44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 3, 2022 10:00AM
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-257, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (protecting against discrimination based on political belief).
He said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Haldimand—Norfolk for her collaboration and assistance on this important project.
I am tabling a bill that would expand human rights protection in Canada by making political belief and activity prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act. Canadians must be free to express and act on their political beliefs within the law and with the protection of law. They should not face intimidation or discrimination while doing so by either governments or private employers. This freedom is essential for strong democracy within a robust and independent civil society.
This bill would align federal human rights codes with the human rights codes in most provinces. Currently, in federal jurisdiction it is legal for someone to face threats to their employment or access to services because of their political beliefs or activity. This allows governments and large corporations to coerce workers and other Canadians into limiting or changing their political behaviour.
The Canadian Human Rights Act already contains an exception for a bona fide occupational qualification. Let us protect freedom of speech, the rights of workers and the health of our democracy by passing this important human rights legislation as soon as possible.
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- Mar/3/22 2:14:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Ken Epp, the MP for my area from 1993-2008. Ken passed away on February 20 at the age of 82. It is always sad for those of us left behind to have to say goodbye to a great leader and a great friend, but that sadness is tempered by Ken's confidence that death was a doorway and not an end. Ken's hope of an eternity with Jesus and with his dear wife Betty, who predeceased him, is one that I and many in our community share and draw comfort from.
Ken was a math teacher before getting elected. It was a natural transition from teaching math to young people to try to teach math to Liberals. Unfortunately, I think his students did a better job of grasping mathematical concepts than did his colleagues opposite.
One of Ken's key parliamentary accomplishments was to sponsor and see the passage at second reading of Bill C-484, a bill to recognize unborn victims of crime. The bill achieved substantial cross-party support, but we will remember Ken not primarily by the speeches he gave or the votes he cast. We will remember him by the joy, the grace, the humility and the kindness that characterized his long service.
He remained faithful throughout to his convictions and to the virtues that defined his life. Ken changed Ottawa, but Ottawa did not change him. I thank Ken for his service and his example.
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- Mar/3/22 4:46:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the House this afternoon about the horrific situation unfolding in Ukraine and also about the Conservative motion that seeks further action in response.
At the beginning of last week, my family had the pleasure of welcoming another child, Augustine Anthony Genuis, born in safe and approaching ideal circumstances, surrounded by family in a warm and secure place and with the assistance of a medical professional. A couple of days after that, following the vile and illegal invasion of Ukraine, I saw an image posted of a little baby born in a subway in Kyiv, where subways are being used as bomb shelters. It is hard to imagine, after our own experience, what it must be like for a family to have a child born in a subway turned into a bomb shelter.
I kept thinking about that juxtaposition, the experience of my child and the experience of this child. The comparison of circumstances powerfully brought home for me the injustice of what is unfolding. There was a baby born in a subway and, yes, there are other images, like a young couple getting married in a bomb shelter and then immediately joining the territorial defence force. Politicians, beauty queens and everyone in between are taking up arms for the defence of their country, and there is a prime minister prepared to stand with his people no matter what the cost.
The images demonstrate profound injustice but also inspiring resilience, a will to survive and a will to endure. The Ukrainian people have faced so much injustice in their history, but they have always endured, preserving their faith and their hope: faith and hope in God, in country and in the power within themselves to bend the arc of history toward justice.
There is no difference between my child and the child born in a Kyiv subway, except the lottery of birth circumstances. It breaks my heart to think of what that mother and father must have gone through and be going through. In one sense, I will say, that child is also profoundly blessed. The child is blessed to be part of the great Ukrainian nation, a nation that will never die.
I stand today with all members of the House in deploring the violence going on and expressing my solidarity with the brave Ukrainian people in their ongoing struggle. As Stephen Harper said, whether it takes five months or 50 years we will keep insisting on the freedom and independence of the Ukrainian nation within secure borders established and agreed to in the Budapest memorandum.
What starts with a commitment to solidarity and with prayers must continue to include concrete action. The criminal Putin regime has a long history of seeking conflict and violence in order to counter its own unpopularity at home. This war was not a response to unmet demands or security concerns. Those demands kept shifting and ignored past commitments made by that same regime. This is a personal war of choice by a regime that wishes to distract attention from its own problems. This regime has failed to deliver on promises to improve the Russian economy and has instead used every tool at its disposal to enrich regime-connected elites instead of seeking the kind of broad-based growth that would benefit ordinary Russians. Now it is doing even more damage.
This is a cynical and brutal war of choice. The people of Russia have noticed. Large anti-aggression and pro-Ukraine protests happening inside Russia show that Putin's efforts to use a foreign war to rally support for his regime at home are failing. This is encouraging news.
I salute the courage of the thousands of Russians who have gone to protest and have already been punished by the regime. Alexei Navalny is calling on Russians “to take to the streets...to fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves” and to fight against the war. This is the face of the true Russians. They are people with the same aspirations for peace, freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law as we see in every country where the people are allowed to be heard. The internal opposition to Putin is growing and the world must stand with that opposition by imposing debilitating sanctions, crippling the capacity of the Putin regime and inducing even his former friends and collaborators to side with the opposition.
As Ukrainians bravely fight Putin's invasion and as Russians rise up to resist Putin's tyranny at home, we must do all that we can do as well.
I love Ukraine, but it must be said as well that this is not just about Ukraine. Ukraine is the front line in a fight that is truly global and that we must win. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have global agendas that seek to overturn hard-won norms of national sovereignty and international rule and instead seek to create a reality in which power is the only law. President Xi is watching what happens in Ukraine to determine possible action against Taiwan, but the agendas of these leaders are not limited to Ukraine, Taiwan, the Baltic states, the South China Sea or the Canadian Arctic. These agendas are global. As Winston Churchill said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” Let us not make the same mistake today that the appeasers made in the 1930s.
We know what these might-makes-right agendas have led to if not confronted. They lead to global war, to the concentration camp and to the Gulag. We either stop this now or we will be forced to stop it later. Inflicting a defeat on Putin today is not just helping the survival of Ukraine; inflicting a defeat on Putin today is necessary for preserving the peace and stability of a world in which power is not the only thing that matters. Ukraine will either be Putin's Afghanistan or Putin's Czechoslovakia, and we must make sure that it is the former.
It is great to see the momentum and solidarity in the House right now, but we have seen this in the case of past crises and we have seen how the will to respond can fade over time and as other issues come into the headline. Responding to this attack on Ukraine, on international peace and stability, is going to take time, endurance and sacrifice over the long term. We will need more and tougher sanctions, the expansion of matching programs for humanitarian support to include more organizations, further diplomatic pressure to isolate the Putin regime and support for the right of Ukrainian people to determine their own international alignment through their own elected representatives.
One critical area in which Canada can and must play a role is energy policy, and our motion today calls on the government to work to relieve the reliance of our European partners on Russian gas. Europe is heavily reliant on the import of Russian gas, and gas exports feed Putin's war machine. It is time to starve Putin's war machine, and Canada can play an indispensable role by exporting its own natural gas, giving our European friends and allies an alternative.
Some members of the House seem to think that we should not be talking about gas exports right now, but focus instead on general expressions of solidarity instead of on pushing practical solutions like this one that weaken the Putin regime. I do not agree with that. I think now must be the time to talk about what we can actually, practically do to help Ukrainians and starve Vladimir Putin's war machine. What is the point, after all, in expressing solidarity if it does not lead us to explore and answer questions about what we can do specifically to stand with Ukraine and weaken the war machine that is attacking Ukrainian people?
It must be said that there are some members of the House who are going to be ideologically opposed to certain energy developments in Canada regardless, but I ask all members to look at the particular facts of the situation in front of us and to recognize that increasing Canadian energy exports to Europe is vital for the security of the world. If we are going to win this fight against Vladimir Putin, if we truly recognize the importance of Ukraine, we have to recognize the magnitude of the impact that relieving Europe's dependence on Russian gas would have.
As well, I do not believe it is a choice between concern for the environment and concern for security. Some of our European partners right now, as an alternative to being too reliant on Russian gas, are also reliant on coal, and they face this challenging choice between Russian gas and coal. Canadian natural gas is cleaner than coal, and it is better from a security perspective than Russian gas. It is a win-win.
The stakes are so high, and I believe we must do all we can to stand with the Ukrainian people and to defend our values.
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- Mar/3/22 4:56:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a small correction, it is my fifth child, but I lose track as well, so it is fine, and I thank the member for her congratulations.
What is a motion? This is not legislation. We have limited tools as the opposition. This is an expression of the opinion and the will of the House. Then hopefully it is up to the government to respond to the will of the House. This motion is a tool we have as the opposition, so we are putting it forward. We are asking the House to express itself to the government in recognizing the importance of this issue of standing with Ukraine and confronting this issue of Europe's energy security.
Of course, a motion by its nature is non-binding, but let us pass the motion to send a clear message to the government calling for that action, and then hopefully it will lead to further steps afterwards.
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- Mar/3/22 4:58:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think my view is well known in the House. It is that I do not think it should take 10 years to move these kinds of projects forward. We need a process in this country that allows us to build critical infrastructure more quickly, and we have presented proposals along those lines.
I have to disagree with the implication of the member's question that energy security is not a problem. The European Union has said repeatedly that energy security is a problem. Different politicians with different perspectives in Europe would have different proposed solutions, but I think there is an agreement across the political spectrum that energy security is critically important. It is easy to take that security for granted here in Canada, but in places around the world that do not have the same domestic capacity to produce energy resources, it is a huge problem.
As for saying that Europe can rely on countries in the Middle East as opposed to Russia, there are multiple potential security challenges. For Canada as a free democracy with high environmental standards to be exporting energy resources to relieve our European friends' dependency on countries that are not democratic is a smart move for global security and is good for the environment.
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- Mar/3/22 5:00:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, a week before the war we of course thought pipelines were necessary, and a week before that, because we were right then and we are right now. This is a critical issue of security. I am sorry, but I just cannot accept the implication of the member that we should put out nice words of solidarity but not actually talk about practical solutions. He is free to disagree with our proposals on practical solutions. That is what the House of Commons is for. It is to debate those things.
However, now is the time to talk about what we can do concretely to address the energy security challenges that have fed this crisis.
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Mr. Speaker, direction and control regulations are a problem for the charitable sector in Canada. Direction and control regulations require that when charities are involved in activities, those activities are to be under the full direction and control of those charitable organizations. It is right that there be rules and restrictions around charitable organizations, that they be accountable for the dollars given to them and that they align their activities with their charitable purpose in accordance with the rules that exist, but this requirement of direction and control is not necessary to ensure accountability. We can have a framework that requires accountability without the restrictiveness of direction and control.
The effect of direction and control is particularly strongly felt in the area of international development because it really limits the ability of charities to form constructive partnerships with organizations in other parts of the world. The best practice in international development is to see the people in developing countries as the heroes of their own story and for donors and external organizations to be supportive, not to try to control and manage all aspects of the development process or of those communities' lives. Direction and control regulations therefore run totally counter to the best practice of self-determination in development. Effectively, they force the kind of ongoing neo-colonial view that many organizations, as well as individuals in developing countries, want to move away from.
In response to these concerns that come up repeatedly from various organizations that work in international development, and that are concerns for other charitable organizations as well, Senator Omidvar put forward a private member's bill that addresses this by moving away from direction and control while still ensuring accountability in accordance with a charitable purpose. This bill passed unanimously in the last Parliament and it passed in the same form unanimously in this Parliament. It now stands in the name of my friend, whose riding I cannot remember, in the House.
We asked the government, on February 14, what its position was on the bill. We asked three questions about direction and control, and I am following up on those questions because, unfortunately, the answers seemed to suggest the minister was not even aware of the issue. I am hopeful that maybe there was some mistake in the process of response and that we can get some clarity tonight about where the government is at on this direction and control issue.
I say to the government that this is not a partisan issue. Fixing direction and control should be a win-win. My colleague who put forward this bill had an NDP member second it as a demonstration of cross-party support. I believe that all opposition parties have been clear already about their support for this bill, so a majority of the House wants to see this bill pass, but sometimes the challenge with private members' bills is that we run out of time. We have a good idea people agree on, but it does not make it through the process quickly enough.
I would like to ask the government what its position is on Bill S-216, the direction and control bill that has now twice passed the Senate unanimously. If the government supports the bill, is it prepared to work with us to try to move this process along so that this Parliament can be the one that finally gets it done? I have worked on other issues, such as organ harvesting and trafficking, for example, where we have a good bill that everyone agrees on and yet it takes over 10 years and we are still talking about it because the clock has run out in every Parliament. I hope that will not happen in this case.
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- Mar/3/22 6:37:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the parliamentary secretary, for responding and for being transparent about the fact that the government is still studying this.
I would submit that we do have a little bit of a process problem on private member's bills, where it seems they are considered and ultimately maybe they are going to cabinet at too late a stage. It would nice if private member's bills could be considered earlier. Then the government could come to a position earlier on them so that, in cases where the government supported a private member's bill, we could move it along faster. However, instead we end up in this situation where there is delay and delay, because it does not seem to get considered in terms of the government coming to a definitive position until we are already at the second hour of debate.
I would ask the parliamentary secretary to do all that she can to ensure that, prior to the first hour of debate at least, which is scheduled for mid-May, there is a discussion where the government actually comes to a conclusion, because if we are able in that first hour to say that everybody agrees to expedite this bill and skip the second hour, then we could move it along faster. Again, I do not want to see this bill die in this Parliament again and have to keep bringing it back. Let us work so that the discussion happens, but let us work to see that we can get it done.
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