is a private member's bill that has already passed the Senate and that I put forward in the House.
The bill would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. This responds to concerns about forced organ harvesting. It has been happening for a long time, targeting Falun Gong practitioners and, as we know now, targeting Uighurs and other communities as well. Canada needs to do what it can to stop forced organ harvesting and trafficking, and that means passing this legislation to address potential complicity of Canadians in those horrific actions.
116 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:16:28 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the second petition deals with the situation specifically in Hong Kong, and is another human rights issue that falls at the feet of the Chinese Communist Party. It notes various human rights abuses.
It calls on the Government of Canada to recognize the politicization of the judiciary in Hong Kong and its impact on the legitimacy and validity of criminal convictions, and to affirm its commitment to render all National Security Law charges and convictions irrelevant and invalid in relation to section 36(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It calls on Canada to create a mechanism by which people who have been charged with any politically related charges dealing with the democracy movement in Hong Kong be able to come to Canada, and that these would not be an impediment for them. It also calls for Canada to work with the U.K., the U.S., France, Australia, New Zealand and other democracies to waive criminal inadmissibility for Hong Kong people convicted for political purposes, who do not otherwise have criminal records.
178 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:16:28 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling highlights the challenges that small businesses have faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It calls on the Government of Canada to adopt the 2017 recommendations of the Alberta skills for jobs task force and create a bipartisan, equal membership committee to develop a small business action plan that will take into account the realities of all communities in Canada, not just those that favour a particular election outcome.
79 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:16:28 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, like my colleagues, and with the Beijing Olympics coming up very soon, the first three petitions I will be tabling deal with human rights issues in China.
The first petition is about the recognition of the Uighur genocide. Petitioners note the various crimes being committed against the Uighur people: crimes that have been well detailed by my colleagues. Petitioners call upon the Government of Canada and the House of Commons to recognize the genocide. The House has recognized it, but the government has not.
Petitioners are also calling for the use of the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, or the Magnitsky act, to sanction those responsible for these heinous crimes being committed against the Uighur people. The Magnitsky act was passed in this Parliament. It was a private member's bill put forward by Conservatives and it was passed, but it has been used very little by the government.
154 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:16:28 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-7
Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling was signed by Canadians who were very concerned by the government's decision to move forward with the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Effectively, it is suicide facilitation for those who are struggling with mental health challenges.
Petitioners note that the Canadian Mental Health Association says that it does not believe mental illnesses are irremediable, and note that suicidality is often a symptom of a mental illness. They also note that suicide is the leading cause of death for Canadians between the ages of 10 and 19. The government should not be legalizing facilitated suicide in a medical context for those who are struggling with mental health challenges. We should be focusing on support and recovery. Petitioners call on the government to protect Canadians with mental illness by facilitating treatment and recovery, and not death.
144 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:16:28 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the fourth petition I am tabling deals with human rights issues here at home. It responds to a commitment made by the Liberal Party to impose another values test tied to charitable status. It says that in order to receive charitable status, one has to agree with a certain position of the government when it comes to the question of abortion.
Petitioners believe that charitable status should be provided on a politically neutral basis without discrimination on the basis of the views of the organization, and that this values test could negatively impact schools, hospitals, homeless shelters and other worthy charities that do good work for the public, but may not agree with the particular political positions of the government.
The petitioners call on the House of Commons to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a political and ideologically neutral basis without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without the imposition of another values test, and to affirm the right of all Canadians to freedom of expression.
177 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:22:36 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the next petition highlights the situation of the Hazara people in Afghanistan. The petitioners, as well as members of the House, have been following with great concern the events in Afghanistan. This petition was signed and sent to me prior to the Taliban takeover. Even at that point, there were many concerns regarding the conditions and the treatment of the Hazara people. The petitioners want to see the government recognize the past genocides against the Hazara people and designate September 25 as Hazara genocide memorial day.
Obviously, since the Taliban takeover there have continued to be escalating concerns about the treatment of the Hazaras and other minorities in Afghanistan that call for a strong response from the Government of Canada, Parliament and other actors.
126 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:22:36 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the final petition that I am tabling today highlights human rights concerns with respect to the situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The petitioners are very concerned about the violence that has occurred there, and call on the Government of Canada to be more engaged with the situation, to work with the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments to push for human rights improvements, to work with international bodies to support credible investigations of reports of war crimes and gross violations of human rights, and to be seized in general with the situation of human rights in that region of the world.
103 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 10:39:20 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I do want to thank the member for Kingston and the Islands for referencing my podcast, Resuming Debate, which people can download on all available podcast platforms. He might be so lucky as to be a guest one of these days. I do enjoy my exchanges with him on Twitter, especially the last one we had, of which I will not identify the ratios involved, because I do not want to cause too much pain across the way.
I did want to talk about the issue of rapid tests, because Conservatives have been raising the importance of rapid tests. Of course, rapid tests are a tool that was available to us long before vaccinations were available, and today we are recognizing that vaccination is an important tool, but that people still can get COVID-19 if they are vaccinated. We have some examples of colleagues in that situation. We recognize the importance of rapid tests.
The government was very late to be talking about or recognizing the value of rapid tests. Now there has been a shift in just the last few weeks in the way it talks about them, and I would say that is a welcome shift. We welcome the government eventually coming to recognize some of the things we have been saying in the official opposition for a long time.
In my province of Alberta, we do have an opportunity for people who are not vaccinated to still be able to access restaurants if they have had a rapid test. Does the member think a reasonable alternative for people, in the context of the cross-border mandate and other issues, would be to have a rapid test that shows they are COVID negative?
288 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 11:04:30 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I know there is a general attitude around relevance, but we did see, in questions to my friend, basically a number of members making S.O. 31s instead of asking questions that were in any way germane to the debate. I wonder if you could make a ruling or come back to the House and advise us of the appropriate parameters, because it seems to me that talking about someone's facility in a language is totally unrelated to the topic of debate.
93 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 12:33:51 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I want to ask my friend about the rapid test issue, which in an important issue raised in the bill. From my perspective, the government has had a very late stage conversion on the issue of rapid tests.
Conservatives have been talking about the importance of investing in rapid tests and their value, and we were saying that before vaccines were even available. When vaccines were not available as a tool, it was clear rapid tests were certainly the most effective way of managing this. We know there are breakthrough infections for those who are vaccinated and rapid tests continue to be critically important.
I recognize this discovery of the value of rapid tests in the last few weeks from the government. Does the member have any thoughts on why the government was so slow to recognize effective systems of testing and tracing that could have been in place right in the beginning, prevented lockdowns and kept many of our businesses open.
164 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 12:48:50 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I was a little disappointed to hear the member referencing David Suzuki, who has incited violence towards pipeline projects. I would think that in the context we are living through now, members of the government would appreciate the importance of not being in any truck or trade with those who are communicating in that kind of way.
I did want to ask the member about the child care issue. I am hearing from parents in my riding a significant desire to see flexibility and choice in child care. Part of the government's policy is really to constrain the choices that parents would have. It is not offering more resources to parents to make their own child care choices.
Various day home operators and private child care operators have raised significant concerns about the lack of flexibility and about the government's one-size-fits-all approach to child care. It is not going to be there for the worker working the night shift, for the person in a rural area or for the person looking for flexibility to accord with their family situation.
186 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 1:45:54 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I have a specific question for the hon. member around her comments on ventilation in schools. Does the member have an estimate of how long a retrofit to improve ventilation would take in a particular case? I guess that speaks to the question of how long the member expects this pandemic to be going on for. Does the government have estimates for the timelines involved? We saw in the fall economic update, for instance, that funding has put aside for the enforcement of mandate rules for a three-year period.
Is the government hoping to bring this pandemic to an end, or is the government undertaking long-term spending projects with the expectation this will continue for years to come?
122 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
