SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 184 - Apr/25/23

Apr/25/23 11:29:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am afraid I have to agree with my colleague. The track record is not great. There are people who have served side by side with my colleagues in the Canadian Armed Forces and are now being hunted by the Taliban. Leaving them behind is tragic. It reflects extremely poorly on our country and our ability to honour our international commitments. It is my hope that with respect to Sudan, the current government can change that. I am going to use this opportunity to reiterate some things. We should offer emergency immigration measures and support to Sudanese people caught in the crossfire, as was offered to Ukrainians. As well, we should not wait to grant urgent refugee status to non-citizen Sudanese who have Canadian relatives. We can do that now and quickly.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

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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Mr. Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ)

Apr/25/23 11:40:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated my colleague's speech, because she seems to have hit the nail on the head. She told us that, in terms of international relations, this government only seems to care about trade these days. In a fantastical, completely insane and almost schizophrenic turn of events, this government sent the Minister of International Development on a diplomatic mission to Qatar, a dictatorship that tramples on human rights, in order to sell arms there. This is the latest star on the report card of this government, which is reaching new heights of hypocrisy in international relations and international development. The only question that comes to mind is the following: Does my colleague have any confidence whatsoever that this government is doing a good job, considering its record since 2015?

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Ms. Heather McPherson

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

Apr/25/23 11:42:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure working with the member on certain issues. I think she would agree that we agree sometimes and disagree other times. This is an important topic we are debating tonight. I want to come back to something she raised at the beginning of her speech, which is the Wagner Group and the motion she put before the House regarding it being listed as a terrorist organization. I wonder if she can share a bit more about how she sees the agenda of the Russian government, in Africa with the Wagner Group and in other ways, contributing to destabilization and conflict, and why it is so important that the government follow through on the motion of the House and list the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization, a point we agree on.

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Ms. Heather McPherson

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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Ms. Arielle Kayabaga (London West, Lib.)

Apr/25/23 11:44:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have not had many opportunities to work with the member, but I have seen her show up on the international issues in a very strong way, and I appreciate the way she has shown up. Today, a group of Sudanese women released a statement. They said a couple of things that they want to see the international community do and support because of the impact this is having on children and women. As I have said in the House before, I myself am a product of war. I came out of a conflict, and I know the impact this has on children and women. Can the member opposite comment on whether she is going to support this statement?

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Ms. Heather McPherson

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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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Apr/25/23 11:45:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad we are all here tonight talking about the emergency situation in Sudan and the horrific violence that is taking place on the cusp of, as my colleague and many other members have already indicated in the House, a civil war. The violence and harm that is taking place right now is devastating. As indicated, it is women, civilians, who are getting caught in the crossfire and are suffering beyond all measure, getting injured and losing their lives. As I was listening to the debate, I thought to myself, “What is the Canadian government doing?” We heard from the Minister of Foreign Affairs who indicated the efforts of the government in addressing the crisis and helping to bring Canadians and others to safety. In reality, what we are seeing is something very different on the ground. The government says one thing, but in practice it does something very different. I just heard on the news before this emergency debate that Canadians who are connected to people in Sudan on the ground are saying that on the process of bringing Canadians to safety, they are mostly left to their own devices. They have to find commercial flights to get out, and there is no assistance really from the Canadian government in that regard. However, when we look at other countries, they are doing much better with their evacuation efforts. This is reminiscent of other situations. I will use Afghanistan as an example. Just now we talked about the duty of care and the responsibility to locals who helped Canadians do their jobs while they are abroad, but every time there is a crisis like this, what happens? They get left behind. That is what happened in Afghanistan. In fact, in my office I have a growing spreadsheet of Afghans who put their lives at risk in support of the Canadian military to complete their mission, and their loved ones have been left behind. The government brought in an immigration measure and then patted itself on the back and said what a great job it was doing, yet it brought in an arbitrary number for those who helped Canada and who are in a humanitarian crisis come to safety. In fact, there are files that have been lost. Somehow GAC does not know where these people are, and their applications have gone missing. That is what is happening to the point where people have to take the government to court to see if it can bring them to safety. It is the same thing with Sudan. Locals have been left behind. I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs if the Canadian government will undertake special immigration measures to bring them to safety, including those who are not Canadians, including Canadians who have family and loved ones who are Sudanese who will need a special immigration measure to bring them to safety. Will the government commit to that? I did not hear an answer from the minister. She sidetracked. She talked about something else. Then she deflected and said that the Minister of Immigration is doing a great job. Well, not so much, I am sorry to say, because the government abandons people time and again. When we say that we have a duty to care, it is, in my view, a responsibility of government as well as a moral duty to bring them to safety. They served Canada in their capacity in helping Canadians to do their job. We cannot just turn our backs on them, but we are doing exactly that. This is why I am here tonight engaging in this debate. I appreciate some of the immigration measures the Canadian government brought in. For example, the Sudanese who are here in Canada on a temporary visit, whether it be a work permit, a study permit or whatever the case may be, will be able to extend their visit. I absolutely appreciate that, but I will say that the government needs to do more. The Liberals say they will expedite the processing of those who already have a temporary resident visa or permanent resident application that has been completed. That is great; they should have been doing that already anyway. For those who do not have an application in, like Canadians who have family members in Sudan, the Canadian government needs to extend a special immigration measure to them, so they can sponsor their extended family members to come to Canada. We also have the duty to care for those who worked and served Canada as local staff. They need to be brought to safety. We cannot do this over and over again, because when we do, the message the Canadian government is telling the world is that if someone steps up to help Canadians to do a job while we are abroad, when a crisis hits, we will abandon them. That is the message we should not reinforce. We must take a course correction, and we must do everything we can to live up to that duty of care. We talked about the humanitarian crisis. People in Sudan are in a situation where they are running out of food, supplies and water. I just saw the WHO in the news again with the latest update saying there is a warning of a biological risk, as one of the Sudanese labs has been seized. The UN officials are calling the development extremely dangerous, and that is the reality they are faced with right now. I question the government on what we are doing to work in collaboration with allies to address this crisis. We are just coming out of a pandemic, although there are still remnants of the pandemic going on, as countries face these kinds of crises. Inevitably I think they would spread across the globe, and not just in those regions, but it would have greater consequences as well. What is the plan the government is going to embark on to work with the international community to address this crisis? Equally important, and not just at this moment in time in Sudan, what is the Canadian government planning going forward, as we know these kinds of situations keep repeating themselves? At the special Afghan committee, we talked about this. We talked about lessons learned and what we need to do to get ahead of them, anticipating th at crises will continue to emerge in the global community. As such, my questions to the government are these: What are we doing? What planning has been in place? What assurances can it give to Canadians and to the international community that Canada is on top of its game, that we will be there, that we will show up and that we will actually have plans in place in the face of these crises? Right now, I do not see any evidence of that. Time and again, situations emerge and then it feels like the Canadian government is caught flat-footed. It is not good enough. We have to do better. My colleague talked about Canada's role historically, about us being a middle power and about our ability to broker peace and have the trust and confidence of the international community to do that work. We have lost so much of that credibility, and we continue to slip deeper into a hole. We have to find the light, and we have to step up. We have to do better, because humanity depends on it.

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Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

Apr/25/23 11:55:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is such an important issue that is being debated into the late hours of this evening. The question has been asked a number of times specifically about the listing of the Wagner Group as a terrorist entity. I know it is something that was brought forward and that this House passed, and it speaks to some of the challenging political circumstances and specifically how the Russians and the dictatorship there could be exercising influence that would destabilize not only Sudan but the region as well. Could the member comment on the importance of taking that strong stand, listing the Wagner Group as a terrorist entity and making sure sanctions are applied to the greatest extent possible to help address this?

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/25/23 11:56:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, absolutely we should list the Wagner Group as a terrorist entity, which is something that my colleague moved a motion on in the House. It is something we should all be moving forward on, but listing a group as a terrorist group and sanctioning against it is only as good as the actions taken to enforce the sanctions. Again, I will say that we have seen this over and over again. In the situation in Ukraine, we saw sanctions being put in place against the perpetrators in Russia. However, they are not being enforced. The government is not taking the full actions necessary to wield the power of those sanctions. While we talk about this, and motions are being passed, what we need is for the government to step up and follow through with actions on the sanctions to yield the kinds of results we want to see.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

Apr/25/23 11:57:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her passionate and rousing speech. She spoke about the supports that Canada must provide to regain its former standing on the international scene. It so happens that Gilles Michaud, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, asked Canada a few months ago to support his work, the work of the UN, to ensure the security of the most fragile populations on the planet by providing $10 million and thus setting an example for other countries. Does my colleague agree that this vital funding must be provided to support Mr. Michaud and his team in their humanitarian efforts to keep people safe, particularly in Sudan? In other words, did Canada simply decide to stay at the back of the pack rather than leading the way?

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/25/23 11:58:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have seen that the federal Liberal government has not stepped up to do what is necessary. We just saw it in budget 2023, where the government has cut humanitarian aid at a time when crises are erupting across the globe, and at a time when we need Canada to do more to support these kinds of measures. We are not there. We are not showing up. I make this plea to the government in the name of humanity, for the sake of connecting with each other and lifting each other up. Canada has to do its part. We can do better. Let us show up when the international community needs us.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Apr/25/23 11:59:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is my first opportunity at almost midnight to get in on the debate tonight. I want to thank my colleagues, particularly from Edmonton Strathcona and Vancouver East, for being so clear. We have abandoned Sudan. We have been busy with other things. We have given it lip service. When those two war-lords seized power in a military coup, we should have denounced them, and we should have sanctioned them. We should have shifted our attention to how we build up civilian civil society and protect any hope of democracy in Sudan. Now that we are at this place, we have to recognize that, of course, we want to get Canadians out of Sudan, but we cannot be satisfied with only that. We have to help the people of Sudan. They do not want these war-lords. The war-lords are not popular. They are dangerous. I ask my hon. colleague to concentrate for the last moments on what we do to help the people of Sudan in the long term.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/26/23 12:00:15 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yes, we need to help people to get to safety. Yes, we need to get Canadians to safety. Equally important, we also need to build up the region where they are having those struggles We need to do what we can to broker a ceasefire. I think that at this time Canada can do better. The United States is doing that work. Allied countries are doing that work. We need to get in there as well. In terms of humanitarian aid, which has already been spoken about, we need to make every effort to support that. More than that, we need to work toward building support of the Sudanese—

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/23 12:01:00 a.m.
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It being midnight, I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, pursuant to order made Tuesday, November 15, 2022, the House stands adjourned until later this day at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1). (The House adjourned at 12 a.m.)

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