44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, we are seeing women's rights around the world under threat. I highlighted in my own speech the threat to women and girls, their rights in Afghanistan and how egregious they are. However, I find it a bit rich when the hon. member stands up on providing aid to countries that are in such dire need when he has been such a vocal opponent of women's reproductive rights, in particular filibustering a study at the foreign affairs committee on providing resources for organizations that provide sexual and reproductive health in countries around the world.
I do not really have a question. I just wanted to make a comment on the need to support women and girls in Canada and around the world.
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Madam Speaker, we are less than an hour into debate on this important government bill on Afghanistan, debate that is, in my view, a year and a half too late. It shows the partisan political approach of the Liberals to immediately try to throw this important debate about Afghanistan over the side and shift to something else.
Beyond that, I would challenge the member to actually be aware of what is happening in the foreign affairs committee. The study that allegedly I have been filibustering has actually finished now. We have been through four hearings at the foreign affairs committee on that study, and I would invite the member to listen to some of the very thoughtful and insightful witnesses. We heard some witnesses from western NGOs. We also heard witnesses from throughout the developing world who shared their particular perspective on these issues.
I would welcome the member to actually come to the committee, as I have never seen her there before, to review the blues, listen to the witnesses and maybe be aware of what is actually happening at committee before she tries to divert an important debate on Afghanistan with something else.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. If the government was as quick to introduce this bill as my colleague was in reading his speech, Bill C‑41 would have been passed a long time ago. I want to congratulate him because I have never heard someone say so many words so quickly.
There are a lot of things in this bill. Members know that I care a lot about this bill. With the support of my colleagues, I was one of the first to ask questions about this. We have been waiting over a year for this bill, and it is here.
We have a lot of questions about Bill C‑41. One quickly comes to mind. Authorization must be sought from a number of departments and agencies. That is not clear. What Bill C‑41 is saying is that the Government of Canada must give answers to these requests in a timely manner.
Does my colleague believe that this will be done in a timely manner—
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- Mar/27/23 4:32:41 p.m.
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The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
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Madam Speaker, on much simpler matters such as passports and immigration applications, the government has massively expanded the delays we are seeing. When we already have families who are being privately sponsored for refugee status having to wait for three years and we hear the government saying it is going to approve exemptions in a reasonable amount of time, we do not have three years to wait, clearly, to get these exemptions moving forward.
By the sound of the question, my colleague from the Bloc has exactly the same concerns that I have, which are around timelines: how long it has taken us to get this far and how much longer it will take to not only pass the legislation, which is part of the process, but also get to a point where organizations are able to implement programs.
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Madam Speaker, I want to comment on how disheartening it is to hear members of the Conservative Party not acknowledging the importance of women's reproductive rights when we are talking about humanitarian aid. It is very disheartening.
However, I will move on. Clearly, the reproductive rights of men are not at stake here, so I guess it is not important. I apologize, it is an important issue.
Today we are talking about how we need to ensure that the people of Afghanistan are receiving life-saving humanitarian aid. I want to hear from the member whether he feels that, in the current bill we are discussing, the processes would create challenges for smaller aid agencies that do not have the same level of resources as larger ones.
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Madam Speaker, again, we see the eagerness of Liberal and NDP politicians to shift the conversation to abortion.
I would just assure them again that there is a study happening at the foreign affairs committee. Four meetings have taken place. Neither of the members who have tried to divert this conversation from aid into Afghanistan to that issue have been at the foreign affairs committee. I participated actively in that study. My comments are on the record.
I would rather focus our discussion today on Bill C-41, which is the bill that is before the House. On this point, I agree with the member. This raises some questions about small organizations and whether small or medium-sized diaspora-led organizations would have an easy time accessing these exemptions. That is why I have raised this idea. What if we say that if one organization receives an exemption to operate under particular conditions in a particular place, then another organization that is doing more or less the same thing would be able to benefit from the same exemption?
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Madam Speaker, as my hon. colleague knows, I have been a bit torn on this bill due to my own past history and involvement in Afghanistan and due to my hatred of the Taliban.
I care deeply about the Afghan women and girls and Afghans in general. I do believe we need to support this bill, but we do need to get it right.
Tied to this, though, in the Special Committee on Afghanistan, recommendation 2 talked about the importance of interdepartmental coordination. This is a good example of a bill that is coming from public safety to change the Criminal Code, but it would tie in to foreign aid, international aid and policies within foreign policy.
I would like the member to comment on the complexities of this. It would be nice to know how the government is actually going to lead this effort to make sure that, however it gets put through, it is done right.
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Madam Speaker, that is a great point from my colleague. I want to recognize him and thank him for his service.
It has been inspiring for me to see how veterans developed close connections with the Afghan people and have been so instrumental in trying to support the Afghan people through immigration measures as well as wanting to be part of the humanitarian response to the challenges they are facing.
The member is right that government can be so difficult to navigate and so complicated. That applies to individuals, to organizations and especially to smaller organizations that are trying to engage in these processes.
I would call on the government to do everything it can to minimize red tape, especially the red tape that organizations that are trying to engage the government have to experience. We want people to be able to get these exemptions done so that they can get programming out to those who need it.
It is not going to be good enough to pass this legislation and then have a parade. We need to actually get all the way through the process so that aid could be delivered to people on the ground by as many organizations as possible.
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Madam Speaker, I was at the meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development where we debated women's sexual and reproductive health and where we heard from women. NGOs came to ask for more help for Afghan women who have been raped. These are terrible situations. Representatives from the Afghan community came to my constituency office in Granby to complain about how slow the government was moving.
Beyond that, this is an unfortunate example of what happens when we allow religious values to come before science and dominate a government. This is an example of the rise of fundamentalism, which is why women's rights are being set back and violated. Women need this bill now. The Bloc Québécois will collaborate to speed up the process. As far as foreign aid is concerned, we heard from NGOs that were worried about funding. The federal government claims to have a feminist foreign policy. It should provide the funding to back up that claim.
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Madam Speaker, there were a lot of different things in there.
The member sort of had an implied criticism that there is something going on about religious values in general. I want to identify the fact that many of the leading development organizations in Canada that are working hard to get assistance to the most vulnerable people around the world are coming from some kind of a faith-informed humanitarian motivation. These are Christian organizations like World Vision or Foodgrains Bank and Muslim organizations like Islamic Relief. For many people, though certainly not for all, a commitment to a sense of the image of God being in all of us is what leads to a passion for development assistance.
I want to recognize the role of people who come from a broad range of philosophical backgrounds who are involved in international development and the important work they are doing.
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Madam Speaker, I have been waiting for this day for more than a year. We are finally debating a bill that should have been introduced a long time ago. Last year, I had the honour of sitting on the Special Committee on Afghanistan with my colleagues from different parties, some of whom are with me today. I was one of the vice-chairs.
It was at the meeting on February 7, 2022, already more than a year ago, that I had the honour of asking the witnesses one of my first questions. This is the first time I have done this, but I am going to quote myself, because I think it is important. This is what I said: “They said that the Criminal Code might need to be amended so that NGOs on the ground could operate in Afghanistan without fear of being accused of funding terrorism. In my opinion, this is a very important subject that we need to address. What are your thoughts on this...?”
I said that on February 7, 2022. Since then, I have asked that question every chance I get. I even introduced a unanimous consent motion in the House on February 22, 2022, to allow non-governmental organizations to do their work on the ground. That was over a year ago. The motion was defeated by the Liberals, and now we find ourselves debating this bill in March.
I put that question to the organizations themselves and to the various ministers who appeared before the committee. Surprisingly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship all replied that they agreed with me. That was in meetings of the Special Committee on Afghanistan.
One year later, we can finally debate a topic that everyone agreed on over a year ago. Democracy is great, but sometimes it takes a while.
It will come as no surprise, then, that I was quite happy to hear that such a bill was finally being introduced and to hear the government announce that it was going to amend Canada's Criminal Code to allow humanitarian aid to flow again and to allow NGOs to do their work without fear of prosecution. I hope that is what happens.
This bill is further proof that the opposition can spur action in Quebec, Canada and around the world. After applying pressure to the government together with my friends from the Conservative Party and the NDP, I am delighted with this huge victory. The Bloc Québécois is always pleased to help. I believe that all my colleagues from the other parties are also pleased to help. That is the reason we ran for office in the first place.
Now, we must expedite the process because it has already taken too long. The Bloc Québécois can be counted on to fast-track this bill because the people of Afghanistan need help now. I say “now”, but they have needed our help since last winter when we were debating this issue. This is a useful bill that will help us make progress in the area of humanitarian aid.
The caveat is that we need to work quickly, but not too quickly. We have three hours to debate this bill, which will then be sent to committee. There are things we can discuss and on which we can agree in order to improve the bill. I will first touch on the more technical aspects. The government tabled Bill C‑41, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other acts, on March 9, 2023.
Currently the bill is at second reading. As it is currently written, the Criminal Code does not include any exemptions to facilitate the delivery of these essential activities in regions dealing with terrorist groups. As I mentioned earlier, this bill amends one of the Criminal Code's anti-terrorist financing offences to facilitate the delivery of much-needed international assistance, immigration activities, and other assistance in geographic areas controlled by terrorist groups. In other words, these amendments would create a new authorization scheme that would allow those that provide humanitarian or other critical assistance, to apply for an authorization that would shield them from the risk of criminal liability if the terms and conditions of the authorization are respected.
We have to understand that the Taliban, as the current de facto authority in Afghanistan, is likely to receive revenue from any payments needed to support humanitarian aid.
Under the Criminal Code, any Canadian or person in Canada making or authorizing such payments would risk contravening the Criminal Code's counter-terrorist financing provision. That is what we have now.
Despite the uncertainty, most organizations have continued to respond to crises around the world, but problems have grown exponentially since the Taliban, a listed terrorist entity, took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. In that regard, the scale of the humanitarian and economic crisis that the Afghan people are now facing cannot be overstated.
On paper, Bill C-41 rectifies this inability to make exceptions for organizations that are trying to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground. The bill is the proposed solution, and some aid groups support it.
However, what is wrong with this approach is that there are already many legal provisions that the government could strengthen rather than imposing a whole new set of legal hoops for humanitarian organizations to jump through. There is also the fact that humanitarian aid workers have said that the current amendments create more red tape for them, as my colleague said earlier.
For the sake of clarity, here is what is in this bill. Under this regime, the following people would have the power to grant an authorization to NGOs: the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, the Minister of Public Safety, and delegates with the power to grant authorizations. That is a lot of people.
These authorizations will shield applicants from criminal liability in the course of certain activities, including the delivery of humanitarian aid, when they would otherwise be at risk of violating the Criminal Code. It is really about time.
When deciding whether or not to grant an authorization, the Minister of Public Safety will examine applications referred by the Department of Foreign Affairs or the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and will take into account their assessment of the application.
In other words, the goal is to determine whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in terms of the risk of financing terrorism. This is done through a system of information sharing between departments to conduct the security review that must be done prior to granting authorization. However, all this remains to be seen, because it does not mean that the authorization will be granted.
What happens if the authorization is not granted? Let us look at that together. Under this authorization regime, in the event of a negative response from the Government of Canada, the bill provides for the possibility of judicial review if authorization is not granted.
There is legal precedent in Canada that supports the assertion that because of the life-saving purpose of humanitarian aid, it cannot be considered criminal to provide such aid, even if a terrorist group may in some way benefit from it.
This does not mean that humanitarian organizations are shielded from anti-terrorism legislation. It means that they should not be presumed to be violating the Criminal Code simply because they operate in places like Afghanistan.
The problem is that Bill C-41 turns that presumption on its head. It uses an approach based on mistrust, one that requires humanitarian organizations to prove their abilities before they are allowed to respond to emergencies, and no one knows how long that process will take. One thing we do know, however, is that approval would involve at least two departments and up to nine security or regulatory agencies.
I cannot speak for my colleagues, but I myself have had numerous opportunities during my time in the House to see how slowly the Canadian government bureaucracy moves. Bill C‑41 provides for applications for authorization to be processed by the Government of Canada within a reasonable time. That does not necessarily instill much confidence.
Despite the positive advances in this bill, what worries me is the number of interventions required between departments and the impact that such a bill could have on humanitarian organizations. It is no secret that, when it comes to processing times, I get the impression that the federal government does not spend much time checking the clock.
The situation for the NGOs and above all the Afghan people, the men, women and children who are suffering, is deteriorating before our eyes. Time is running out.
When the time came to create this committee, a Conservative motion proposed that the Special Committee on Afghanistan be created. It was not going to be adopted because there was no consensus in the House. If the Conservative motion had been presented as worded, it would have been defeated.
The Bloc Québécois came up with a possible amendment to the proposal to create the Special Committee on Afghanistan, adding a requirement that the committee focus not only on the fall of Kabul, the federal government's failure to support the Afghan people and what happened before the Taliban took power, but also on what we could do now and in the near future.
We entered into a dialogue with our Conservative friends about this amendment and we managed to get everyone in the House to support it. Then the opposition parties voted for the motion to create the Special Committee on Afghanistan. It is important to highlight this, because the committee's mission is to find out what is being done now and how we are helping people who are experiencing suffering that we in the House will never experience. Things are horrible there. Women and parents are being forced to sell one of their daughters in order to feed their other children. These are the kinds of horrors we heard about in meetings of the Special Committee on Afghanistan. That is why we wanted to create it, to come up with recommendations and to help the Afghan people as quickly as possible.
We have known about this problem for over a year, but today the government comes along and tells me that it was complicated to draft. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Immigration, everyone in the Liberal Party agreed that there is a problem and that we need to do something about it, but they said it takes time. The Minister of International Development also got involved, saying that we need to do it, but that it will take time, so we need to give them time. We are being told it is normal for this to take so much time.
There is a question I ask myself when I get up in the morning. As I often mention, I have a Post-it note on my bedside table that says, “Who do you work for?” When I open my eyes, that is the first thing I see. I work for Quebeckers and the people of Lac-Saint-Jean, but I also work for everyone who needs help around the world. It is part of my files, but I am also fundamentally human and I am a representative of the people. We have a duty and a responsibility toward people who are suffering.
Now the government is telling me that it was too complicated and that it is understandable that it took so much time. I will give an example. When the pandemic hit the entire country, I think the government acted fairly quickly to implement special aid programs. It only took the government two weeks to create the Canada emergency response benefit and subsidies for businesses when people were losing their jobs. Now, however, the government says it is understandable for this to take a year and a half, even though children are dying in Afghanistan, women are selling their children and Canada is unable to deliver humanitarian aid because of the Criminal Code. Come on.
I am rather appalled by that. I understand that I have plenty of Liberal colleagues who are acting in good faith, who want to help and who agree with us on this subject, but I think there is a problem somewhere in the machine. It is not right for the government to be able to create aid programs really quickly when people are losing their jobs in Canada but not when children are dying in Afghanistan. I think that is unfathomable and disgraceful.
I am going to end with that because I do not want to get too wound up, and this is still good news, after all. However, now that we have wasted so much time, we need to get Bill C‑41 in place. How likely is that that the bill is well written and we can all agree on the amendments coming from the humanitarian NGO community, all together and not in committee?
What I am asking is that the parties come to agreement through informal conversations before sitting in committee and that everyone agrees quickly. I am hoping that there will be no debate in committee and that the amendments that are agreed upon are voted on quickly. Let us not waste any more time; we have wasted far too much over the last year.
I will say it again. The first question I asked with respect to this issue was on February 7, 2022, in the Special Committee on Afghanistan. The motion received unanimous consent, so I tabled it on February 22, 2022. What day is it now? It is March and April is coming. There was snow in the Parc des Laurentides, but it is sunny here. It is spring. It should not have taken this long.
Let us make sure that from now on it moves as quickly as it can and that this bill is as well crafted as possible to allow our NGOs to do the work on the ground, to help women, men, children and the Afghan people through one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet.
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Madam Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to recognize Farzana Elham Kochai, who was a member of Parliament in Afghanistan. I believe I pronounced it relatively right. She is a young woman with a very powerful voice who is now in Winnipeg. I had the opportunity to meet her at the local McDonald's restaurant on one of my Saturday visits.
When I look at the legislation we are debating today, I think we all have a responsibility to find ways to ensure that it reflects the interests of the people who are out there. I know I, for one, will be sharing my thoughts with Farzana and getting some direct feedback.
We can talk about why it took as long as it did, and so forth, another day, but we need to recognize that it is important legislation to pass for the people of Afghanistan. Could my colleague provide his comments on why it is important that we get that support?
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Madam Speaker, it is precisely because we are in contact with people who have been on the ground there for many years that we need to pass such legislation. Every day and every week, we meet people who tell us what they need, and we speak on their behalf. That is more or less what my colleague wanted to say as well. We need to go and get the information from those who are really experiencing the situation in order to use our parliamentary power to make legislative changes.
It is not such a bad idea to talk about why this took such a long time. Since the bill has not yet been passed, let us move it through the process as quickly as possible as of now. Humanitarian organizations and the people of Afghanistan are the ones asking us to do this quickly.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Lac‑Saint‑Jean for all that he does to help the people of Afghanistan. He spoke a lot about how long it took the Liberal government to introduce this bill.
I would like to give him more time to share his feelings and frustrations and I would like for him to talk about the consequences that he, other members and I have faced when dealing with the Liberal government in trying to help the Afghan people. Unfortunately, some Afghan citizens were killed because of these delays.
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- Mar/27/23 4:58:28 p.m.
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I want to commend the member for his efforts. He spoke French very well.
The hon. member for Lac‑Saint‑Jean.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen on his French. I have a great deal of appreciation for him. I know that he has a direct connection to Afghanistan, because he served over there. We thank him for his service.
I thank him for the opportunity to say how frustrating this is and has been. He and I are part of a group of parliamentarians that also includes our friend from Edmonton Strathcona. The members of this group are advocating for former Afghan parliamentarians. We are working very hard to try and bring them here because we have a responsibility to these women. Unfortunately, we lost one of the women for whom we were advocating. I think that this has been very hard on the whole group. In fact, the Liberals are part of this group, which is a transpartisan group.
However, the situation is frustrating. Currently, the government's slowness is not only frustrating, but also something that I find incomprehensible. The government says it is feminist. It often wraps itself in human rights' superhero costumes. However, when it comes time to act in crises such as this, it always seems to drag its feet. It is frustrating, incomprehensible and unfortunate.
We have friends in every party in the House of Commons who work behind the scenes to help people half a world away living in fear. These people are frustrated, whether they are in the governing party or in the other opposition parties. This needs to change.
I think that the government has some serious soul-searching to do to understand what is going on. Unfortunately, we are talking about people's lives.
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Madam Speaker, I would speak French but I find when I get upset, it is difficult to find the words in French. I am upset today because what we have in front of us is the situation the government has put us in, being 18 to 19 months too late. We are now having to judge between accepting and supporting bad legislation or giving the organizations that are desperately trying to help the Afghan people no legislation at all.
I will be speaking about my challenges later on today, but I wonder how the member reconciles that. I am finding it very difficult to reconcile this dilemma, the dilemma that will actually take away the rights that humanitarian organizations are by international law entitled to.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague and I are in the same position and we feel the same way. This is a bill that we need to pass, but it is truly imperfect and is not acceptable to the very organizations that asked us to create this bill.
We need to find solutions. Earlier in my speech I talked about that a bit. I do not know whether my colleague had the opportunity to hear it. I think that the members from all the parties are mature enough to talk informally before sitting down in committee to agree on changes to the bill that we could adopt quickly. Instead of putting on a show in committee and deciding to debate this or that amendment, let us sit down. We are capable of going into a room in Parliament, all together, before the committee in order to decide which amendments we can agree on.
That way, when we go to committee, everything will go more quickly. We will adopt amendments rather quickly and we will do our work properly and in the best spirit possible to be able to help our friends who are awaiting this help in Afghanistan.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean for his speech. Every time he rises here in the House we see that humanitarian causes are very dear to him.
With respect to Afghanistan, we know that the needs are immense and that millions of people are affected.
My question may be a little redundant in light of the earlier question. Does this bill strike a good balance between sanctions on a terrorist state and the exceptional measures for humanitarian assistance? I understand that improvements need to be made. Is that tied to this aspect of the bill?
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