SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Oct/24/22 8:35:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I look forward to speaking to my friend's motion on Wednesday, and I thank him for his work on that. The member spoke at the end of his speech about a united front. I know that he was not referring to the United Front. Maybe we need a united front to counter the United Front. As well, I agree with his point about the fact that, as a state party to the genocide convention, we have obligations. Those obligations are not dependent on a determination by the UN, and they are not dependent on its being definitively a genocide. Those obligations are engaged when there is a possibility of genocide. We heard this testimony very clearly from Irwin Cotler during the initial hearings that led to the recommendation by the subcommittee on human rights of the finding of genocide. The member's motion speaks of 10,000 over two years starting in 2024. He is giving the government time, and I appreciate the member's principle and pragmatism in trying to push these things forward. Is the member hoping that the government will exceed that timeline if the motion is adopted? I wonder if the member could speak to the imminent danger certainly that many people are in right now.

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Mr. Sameer Zuberi

Oct/24/22 8:37:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for that important observation, that Uighur people are right now suffering a genocide and that we need to act as soon as possible to help people. The sad reality is that we cannot go into China to stop it. We need to continue to work with the international community and call for unfettered access, because it is only with unfettered access that this will stop. We know it is occurring. The satellite images show it. The China papers have revealed the intent. We see the birth rates dropping. To the member's correct observation, it is happening right now. We must act immediately and without delay. My motion brings things forth to the earliest possible time, so that we can get this done effectively and in a fulsome manner.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Oct/24/22 8:38:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for persevering through that speech. I hope he gets a lozenge by Wednesday, so he can be in better shape as we all discuss his motion, which of course I will be supporting. I am incredibly honoured to be able to work with the member as he brings this motion forward. I bring some legitimate concerns that the governing party is not acting on this and that it has taken a private member's motion to bring this forward rather than government legislation, which we know could also be done. I wonder why the member thinks that so long into this, after we have done the work, and I did this work with the member at the international human rights subcommittee, it is still on a private member's motion that we are acting.

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Mr. Sameer Zuberi

Oct/24/22 8:39:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, lawyers say we cannot put ourselves in the mind of somebody else, so I cannot put myself in the mind of anyone else; I can just control what I do. I had a slot in the lottery that allowed me to put forth any piece of legislation or motion, and of all the things I am working on, I chose this one issue, because I knew that through this I could have a positive impact, that we could have a positive impact. At the end of the day, it is all of us who must move together. Personally, this slot was utilized in order to have the most positive impact within my ability, and that is exactly what I have done. I am asking everyone here to hold my hand and make it possible. I know that it is going to happen. I believe it is going to happen, and I expect it to happen.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Oct/24/22 8:40:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member across the way for his work on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights and for his work in passing the report through this place, calling for the government to recognize the genocide that is happening there. I note that this member is very active on it, but my question for him is this. If we continue to wait for the government to take action on it, when does he think the government will be taking action on this declaration of Uighur genocide?

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Mr. Sameer Zuberi

Oct/24/22 8:41:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as politicians we know that everything is movable and nothing is determined in advance. That is why I make the clear call for us to unite together in order to make the possible happen. Thus, I will keep it very simple and to that single point. That is my firm opinion. If we ask for it and call for it, it is possible, so let us make it happen.

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Mr. Brad Redekopp (Saskatoon West, CPC)

Oct/24/22 8:41:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to speak to this motion today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Peace River—Westlock. I am proud to speak to this motion on behalf of my constituents in Saskatoon West. It is a very important motion and I want to note that the motion came from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, of which I am a proud member and have been since this Parliament resumed a little over a year ago. I am also proud to say that last week I was elected by my colleagues as the vice-chair on the committee, which is new for me. Along with my work as the associate shadow minister for immigration, it is a very important role and I am thankful for the faith that the leader of my party and my constituents have put in me for that. My goal is to work with MPs from all parties to better our immigration system. This does not have to be a partisan issue, so I have some key priorities as I work with the immigration committee and immigration in general. We need to hold the government to account when it makes errors that affect people. We all need to work together to improve the system and fix the problems. There are so many examples I see in my work of people who are stranded from their families. These are true life-and-death situations for them. We, as MPs, have to remember that the people we work with are not files but people and families with real issues. We need to always keep that in mind. I am also very excited to work on the student direct stream. That is important for us. We know the IRCC is broken when it comes to backlogs. MP offices are inundated with immigration cases every day. I am sure everyone is in the same boat. That is also very important to me. Finally, foreign credential recognition is a huge issue for me. That is why I put forward my private member's bill, Bill C-286, to help improve that situation and work with the government to try to make that situation better so that new immigrants coming to our country can work in the jobs in which they are trained, rather than having the classic “doctor driving a taxicab” situation. That is very important. About 20 months ago, the House adopted a different motion, declaring that China's treatment of Uighurs and Turkic minorities constitutes a genocide. This was a Conservative motion and it was unanimously agreed to by the House, but it is disappointing that the Liberal cabinet did not vote for it. In fact, it abstained. It has had no position on this. It is unfortunate because, as has been discussed tonight, this is a very important issue through which we can make a difference in people's lives in a huge way. I would encourage the Liberal cabinet to take a position and take some action on this. The other interesting thing that happened just recently was that the United Nations officially recognized that horrific crimes are occurring in the Xinjiang province of China against the Uighur people. This is a very significant move. For the United Nations to recognize and mention this is very significant and will definitely raise the profile of this and allow for more work to be done. In the report that the UN submitted in August, it said “serious human rights violations” have been happening, things like beatings, solitary confinement, waterboarding, forced sterilization and the destruction of mosques in communities. These are all terrible things for a government to be doing against its people. The report stopped short of using the word “genocide”, but it did say that reports of all of the things I just mentioned were credible reports and are real. China, of course, reacted very angrily to this and fought very hard to prevent the United Nations from actually publishing this report. However, in the end, it was published. I want to also stress that, as I speak somewhat negatively about the Chinese Communist Party, it is so important to remember that I am not speaking negatively about Chinese people. There is a big difference between the Chinese people and the party that is running their country as a dictatorship. The issues that I am reacting to are with the Chinese Communist Party and not with the people of China. I have many good friends from China and many others that I have met. They are wonderful people. It is their government that I struggle with. The Chinese government claims many things about the Uighurs. For example, when the world, the United Nations and others, see something that looks a lot like concentration camps, it says, no, they are just re-education camps. It has some very nice names for the atrocities that it is committing against the people. We can see through that. We know that is just not true. We have to be very careful about the Chinese Communist Party. Members may be aware that on the weekend it had its congress, which it has once every five years. One thing I found particularly interesting was that former president Hu was forcibly removed, as a show of strength by the current president, Xi. We can see video of that, of his literally being picked up and taken away during the meeting as a way for the current president to show his power and strength. It is quite an amazing thing that has been heavily censored in China. The government does not want Chinese people to know about that, but it is quite interesting. That is why I am concerned about our Prime Minister. He said he has admiration for China's basic dictatorship. I know that is not what we want in this place, and I am sure he has changed his position, or at least I hope he has. I am concerned, though. We know there are Chinese police stations in Toronto now. We do not know exactly what they are doing, but I think we can probably safely assume they are harassing expats, among other things. I am hoping we can learn from this and maybe eliminate some of these things, like these police stations in Toronto. I am hoping, also, to pass another motion at the immigration committee related to Hong Kong. We know there are special measures in place right now, but they expire in February. I am hoping we can not only extend those measures but waive the requirement for police certificates. It is quite silly, I think, that a Hong Kong resident who wants to come to Canada has to get a police certificate, which essentially means walking into a government office and saying, “Hi, I want to leave the country and go to Canada,” and then expecting to get good treatment. It is just not reasonable, and many Hong Kongers are not even trying to come to Canada because of that. I want to look at the motion itself. Part of the reason for this motion, I think, as I indicated, is that we talked about this 20 months ago and nothing much has happened. Part of the purpose here is just to remind the government, again, of how important this issue is, to put it on the radar and make sure the government is aware of it. I think that is one of the really important reasons for bringing this motion forward today. Another point I want to make is that in section a) it talks about some of the things we can do. It talks about special immigration measures for Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims. The government might say that these people are totally free to claim asylum, and that is true, but we have a very congested system in Canada. As I mentioned already, it is backlogged. There are a lot of things going on. We have the ability to create special immigration measures, and we have done this, in fact. We did this for Syrians. We have done it for Afghans, and we have most recently done it in Ukraine, for Ukrainian people. It is something we can definitely do, and it actually helps, because it creates a special program that gets them priority and gets them special treatment. Otherwise, it is very difficult for people who are fleeing something that is very significant for them. The other thing I want to mention is that point c) talks about waiving the UNHCR refugee determination. That is an important thing, because right now the UNHCR is able to determine who is and who is not a refugee. It is an administrative process, but it is super important, because if one is designated as a refugee, it gives one access to a whole lot of different programs that one may not otherwise have been able to access. If one is not a refugee, then one is excluded from all those things. We have heard a lot of testimony at our committee about this very issue, about how bias gets introduced into the system and the method for selecting who is and who is not a refugee. One can have racism and other things that enter into it, because, obviously, people are making these determinations. One of the things that have come up in that is the persecution of minority religions, particularly Christians. Former London chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, said in 2014, “The persecution of Christians throughout much of the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and elsewhere is one of the crimes against humanity of our time, and I am appalled at the lack of protest it has evoked.” This is a very important issue for me. I want to make sure that Christians who are persecuted all around the world have a safe haven in Canada, and that they are selected to be refugees by the UNHCR and other things. It has been mentioned that this is a genocide. I was in Rwanda in April of this year, and I have been there a number of times. I had the privilege, a very holy privilege, to see what has happened in Rwanda and the aftermath of the genocide that happened there. Many of the same things that were mentioned here happened there. We all know the story of Rwanda. Fortunately, Rwanda has managed to come out of that, but the genocide against the Tutsis was very significant. We said, “Never again,” and I just hope we can also say, “Never again,” about the Uighurs.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Oct/24/22 8:51:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, like my colleague, I do worry about genocides happening around the world in many different locations, including in Xinjiang with the Uighur people. There is a need for us to say, and mean, “never again”. We were able to vote on the motion to declare the Uighur genocide years ago. The Subcommittee on International Human Rights declared it a genocide years ago, yet the government has still taken very little action to both condemn and stop the genocide, as well as to help the Uighur people come to Canada to escape persecution. Can he talk about why it has taken so long?

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Oct/24/22 8:52:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we cannot really control what the rest of the world does with this. We can designate this situation to be a genocide here in Canada. We can take those actions. More importantly, actions we can take that are significant are, for example, blocking products that are made with Uighur forced labour. That is something we can do in Canada. Just last month the European Union banned exactly that. It banned products made with Uighur forced labour. That is an example of something within our control to do, and we can do it. We can also halt complicity in organ harvesting. This is a very significant thing where organs are actually being harvested from people, such as Uighurs in China, and are being sold all around the world. This is a horrific thing that should not be happening. There is a bill right now, Bill S-223, that is at the foreign affairs committee. That is another very important piece of legislation. It is something we can do to take action on this important file.

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Mr. Ted Falk (Provencher, CPC)

Oct/24/22 8:53:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for sharing the wisdom he gained from his experiences in Rwanda with the House this evening. Could he elaborate further on similarities between what happened in Rwanda and what is happening with the Uighurs in China right now? Could he look back at what happened there and possibly suggest some solutions?

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Oct/24/22 8:54:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a shame when we see situations repeat themselves. We all know the story of Rwanda and how Canada played a very important roll in that situation. The things that the government, or the rebels in that case, did to the Tutsi people were horrific, and many of the same things are happening right now to the Uighur people in the Xinjiang province of China. One of the big errors we made in Rwanda was that the world did not recognize it and act quick enough. I believe that, unfortunately, a very similar thing is happening right now. That is why the motion today is very important. It is very important for the government to take some action and make some concrete steps to help everybody in the world recognize what is going on and do something to stop it.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Oct/24/22 8:55:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, several petitions were presented on combatting forced organ harvesting around the world. Does the hon. member have any thoughts or opinions about the passage of Bill S-223 through the House?

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Oct/24/22 8:55:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, it is a very important bill. It is currently at the foreign affairs committee, and it really needs to move through the House and become fully adopted. It is one of those bills that is a no-brainer. We should not be allowing people to harvest organs and then get paid to have those organs used. It is one more way that the Uighur people are being violated and taken advantage of. It is not just Uighurs, unfortunately. It is other people around the world too. This bill is very important because it will stop that practice, at least in Canada, for whoever might be affected by it.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Oct/24/22 8:56:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise to speak to this motion. Way back in the day, in 2015, just after I was elected, I was invited to a Christian embassy Christmas dinner and was seated at a table with a gentleman named David Kilgour. David Kilgour was a former member of Parliament when I met him, and he had represented a riding in Alberta. Interestingly, he had been a member of the Conservative caucus and a member of the Liberal caucus and he had sat as an independent, so he had seen the House of Commons from all sides. We got into a heated debate at that Christmas dinner on issues I did not agree with him over, but I guess the fact I was willing to argue with him made us immediate friends. From that point onward until his death just recently, I had probably seen David Kilgour on a monthly basis in and around Parliament Hill. David Kilgour was a human rights lawyer and former member of Parliament, and he was the one who really opened my eyes to the situation of the Uighur population in China and the forced organ harvesting that happens in China. Forced organ harvesting is something that, just on the face of it, sounds terrible, yet David Kilgour went through the effort of building reports to prove the Chinese Communist Party and government officials are complicit in this. They are actively participating in it and have created entire systems to facilitate forced organ harvesting in China. I commend the work of David Kilgour. It is really too bad he is no longer with us. He died suddenly just a couple of months ago. He made the calculations around the number of foreigners coming into China for organ harvesting. He was tipped off originally and started to monitor that, and it was dramatically more people than was possible given the natural occurrence of accidents, overdoses and things like that from which one usually harvests organs. He said that, given the size of the population of China and the expected number of organs that would be available for donation, one would expect a certain amount of people to be able to get a donor, given there has to be an alignment of the ability to donate from one person to the other. It was an order of magnitude of 10 times more people going to China for organ harvesting than he calculated to be possible. Then he received a phone call from an Israeli doctor who said that the darndest thing had just happened to him. He said that he had just been able to book an organ transplant. He said that never in his life had he been able to book an organ transplant. Typically, one waits on a waiting list for a donor and a match. One waits and waits, because this is a life-and-death situation for the person receiving an organ. Lo and behold, when one comes available it is like winning the lottery. The person travels across the world to find their specific donor who happens to be a match, and on a moment's notice a person needs to drop everything and go to get this organ donation. The doctor said it was the weirdest thing. He said he now could book two weeks out from today and had scheduled an organ transplant, and that something was odd about it. He knew Mr. Kilgour was investigating this already, so that was kind of the first tipoff. I think that was probably almost 20 years ago now that Mr. Kilgour received that phone call. As Mr. Kilgour was investigating these things, it came to light that, yes indeed, there was a systematic process of organ harvesting happening in China, but the Chinese government said it was using folks who were on death row, hardened criminals who were being executed. It said it was using organs from those people. It said it was using it from accidents, from other tragedies and also from criminals who were being executed. I think we would all have our foibles about that a little bit. The other interesting thing is that the Chinese have an extensive network of political dissidents who are imprisoned. We were considering whether the Chinese are using political prisoners as organ donors. Mr. Kilgour made the case that this is in fact happening. Mr. Kilgour then showed us a lot of footage from the particular regions of China where most of the organ harvesting is happening. It happens to be not in Shanghai, not in the centre of China, but out in the more mountainous regions, in more remote communities. This is for a couple of reasons. Typically the air quality is better, so lungs and organs are in better shape because of that. Also, the people are less educated and are less aware of what is going on. He showed that these marginal populations in Canada were being targeted for organ harvesting. The Uighurs have been a victim of this, there is no doubt. It gets crazier, so I cannot say that is the craziest part, but if one lands in particular airports in China, they have signs in English saying “This is the organ donor expressway.” They have yellow markings on the floor and yellow signs saying that those who are there for an organ donation are to follow the signs. There is an entire system set up from the moment people land at the airport, so they do not get lost, and so they can rush, as people are typically in a hurry in these are life-and-death situations. There is an entire system of signage, shuttle buses and specialized elevators, with yellow signage and yellow arrows on the floor to tell people who are there for an organ to follow the signs and they will get where they need to go. That is organized. Then there needs to be a supply of organs. Mr. Kilgour showed us complete remote villages of people all getting blood tests, and nobody seemed to know what they were getting them for, but they were getting a blood test. Everybody had to show up at the school to get their blood test, and then everybody went home again. Later on, people would randomly go missing. Mr. Kilgour was making the case that this was part of that organ harvesting that is happening in certain populations in China. This is the greatest connection to the Uyghur population. The Uyghur population are of the Muslim faith, and what is interesting about that is that, particularly when it comes to the organ harvesting, there is a demand for organs that come from a Muslim person. China seems to be using the Uighur population to fill that demand. This is another thing that Mr. Kilgour pointed out to us. Between the forced organ harvesting happening in China, the particular community of the Uighur population being targeted for this, and the amount of effort the Chinese Communist Party has gone through to make the Uighur people pariahs in their communities, so they are reported by their fellow countrymen and not associated with, make it so they are not missed when they are taken. It makes it so they are seen as lesser than human and generally reported to the government. Interestingly, this happens to the Uighur people and it also happens to the Falun Gong. Again, Falun Gong is a unique religion, but they also have a very healthy lifestyle and are excellent organ donors. It just seems interesting that the Chinese government would turn the Falun Gong into social pariahs, people their neighbours would turn in for what seems to me to be a steady, healthy supply of organs. That is the story that I have been told by Mr. Kilgour. I will be forever indebted to him and the work that he has done. I also want to recognize Francis Yell, who took many trips with Mr. Kilgour to China to investigate a lot of these things. A lot of times, Mr. Kilgour did this at great personal cost, so I want to recognize his legacy. I also want to recognize this motion as being great work by my colleague.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Oct/24/22 9:06:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the importance of not recognizing lesser humans. He spoke of lesser humans, how there is this hierarchy and how dangerous that is. One of the concerns I have, as I have mentioned in this place, is that we pick and choose which human rights to protect. Children are, of course, innocent regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in. I wonder if my colleague is supportive of the notion that children need to be protected regardless. Would he stand with the NDP in calling for a special envoy for children in Palestine who are the victims of violence in Palestine?

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Oct/24/22 9:07:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the basic idea of human rights. What are human rights? Do all human beings get human rights? Those are my questions. For me, human rights come to us because we are created in the image of God. Therefore, all of humanity is equal and worthy of dignity and respect. Particularly when it comes to children, that is definitely the case. Regardless, innocent human life should not be taken. I do not know much about the specific thing the member is referencing, but those are my views on human life and human rights, and I defend human life and human rights wherever I can.

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Mr. Brad Redekopp (Saskatoon West, CPC)

Oct/24/22 9:08:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I really did appreciate learning more about organ harvesting and all of the terrible, tragic things that are happening there. I want to ask the member a different question, though. One of the other related topics is the idea of Lululemon, Target and Walmart all having products that potentially come from the forced labour of Uighur people in China. Uighur people are removed from their families and villages and taken to cities where they are put to work in factories, and then the state benefits from their labour. I am just wondering whether the member has comments and thoughts about that.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Oct/24/22 9:09:16 p.m.
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Oh boy, do I ever, Mr. Speaker. I think I would need a whole other speech just to address that. What I would point out is that there is currently a bill in front of the foreign affairs committee, Bill S-211, that deals with supply chain reporting. It deals with big companies that operate in the west or in Canada. In particular, they would have to do a report on the impacts of their companies on human trafficking and forced labour. That is for sure a bill I would like to get passed. The other thing is what the Americans are doing. They are identifying the province of Xinjiang as a place where forced labour is a problem, so for any products that are coming out of that area, there is a reverse onus and companies must prove that forced labour is not being used in their products. That is another initiative that I could get behind, and I look forward to the government moving on that.

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Mr. Ted Falk (Provencher, CPC)

Oct/24/22 9:10:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Peace River—Westlock for the work he does on human trafficking. He did not talk a lot about how perhaps the Uighurs have been subjected to that. He talked a lot about organ harvesting, and we know about that through the work of David Kilgour. We know it is happening and how atrocious it is. I wonder if the member could expand a bit on any elements of human trafficking that there may be with the Uighurs in China.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Oct/24/22 9:10:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for highlighting the work I do in combatting human trafficking both here in Canada and around the world. Human trafficking for the Uighur population mostly looks like forced labour. It is a big challenge for Canada to identify who is being trafficked and forced into labour in some instances. In some places, it is not at all. In some instances, people who have worked for a company for 20 years got their job all on their own and they are of the Uighur ethnicity or religion but have moved into the city and now work there. Sometimes we struggle or grapple with how to identify a person who took that job on their own and another person who has been trafficked into it, but it is definitely the case that it happens.

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