44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 16, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/16/22 11:35:49 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his excellent speech. I hope he agrees that we need to pass this bill so that we can spend more time resolving other problems in our judicial system, particularly systemic racism and the appointment of judges.
What does he think are the biggest problems in our judicial system?
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- Jun/16/22 12:43:03 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, I always learn a great deal listening to my colleague and have enjoyed working in this place with him.
I agree with him that, when we stand here and listen to speeches from all members in this place, we hear the total agreement on moving this piece of legislation forward. What other things would he suggest we could do to encourage this bill to go forward as quickly as possible? Would he be willing, as a member of the government, to bring forward a unanimous consent motion so we could push this bill forward and give people the confidence that this Parliament can get things done?
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- Jun/16/22 7:16:25 p.m.
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Madam Chair, this is a very important debate, and I am glad to see people in the House contributing to it.
One of the big issues I have is that, in foreign affairs and international development, Canada has not contributed its fair share of food security funding for a long time. Right now, we are set at $250 million a year. That is about where we have been through past Conservative and Liberal governments. One of the things the sector is asking for is that food aid be indexed to the price of food so that when it goes up, our contribution goes up.
I am wondering if the member believes that indexing our commitments for food security would be appropriate.
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- Jun/16/22 7:41:35 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I have to say I am absolutely delighted that we are having this debate today and that we have the opportunity to speak about this issue. I firmly believe that the food security crisis that is facing the global community is one of the most pressing issues affecting the world right now. I am going to speak about the impacts of Ukraine on this issue, but I want to start by saying that where we find ourselves today is not just a result of what has happened in Ukraine. In fact, before the war in Ukraine and before February 24, there was a food security crisis on the planet.
Before COVID, food insecurity was increasing significantly. During COVID, those numbers jumped massively, to the point where we had hundreds of millions of people around the world who were food-insecure. Then, the war in Ukraine happened. Two weeks ago, Russia destroyed a major grain warehouse in the city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine. The terminal plays a crucial role in getting grain out of Ukraine into the global market. Many people in North Africa and many people across the Middle East, which some people will describe as the “ring of fire”, are very dependent on the grain that comes from Russia and Ukraine. That major grain export warehouse was the hub for moving those grains around, so the conflict in Ukraine is making what was a very dire situation around the world in terms of food security much worse.
I have heard in the House tonight some talk about how we need to make sure that we give people the tools to produce their own food. I absolutely agree with that, but this is not an issue of giving people tools so they can access their own food. This is the fact that we have an emergency and crisis where there is no food going into these regions. People are urgently at risk of starving to death. This is the reality we are in. The reality is not that we should figure out how to get fertilizer to Canada. That is a different issue. This is not a reality of “we should figure out how to make sure that our development dollars are more effective”. That is a different issue.
What we are dealing with right now is an urgent food crisis where people around the world, in Afghanistan, Lebanon and North Africa, are going to die because they do not have enough food. It is a different conversation that we need to be having in this place right now. I understand the desire to talk about a whole bunch of different things, like the price of oil and gas or the issues that farmers in western Canada are facing. I come from western Canada, and I understand that, but this debate needs to be on the lives of the millions of food-insecure people around the world who will die if the global community does not step up and deal with this.
I want to talk about the implications of that a little. What we are seeing with Vladimir Putin is a madman who has no interest in caring for people around the world. He knows exactly what he is doing when he stops food and crops from leaving Ukraine. He is causing and sowing mayhem in other countries.
Members know what happens when there is not enough food: There is conflict. That happens. People go to war if they cannot feed themselves and if they cannot feed their families. What a perfect way for Vladimir Putin to make the west blink: to make the west divert its attention from Ukraine by having conflict in North Africa, Afghanistan and the Middle East. It is a perfect plan if western countries and the globe do not come together and respond appropriately.
I have to tell members that we have some very clear solutions. We have heard from experts. I will quote until the end of time one of my very favourite people in the entire world, Mr. David Beasley, who is from the World Food Programme and who incidentally has asked time and again to have food security commitments from this country be indexed to the price of food. That is a very clear ask from the World Food Programme. I hope people in this place are listening when I say that this is something the community has asked for. It is something that specialists and Nobel Prize-winning organizations have asked for.
I also want to mention some of the other things we can do. I think it would be irresponsible to come to this and talk about the people who are starving around the world and not provide those solutions, those options, of what Canada can and should do, because there are options here. The next G7 meeting will be happening in Germany in a few weeks' time. The NATO summit is in Madrid, and will take place at the end of June. The Government of Canada can ensure that the global food crisis is on the agenda at those meetings and Parliament can ensure that this happens. We can make sure there is pressure we are putting on our government. We can ensure that famine prevention and response are a core part of the 2022 G7 agenda and at other global forums such as the G20, as well as in the discussions ongoing with the World Bank and the IMF. We can make sure that food security is on those agendas.
Canada right now should be pledging $600 million toward food security around the world. That is the ask, and this urgent pledge needs to happen and be announced very quickly. That $600 million needs to be spent fast. It needs not just to be promised. I do not want a minister to stand up and promise these dollars and not deliver them for weeks at a time. This needs to happen very quickly. This is an urgent need. This money cannot come from other pots. It cannot be money that was devoted to women and girls or to humanitarian aid in Ukraine. It has to be money that is used for food security.
I will say as well that Canada needs to up its game on food security in the long run. I have mentioned in this place before that we give $250 million a year. We are not providing our fair share of food security money to the global community. We need to up that to at least $400 million a year, and it needs to be an annual commitment. It needs to be something Canada stands for. If we are a country that believes in human rights, that believes in women's rights and that has a feminist foreign policy, that is something Canada can do and needs to do right now.
I will tie this very quickly to our responses with respect to Ukraine. We have heard from members of the government and the opposition that there needs to be more commitment to defence spending with NATO. The call has been to ask for 2% of spending for NATO. Do members know what we spend on humanitarian aid in this country? It is 0.3%. What we are saying is that as a country that believes in human rights, in multilateralism and in global solutions to global problems, we are prepared to spend 2% on defence spending and get nowhere near that in humanitarian aid or in official development assistance. We just have that as a fraction. I look around the world and see places like Denmark, which spends 2% on NATO. That is great. It also spends the promised 0.7% on ODA. It also meets its commitments in humanitarian aid. I would say if we are going to raise one we cannot not raise the other because it means that we do not believe in people. It means that we are not supportive of that.
I know I am running out of time. I am going to quote David Beasley from the UN World Food Programme one more time. He came to the foreign affairs committee and told us that Canada and other developed countries have an option. We have a choice. We can pay right now, or we can pay a thousand times more if we wait. That is only in dollars. That is not in human lives, that is not in human suffering and that is not what Canada should be doing.
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- Jun/16/22 7:52:15 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will say that there have been additional promises made. As I said in my speech, I really do hope that it is urgently delivered and not just another promise, and that it is not going from one pot to another pot, because we have seen that in the past.
I will also say that I have asked for transparency on our dollars and on what has been spent, but I have not been given any of that information. As a parliamentarian, it is almost a point of privilege that I am not able to get the information I need to adequately assess what the Government of Canada has spent on food security and where we actually are at this point.
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- Jun/16/22 7:53:57 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, first of all, I would say that hunger is a choice and that this is something we do have the ability to solve, but the global community has not yet seen fit to do so.
One of the things that the New Democratic Party has put forward is a wealth tax. Right now, $6 billion would go a very long way to solving the global food crisis that we are experiencing. Elon Musk is worth $300 billion, so a wealth tax would be a really interesting way that we could actually start raising money to use for this.
I also talked in my speech about tying humanitarian aid to defence spending. We could lower our defence spending and increase our humanitarian aid, which I think would be another way.
We could take away oil and gas subsidies and use the money to subsidize farmers in Alberta, and also use it for the food crisis around the globe. That is another option that we could use, and there are many. I could go on, because I have a lot of other options.
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- Jun/16/22 7:56:27 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I must say the work that I have done for decades is to try to move both Conservative and Liberal governments further on this issue, and much of it was before I was elected as a member of Parliament.
It is the shortsightedness that really worries me about our global response, because when one is unwilling to contribute multilaterally in the short term, the long-term costs are massive. The long-term costs to Canada's reputation as a country are very difficult. We saw that when we tried for a UN Security Council seat. There is a reason that Canada was not able to get one. Canada is no longer respected in the world as playing a role that punches above its weight, which is sad, because it is something that we were very proud of, and should be very proud of as a country. We have that potential as a country.
I look at the things Pearson had promised. It was Lester B. Pearson who actually said that 0.7% is what every country should be contributing. We have never made it. Other countries have made it, and have been able to maintain it through economic ups and downs. Canada has never come close, and it is obscene, to be honest. We could do it. We have every ability to do it.
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- Jun/16/22 7:58:35 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I would like to thank my colleague for her question. It is a question that we all need to be grappling with. The sewing of a flag on a backpack is such a truly Canadian thing to do. We sew our flag on backpacks when we travel around the world, because we are so deeply proud of our contribution globally. However, right now in peacekeeping, which is something that Canada was known for, we have not met even a fraction of our promises. We have also not met a fraction of our promises on having a feminist foreign policy. None of that has happened.
I wish the government, whether it was Liberal or Conservative, had done more. Certainly once the NDP is in government, we will.
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- Jun/16/22 8:00:58 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, first of all, I will address the fact that the member's Prime Minister promised 600 peacekeeping troops would be deployed. We currently have 60. We are ranked the 70th country in peacekeeping around the world. I do not think we are punching above our weight, as we would like to do.
I think that realistically, as we are parliamentarians, we are meant to do what is best for the country. We are meant to be a multilateral force. The argument that we cannot play a role internationally because of our obligations domestically is a bit juvenile, to be honest.
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- Jun/16/22 8:31:31 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, prior to being elected, I worked with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank quite a lot, and I think of my colleague as a friend and an ally in this place.
I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to wish Jim Cornelius a very happy retirement from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
Very quickly, I would ask for the member to share some more of his expertise with us tonight. We know the Canadian Foodgrains Bank has worked in countries around the world. Some of the work it has done in Ethiopia has been extremely strong. I wonder if he could talk a bit more about some of the ways western farmers have worked with farmers in Ethiopia and have provided food to people in Ethiopia.
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- Jun/16/22 8:41:23 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I am going to bring this back to the global food crisis. I know there has been a lot of discussion about farmers in western Canada, but really what we are talking about is the global food crisis.
I want to let the member know that right now we are facing hunger that is generational in scope. There are 181 million people at risk of starving to death. In Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, one person is dying from hunger every 48 seconds, so this is pretty desperate. I wonder if the member could tell me what he thinks is an appropriate percentage the Canadian government should be spending on food security and support for international development.
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- Jun/16/22 9:01:25 p.m.
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Madam Chair, my colleague works on the foreign affairs committee with me and I know her to be very honourable. We work very well together. I would like to quote Anne Frank, who said, “Hunger is not a problem. It is an obscenity.”
When we fail to address this, that is an obscenity. The member knows as well as I do that 60% of the people who go hungry are women and children. She knows that the implications are dire, outside of hunger, in terms of violence against women, sexual abuse, and trafficking because of hunger and because of the need to work for food.
I have two questions for the member. First, when are we finally going to see the promised feminist foreign policy from the government? Second, when can we finally expect the government to get to the 0.7% of ODA that has been promised since Lester B. Pearson promised it way back when?
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- Jun/16/22 9:31:06 p.m.
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Madam Chair, my colleague and I worked together very well on the ALS caucus, and I enjoyed working with him on that very much.
I want to talk about the aid levels Canada is contributing. I do not think anyone in this place will be surprised by that.
Under the present government, we are currently at 0.3%. Many people would think the Liberal government, especially with what we heard from the Prime Minister in 2015, would have contributed more, but in fact our highest overseas development assistance came under Joe Clark, when he was the foreign affairs minister, and the Conservative government. We did not get to our target, but we did get to 0.5%. I will say that the Conservative Party of Joe Clark is definitely not the Conservative Party we have now, which ran in 2019 with a massive cut to ODA.
When can we expect the Liberal government to live up to the very low standards the Conservative government has set with regard to development assistance?
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- Jun/16/22 10:00:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the member is from Alberta, as I am. Of course, we have an enormous population of Ukrainians who settled in the prairies and helped build our province. I think we are all very thankful for, and proud of, the contributions that Ukrainian Canadians have made to our country, and I wonder if the member is hearing from his Ukrainian constituents about how we should be providing more support to Ukraine and whether we are doing enough.
I just heard from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress that Canada is 17th in contributions to Ukraine at a time when we know that there are more Ukrainians in Canada than anywhere else in the world outside of Ukraine. I wonder what the member has heard from his constituents. I wonder if he would like to see us contribute more, and if he believes that a larger proportion of ODA spent on humanitarian aid would be useful for Ukraine at this time.
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- Jun/16/22 10:35:52 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am sorry, but it is hard for me to speak in French because it is so late.
I really enjoyed it when my colleague talked about what good development principles are. We know that we have the principles of sustainable development effectiveness. He talked about what we can do with the FAO and with other organizations to deal with the global food crisis in a holistic manner or how to deal with it in an unsiloed manner, as my colleague from the Green Party has mentioned.
The sustainable development goals are something that the government has signed onto, and the 17 goals work together to build a more sustainable, more prosperous future. I wonder if the member could comment on the sustainable development goals and how multilateral institutions such as the FAO and the United Nations could contribute to these global solutions we will require.
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