44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/25/23 11:12:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's comments on the sanctions are important for us to keep in mind today, because it would be very difficult for Canada to find an adequate way to sanction in this particular situation.
The question I have for him is about one of the things I am quite seized with. In 2014, under Stephen Harper, a law was repealed and took away the duty to protect local embassy staff. What happened in Ukraine and Afghanistan is that the staff who supported the Canadian embassy were left behind, and we are seeing that again. That has not been changed. I have raised this with the minister multiple times. This has not been changed.
I wonder if the member could talk about the fact that right now while we have been able to evacuate the Canadians from the Canadian embassy we have not been able to help our local staff.
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- Apr/25/23 11:30:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while it is always a privilege to stand in this place and to represent the people of Edmonton Strathcona, it is a very sad debate that we are engaging in today.
Many members have said this before me, but we are witnessing what looks like the beginning of a civil war in Sudan, a country that has been rocked by violence for many years, a country that is already home to a number of refugees who have tried to flee violence within the region. This is a devastating turn of events. It is extremely concerning to think that this civil war could escalate. It is extremely concerning to think that it could spread outside of the borders of Sudan, that we could be looking at a regional war that would impact more people, that would hurt more people and that would kill more people.
I am quite concerned that this could become a proxy war. What we are seeing in Sudan is the Wagner Group playing a key role in arming one of the sides. I have to say the NDP brought forward a motion and asked for this group to be named a terrorist entity. That was accepted unanimously across the House and it has not been done by the Liberal government to this day.
What we are seeing is incredibly heartbreaking, and I think all members of this House see that. We are seeing incredible shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel. We know this is becoming more and more acute. We know that at least 450 people have been killed, according to the World Health Organization figures. We know that hospitals and essential services have been paralyzed. We know that there are potentially 270,000 people who are preparing to leave Sudan as refugees. That, on top of the fact that Sudan already has more than one million refugees who have been fleeing conflict.
We know there are power outages. We know those power outages have destroyed vaccines, medicines and the coal chains. Canada, in this situation, must do everything we can to help. We must work with allies like the United States to urge a ceasefire, to urge a stop to the violence immediately.
We must defend humanitarian law and urge both sides of this conflict to not attack civilians, to ensure that they are not targeting those people who are most vulnerable right now. If we are a country that believes in a feminist foreign policy, that believes in a feminist international assistance policy, we have to step up right now and do what we can to help. We have to do what we can to get Canadians out, to get them to safety. Many members in this place have spoken about this.
I will be splitting my time today with the member for Vancouver East, who is a tireless champion for immigration issues and a tireless champion who will be speaking about the ways Canada could help to make sure that Canadians in Sudan could get out.
I have spoken already tonight about some of my challenges with that. In 2014, very quietly, something was taken away from our laws, and that was the duty to protect. Prior to 2014, Canada had a duty to protect those staff who worked in our embassies. We had a duty to protect those people who worked with us, that supported us in countries around the world. That was repealed in 2014 by Stephen Harper, but I do not just blame the Conservatives for that. I have raised this multiple times with the minister and the minister has not fixed that.
We have a duty to these people, whether we admit it or not, whether the Liberal government admits it or not. I am appalled that we actually left people in Ukraine and left the national staff there, behind and in danger. I am appalled that we left Afghans behind. We left them in danger. I am appalled that we have left Sudanese behind in Sudan. We have left them in danger, because we have not done our duty to protect those individuals.
This is one of the things I wanted to speak about most today. What is happening in Sudan is horrendous and there are many things that we need to be able to do, but Canada is not in a good situation to do that work right now.
In the budget that we just had recently, there was a 15% decrease in our official development assistance. This was done at a time when the world needs Canada to step up and play a larger role on the world stage, when the world is suffering from a food crisis unlike any we have seen before and when the challenges caused by conflict in Ukraine are rippling around the world. At this moment in time, when Canada should have stepped up and said, “We will be there. We are a wealthy country, and we can do that”, we cut international official development assistance by 15%. It is absolutely shameful.
Another thing that we have done is to turn our focus to Ukraine and forget others. Members should not get me wrong: Canada must do everything it can to help the people of Ukraine. However, we have forgotten whole swaths of this planet that we have responsibilities to. We have abdicated our responsibilities to the people in sub-Saharan Africa.
Since 2008, the Government of Canada has reduced its impact and its ability to help with conflicts just like this. Therefore, what we are seeing in Sudan is terrible, but we are not equipped to help. We no longer have peacekeepers in the field who can deal with this one. Canada, the country where we used to take such pride in punching above our weight and being the peacekeepers that countries could count on to be there when they needed us, does not even have 100 peacekeepers in the field. Despite the promises the government has made, we are no longer playing that role.
We used to have a role that was so important. We were conveners. We were peacekeepers. We engaged in international development. We had the Canadian International Development Agency; it was respected around the world. Now, we do not have that. We have Global Affairs Canada. For those who do not know, that was taking development, diplomacy and trade and putting it all into one place because it was supposed to harmonize it and make it better. However, what happened is that trade trumped all. All of a sudden, trade was the only thing that mattered to the current government rather than any of our moral obligations, the value of diplomacy, playing a role on the world stage or playing a role in a multilateral fashion.
I have said this before: When we look at our foreign policy and at the way that Canada interacts with the world, diplomacy and being part of those conversations, development, and trade are all so important. However, do members know what trade is? Trade is the dessert they get when they do the hard work of diplomacy and development. As with any dessert, if all they eat is dessert, they are going to get sick. They are not going to do well. That is where our foreign policy is right now.
We focus on trade. We fail to realize that building the relationships that we need to build with people around the world is vital. It is vital because it is the morally right thing to do and we have an obligation to do that. However, it is good for Canadians too. It allows us to develop trade relationships and have relationships with people around the world.
I look at what is happening in Sudan, and I am heartbroken because we know how the Sudanese people have suffered already. Women and children in Sudan are going to lose their lives. I am also angry because Canada, which should be able to be there to help, is not. Canada, which should be one of these countries that invest in the world and in making the world a better place, is absent. That makes me very angry.
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- Apr/25/23 11:41:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest challenges I have is that in 2015, when the government was elected, we had a Prime Minister who said very clearly that Canada is back; it was sunny ways, with the whole tapping of the chest thing. I believed him because I was not a member of Parliament. I was a member of civil society, and all the things the Prime Minister said I wanted to believe.
I wanted to believe the cuts and damage that had been done during the Harper decade were over, that Canada was back and that Canada was going to re-engage in the world and take back our place. I prefer the Conservatives because, frankly, they tell us they are not going to do anything. They tell us they are going to be useless, and that is better than a government that tells us it is going to do something and then does not.
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- Apr/25/23 11:42:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think this is a massive problem we are not addressing. We are seeing the Wagner Group and Russia infiltrate a whole bunch of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. We are seeing China, with its belt and road initiative and other initiatives, doing the exact same thing.
While they are making inroads in some of these countries, we are pulling back. I think that dynamic is very dangerous when we look at global dynamics in this multipolar world we are in. If Canada wants to be part of major discussions happening around the world, we cannot turn our backs. There is a reason we did not win the Security Council seat. It is because we made choices about which countries to ignore. We prioritized.
How do people think it feels to be someone in a country in sub-Saharan Africa watching millions and millions of dollars of support go to Ukraine, when in their country people are starving to death and do not have access to clean drinking water and there are no vaccines? How do we think people feel when we hoard vaccines to the point that we have to throw them away and they cannot vaccinate people in their countries?
We are backing up at the wrong time. We are backing up when we should be moving forward.
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- Apr/25/23 11:45:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, one thing that is key, which I meant to mention in my speech and am really grateful to the member for bringing up, is that women need to be at all of the tables when we are talking about resolution and peacekeeping. That is fundamental. We know that peacekeeping only happens when women are at the table. That is a fundamental thing. If we have a feminist foreign policy and a feminist international assistance policy, women's voices need to be at the forefront.
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