44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 11, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to stand in this place and represent the good people of Edmonton Strathcona.
This is a concurrence debate. We were unaware that this was coming, and so I am going to talk a little bit from the heart and tell members a few of the things that I have been thinking about, now knowing that we are to debate this motion.
As we all know in this place, in 2021, Kabul fell and the Taliban took over Afghanistan. I do not think that any one of us can really understand the horrific consequences that had on women and girls in Afghanistan and what that shift, that change, means to women and girls in Afghanistan who had been given hope for so many years, because there was the possibility for them to go to school, and for them to be teachers, doctors, lawyers or members of Parliament. The women were able to participate in their culture and their country, but in 2021, that was all taken away from them.
I have been working with members across the floor. The member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound mentioned earlier that we have a cross-party group that is trying desperately to help some of those women MPs get to safety. It is unbearable how slow it is. One of the worst days I have had as a parliamentarian was waking up and finding out that one of those members of Parliament had been murdered. I know that the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound feels the same as me. I know that all of us in this place are absolutely horrified that these people have not been able to be brought to safety, and so we are continuing to work with civil society, and we are continuing to work across aisles to make sure that we can bring these women to safety.
I also want to tell a bit of a positive story as well, because we often talk about women and girls in Afghanistan and the burden, trauma and absolute horror that they are facing. It has literally been described as one of the worst places on earth to be female. When I am in my riding I like to talk to classes. I think talking to students about democracy and how to be involved in democracy is very important. I think it is a big part of my job. I was a teacher before I was a politician. I was talking to a grade 6 class about how devastating it is that education had been taken away from women and girls in Afghanistan, and a little girl in the front row put up her hand and told me that she was from Afghanistan. She had gotten out of Afghanistan and come to Canada. She was in the front row, and she was studying. She was in school, and she was learning. It is stuff like this that makes me think that we have to fight so much harder.
I have a dear driver, a lovely guy, and his daughter is from Afghanistan. She came to the House last week and spent some time with us here. She sat and watched question period. I hope we were all behaving, although I must say I doubt it. However, it is a pretty important thing to know that there are girls and women from Afghanistan who are getting that education. It means a lot to me.
I do think that it is important that this place be seized with what we can do to help women and girls in Afghanistan. I do think that it is important that we talk about foreign issues and that we talk about humanitarian support. Canada is not playing the meaningful role it needs to play. We have not lived up to our obligations. We have not lived up to our reputation. We have not lived up to what we should do. Our ODA is extraordinarily low.
We are really good at saying things like “We have a feminist international assistance policy”, but we are not very good at actually implementing it. This government loves to tap its chest and say that it is a feminist government. In fact, government members keep telling us that there is a feminist foreign policy, although nobody has ever seen it.
The fact of the matter is, if we are going to be a country with a feminist international assistance policy, which I fully support and in fact I helped write the policy before I was elected, then we need to stand up for women and girls, and that does not just mean in concurrence debates. It does not just mean that when the MP for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan decides he wants to mess with what is going on in the House he can call a concurrence debate and cry crocodile tears for Afghan women and girls.
He did not vote last week to support international development spending; he voted three times to not support international development spending. The Conservative members voted three times to not provide support for women and girls around the world. Folks have been talking to us today about the reproductive rights of women and girls. We know that, under Stephen Harper, the Conservatives cut that completely out of international development funding. I can tell the House something right now: When support for abortion is cut, it does not stop abortion; it stops safe abortion, and people die.
When I asked to do a study on women's rights in the international human rights subcommittee, the Conservative member from Peace River who sits on the committee said he was not interested in doing a study on the rights of women but would be more than happy to do a study on the rights of the preborn, not women who have been born, not women who are in our world who are struggling, but the preborn.
We all know what this is about; it is about the Conservatives' trying to change the channel from their appalling voting record. It is all about the fact that they are trying to change the channel from the fact that they voted against the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, voted against Operation Unifier and voted against support for Ukraine. My goodness, Conservatives voted against the human rights museum. Honestly, who does that?
I was at home this weekend. It was my son's 16th birthday, and I would like to have the indulgence of the House to wish my son a very happy 16th birthday. I was sitting with my family, and members may be surprised to learn that my family is very non-political. None of them can really understand why they have a member of Parliament in the family. We are not one of those families. They all asked me about the nonsense in the House. They wanted to know what that nonsense was, when members had to sit here for 30 hours. I told them they would not believe it, but it cost $2 million for the Conservatives to do the little fundraising kerfuffle that they thought was so important. They asked me whether the Conservatives thought it was a good use of time and whether they thought it was what Canadians want from their politicians. Today is a great day for me, because New Democrats got dental care for Canadians. The Conservatives got a concurrence debate on an issue that their voting record shows they do not even care about. There is where we are at, folks.
Let us talk a little about some of the issues with regard to Afghanistan. I can talk about international development, foreign affairs and international humanitarian law all day, and I am happy to do it. At the initial time when we heard we were doing a concurrence debate, it was going to be about Bill C-41, or the aid to Afghanistan bill. Of course, the Conservatives must have made a mistake, because they do not actually care what they are bringing forward to the House. They are just trying to come up with something they could throw up as a shield. They got the wrong bill and the wrong concurrence motion. Then we had to sort of change direction a little. However, since they had initially wanted us to talk about Bill C-41, I am game. I am keen to talk about Bill C-41, which the the NDP could not support. We were the only party in the House that did not vote for the bill, because it was such a flawed piece of legislation.
Let me explain a little. International humanitarian law exists in the world, and it is very clear that organizations working on international humanitarian efforts have certain protections so they can do that work. These are the people we ask to go into the world, into the most dangerous, most heartbreaking situations that we have on the globe. They do that so they can bring food, shelter and life-saving humanitarian aid. There are international humanitarian law standards in place. Instead of using those standards the way that Australia, Europe, the U.S. and all sorts of countries did, the Liberal government found a weird convoluted route whereby it was kind of like one had to opt out. One is a terrorist until one opts out; this is basically how it works. One has to get a special pass to give humanitarian assistance.
We were able to get some carve-outs through the legislation. We were able to get some of that to work, but I sat in the committee meetings and can tell members that the people who wrote the legislation, and the members of those committees, do not understand how international development works. It does not happen in a sterile environment. It does not start on day one and end on day 12. It is not as definable as that.
The legislation that was put in place is very problematic. In fact, an article that came out on the CBC says that aid groups still say that Ottawa is hampering work in Afghanistan. We started asking for the legislation in 2021. It took years for flawed legislation to come forward. I do not know how many times I stood in the House and asked questions about it. The legislation is still not working; it is still not acting properly. Organizations are still not able to deliver the aid. Realistically, if the Conservatives actually cared about the people of Afghanistan and about getting support to Afghans, they would be more concerned about making sure that the legislation is fixed. World Vision's policy director Martin Fischer says that he is “frustrated and bewildered” that the process is taking so long. He says, “It's hard to understand why the machinery of government is having a hard time putting in place what should be a pretty straightforward...process.” The legislation is still not working. The aid is still not getting to Afghanistan.
As I mentioned it earlier, the Liberals, who have the lowest ODA, or official development assistance, that we have ever had in this country and who are abdicating their responsibility under a feminist foreign policy and a feminist international assistance policy, have brought forward legislation that is overly bureaucratic, is overly problematic and does not work. On the other side, we have the Conservatives, who, frankly, if one were to listen to them, probably do not like women very much.
This is where we are at with that. When I talk about—
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- Dec/11/23 5:47:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time with the member for Edmonton Manning.
I actually want to start my speech by answering the questions that NDP and Bloc members asked of the previous Liberal speaker: Why is it so important to debate this motion today? I have an article here from today's international news, titled “Female-Led Afghan Refugee Families Reluctant To Return To Afghanistan Amid Fresh UN Warning”. Another article from last week was titled “How the Taliban Enables Violence Against Women”.
As I mentioned in a previous intervention, there are a few key things coming up. It has been over a year since the all-party group formed to help former Afghan women MPs to get out of Afghanistan. I will get into that in a minute. There are huge concerns that I have been hearing from charities and NGOs that are continuing to try to help those Afghans fleeing the Taliban regime, in particular those who helped us. Finally, I want to get into the depth of just how terrible and oppressive the apartheid is against women and girls that is ongoing currently in Afghanistan. I think that makes it all relevant and, as was pointed out earlier, we are not slowing down government legislation or anything today, because it is time allocated. We will be voting on it soon enough.
Let us talk about the former Afghan women MPs. A group of us came together across all parties. There were a couple of Liberal MPs, myself from the Conservatives, somebody from the Bloc, the Greens and the NDP, all trying to work to get former Afghan women MPs safely out of Afghanistan. We started that group in October of last year, over a year ago. We did it behind the scenes. We did not go public. We really wanted to work with the government and the NGOs to get the help needed for these incredible women, who made a difference in Afghanistan before the Taliban took control again.
Unfortunately, what happened in January was the murder of Mursal Nabizada, which caused unbelievable grief for those of us tied to this behind the scenes. It was just terrible, because in two weeks, we can get somebody out of Afghanistan. It is not difficult to get somebody out of there if we have the political will. I am not going to elaborate in detail other than the bad news that we still do not have the vast majority of them out. I believe one of them has gotten to Canada, which is not even close. The good news is that there has been progress. The other part is that the government has been working with the group and with the NGOs, so we have been getting updates.
However, my biggest fear is that, if we lose another one of these former Afghan women MPs before they get safely to Canada, I am going to go from being one of the most non-partisan MPs in this chamber to quickly becoming one of the most partisan. It is unacceptable; this could have been solved in a matter of weeks, and it has been over a year now.
The other concern that I want to talk about is around the current support and the current programs that the government has for Afghans, in particular, the Canadian-Afghan special immigration program, which is apparently now closed. Right from day one, I raised concerns around this program that it was being focused on a quota rather than those most in need. I think 40,000 is the number that the government chose. Another big concern is that a lot of Afghans successfully fled Afghanistan for neighbouring countries, but they did not necessarily have that connection to Canada. However, there are tons of former Canadian contractors, Canadian cultural advisers and Canadian interpreters of Afghan background who were working for us. Many of them are still stuck there to this day.
I am not going to go into long details. I know other members asked questions during this debate about the failure of the Liberal government when Kabul, Afghanistan, fell. They talked about how we could have done a heck of a lot more to get Afghans to safety at that time. I am on the record talking at length about that, so I am not going to go into detail.
I do want to focus on getting some clarity. This is the question that I asked the parliamentary secretary and one of the other Liberal members. I am asking for help. All I am asking the Liberal government to do is come out publicly with some clarity around the program and tell us if all the Afghans' applications that are currently in the SIM program are going to get processed so they eventually get to Canada.
I am hearing lots of rumours from NGOs and from groups working behind the scenes in collaboration with the government to get these Afghans to safety that there are still thousands, and I am not talking one thousand but thousands, plural, of Afghan applicants who have not even received an invitation to apply through the program, despite having applied over two years ago. I am trying to get to the point here that we need greater clarity on this. There are a lot of Afghans and Canadian Afghans with family members who are stuck in this process, and we have concerns.
In the next part of my speech, I am going to paraphrase pretty extensively from a report that has been out in the media in the last week, so all Canadians can understand how the Taliban is enabling violence against women.
We just finished, this past week, the 16 days of activism to end gender-based violence. However, in the 28 months since the Taliban basically took control, it completely dismantled Afghan women and girls' rights. It has imposed draconian restrictions regarding their education, employment and freedom of movement, and any perceived violation of these oppressive policies is often met with harassment, intimidation, and verbal and physical abuse, all orchestrated by the Taliban's ministry of vice and virtue. When women are detained by the authorities, they have been subject to cruel treatment, including torture.
The Taliban's anti-women policies, combined with its patriarchal system, have made Afghanistan the lowest-ranked country in the 2023 women, peace and security index. They have basically rolled back over two decades' worth of gains that I and others helped try to establish in Afghanistan. The women there had achieved much in politics, governance, education, health and even the private sector.
However, within months of the Taliban taking over, it suspended the Afghan Constitution, which obligated the government to protect and promote human rights. It replaced the Ministry of Women's Affairs with the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. It ordered professional and working women to stay home until further notice. It prevented women from travelling any long distances on road trips without a male supervisor, and it imposed a strict dress code on women.
As I have mentioned before in this chamber, I still have hope that those Afghans who did get a glimpse of what the future could hold will eventually be back to lead Afghanistan and be a beacon of hope, change and leadership. However, that is going to be achieved only if western democracies and countries like Canada continue to provide the necessary support and allow them to get out of there in the first place.
I actually believe this debate is very timely and important today. The Liberal government must continue to provide support and provide clarity to all those Afghans still stuck in Afghanistan who helped us or are fleeing persecution, and provide clarity to the many charities and NGOs working to get these Afghans to safety. This is especially important when it comes to the former Afghan women MPs and their families. I also want to make it crystal clear that the Taliban are terrorists. They must remain listed as such. They are some of the most oppressive, terrible people in the world, and I have zero sympathy.
Afghanistan will someday in the future return to being a democracy that will respect human rights, but only if we continue to help those who will eventually return and lead this necessary change.
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- Dec/11/23 6:06:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we are all well aware, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is catastrophic. Millions of people face major challenges due to decades of conflict, political instability and, in the past few years, the resurgence of the Taliban.
Canada took part in an international coalition to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban, a campaign that saw more than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces serve in that country. As such, 158 lost their lives and more than 2,000 were injured. For the families of those men and women still dealing with the after-effects of the long period of conflict, the seizing of the country once more by the Taliban in 2021 was saddening. It seems like their sacrifices had been in vain.
The Taliban was, for good reason, listed by Canada as a terrorist group in 2013. Its rule is marked by limited rights for women and minorities, and a history of human rights abuses. The Taliban's return to power triggered a mass exodus of Afghans inside and outside the country, sparking a refugee crisis. Many had to flee for fear of reprisals, persecution and restrictions on individual freedoms. The Liberal government made a lot of promises, especially to aid those Afghans who had worked with Canadian troops during our combat mission there, but, sadly, many of those promises turned out to be words and not actions.
It is not only those who worked with Canada’s military who have suffered as a result of Canada’s response to the latest takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Internally displaced persons are also in urgent need of help. They lack access to basic needs such as food, clean water, health care and education. I am pleased that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has seen fit to firmly denounce the Taliban and reject any recognition or legitimization of its control over Afghan territory. A terrorist organization that achieves by force what it cannot achieve at the ballot box is not a legitimate government.
It makes sense for the committee to denounce the Taliban system of gender discrimination, systemic violence targeting minority communities, reprisals against former members of the Afghan National Security and Defence Forces, attacks on freedom of the press and other violations of fundamental human rights. The more than two years since the Taliban seized power have been two years of broken promises. In 2021 a Taliban spokesman promised that his government was going to allow women to work and study, and that women would be very active in society. The reality is that not only were women banned from attending university, education for girls is banned beyond the sixth grade. The Taliban has also banned women from working in all non-governmental organizations. According to the International Labour Organization, women's participation in the labour force dropped by 25 per cent between August 2021 and March 2023.
Conservatives have long been calling for action to hold those in power in Afghanistan accountable for their actions against the Afghan populace, the international community and, most importantly, Afghan women and children.
The Taliban have neglected the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, leaving the population suffering from a malnutrition crisis and a rapid increase in acute hunger. The number of people suffering has increased exponentially, from 14 million in 2021 to approximately 20 million this year.
From 2001 to 2014, our Canadian troops heard first-hand the stories from Afghan citizens of repression under the Taliban. Our troops fought, not only for Canada but also for the good, innocent people they grew to love in their time there. Canadian troops put their lives on the line, not only for their country but to help Afghan women and children have hope of a better life. Years of conflict and violence led to a humanitarian crisis that shattered the innocence of these people. Life under the Taliban is so much worse than before.
We owe it to our veterans and our fallen soldiers to continue the effort towards a better humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. That means not even considering that Taliban rule, by force and fear, is somehow legitimate. To consider recognizing the Taliban government, as some have suggested, would be wrong. It would be rewarding an organization that knows nothing but force and fear and rejects the values Canadians hold in common. To recognize what the Taliban calls a government would be to reward the actions of a terrorist group. Conservatives believe Canada must continue to stand with the Afghan people, oppose the Taliban and engage with civil society and pro-democracy groups who want to restore Afghan freedom and democracy.
I have at times wondered if the Liberal commitment to freedom and human rights is as strong as the Conservative one. As Kabul was falling to the Taliban, the Liberal Prime Minister responded immediately by calling an election. While the Americans were airlifting more than 100,000 desperate people out of Kabul, the Canadian Prime Minister decided to call an unnecessary election instead of providing the leadership Canadians expected and Afghans hoped for.
The Prime Minister promised to provide a safe haven for 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan. When Canadians heard that promise, they did not dream that it would take more than two years for him to keep that promise. One would think that, faced with a humanitarian crisis, the resettlement process would have been a priority for the government. One would think that, but the Liberals did not. At least Canadians hope they can fulfill the promise by the end of this year.
No wonder so many Afghans felt let down by Canada as the Taliban seized power and began persecuting those they saw as opponents. In Afghanistan’s time of need, the Liberals decided to have an election. It seems like ever since, they have fallen further and further behind in their promise to the humanitarian crisis, both in Afghanistan and in the surrounding countries from which refugees have fled. It is a sorry track record, one they hope Canadians will not notice.
Having failed the people of Afghanistan in so many ways, it is important that, at the very least, Canada continues to stand up for the values that we share. Those include religious freedom and gender equality, two things the Taliban denies to those under its rule. More than just denying rights, the Taliban looks to export its agenda as it continues to coordinate and facilitate attacks with other terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, the IRGC and ISIS.
The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights believes that the Taliban must remain a listed terrorist organization. I think all hon. members will agree.
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