44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 15, 2024 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I move that the 18th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, presented to the House on Wednesday, December 6, 2023, be concurred in.
I rise once again to speak about the urgent need to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization, to shut down its operations in Canada, to protect our friends and allies around the world, but also to protect ourselves.
I am sharing my time, Mr. Speaker, with my friend and colleague, the member for Thornhill. I am very much looking forward to her remarks on this important motion to concur in a report from the justice committee that calls for, among other things, the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.
Canadians have been anxiously following the news from the Middle East this weekend. The regime in Tehran launched a massive attack on the State of Israel. This attack follows the October 7 attacks, in which the Tehran-backed Hamas terrorist group brutally tortured, raped and killed many Israelis. We again condemn these attacks and we call for the release of all hostages.
Many have correctly identified, then and since, the role that the regime in Iran has played, supporting and backing Hamas. These far-away cowards seek to use the pain of the Palestinian people to advance their violent ends. Like Hamas's own leaders safely away in Qatar, the regime in Iran wants to attack Israel through proxies and with the maximal use of civilian human shields, while minimizing the risk to themselves. In this context, therefore, it is legitimate for Israel to take the fight against terrorism directly to Hamas's IRGC guides and paymasters, wherever they live.
As I have said many times, the Conservatives seek a two-state solution, in which Israelis and Palestinians could each pursue security and economic development through democratic, responsive and pluralistic self-governing institutions.
Let us be very clear that Hamas and IRGC terrorists do not want a two-state solution. They want to perpetually use the Palestinian situation as their justification for pursuing their selfish ends. The negotiated final status agreement that we hope for would in reality be the worst nightmare of these extremists, because these extremists thrive only in the midst of conflict and violence.
In the course of this weekend's events, it is worth recognizing and celebrating the effectiveness of Israel's defences. Israel's defensive technology is what has allowed the world's only Jewish state to survive as a state, facing constant existential threats from hostile forces. If people believe in Israel's right to defend itself, then they obviously must also have to believe in Israel's ability to procure the weapons that are necessary to defend itself. If people oppose the sale of weapons to Israel, then it is hard to make the case that they also believe in Israel's right to defend itself.
While recognizing the effectiveness of those Israeli defences, it is very important to recognize the vital contributions and collaboration of some of Israel's Arab neighbours, neighbours who have disagreements with Israel on various subjects but who are collaborating in the pursuit of peace and of shared security interests. There is a fundamental alignment between Israel and many of its neighbours, who are moving toward greater co-operation in response to the aggressive and colonial agenda of the regime in Iran. I hope that this will provide the basis for continuing and growing collaboration, and enhanced dialogue on a range of issues.
We know how many Muslim-majority states in the region have been victimized as a result of the horrific violence coming from the regime in Tehran. We could speak about Lebanon, about Syria, about Afghanistan, about Yemen, about the civil wars that are unfolding because of proxies that are sponsored by the regime in Tehran. We could speak about the support that the Taliban have received from the terrorist regime in Tehran, the destabilizing effect of Hezbollah in Lebanon and many other examples; the general capricious disregard that the regime in Tehran has shown for the peoples of all nations in the region; the constant genocidal demonization of Israel but also violence against all peoples in the region and around the world.
Needless to say, the fact that this attack was largely thwarted does not mean that it should be shrugged off or dismissed as merely symbolic. Indeed, the regime in Iran intended to break through Israel's defences and intended to wreak havoc. It will try again. It will try in other ways, as it did on October 7.
The regime in Tehran will continue to try to acquire more sophisticated and dangerous technology, including nuclear weapons, with which to attack Israel, with which to attack other peoples in the region and with which to threaten the security of all freedom-loving peoples wherever they live.
The events of this weekend underline why the Conservatives have been persistently calling on the government to recognize that the IRGC is a terrorist organization and therefore must not be allowed to operate in Canada. The call to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization means, quite simply, that we would use all our resources to shut down any possibility of this regime operating in Canada. If it is a listed terrorist organization, it is not able to recruit, fundraise or promote its ideology in Canada. This, especially after the events of this weekend, is the least we can do.
However, it did not take the events of this weekend for the Conservatives and for many other Canadians to realize that the IRGC must be listed as a terrorist organization. I put forward a motion in the House to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization six years ago, and this was before many of the events we have seen since, about which I will speak. The case was already clear six years ago and, at the time, the Liberals, including the Prime Minister, voted in favour of that motion. They voted in favour of it and said they were thinking about it. Six years later, they still say they are thinking about it, yet they have refused to act.
Since that vote in the House of Commons six years ago, we have had the shooting down of flight PS752, an event of great personal significance for many of my colleagues from the Edmonton area. We have had the opportunity to, year after year, go to memorials, meet with families and to hear the stories of pain and grief from these many Canadian families that have lost loved ones. Canadian citizens were murdered when the IRGC shot down a civilian aircraft leaving Tehran, flight PS752, yet that still was not enough for the government to recognize that the IRGC is a terrorist organization.
Since then, we have lived through the murder of Mahsa Amini and the “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement. The Iranian people again, as they have in years and decades past, have taken to the streets, calling for change and seeking the same things we so often take for granted in Canada, the protection of their fundamental freedoms. The Iranian people are such heroes. They are such an inspiration to so many members. In spite of the sacrifice of those protesters and in spite of the murder and torture we have seen targeting the people of Iran, the people whom this regime supposedly governs, the Canadian government has refused to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. It is utterly shameful.
How much more violence do we have to see and how much more has to be done by this terrorist regime before the Canadian government finally recognizes and lists it as a terrorist organization?
There are the civil wars in Yemen and Syria; terrorists operating systematically outside of the law in Lebanon and Iraq; the brutal suppression of the Iranian people; attacks on Israel; the murder of Canadians and foreign-backed extremism in Canada; intimidation of members of the heroic, patriotic Iranian diaspora community in Canada; yet the NDP-Liberal government persists in failing to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
We have actually put forward a private member's bill, Bill C-350, a bill that would list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and would take further steps to hold the regime accountable, yet the Liberals have blocked efforts to expedite that bill.
Therefore, we are putting this question before the House again with our efforts to concur in this motion, which calls for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization and for additional steps to protect Canadians from foreign-state-backed interference and to protect victims of violent extremism. This motion passed unanimously at the justice committee, and I hope it will pass the House when it comes to a vote.
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- Apr/15/24 3:40:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to this important motion because of what we witnessed this weekend.
There was the delay of the government to say anything at all on following our allies and at least condemning this in a reasonable amount of time. We did not see that.
I ask members to imagine being part of a government that six years ago voted in favour of listing the IRGC, to imagine seeing what happened this weekend with 300 projectiles being fired directly on a democratic ally, to imagine being part of a government when the Saudis were better allies to our friend and democratic partner than the Government of Canada has been, and to imagine getting up in the House to say that the motion today is not an important motion to debate after witnessing 300 projectiles directly fired on a friend and democratic ally. Members do not have to imagine it. It just happened.
There has been six years of foot-dragging. The question has been asked hundreds of times in the House as to what day and at what time the government is going to list and ban the IRGC terrorists, who are operating openly in our country. Today, in the House, the answer was exactly the same. The government is trying, consulting and working on it. This has been the answer for six years, yet the Prime Minister himself got up and voted to ban the IRGC.
Today the mullahs in Iran and their proxies are fighting wars that kill Canadians. They killed hostages with Canadian citizenship. They killed 55 Canadians in the downing of flight PS752, 30 of whom were permanent residents. Since 2015, the government has done nothing but appease the mullahs in Iran. The Prime Minister himself met with the foreign minister, bowing his head in respect, in 2016, not even a year after the flight went down. It was absolutely disgusting to watch.
There are communities all over the country that know that operatives of the regime openly spend money. They have blood money to buy homes and assets in this country. Their kids go to school at universities here. The flood gates are open. We know that they intimidate Canadians in every single neighbourhood. We know that the chief of police of Tehran worked out in at GoodLife Fitness in midtown Toronto. We know that senior members of the regime are eating steak dinners in fancy restaurants in Toronto openly, with impunity. This is after eight years of the government.
The worst is what we saw in the streets of Toronto. At the very moment the projectile missiles fired on a democratic friend and ally, there was celebration and jubilation in the streets of our biggest cities. There was a failure to denounce that by a party that we know is capable of denouncing all kinds of protests in this country. If its members were at all concerned with the desecration of a statue in front of Parliament and said nothing about what has happening in our streets, the mobs of protesters with covered faces brandishing swastikas, I cannot help them.
However, what we can do today, as a country, is to ban the open operations, the ability to raise money and organize, of the IRGC terrorists who live among us, and there are at least 700 who we know about in this country, yet we get the same answers over and again. The government has been asked no less than 100 times in the House, and the answer is always the same. They say that they take terrorism seriously, that they are working on it and that they are looking into it. It has been six years.
If this weekend and the events from this weekend have not changed that answer, then we have a really big problem with the government. We have a really big problem with how it treats terrorism, how it treats national security in this country and how it treats the very communities who elect its members to come here. We also have a problem with members of Parliament from the other side, particularly the member of Parliament for Richmond Hill, who meets with agents of the IRGC in his office. It is open, and it is known. I will say it inside of the House and outside of the House. His community knows that, and it is shameful. The fact that the answer is the same today, that they are working on it or they are looking at different ways to do it, is absolutely shameful.
The 700 IRGC agents we know about who we have living in this country, and there are potentially more, intimidate Canadians every single day. They intimidate Canadians in neighbourhoods right across the GTA and in North Vancouver. We hear them. Our own conversations with them happen sometimes with a blurred out background because they are so scared about making the call to somebody in government or their MP for help that they blur out the background. They sit in their car away from their home because they are terrified of the intimidation that they face here.
There are thousands of Iranian Canadians, freedom-loving Iranian Canadians, who fled that regime to find safety and a better life here in Canada. Their expectation from their government is that they will be kept safe and free of intimidation, be able to go to school and to work, and be able to talk to their MP from their home without being terrified of being watched by the regime. That is what we are dealing with in Canada. That is what the community is dealing with in Canada. Those people have said so, and they continue to call on the government, after six years of it doing nothing to at least list these operatives as the terrorists they are.
Today in Canada, they can raise money, have meetings and organize. This is the Islamic regime in Iran that has been fighting proxy wars against our ally until the direct attack on the weekend. This is the regime in Iran that has funded Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. This is the most destabilizing force in all of the Middle East and one of the most destabilizing forces in the entire world. The very fact that the government answers the question in the same way today as it has for the last six years, and for two years before that, is a darn shame because there are people in this country who want to see the government take national security and terrorism seriously. It is about time that it do that. It is about time that it does that for every single freedom-loving Canadian who sees what is going on in their streets, where the progressive left has been co-opted by the Iranian regime with things like Al-Quds Day, which is funded entirely by the mullahs in Iran to destabilize our own streets here.
It is unbelieve that the Liberals' answer after six years is exactly the same. They say, “We are working on it. We are going to do it. We have a tough sanctions regime on Iran.” They do not even know how many operatives are here. They do not know how many people they are going to put on their list because they do not have a list. If they did have a list, they would produce that list. It is a government that does not take terrorism seriously. It is a government that does not take national security seriously. Soon there will be a government that does, but until then, the Liberals can do one thing. They can ban the IRGC from organizing, from fundraising and from living freely here and intimidating our own citizens. That is what this motion calls on, and I hope the Liberals vote in favour of it.
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- Apr/15/24 4:55:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing my colleague spoke about was the use of concurrence debates to do this important work, and it is very important work that we undertake. In just a few weeks, in fact, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development will be looking at Iran, will be studying this and will be bringing forward the minister to talk about how we can do this in a way that protects those who are conscripted. That is where we should be having this debate. That is a meaningful way that we can ensure Canada is doing what needs to be done to make sure that Iran, the IRGC, who are very clearly terrorists, has its leadership punished, yet those who might be innocent are not. I wonder if she could comment on that.
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- Apr/15/24 5:21:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I look forward to participating in this debate this evening.
I want to just say very quickly that I do not think a concurrence debate is the appropriate place for this debate to be happening. As I mentioned earlier tonight, I moved, over a year ago, a motion at the foreign affairs committee to look at this exact issue. In fact, in just a number of weeks we will be undertaking that study within the foreign affairs committee to look at this in a fulsome way and have an opportunity to hear from experts, hear from witnesses and hear from Iranian Canadians who have been impacted in our communities across this country.
Today, I want to start by telling a bit of a story. When I was elected in 2019, we were all sworn in in November. We had very little time in December before the House rose. I went home for Christmas holidays, like all of my colleagues did. Then, on January 8, 2020, flight PS752 was shot out of the sky by the terrorist regime in Iran. There were 176 innocent people on that flight. Fifty-five of them were Canadian. We had 30 permanent residents. Many of those individuals were from Edmonton, and particularly from Edmonton Strathcona. The University of Alberta was deeply impacted. It was the first event as a parliamentarian that I needed to deal with. I cannot say how difficult it was and how much grief my community felt.
The difficulty I had while sitting in the university's biggest auditorium for the memorial service that we held for the victims from Edmonton made that probably one of the hardest days I have ever spent. I sat with members from all parties for that memorial. I cried with Liberal members and I cried with Conservative members because it was such a devastating day for our community and it continues to be. I gather with the Iranian Edmonton community every year to mark that terrible day and to remember the beautiful souls who we lost that day.
In addition, it has been one and a half years since the horrific killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini and since the start of the “women, life, freedom” uprising in Iran. Over the past year and a half, we have been witness to the immense bravery of Iranian women, who are fighting for their rights, for their human rights and for Iranians around the world who have raised their voices, and their allies who have marched with them in the streets and who have raised their voices for the people of Iran, so that Iranians do not have to live under the tyranny of the terrorist organization that is the IRGC.
We are very clear that this is something that Canada must and can do more for. We have condemned, as New Democrats, the brutality against the Iranian people, including the hundreds of unlawful killings and executions, the tens of thousands of arbitrary arrests, widespread torture, including rape of detainees, and attacks on women and girls who defy the discriminatory compulsory veiling laws. In fact, as a country with a feminist foreign policy, we must do everything we can. I have talked about that policy often. We have never seen it, but we have been told that it exists.
I was so pleased last spring. I had put my name forward to sponsor a political prisoner in Iran. One of my dear friends from Edmonton, Mohammed, came to me. He asked if I would be willing to sponsor this Iranian prisoner, Armita Abbasi, a young, beautiful, vibrant woman who was in detention and had been tortured simply because she was trying to stand up for her own rights. I was delighted to be able to sponsor her. Imagine how happy I was when she was released from prison, when she was given back her freedom and was able to escape from the terrorists, the IRGC.
We need to make changes to the Canadian foreign policy. I will admit that it should have happened years ago and it is appalling that it has taken so long for the government to take action, particularly after PS752 and after the “women, life, freedom” movement began.
I will say we cannot make foreign policy based on concurrence debates. We need to do the work. That is part of what we do as parliamentarians. We need to look at this issue. We need to bring experts in. We need to examine it. We need to make sure we are making the right decision, because the worst thing we could do is make innocent people be punished by their own government, the IRGC, and then punished again if we are not careful in how we make sure those conscripted people are protected.
We, of course, want to see the IRGC, especially its leadership, declared as terrorists. We have been calling for it for some time, but we need to do the work. We need to do foreign policy carefully and thoughtfully, and make sure that no innocent people are caught up in the terrible things that have been done by the IRGC. There needs to be a robust commitment from the Canadian government to act on this, but it needs to be done thoughtfully and it needs to be done with the urgency this requires.
In remembrance of Mahsa Zhina Amini, of the countless innocent lives that have been taken and of those in prison, New Democrats express our profound solidarity and support for the Iranian people. I think we can all say that the events of the last several weeks have highlighted that we are at a dangerous moment in time in the Middle East. Certainly, we must impose stronger sanctions on the IRGC and Iranian regime. We must end Iran's support for terrorism in the region.
Time and time again, I have stood in this place and said that Hamas is a terrorist organization. That is very clear. Hansard is extraordinarily clear on this. Just like I have said, time and time again, that Canada has an obligation to adhere to international law. We also have an obligation as Canadians, and people expect us as Canadians, to do what we can to de-escalate war and to protect civilians and children. That is what people in our communities want from us. That is what our foreign policy should be doing.
What we are seeing in the Middle East right now is horrifying. There are more than 13,000 children who have lost their lives. We have to continue to call for a ceasefire. We have to continue to put pressure on all actors in the region, including Israel, to de-escalate tensions at a time when civilians are the ones paying the price. Let us be clear: The escalation of tensions in the Middle East will do nothing but cause increased pain for those who are most vulnerable right now.
Again, I would urge the government to come to the foreign affairs committee and the opposition parties to come to the foreign affairs committee. Let us sit down and do this important work. It has been over a year since my motion calling for the examination of Canada's, the Canadian government's, refusal for the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist entity; of the connections between people or assets in Canada and the IRGC; and of paths forward to support Iranian human rights activists, artists, journalists and other political refugees. The motion asked that the committee invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs to testify, as well as additional witnesses submitted by members of the committee, and that the committee report its findings back to the House.
This is important work. Canada has an important role to play. Historically, we have been able to play that role and we have been missing in action. Iranian Canadians expect this from us. Iranian people around the world expect this from us. There is more that we can do. This is not the opportunity for that, but we will look at this in the foreign affairs committee and we will expect our government to act.
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