Hon. Leo Housakos: My question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate. In his speech on Tuesday morning Senator Gold said: “. . . I think the government is owed a certain degree of deference vis-à-vis the security assessment it has made.” Every honourable senator can see the security situation on Monday night when the votes were taken in the other place was just as it was on Wednesday afternoon when the Prime Minister reversed himself. The state of the blockade, the protesters and the border were all the same. We were told that we owe the government deference, but everyone could see the reality of the situation for themselves. We also saw yesterday a number of Trudeau-appointed senators standing on their feet in this place defending these Draconian measures and, of course, they were seeing enemies of the state lurking around every corner.

So, leader, what will be the impact of this sorry episode if, God forbid, Canada faces a real catastrophe in a week, in a month, in a year? How will pulling out the sledgehammer in this instance help if we’re to face a truly national emergency?

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, my wish is not to belittle you. You know I have the utmost personal respect for you. But we have a Prime Minister — and the facts remain — who is ill‑equipped to lead this country in a time of crisis, who is ill‑equipped and doesn’t have the desire to unite Canadians, who has done nothing but provoke and stoke the flames of division and that’s the reality. He had had his Government Representative — I feel sorry for that Government Representative on his feet in this place yesterday — defending something which, minutes later while you were defending it, he pulled the plug on. That speaks volumes. That speaks volumes for many others who were defending that yesterday while he was pulling the plug on you.

The problems facing Canada and facing the world today are profoundly serious. We see that there’s massive inflation going on, Canadian families are struggling. We see what’s happening in Ukraine. We know the threat of China on our country and our Western democracies. And the Prime Minister at this particular point in time has lost international credibility.

Where is the leadership, Senator Gold? Where is the Prime Minister’s sense of personal responsibility for all that has happened over the last few weeks? Does the Prime Minister believe this is yet another learning experience for everyone except himself? When will this government take any accountability in either one of these chambers?

Hon. Leo Housakos introduced Bill S-237, An Act to establish the Foreign Influence Registry and to amend the Criminal Code.

(Bill read first time.)

Hon. Leo Housakos moved second reading of Bill S-204, An Act to amend the Customs Tariff (goods from Xinjiang).

He said: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-204, An Act to amend the Customs Tariff.

This bill is very straightforward. It seeks to amend the Customs Tariff Act to prohibit the importation of any and all goods produced in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

Some of you may be asking why I’m proposing this be done by the Parliament of Canada; others may wonder if it’s necessary given current law; and others may wonder about retaliation, so I would like to address each and every one of those issues.

First, why am I proposing this ban? The answer is simple — because of the mounting evidence that a genocide is being committed in that region by the Communist Party of China, and it’s being committed for no reason other than the people indigenous to the region are Muslims. They’re being raped, enslaved, tortured and murdered because they’re Muslim, full stop.

Integrated with this genocide is incontrovertible evidence that hundreds of thousands — perhaps up to 1 million — members of the Uighur minority are being compelled to engage in forced labour for the benefit of the Communist authorities and for the benefit of businesses that are implicated in this activity.

In my view, by not taking action, by remaining silent, we are being complicit — even if inadvertently — in the face of this outcry, and that is not who we are as Canadians. This bill is necessary to single out and further expose what may be the most serious violation of human rights occurring in our world today.

I will begin by quoting from only a few of the many eye witnesses testifying to what has been happening in Xinjiang.

Rukiye Turdush is a Canadian citizen who emigrated from China to Canada in the 1990s. She has testified that her brother was killed by Chinese soldiers in 1992, and she has talked about the brave decision she took to leave China in the 1990s. She has spoken about being expelled at gunpoint with her baby from her Beijing hotel room for no other reason than because she was a Uighur.

She has spoken openly about the continued harassment she has experienced, even here in Canada, at the hands of those who are in the service of, or supportive of, Chinese Communist authorities.

She has been harassed because of what she has dared to say about the repression that has accelerated since 2017, and I quote:

Since 2017 [the Chinese government] started to arrest everyone in East Turkestan [otherwise known as Xinjiang] . . . I asked my dad, how many of them are inside, and he said, you have to count how many are outside, because all of them are inside.

Mrs. Turdush’s accounts are hardly unique.

The BBC has reported accounts of systematic rape and torture in those camps, and countless reports of rape and sexual abuse have been catalogued by human rights organizations.

Canada’s own former minister of justice and attorney general, Irwin Cotler, has argued that in his view the Peoples Republic of China has committed every one of the five acts found in the United Nations Genocide Convention. Mr. Cotler stated:

Uyghurs suffer unlivable conditions, torture, and sexual violence inside the camps, and are subjected to institutionalized enslavement across China. Since 2017, the Chinese government has forcibly transferred Uyghur children — many of them ‘orphaned’ as a result of losing both parents to internment or forced labour — to a network of state-run facilities in Han Chinese settings.

In other words, the minority population is in the forced service of China’s ethnic majority.

Mr. Cotler further states:

The government is simultaneously subjecting Uyghurs to systematic mass forced sterilization and coercive birth‑prevention policies, destroying the group’s reproductive capacity.

. . . Senior officials have issued orders to “eradicate tumors,” “round up everyone,” “wipe them out completely” . . . .

Other Canadians have also witnessed first-hand what is going on in Xinjiang.

[Translation]

Canadians Gary and Andrea Dyck lived in the Xinjiang region from 2007 to 2018. They told Agence France-Presse what they saw when they arrived in China.

They noted that the traditional Uighur neighbourhoods had started to be dismantled and residents were being relocated to buildings far from their communities — and then the measures started to escalate. The couple said that in 2016 there was an increase in police presence, with checkpoints at all major intersections and more security cameras in the cities.

[English]

They personally saw the internment camps being built. Gary Dyck stated:

As the camps were being built, and people were being taken away months later, there was no pushback, there was no fight because there was so much security and they were overwhelmed as a people.

One detention centre was built close to their home. They described it as having a wall 15 feet high, topped with barbed wire and monitored by security cameras as well as guard patrols.

Gary said:

A few of our (then) 15-year-old son’s friends were turning 18 soon, and they were fearful because they would be legal age and they were wondering if they were going to be taken to these camps next, and so they were actually dreading turning 18.

Where (else) in the world does a 17-year-old dread turning 18?

We just felt we were living in a huge penitentiary.

I very much regret to say, colleagues, that the body of evidence supporting this very disturbing assertion is considerable.

I want to quote from what international human rights organizations, who have been cataloguing the witnesses’ testimony, have told us. Last June, Amnesty International released a 160-page report on the scope of the repression. That report concluded:

Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region face systematic state-organized mass imprisonment, torture and persecution amounting to crimes against humanity . . .

Other research work carried out by Human Rights Watch, together with Stanford University’s Law School, found that the Chinese government has committed — and continues to commit — crimes against humanity against the Turkic Muslim people. Human Rights Watch noted that under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ICC, crimes against humanity:

. . . serious specified offenses that are knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population.

Crimes against humanity are considered among the gravest human rights abuses under international law. The specific crimes against humanity documented in this report include imprisonment or other deprivation of liberty in violation of international law; persecution of an identifiable ethnic or religious group; enforced disappearance; torture; murder; and alleged inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to mental or physical health, notably forced labor and sexual violence.

Here in Canada, in 2021 the NGO Above Ground published a study on forced labour around the world. As part of its study, it found that in Xinjiang Chinese communist authorities have sent:

. . . hundreds of thousands of the region’s Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic minorities, who are predominantly Muslim, to detention camps to have their thoughts “transformed.” Survivors of camps report being kept in crowded dorms, deprived of food, forbidden from praying or speaking their language, and harshly punished for transgressions.

The study noted that Chinese authorities have also allegedly:

. . . transferred hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority citizens, including former detainees, into involuntary work placements across China.

The workers are said to have little choice but to comply given the ever-present threat of extrajudicial detention.

Also, last year, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights released a report by more than 50 independent global experts in international law. The report concluded:

. . . the People’s Republic of China . . . bears state responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs, in breach of the Genocide Convention.

Colleagues, democratic states and international organizations are taking note of these reports. Last June, the White House issued the following statement:

. . . The United States believes that state-sponsored forced labour in Xinjiang is both an affront to human dignity and an example of the PRC’s unfair economic practices. The PRC’s use of forced labour in Xinjiang is an integral part of its systematic abuses against the Uyghur population and other ethnic and religious minority groups, and addressing these abuses will remain a high priority for the Biden-Harris administration. These systematic abuses go beyond forced labour to include sexual violence and large-scale detentions, and the PRC continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in turn, has stated the following in relation to the position of the British Government:

We are seriously concerned about the widespread and systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang. These violations include — but are not limited to — the extrajudicial internment of over 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities; severe restrictions on culture, religion and language; pervasive surveillance and monitoring; the use of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities as forced labour; and the enforcement of birth prevention policies.

Evidence of gross human rights violations and extra-judicial detention and forced labour has been growing, including leaks of China’s own classified internal documents.

Colleagues, a December 2020 Resolution by the European Parliament states:

. . . the suffering of the Uyghurs also extends to the younger generation . . . young children have been sent to state-run orphanages even if only one of their parents has been detained in the internment camps . . . by the end of 2019, over 880,000 Uyghur children had been placed in boarding facilities . . .

[Translation]

The resolution of the European Parliament also emphasizes the Orwellian nature of the Chinese government’s surveillance measures, namely, and I quote:

 . . . measures to ensure the ‘comprehensive supervision’ of Xianjiang through the installation of Skynet electronic surveillance in major urban areas and GPS trackers in all motor vehicles, the use of facial recognition scanners at checkpoints and train and petrol stations, using software based on artificial intelligence camera systems aimed at identifying Uyghurs and other members of ethnic minority groups . . .

Finally, I would like to mention a statement issued this June by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the findings of human rights experts. It referred directly to, and I quote:

 . . . exploitative working and abusive living conditions that may constitute arbitrary detention, human trafficking, forced labour and enslavement by the use of forced labour.

It also recognized the following, and I quote:

 . . . hundreds of thousands of members of the Uyghur minority have been held in “re-education” facilities. Many have also reportedly been forcibly transferred to work in factories in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and in other Chinese provinces.

“Uyghur workers have allegedly been forcibly employed in low-skilled, labor-intensive industries, such as agribusiness, textile and garment, automotive and technological sectors” . . .

[English]

Colleagues, this is the evidence we have before us, and it is evidence that both world bodies and democratic countries are acknowledging as credible.

I submit that what is happening in Xinjiang should terrify us all the more because the actions we are hearing about now are consistent with actions that Communist authorities in the People’s Republic have taken for many years. My intent is not to be inflammatory or dramatic, but I believe we need to be honest when it comes to the historical record, because the historical record helps us to fully comprehend what is happening in Xinjiang today.

The Chinese Communist Party has ruled mainland China for more than 70 years. The generally accepted fact is, in that period of time, it has murdered between 30 and 45 million people. Some argue that the number is even higher. No one will likely ever know the precise number. It doesn’t matter what the exact number is; it is horrifying.

[Translation]

The thing that concerns us in the history of the Communist Party is that the regime that committed these acts is still in power today. It has never been held accountable for its actions. We have nonetheless decided to strengthen our relationship with that regime. I wonder why. I imagine that we wanted to believe the regime would change on its own, that it would recognize the need to change. Although it now says mistakes were made in the past, this does not change one of the core guiding principles of the regime, specifically, that any action to defend the interests of the Communist Party is justified.

This fundamental position is what makes what is happening in Xinjiang so terrifying. That is why we cannot simply turn a blind eye yet again. We cannot convince ourselves that the regime will change on its own. It has sent a clear message that it does not believe it needs to change. That is the difference between what is happening in Xinjiang and what is happened to residential school survivors in Canada, for those who want to make that comparison. I would say that it is because of our own history and the deeply rooted repercussions that are still felt today, that we feel compelled to denounce the situation when we see it elsewhere.

[English]

Unlike Canada, the Communist regime in China doesn’t believe it is doing anything wrong. They believe their actions are justified. A few months ago, published secret remarks reportedly delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping show his active engagement in the actions being carried out in Xinjiang today.

According to The Guardian newspaper, the leaked documents include three speeches delivered by the Chinese president in April 2014. These reference security, population control and the need to punish the Uighur population. Some of these leaked documents were reportedly marked “top secret.”

The transcript of one speech from May 2014 quotes President Xi as saying that the Communist Party “must not hesitate or waver in the use of the weapons of the people’s democratic dictatorship and focus our energy on executing a crushing blow” against the forces of so-called religious extremism in Xinjiang. When one considers the history of the Communist Party in China, these remarks are chilling.

Last year, when my motion concerning the genocide of the Uighurs was considered in this chamber, it was rejected by the majority — which I think was a shame. I believe part of that is because there has not been a full appreciation as to the scope of what has been happening in Xinjiang. Perhaps it is because we have been so hopeful for a People’s Republic of China that, with time, would more closely resemble our values, that we have lost sight of what the Communist regime has done in the past and of what it is capable of doing today.

As I have said, the regime has never been held to account for its past atrocities, yet there appears to be a tendency to forget them.

Recall that our Prime Minister once called Communist China the country he admired most in the world. I’m not recalling that remark in an attempt to be cheeky — it shows our naïveté and misguided approach. I cite it as an example of that naïveté, engendered by the blind eye that we turn to this history of the Communist Party of China — a naïveté that I find extremely worrisome and dangerous. This naïveté has even given rise to a belief that there is a moral equivalence between democratic states and tyrannical regimes.

In this regard, last June, the former leader of the government spoke of the supposed “tone of moral superiority and self-righteousness contained in the motion,” in reference to my motion concerning the Uighur genocide.

The argument that somehow, because Canada has not been perfect, we then have no right to judge what is taking place in Xinjiang today, is one of the most morally paralyzed responses I’ve ever heard.

As I said earlier, it is because of our own history of residential schools and the ongoing damage and trauma caused by them that Canada is not only well positioned but is actually obligated to call out and take action against what is happening to the Uighur people.

Imagine the consequences for the entire world were such a position adopted during the 1930s. Could we have ever opposed the rise of fascism?

Then there is the naive — if not spurious — argument that we must “engage” with the Chinese regime and help them understand that the path they are on will not be successful for them.

My colleague Senator Woo made this very argument last June, saying that he preferred to seek to convince the Communist regime that their methods are unlikely to achieve a successful outcome. As I said, spurious or, at the very least, extremely naive.

With all due respect, Senator Woo, I would perhaps be disquieted had I been one of the senators who, last June, was complimented by the Chinese ambassador as “people of vision,” people who were described by the ambassador as having “seen through the despicable schemes of a few anti-China forces.”

The regime does not acknowledge the truth, or even the facts, of what is going on in Xinjiang. How, then, are we to somehow convince them to change their ways?

I fear that our government’s own moral ambivalence — by abstaining on a motion in the House of Commons last year that condemned the Uighur genocide — has only encouraged further repression. There are not many Western governments, colleagues, that have refused to recognize what is going on there as a genocide. The Canadian government continues to refuse.

[Translation]

What is happening in Xinjiang is reminiscent of similar actions we’ve seen from this regime in the past, and it is terrifying. Much has been written about what the Chinese Communist Party’s ultimate goals in Xinjiang might be. Is it simply to suppress and eradicate a minority culture? Does it have a broader objective, for example, to replace the Uighur population with a majority Han Chinese population? No one knows for sure. What we do know, however, is that millions of people who are part of a minority population are being detained and subjected to intensive re‑education. That is one of the findings of a recent study by the Brookings Institution.

[English]

In the face of that, I believe we must respond, and we must respond firmly. In my view, we must actively oppose and sanction what is happening in order to begin to protect the Uighur people and other ethnic minorities.

I agree with what former senator Roméo Dallaire has argued in a very morally clear way. He said:

When there is massive abuses of human rights by a state . . . we all have the responsibility to go in and protect them.

What does “protecting them” mean in the context of a great power like the Chinese Communist state? In my view, at a minimum, it means we should not be co-participants in their repression, even if inadvertently.

This bill proposes to stop the importation of goods from a region where crimes of genocide are taking place and forced labour practices are evident. This is certainly a modest measure, but I believe the bill can play a part in opposing what is happening in Xinjiang. In my view, the measure proposed in this bill is entirely consistent with Canada’s obligations to the World Trade Organization, or WTO.

Article 21(b)(iii) of the WTO permits member states to take trade actions to protect essential security interests in a time of war or in order to respond to other emergencies in international relations. The existence of a genocide, one that is widely reported and acknowledged, must certainly be regarded as one of those international relations emergencies. Historically, Canada has taken such measures before, for instance, against Myanmar/Burma in the face of egregious human rights abuses. I submit that what is happening in Xinjiang also constitutes an egregious abuse of human rights.

Many of Canada’s allies agree and are already acting. Just to reference some examples, in 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act imposing various restrictions on the import of goods from Xinjiang. The senate in Australia has passed a bill seeking to prohibit the importation of all goods produced, in whole or in part, by forced labour. The European Parliament has called on the European Commission to adopt measures, including a prohibition on goods produced through forced labour, in the European market.

Just as is occurring in relation to those measures, as this bill advances, I am certainly more than willing to listen to suggestions to improve the bill and to strengthen it. However, in my view, what is most important at this stage is to move the bill forward from second reading to committee consideration.

I know there are some concerns that this bill goes too far and that we should be focused on stopping the import of products that we know are specifically manufactured using forced labour. Some opponents will argue that we already have a law in place to deal with just that. The problem is that the current law isn’t sufficient or simply isn’t being enforced. Whether that’s through lack of resources or lack of political will, only the Minister of Public Safety, previously Bill Blair and now Minister Marco Mendicino, can tell us for sure.

Consider that in the year since we changed our customs law, the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, has stopped only one shipment from China with goods deemed to have been manufactured using slave labour. Colleagues, something’s clearly not working — whether it’s the law itself or the inability to enforce it. I’m referring to the changes that were made to our customs law after an agreement to halt the importation of goods manufactured with forced labour as part of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA.

In the United States, the onus is on anyone importing certain goods from the Xinjiang region to prove that those goods aren’t the product of forced labour. Whereas, here in Canada, CBSA has taken the position that it doesn’t have the authority to put the onus on the importers. Would it surprise my colleagues to know that CBSA argued this position before the Federal Court after a refugee group filed legal action last year?

That’s why I wanted to introduce this bill. I want to make sure it is very clear to CBSA that they have the authority to stop all goods from Xinjiang and that there is no onus on anyone to prove anything. I want to make it as clear and as simple as possible for our agents on the front lines to be able to do their job in fighting this egregious behaviour, and I want to send a clear and unequivocal message to the communist regime of China that we, a G7 country, will no longer tolerate China’s egregious and outrageous human rights abuses. We will use the leverage we have, which is access to our wealthy consumer markets and which is considerable leverage, colleagues.

I acknowledge that if this bill is enacted, the communist regime will retaliate. We should be under no illusions about that since, in the face of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in 2018, the regime retaliated against Canada by taking two Canadians hostage. It’s ironic that I speak of this during anti-bullying week here in Canada, because there is no perpetual bully in the world right now bigger than the Chinese regime.

We know and should expect that the regime may take similar bullying steps again. It is also likely to impose its own economic measures against Canada, just as it has done in the past in order to intimidate Canada, Australia and many other of our allies. Australia, however, has responded confidently by diversifying its markets. It has engaged closely with like-minded allies in order to make its stance even more effective against this brutal regime. This is what Canada must do as well. We should partner with like-mind allies, countries like Australia, the United States, Japan, India and others. The government should take steps to protect Canadians by urging them not to travel to China if at all possible or to leave that country as soon as possible.

I agree we need to act multilaterally, but we must also be prepared to lead. That’s what Canada has done in the past. In the face of the moral challenges we are facing, I do not believe that we have any other option. That also includes calling on Canadian companies to stop investing in Chinese companies implicated in gross human rights violations.

Thanks to the research and subsequent report done by Hong Kong Watch, we know that some of the largest Western pension funds, including CPP Investments, the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec maintain substantial investments in Chinese banking and business concerns that are allegedly complicit in human rights violations, including a number of Chinese companies that have been sanctioned by our allies around the world, like the United States.

We know that many well-known Western companies are heavily invested in Xinjiang and are benefiting from direct and indirect forced labour. Well-known figures, such as basketball star Enes Freedom, formerly Enes Kanter, have been speaking out against Nike and other major corporations who have been implicated as a result of their investments in China, activities that only serve to strengthen and embolden a communist regime. We should not permit these activities to continue, because if we do, we are complicit in these human rights violations and in this genocide.

Colleagues, I believe that we have a moral obligation to act, as well as have a legal obligation.

As Sarah Teich, an international human rights lawyer and legal adviser to the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project has pointed out, Canada has not only ratified several treaties that impose international legal obligations to suppress and eliminate forced labour, but are also a state party to the UN Genocide Convention, which means that we are obligated not just to not commit genocide but also to prevent it, to speak out against it, to take action against it.

Article 1 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

“Undertake to prevent,” colleagues. It is not enough to wait for the punishment to be doled out once the UN has established that a genocide has been committed. We are obliged under the law and obligated to prevent it from happening in the first place. Canada should not be signatories to these agreements for fun. They should mean something. Our word, our signature, should mean something.

I know that many of you are disquieted by the idea of confronting China. The communist regime is a powerful one. They have their economic tentacles in all areas of our society and institutions in Canada and around the Western democratic word, but this regime is also increasing its repression, not just against the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities, but also in Hong Kong and against all dissenters throughout China and around the world. Simultaneously, the regime is becoming more bellicose in its actions against neighbouring states such as Taiwan, India and Japan, and against neighbours in the South China Sea.

Threats and intimidation are a hallmark of this bully, but we can no longer be silent in the face of repression. We have a moral and legal responsibility to do the right thing. We know the millions facing repression in Xinjiang are calling on us to do the right thing. They’re calling for help. We shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand. We shouldn’t turn our backs on them. We should hear their cries. These are people who are being tortured, oppressed and used in labour camps. Often many of those products find their way to our shelves.

Canada can lead by example, and I believe this bill is just one step in doing that. In that spirit, honourable colleagues, I urge you all to support this legislation and send a message to the Uighur people that the Senate of Canada and the Parliament of Canada hear their cries, and we are ready to do something about it. Thank you.