SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 299 - Apr/15/24

Mr. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas (Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ)

Apr/15/24 5:48:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not easy for Canada to have any credibility on the international stage when it comes to security. A major player in the government told us that “Canada is back”, but it is definitely not. Canada was eyeing a seat on the United Nations Security Council, but it lost the bid. When it comes to security, Canada has had problems, especially with the Winnipeg lab, a maximum-security facility. When it comes to security, this report talks about recognizing a terrorist group and putting it on the list of terrorist entities, a targeted list, so that the group is identified by the government and its security agencies. I would like my colleague to talk about sanctions. The government, along with other G7 countries, seems inclined to impose sanctions on the Iranian regime and the current Iranian government. The government is already having difficulty targeting, analyzing and monitoring the sanctions against Russia. I cannot see how it will manage to do the same for Iran. I would like my colleague to enlighten me and to explain in practical terms how his government is trying to resolve the situation and act in an effective, meaningful way.

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Context: House Hansard - 299 - Apr/15/24

Mr. Marty Morantz (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, CPC)

Apr/15/24 5:52:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to this important motion. The motion we are dealing with is a concurrence motion that calls for a number of things, but the one I mainly want to talk about today is the first part of the motion, which calls on Canada to designate the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code and expel the estimated 700 Iranian agents operating in Canada. I wish I could say that to do this was obvious and that it had been done already. Many people watching this debate tonight may not realize that Parliament actually voted to do this exact thing six years ago. Sometimes I wonder what we are doing in this place. We are elected. We are spending billions of dollars renovating Centre Block. These places are supposed to mean something. They represent the will of the common people. When we vote as a Parliament to do something, it should be done. If there is a good reason for it not to be done, I am all ears. I keep asking myself this: What will it take for the Prime Minister to actually list the IRGC as a terrorist entity? The Liberals are now using Liberal speak. They are saying they have to responsibly list. I have never heard those two words put together in my life, responsibly list, unless one is making a grocery list or something. What do they mean by that? What will it take for the Prime Minister to act responsibly? The IRGC has been a bad actor in the region and throughout the world for decades. It is not a secret. The IRGC does not hide it either. We know that there are 700 agents wreaking havoc on Persian and Jewish communities. Who knows what else they have gotten into? What if, for instance, the IRGC shot down an aircraft and killed Canadian citizens? If that were to happen, would the government register the IRGC as a terrorist entity? The answer is no, because it happened. That was done. It pains me to have to say it again. PS752 was shot down, killing 55 Canadians and 20 permanent residents. The call came after Parliament already voted and the democratic will of the Canadian people had been expressed. The call came again from the House to please ban the IRGC and list it as a terrorist entity. Apparently, it fell on deaf ears. Would it take the IRGC murdering “woman, life, freedom” activists, such as Mahsa Amini, to finally bring in a ban on the IRGC? I always thought, because I heard the Prime Minister say this back in 2015, that the government had a feminist foreign policy. Where is it? The IRGC murdered activists in cold blood. The calls came out again from this democratic institution to ban the IRGC and do the right thing. The government said we have to responsibly list, whatever that means. What will it take for the Prime Minister to act responsibly? Would it take Iran and the IRGC orchestrating a terror attack in Israel in which 1,200 innocent Israeli civilians were killed and 250 others were kidnapped? Our friend, democratic ally Israel, gets attacked and its people slaughtered in their own homes. I know this because I walked among those homes. When I was in Israel in November, I walked through the burned, shot-up and blackened homes of Kibbutz Kfar Aza and saw the devastation that Hamas, the Iranian IRGC proxy, wrought on the innocent civilians of Israel. Would it take something such as that for the Liberal government to finally decide to ban the IRGC? Apparently, it would not. How about 700 IRGC agents across the country harassing Persian and Jewish communities? Mr. Speaker, imagine a circumstance in which Iran decided to send 170 armed drones from its territory directly to Israel. Such a scenario seems unimaginable. Would it make the government finally realize that it is time to ban the IRGC? What if Iran sent 30 cruise missiles or 120 ballistic missiles? What if such an eventuality took place? What if it did something so heinous to our friend and ally Israel? However, Iran did do it. It did it on Saturday night, on Shabbat in Israel, because it wants to kill Jews. It wants to do that directly and indirectly, through proxies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. That is Iran's goal, and Canada, as an ally of the only democratic state in the Middle East, has a moral obligation to stand up and do the right thing. Again, what is this “responsibly list” business? Some will say there are some low-level IRGC conscripts who are living in Canada now; surely we should not do anything that would hurt them. What about the fact that our own citizens and our allies are being hurt? I have my doubts that this is the issue, because all they have really said in the last six years is that we need to look out for these poor conscripts who really had nothing to do with the conflict other than the fact they spent a year in the IRGC. However, if this is actually the reason, then let us find a solution to that problem, but not doing anything at this point is simply not an option. I also want to briefly talk about the horrendous motion the Liberals and the NDP in the House gave a standing ovation to themselves for a couple of weeks ago. It did not punish the IRGC. We can imagine punishing the IRGC, which would make sense. It did not punish Hamas. The motion punished Israel. There was a motion passed by the House that actually punished Israel and rewarded Hamas. It punished Israel by reinstating funding to UNRWA, which is a subject of a whole other debate, but UNRWA employees were complicit and acted directly in the slaughter of Israeli citizens on that day. We should not be funding organizations that fund terror. What else did the motion do? It banned arms sales. What foresight. What a brilliant move that the House of Commons would vote to ban arms sales to our friend and ally Israel. We ban arms sales to Israel and now Iran shoots cruise missiles, drones and ballistic missiles at Israel. The Prime Minister says that we stand with Israel and that it has a right to defend itself, but we are not going to sell it any arms. What a hypocrite. Such a level of hypocrisy has never before been seen in the House, and it cannot stand. I would like to ask for unanimous consent for the following motion: “That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order, or usual practices of the House, the motion to concur— Some hon. members: No.

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Context: House Hansard - 299 - Apr/15/24

Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

Apr/15/24 6:06:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for the better part of the afternoon, we have been talking about what has gone on over the last six years, and the fact that the House expressed its view in banning the IRGC as a terrorist organization six years ago. We have not seen any action by the government at all. I am just wondering if my hon. colleague wants to speculate on or perhaps provide the real reason the Liberals are not deeming the IRGC a terrorist entity.

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Context: House Hansard - 299 - Apr/15/24

Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC)

Apr/15/24 6:07:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising to support concurrence of the 21st report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, a report that touches on the human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is a report that draws attention of these abuses to the government in the hope that the government would act. We are having this debate here in the House on this very issue in the aftermath of the Iranian regime's attack on the State of Israel this past weekend. I think it is a timely debate for us to have. I hope members of the House will support concurrence of this report. It also allows us to draw attention to the gross human rights abuses and the violations of international law that the Iranian regime has been perpetrating in recent years. In particular, we need to draw attention to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a key part of the state apparatus of the leaders in Tehran. It permeates its security apparatus internally in Iran and its military. It is an entity that we believe should be listed as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code of Canada. Six years ago, in June 2018, the House adopted a motion calling on the Government of Canada to immediately list the IRGC as a terrorist entity. It has been six long years since the House adopted that motion, since members of the ministry of the government, including the Prime Minister, voted for that motion. However, here we are, six years later, and in the intervening years, the IRGC has continued to promulgate its ruthless and vicious campaign persecuting Iranians in Iran, including people such Nasrin Sotoudeh, an esteemed human rights advocate in Iran, and its campaign of destabilizing the region by attacking liberal democracies, such as the State of Israel. It also continues to attack Canadian interests here at home. It was in January 2020, some four years ago, when the IRGC fired a missile at Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, which killed dozens and dozens of Canadian citizens. Those families continue to mourn the loss of their loved ones to this day. They were people who held such promise in their future contributions to this country, whose lives will never be known and who will never be able to make a contribution to this country. We have had these things happen over the last six years, yet the government continues to stubbornly refuse to take the leadership to list the organization as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code, despite the fact that the Prime Minister himself has called the IRGC a terrorist organization. Despite the fact that the government has labelled it as such, it still refuses to take the ministerial authority they are entrusted with under the Criminal Code to list the entity as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. The reason this is so very important is that it would allow FINTRAC and our other investigative bodies, such as the RCMP, our provincial police forces of jurisdiction, our CSIS intelligence analysts and operatives, who all work so hard to keep our country safe each and every day, to have another tool to prosecute the flows of money that are so often associated with the threats the IRGC presents, both to the people of Iran in that region and to Canadians here at home. Iran is subject to vast sanctions regimes. That makes it very difficult for the Islamic Republic of Iran to get the cash it needs to operate. The flows of money that so often accompany the threats that we see, both here and in the region, are essential in cutting off the ability of the IRGC to function. However, our security forces here in Canada, our intelligence agencies here in Canada and our police forces of jurisdiction have one hand tied behind their backs because they are not allowed to go after people in Canada who are helping the IRGC with flows of money, whether it is helping them clandestinely sell oil on the black market to fund the projects they want to fund or whether it is going to proxy agents of the IRGC who are operating here on Canadian soil and threatening Canadian citizens, doing so with resources they have clandestinely been provided with. These are the reasons we need to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity. We are calling on the government to do exactly that in the context of the shooting down of Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, in the context of the attack this past weekend by the IRGC on the State of Israel and in light of its gross human rights abuses and imprisonment of people such as Nasrin Sotoudeh and so many other people in Iran. We have a government that says it supports the motion that was adopted in the House some six years ago, a government that calls the IRGC a terrorist entity, and a government that still refuses to list the entity as a terrorist organization under the Criminal Code of Canada. In response to the government's reasons for not listing the IRGC, which is that it is worried about capturing innocent individuals who are compelled to join the IRGC while they are in Iran, its members forget the fact that there is prosecutorial discretion here in Canada. Crown prosecutors have the discretion about whether or not to pursue charges under a terrorist entity listing under the Criminal Code of Canada. Their explanations for why they continue to refuse to list this entity does not make any sense, and we are calling on them to support this concurrence motion and list the IRGC as a terrorist entity.

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