- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
Whip of the New Democratic Party
Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- NDP
- Edmonton Strathcona
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $141,604.97
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Mr. Speaker, this is a little more broad than perhaps what he was looking for with his question, but I would say that, in fact, Canada's foreign policy has tilted very heavily toward trade, to the detriment of diplomacy, peacekeeping, security, development, all of these other pieces. I think the problem is that our foreign policy has to be built as a table. We need all of those legs for it to be effective and for it to work. When we prioritize trade over human rights, over security, over peace building, I think that is a real problem.
I do see some flaws with this legislation. Like I said earlier, I have not had time to really go through it, but I certainly see some flaws with this legislation. Our caucus will have to take a look and see if we will be supporting it or not.
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Mr. Speaker, 1994 was significantly before my time, so I will focus a little bit more on the more recent 2014 free trade agreement that Harper and the Conservatives signed with China.
I do not think many Canadians know that it was signed and that we gave up so much of our rights and that we, in fact, made it so much harder for workers in our country because of that. There are still clauses within that fair trade agreement that are making it very difficult for us to even have legislation put in place for forced labour. It already handicaps what we can do to protect workers in Canada and to protect workers in China.
I do not know about 1994. I am not going to answer that one because, like I said, I think I was in elementary school at the time.
Certainly, the one in 2014 that I have looked at quite a lot is one that I am disappointed in, and I certainly hope that the Conservatives do not get another opportunity to negotiate another free trade agreement with China.
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Mr. Speaker, in March of this year, I actually travelled to Ukraine. I wanted to meet with government officials. I wanted to see what was happening on the ground in Kyiv and Irpin. When I met with government representatives and when I met with parliamentarians from Ukraine, one of the things they wanted was support from Canada to help rebuild their country. They wanted us to be working with them to rebuild.
I spent some time talking to folks working in different areas and different sectors, and I can tell members that, ultimately, the people who suffer the most in any war are women, are children, are marginalized people. The war in Ukraine is no different.
We need to help Ukraine rebuild. We need to be there for our ally. We also need to recognize that after this war is won, the people who are most vulnerable and the people who will need the most support are women, girls and indigenous people.
That needs to be the priority of our trade agreements as well.
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Mr. Speaker, I am of course very proud to be the member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona.
Today, we are talking about the free trade agreement with Ukraine. As every member of the House knows, we are an immense ally of Ukraine. Canada was the first western country to recognize Ukraine's independence in 1991, and, of course, Canada is home to the third-largest population of Ukrainians in the world, third only to Ukraine and Russia. As members would know, many people of the Ukrainian diaspora reside in my riding, in my province and certainly across the Prairies. Therefore, I am glad to see that we are debating this bill after the agreement was delayed by Putin's illegal war, the illegal invasion that Putin and the Russian Federation have made against the Ukrainian people.
Trade agreements are very important. They are an important part of our relationship with Ukraine. They are an important part of our relationship with our allies. It is vital that we have strong trade relationships with Ukraine, now more than ever as Ukraine fights for its freedom and builds more, better and stronger relationships with the west.
Russia's illegal invasion and genocidal war against Ukraine has had a profound impact on Canada. It has had a profound impact on the Ukraine-Canada trade relationship. We have seen exports to Ukraine fall by nearly a third since the war started, and it is important to have a trade agreement that would restore those exports once Ukraine is victorious in the war against Russia.
However, trade negotiations must be transparent, and Canadians and parliamentarians have the right to know both the costs and the benefits of proposed trade agreements before they are signed. The current Liberal government has failed in this regard. We were given this legislation very late last week. We are debating it in the House on Monday and Tuesday. We have had no time to discuss this with our colleagues at caucus, despite the fact that this agreement was negotiated in April and signed in September. There was ample opportunity for the government to give us more time to discuss this trade agreement with our colleagues and our caucuses. I hope the Liberal government reflects on that. Certainly from my perspective, that could and should been done better and would have shown more respect for parliamentarians and for the Ukraine-Canada trade agreement.
The importance of transparency in trade deals is very apparent as well. We have seen this. In 2014, under Stephen Harper, we learned about a secret trade deal that the Conservatives had negotiated with China, which had been signed two years earlier in Russia. That trade agreement with China was ratified without the participation of Parliament, and the consequences and the lack of transparency will be with us for decades. Chinese interests now control significant parts of our natural resources industries. Cheap Chinese steel produced from coal from Alberta is undermining our coal sector. Canadian grocery stores are full of Chinese food products with few or no environmental or human rights standards associated with them.
We have spoken in the House a bit today about some of the comments we have heard from the Conservative Party about this legislation's being woke, which is absolutely absurd. There should never be a trade relationship that Canada has that does not involve our looking at human rights, at environmental protections and at Canadian jobs and the impacts on Canadian workers. The success of the trade deals that we negotiate as a country can never be measured purely by trade and purely by corporate profit. They have to be measured by a number of different things.
I sit beside the good member for Edmonton Griesbach, who is an absolute champion for indigenous people in this country, for Métis people in this country and for Inuit people in this country. For him to have to sit here and listen to folks say that adhering to UNDRIP, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, is woke is absolutely shameful.
We sat in the international human rights subcommittee meeting today. We met with a Honduran, Elvin Hernandez, who is a human rights investigator. He spoke about the Canada free trade agreement with Honduras and about how it did not help the people of Honduras.
He said that no one looked at human rights when they negotiated it. There was no conversation at that time to look at human rights. He talked about the impact it has had on women, children, indigenous people, folks in the community who have stood up for environmental rights and people in the community who have stood up for human rights. Because of the free trade agreement we negotiated, those rights were not protected. It is something to keep in mind.
We also heard from Robert McCorquodale, who is the vice-chair of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. He said that if we do not look at human rights when we do this important work, we put people at risk. It is something we really need to do and something that, from my perspective, is the furthest thing from being superfluous, or whatever the Conservatives are trying to say with their insensitive woke comments.
We need a trade deal that is good for Ukraine and that is good for Canada. This renegotiated deal with Ukraine includes chapters that would ensure both Canada and Ukraine maintain their right to regulate in key areas such as environment, health, safety, indigenous rights, gender equality and cultural diversity. This is very important.
I welcome the provisions for temporary entry for those conducting business in either country. I like the idea of removing barriers from entry for business people, professionals and their spouses. That will lead to stronger economic and social ties with Ukraine and stronger economic benefits for Canadians. I also welcome the labour standards provisions in this agreement. It is vital we protect labour rights.
When we look at trade agreements, we always have to consider labour rights and the workers who depend on those rights. This agreement does this with a few different things we are pleased to see, such as the sections that respect labour laws, the import prohibition on goods made in whole or in part with forced labour, a commitment to the content of all core international labour organization conventions and a stand-alone article on violence against workers. These are important things to have as part of our agreement.
I am disappointed in how the government brought this agreement forward. I am disappointed I have not had the opportunity to sit with my colleagues and discuss this agreement, as would be the norm and as would be expected. While I am disappointed in the lack of transparency we have seen in the development of this agreement, I do support a trade agreement with Ukraine. I do think it needs to happen.
I am going to need to take some time to look at this one and see whether I can provide support for it, because this is important work, and I do not take this work lightly. I am also looking very forward to seeing more Ukrainian products on the shelves in the stores in Edmonton. We have a large Ukrainian population, and my name is not very Ukrainian, but I can eat Ukrainian food with the best of them. I know my way around a cabbage roll, as everyone in Edmonton does.
I am extraordinarily excited to see Ukrainian products in food stores like K&K Foodliner, a local food specialty store right in my own riding of Edmonton Strathcona. I hope this agreement will mean greater economic ties between our countries and more made-in-Ukraine products in our local stores.
Let us support Ukraine. Let us help Ukrainians rebuild their country. Let us work together as friends for the benefit of both countries.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about how important this agreement is, and there is a lot in it that I will be speaking about later this evening, but this trade agreement, I understood, was negotiated and completed in April. Therefore, if this is such important legislation, and I believe it is, why did it take the government so long to bring it forward and then to bring it forward to the House, which has not even allowed us an opportunity to speak to our caucuses about this particular legislation?
If it wants the support and wants everybody to be on board, why did it take so long to bring this forward in such an irresponsible manner?
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- Mar/28/23 2:29:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Ukrainians fleeing from Russia's brutal illegal war are looking to start over and build a new life in Canada.
However, the Liberals' emergency travel measures have a three-year limit, meaning that Ukrainians cannot participate in most trade apprenticeships. Ukrainians are effectively being shut out of the trades because of this limit. It is wrong, and union leaders like Scott Crichton from IBEW 424 want this to change.
Will the Liberal government remove the limit so that Ukrainians could train and work in Canada?
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- Dec/12/22 1:31:26 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-8
Mr. Speaker, it is always a great honour to stand in this place to speak on behalf of the residents and constituents of Edmonton Strathcona. I am particularly delighted to stand today to speak about our sanctions regime and the work that needs to be done to strengthen it and ensure it is as adequate and as strong as it can be.
We know that sanctions are one of the tools we have to hold governments and individuals around the world to the rule of law, to human rights, to democracy and to fairness and justice for their citizens. For a very long time, many members in this place have worked very hard and well together to try to increase the effectiveness of our sanctions regime and the ability of sanctions to do what we hope they will do, which is to change the course of governments and individuals, to change their behaviour and punish them for the harms they have caused without harming and punishing innocent people and citizens.
The act we are debating today is Bill S-8. This act would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, to make consequential amendments to other acts and to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.
The proposed legislation amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or the IRPA, and it provides Canada with much-needed abilities to better link government sanctions with authorities related to immigration enforcement. I think we can all agree that this means that not only will foreign nationals sanctioned due to the invasion of Ukraine be inadmissible to Canada, but it will also stop all previously sanctioned individuals from places like Iran, Myanmar or Burma, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe among others.
I and the NDP are very supportive of the bill, but we need to consider, and most of my comments today will be on this, that this is a small piece of what needs to be done to strengthen Canada's sanctions regime.
The bill would not fix some of the things for which we have been calling for some time; for example, the absence of parliamentary oversight. We have very little parliamentary oversight of our sanctions regime, and I will speak to that a bit later.
This would also not fix the enforcement in areas that are not immigration related, for example, the seizure of assets. Again, I will speak to this in more depth later on, but I would raise again in the House that to date about $121 million has been seized from Russian oligarchs as part of our sanctions regime to force Russia to stop its illegal war in Ukraine. While that $121 million is an awful lot to me and probably an awful lot to most of us in this room and in the country, it is not an awful lot for Russian oligarchs.
The bill would also not fix the challenge that we as parliamentarians have with clarity. We still do not have a good system in this place that explains why the government chooses to add some people to the list to be sanctioned, how those decisions are made and how the timing of those decisions is determined. We know we work with our allies and other countries. That is very important for sanctions to be effective. However, as parliamentarians, we need to have more clarity on how those decisions are made.
As we go forward in looking at strengthening the sanctions regime, there are people in the House who have been doing very important work on this. I have to call out my colleague from the Conservative Party, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, for his excellent work on the Magnitsky sanctions. The Deputy Prime Minister also did great work on ensuring the Magnitsky act was put in place. Of course, as some people have mentioned before, and my colleague from the Bloc mentioned just previously, the challenge is that putting a law in place does not actually matter if we do not enforce it or if we do not ensure it is adequately applied.
A perfect example of this is that with the Magnitsky sanctions, we are supposed to do a five-year review. Five years is 2022. There is some review being done in the Senate, but we have not done any review within the foreign affairs committee or within this Parliament. For me, that is the challenge we have.
I spoke briefly about the need to strengthen our sanctions regime. For years, the NDP has been pushing for a stronger sanctions regime. We are happy to see some of the important changes that this bill would bring forward, but there are things we have been asking for for years, including in the 2017 foreign affairs committee study on Canada's sanctions regime. Many of the recommendations from that study have not been implemented. We look forward to the government moving somewhat faster than it has to date to make sure those are implemented, especially considering that right now what we are seeing in Ukraine is a vital need for sanctions to be a key piece of our response to the Ukrainian war.
Another example of why our sanctions regime has not been as effective as it could be is the waiver. We saw the government in the summer, in the middle of July, put a waiver in place that would cancel some of the important sanctions we put in place against Russia. I am not going to stand here and pretend that would not have been a very difficult decision for the government to make. Our German allies and Ukrainian allies were asking for different things, and that is a very difficult situation to be in. While I did not agree with the decision that was made by the government, I do accept it was a difficult decision to make.
That said, first of all, the pipeline the waiver was supporting was a piece of equipment returned to Germany to be returned to Russia, and Russia did not pick it up. The second thing is that the pipeline it was meant to be used on has now been blown up. There is no reason whatsoever for us to still have this waiver in place and still have this lessening of our sanctions against Russia, yet we still do.
The Government of Canada has still not cancelled the waiver, which is appalling. It is something it should be doing immediately. I know the foreign affairs committee will be recommending that, if we can get out of the filibuster that has been put in place by some of our colleagues in the Conservative Party.
The other piece of our sanctions regime that I want to know about is how we can double-check it to see that what is happening is adequate and being done properly. I have talked a bit about sanctions oversight, and we know that after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, sanctions were put in place. However, we also know that those sanctions trickled out after months and months. We learned that many oligarchs had the opportunity to move their assets from Canada so they would not have those assets seized. That is a missed opportunity since those assets were supposed to help rebuild Ukraine and help with the rebuilding initiatives.
We also know that the government has failed to provide the clarity on sanctions that we have hoped for. For example, I have asked about this multiple times in the House and through Order Paper questions to get more information and details on who is being sanctioned, what is being sanctioned, what has been seized, how it is being seized and what processes are being used. However, I have never been able to get an adequate answer from the government.
In fact, one of the Order Paper questions was returned to me with a response that said the government was not 100% sure that it would be able to give me accurate information, so it provided me with no information at all. That is an interesting tactic. I would love to see somebody try to say in a high school or university course that since they are not sure they are giving all the information, they will give none at all. That is something we have problems with. We still do not have that level of clarity.
I have another concern. When the government introduced the last budget implementation act, there was a change to the way that sanctions were dealt with. In the past, there was parliamentary oversight because the government needed to record the use of the sanctions regime or the sanctions act and needed to report it to Parliament. It needed to be tabled with Parliament.
In the Budget Implementation Act, that requirement was removed. Therefore, it is now no longer the government's obligation to tell Parliament what those sanctions are or what has been seized. We could find out if we took the government to court and used a judicial remedy, but we cannot find out just through parliamentary processes.
This is taking away the right of all parliamentarians to have that transparency and to have that understanding of how our sanctions are being chosen, how they are being enforced and if they are working. A sanction is not that useful if it is not being enforced. A sanction is not that important if countries or individuals understand that it will not be enforced in Canada.
There is an interesting thing I found out as I was doing some digging around sanctions. If we want to find out what goods are coming into Canada from Russia, we can look at Russian shipping records. We cannot find that out by looking at Canadian shipping records.
It is very interesting to me that there is transparency that can be found in the U.S., the U.K., the EU and Russia, but we cannot find it here.
That is another challenge I have with our sanction regime. As I said at the beginning, this particular bill would help with some aspects of our sanction regime. I am very happy to support this legislation. I am very happy to see that it would be fixing some of those holes around our sanction regime. However, this seems very much, to me, like tinkering around the edges.
We have heard from the Senate. One of the key quotations from the Senate hearings on Bill S-8, from Canada's foremost expert on sanctions policy, Andrea Charron, was this:
While there is nothing wrong with highlighting in the Immigration and Refugee Act that inadmissibility due to sanctions is possible, this repeats a pattern whereby Canada tinkers on the margins of legislation without addressing core policy and process issues. If we are to continue to sanction autonomously with allies, we need to fix fundamental issues of policy and [fundamental issues of] process.
I believe that we have many things we still need to do. We need to have a comprehensive review of Canada's sanction regime. The NDP has proposed a study at the foreign affairs committee on Canada's sanction regime. That study was meant to have taken place during this fall's session. We are very hopeful that it will take place very quickly once the winter session begins. I urge my colleagues in the Conservative Party to stop filibustering our committee so that we can get on with the very important work of foreign affairs.
We can ensure that our sanctions are being more effectively applied. We can bring forward legislation that would align with the recommendations in the 2017 foreign affairs committee report that called for greater transparency. It called for a review of our sanctions regime and called for a parliamentary body of all parties that would assist in identifying which names and which individuals should be on the Magnitsky list and should be sanctioned by the Government of Canada.
One of our biggest problems, and I have said this many times, is that if we cannot fix our sanction regime, our sanction regime very quickly becomes not as effective and not as useful as we need it to be.
I think that members of the House have brought up circumstances where that is the case. We know that, for example, in Ukraine, sanctions are one of the key tools we have to hold Russia to account for its illegal invasion in Ukraine. It is one of the key levers that Canada can pull to force the Russian Federation to rethink this horrific and illegal attack on civilians.
It is also one of the things that we can use when other human rights abuses are raised around the world. We are seeing horrific attacks on protesters in Iran. Just this morning, I woke up to another horrific example of a protester being executed because he was fighting for his freedom. We know that there are many Iranians who are in grave danger right now. If this sanction regime can be fixed and can help the people in Iran even a little bit, it has to be done.
I am interested in looking at sanctioning a whole range of characters around the world who we know have been responsible for atrocious human rights abuses, such as what we see in Yemen and from members of Saudi Arabia. We need to be ensuring that, as a country, we are standing up for human rights, using the tools we have at our disposal for those efforts.
I also want to point out that the sanctions regime is a tool we also have to use for our feminist international assistance policy and for the feminist foreign policy that we certainly hope the government tables in Parliament very soon. We know that a huge percentage of the people who are identified by the Magnitsky sanctions and the other SEMA sanction measures are perpetrating human rights abuses that are disproportionately impacting women and girls around the world. We know that sexual violence and gender-based violence have been used as a tool to silence journalists and human rights defenders around the world. We know that rape has been used. This violence does not align with a country like Canada, which has a feminist foreign policy and a feminist international assistance policy, and we need to be looking at our foreign responses through that lens.
I would like to end my comments with this. As I was travelling here from Edmonton yesterday, I took some time to read some of the speeches from the Nobel Peace Prize winners, and I want to read a quote to the House. It is by Oleksandra Matviichuk from the Center for Civil Liberties, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner. She spoke to me about the need for sanctions and why it was so important that we work with our allies to make our sanctions regime stronger.
She stated:
Peace, progress and human rights are inextricably linked. A state that kills journalists, imprisons activists, or disperses peaceful demonstrations poses a threat not only to its citizens. Such a state poses a threat to the entire region and peace in the world as a whole. Therefore, the world must adequately respond to systemic violations. In political decision-making, human rights must be as important as economic benefits or security. This approach {must} be applied in foreign policy...
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- Oct/18/22 12:57:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his intervention.
The member spoke about the slowness with which the supplies and weapons have been delivered to Russia. However, on June 28 of this year, the Prime Minister promised $75 million to help with humanitarian aid going to Ukraine. Unfortunately, none of that, as of September 1, had even been earmarked, let alone distributed.
I am wondering if the member has any questions or concerns as well about the fact that humanitarian aid that this government has promised to the Ukrainian people has not even been delivered, considering that winter is coming and they are in dire need of that support.
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- Oct/18/22 12:12:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member's speech was very interesting and thoughtful.
One of the things that was talked about yesterday when I met with some folks from Russia working on the Magnitsky sanctions is the idea of how our sanctions are imposed. Right now, we will often use the SEMA sanctions, not the Magnitsky sanctions. I am curious as to why the government has made the decision to use that system of sanctions instead of the Magnitsky act that we have. We have not used that act since 2018.
I am wondering if the member has any insight into why that is the case.
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- Oct/18/22 11:38:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is an appropriate time to make a note that the Hon. Douglas Roche is celebrating his 50th year since he was elected as a member of the House. It is quite remarkable that a man like Mr. Roche has fans in every party in this place. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge him today.
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- Oct/18/22 11:36:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP have been standing up for nuclear disarmament across the board for a very long time. We have had leaders like Paul Dewar, Linda Duncan, the member for Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke) and others who have been pushing for nuclear disarmament, and it is a very important thing to do.
I sit in the same chair in which the Hon. Douglas Roche sat. He has been fighting for decades for disarmament, and that work has been so important. The Conservative Party has made no move, unilaterally, multilaterally, whatsoever to move forward the case of nuclear disarmament in this world.
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- Oct/18/22 11:34:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague. There is just too little time in this place. What I have found, particularly during this session of Parliament, is that so many people are trying to obstruct us going forward, obstruct us in our work.
For example, the foreign affairs committee has not been as effective and as transparent as it should be. The House of Commons cannot get important bills through, because there is so much obstruction.
There needs to be a really concerted effort to actually get the important work that parliamentarians need to get done. I agree with my colleague that it is very important that we debate bills that are so vital to Canadians.
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- Oct/18/22 11:23:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have the great honour of splitting my time today with the member for Vancouver East.
Today we have a concurrence debate, and we are talking about Ukraine, we are talking about Russia and we are talking about what more Canada can do to support the people of Ukraine and support the brave people in Russia who are valiantly trying to hold the line on the principles of democracy, the principles of human rights and the principles of international law in their country, which has very clearly been taken over by Vladimir Putin, who is of course not interested in any of those things.
I want to start by telling members a bit about what I did last night. Last night, I had the great honour of joining my leader, the member for Burnaby South, in meeting with three remarkable individuals. One of those individuals was Irwin Cotler, who I know everybody in this House is well acquainted with. Another was Mr. Bill Browder, who many will know as the architect of the Magnitsky sanctions. He is a really remarkable human being who has done so much to protect those who have been illegally detained around the world.
We also heard from Ms. Kara-Murza. Ms. Kara-Murza is the wife of detained political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza. She spoke of the pain she felt. She spoke of the challenges that she, her family and her three sons face. She spoke of her husband. One of the things she said to me was that he is a man of integrity and a man of brutal honesty and that his ethics are so strong. She made a little joke that it is not always easy to live with people like that, people who are so clear in their stance and their ethics.
Ms. Kara-Murza told us about how hard it has been since he was imprisoned in Russia in April. This is a man who has been poisoned twice by the Russian Federation. It has attempted to murder him twice. He has undergone two assassination attempts while imprisoned in a Russian prison since April, because he condemned the illegal war and illegal genocidal invasion in Ukraine.
I want to say his name in this place. One of the things that Ms. Kara-Murza, Professor Irwin Cotler and Mr. Bill Browder said to us is that we need to say his name because that protects him and makes it harder for the Russian Federation to murder him. I will take a moment in this House to say that name, and I hope everybody hears as I say it: Vladimir Kara-Murza.
This is somebody who is fighting for democracy in this world. He has taken on risks. He has taken on incredible pain and suffering for himself and for his family as a fight for democracy. I do not know if any one of us in this room would be brave enough or strong enough to do what Vladimir Kara-Murza has done. I certainly hope we would be. We need to take a moment to honour him and honour what he has done for democracy, for the Russian people, for human rights and for the rule of law.
While the motion deals a lot with protecting Russians, I think we can all agree that what is at the heart of this is the war in Ukraine. Similar to Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ukrainians are not just fighting for themselves. They are not just fighting for their own country. They are fighting for all of us.
In the Journal of Democracy, David J. Kramer wrote, “The best hope for democracy in Russia—and all of Eurasia—is for the international community to support Ukraine in its efforts to defeat Vladimir Putin.” He went on: “Putin's fear of a successful, vibrant, democratic Ukraine on Russia's border is the real reason for the invasion. Nothing scares Putin more than for Ukraine to become a successful alternative model to the rotten, authoritarian system he oversees in Russia.”
Mr. Putin's war is a proxy war. The real goal is not territory; the real goal is hegemony. It should be obvious to everyone now that Putin is waging war to stop democracy from advancing, and he threatens not only Ukraine, but all of Europe and all of us in the West as well. It is important to remember, and I think sometimes Canadians forget this, that Russia is, in fact, our neighbour. Of course, we live on a globe. I do not mean to trigger any of the flat-earthers out there, but Russia is our neighbour.
We know Putin's war on democracy did not start with Ukraine and we know it will not end with Ukraine. Ukraine is one piece in this puzzle. We should not forget that Putin's first tactic has been to try to destabilize democracies across the world through disinformation to weaken our democratic institutions and systems first. His cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns in the U.S. are now coming to light. He has tried to attack Canada's elections, just as he did the U.S. election, and he continues to use these tactics in Europe and elsewhere. It is very important that all of us in Canada think about this.
Last week, I met with progressive parliamentarians from around the world. I met with an MP, who has her home seven kilometres from the Russian border. While we often feel insulated in Canada and feel that this is not attacking us right now, the reality for that Finnish progressive member of Parliament is very different, and it is important that we keep that all in our minds.
It is also important to recognize that we are not just talking about a war between armies. Putin's strategy has been, and continues to be, to attack civilians. His atrocious war crimes are on civilian targets, like theatres, hospitals and playgrounds.
I know I have brought this up in the House before. I carry with me a piece of the shrapnel that a Ukrainian member of Parliament gave me, so I can remember what rips through the communities in Ukraine. This is not army to army. This is ripping through the community in which that MP and her eight year old. She travels around the world to ensure there is support for Ukraine. She has an app on her phone that tells her when that shrapnel is ripping through her community. When that happens, she phones to find out if her eight year old is all right. This is important for us to consider.
It is important that everybody in the House and in our country stay firm in our support for Ukraine. That is not the case right now. I brought this up in the House yesterday, and I spoke to the media about this yesterday as well. Danielle Smith, the Conservative premier in my province, has said that Ukraine does not deserve to win this war, that it should bow down and that it should stop being supported. I have a big problem with that: I have not heard the leader of the official opposition condemn those comments. The Conservative premier is making these horrific and horrible comments, and I have not heard a single Conservative member condemn them. It would be very welcoming to hear that.
I want to talk about the one thing that came up previously, and that is nuclear war. Unbelievably, a member of the Conservative Party just suggested that we should not be against nuclear war, that we, as a world, should not be against nuclear weapons. I, as a New Democrat, will always be against nuclear weapons, because when we do not prohibit nuclear weapons, the western world can be held over a barrel by any madman or genocidal maniac at any time. Very clearly, nuclear weapons need to be prohibited. I will stand by—
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- Oct/17/22 3:06:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for eight months, Ukrainians have heroically defended their country against Putin's genocidal invasion, yet the government's response has been slow and ineffective. The sanctions regime is a mess, with no enforcement and no accountability. The humanitarian aid and the supplies for Ukraine that the government has promised have not been delivered. Even Ukrainian MPs have said Canada's response is “just unexplainable”. Now the Conservative premier, Danielle Smith, says that Ukraine should submit.
Ukraine needs and deserves our support. When will the government finally act to support Ukrainians?
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- Oct/3/22 5:31:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a bit perplexed, because I did bring that up in my speech. It was actually my motion at the foreign affairs committee to take on a study of that and have emergency meetings during the summer.
I am appalled that the government has not cancelled the waiver on the turbines. I wrote a letter immediately. I have met many times with the Ukrainian ambassador, many times with the German ambassador and many times with different stakeholders about this particular issue. From my perspective, I cannot comprehend why at this point, when it is so very clear that the Russian Federation is weaponizing energy, the waiver has not been cancelled and why we have not nullified it. There is no way to justify it. I have been outraged about this for some time. I thought I brought that up in my speech, but maybe the member missed it.
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- Oct/3/22 5:29:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague has done so much work for the Ukrainian community in her riding as well, and I am very proud to be in the same caucus as her.
Yes, there is a problem. We have a government announcing that an unlimited number of Ukrainians will be welcomed to Canada, and of course they should be; of course that should be the case. However, we need to make sure that we are providing support once they get here. By not saying they are refugees, they are not able to access the same level of support that other refugees would be able to access. This is compounded a bit because, as I am sure members know, many women came as single parents because the men in their families stayed to fight in Ukraine. Many of them are single parents with children who may have been traumatized by what they have seen.
I was in Poland just this March meeting with people who had fled the violence in Ukraine. I saw how terrified and scared families were. Obviously they are going to require additional supports, so the government can do more. I applaud members of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the work they have done to support refugees across this country, but they also need support from their government. Much more needs to be done at that level.
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- Oct/3/22 5:26:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the beginning, I think we all thought that in some way we needed to negotiate with Russia. It is very clear that this is not what we need to do right now and that, in fact, the fundamental principle of international law that we need to look at is distinct geographical sovereignty for countries. We have to support Ukraine as Ukrainians do their own work to defend their own borders.
However, there are things we can do. We can help Ukraine with its rebuilding efforts. That is going to be a massive thing that needs to be done. It needs to be done in addition to our other commitments and to international aid, not instead of. We need to be looking at things like demining in Ukraine and how Canada's experts can work on demining.
The member's colleague brought up the idea of UN reform. We need to look at the fact that Russia has a seat on the Security Council and has a veto. How do we fix that? How do we reform the United Nations and other multilateral institutions to ensure that countries have to adhere to the rule of law, to international law and to international human rights law?
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- Oct/3/22 5:25:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what we saw in January changed very drastically in February.
February 24, when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, I think we could all agree, changed what was happening on the ground. I would hope that every member in this place recognizes that we must fight for peace as long as there is even a hope that peace is available. We must fight for peace as long as possible to ensure that there is less bloodshed and less violence against children and against civilians.
The Russian Federation made a decision with that invasion and that changed the reality for all us.
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- Oct/3/22 5:23:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, clearly, Canada could play a really important role here. We need to involve the ICC. That needs to be part of this. We need to ensure that we are providing support for forensic reports, so that we are helping Ukraine document the crimes that are happening against humanity.
Of course we need to stop those crimes from happening, but we also need to ensure that justice is done as we go forward, that the International Criminal Court is involved and that we do have the work on forensics. One of the things that we heard at the subcommittee on international human rights was how important it was that we identify not just the remains of Ukrainians but the remains of Russian soldiers who have been left on the ground and who have been left behind. Those soldiers also have mothers. Canada has an important role to play.
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- Oct/3/22 5:06:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to stand here today and share with my colleagues some of my thoughts on this report that has come from the foreign affairs committee. I am the New Democratic member on the foreign affairs committee and I am, of course, the critic for foreign affairs and international development.
I am also the vice-chair of the Canada-Ukraine parliamentary friendship association, and it was very important to me when I was elected that I take on that role within that friendship group. I have to say that many people in the House will hear the name “Heather McPherson” and think that it is not particularly Ukrainian, but I am an Edmontonian and as members know, in Edmonton, we are all a little bit Ukrainian. We have an incredibly active and incredibly important diaspora community.
I want to start by saying how proud and thankful I am for the so many members of the Ukrainian community in Edmonton who have opened their arms for Ukrainians and who have worked so hard, tirelessly in fact, to ensure that Ukrainians in Ukraine and those fleeing violence coming to Canada have the support and know that, as Edmontonians, as Albertans and as Canadians, we stand with them. I think we can all be incredibly moved by what we have seen Ukraine endure and what we have seen Ukraine accomplish since that horrible day, February 24, 2022, when Ukraine was invaded by the Russian Federation and by Vladimir Putin.
One other thing I want to say before I get into the meat of my comments is just how proud I was last week to finally realize that I had been banned from Russia. The Russian Federation had finally sanctioned me. As someone who stood many times in the House and said how horrified I was by the actions of the Russian Federation, to be able to stand outside the Russian embassy in Ottawa with colleagues, friends and supporters of Ukraine and receive from them the thanks for my work was one of the best moments of my parliamentary career. There is nothing I am thankful to Vladimir Putin for, but perhaps that is one thing that I am thankful for.
We are here today to denounce the sham referendums and the sham occupation of Ukrainian territory. I have been to Ukraine a number of times. I was part of two delegations, one in 2012 and one in 2019, observing elections within Ukraine. I have been to the region and I have some experience there. I have seen just how hard Ukrainians have worked to build and improve their democracy, and worked with their communities to make sure that people have the right to vote.
It is interesting, because when there are elections in Ukraine, they happen on a Sunday and they are very festive. They are something that I think Canadians could learn from, because people get dressed in their very best clothes and there is a community feeling in going to vote. I remember going to polling booths where Ukrainian community members had so much pride in the fact that they were in charge of the voting station and were managing the voting station that they had decorated it with the Ukrainian flag, flowers and whatnot. I know what a real election looks like in Ukraine, and I can tell members that it does not look like Russian soldiers escorting people to the polling booth. That is not what a real election looks like in Ukraine. That is not what democracy looks like anywhere in this world.
When we hear things out of Moscow such that it owns 15% of Ukraine within days, or when we hear things like 87% of Kherson voted yes or 93% voted yes, nobody in the House believes that. Nobody in the world believes that. Of course this is a sham. Of course we must condemn it and call it what it is. This is one of the last-ditch attempts by a very desperate man who is losing a war in Ukraine that he started. It is important that, as parliamentarians, we stand up and condemn what is happening there and that we actually make it very clear that at no point does Canada recognize what Russia is trying to do in annexing these parts of Ukraine. At no point do we accept that Ukraine is anything but the borders that have been identified and are very clear. That is Ukraine. That is not Russia. All parliamentarians should stand with that.
That is what we are talking about today, but I want to talk a little bit more as well about some of the other things that we have heard about recently. I want to talk about the horrific stories that are coming out of these territories. One of the things that I find almost comical is the fact that, out of all the territory that Putin claims to now be Russian, the Ukrainian military has been able to take it over again. It has been able to go and take that territory back, although the Russians do not even seem to know which territory they are talking about. Some articles have come out saying that the Russians do not even know which territory they are claiming to annex.
I want to talk about the things that were found in those communities. I want to talk about the horrific attacks on the Ukrainian people that happened in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine earlier in this war.
I am certainly not going to use a prop today but I want colleagues to know that in my desk I keep a small piece of metal. It is a piece of shrapnel that was given to me by a member of Parliament from Ukraine. It was given to me by a female member of Parliament from Ukraine, who came to Canada and showed me what had flown across her community, the community that her eight-year-old daughter lives in. This piece of metal shrapnel that went across her community and ripped through the bodies of Ukrainian people, I keep in my desk because I need to always be reminded of why we have to continue to stand in solidarity with Ukraine, why we cannot stop supporting Ukraine and why we have to continue to do what we can, whether it is through sanctions, through humanitarian aid or through helping Ukraine continue to win this war. I keep that piece of shrapnel in my desk for that.
Over the last several weeks we have heard about what has been done to prisoners of the Russian Federation in Ukraine in the cities and towns that have recently been liberated. We have heard about things like mass graves and torture chambers. The Associated Press reports:
The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end.
Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID—all he had to prove his existence—and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was.
“No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.”
That brutal encounter was just the start of the torture that this man endured, that so many Ukrainians have endured. There are war crimes that have been perpetrated against children, sexual assaults against children, crimes of humanity and theft of children.
The recent report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that war crimes had been committed in Ukraine. It reports that:
The Russian Federation’s use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas was a source of immense harm and suffering for civilians. Witnesses provided consistent accounts of ill-treatment and torture carried out during unlawful confinement. The Commission had found that some Russian Federation soldiers committed sexual and gender-based violence crimes, and had further documented cases in which children had been raped, tortured, unlawfully confined, killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons. The Commission would continue its investigations, making recommendations regarding criminal accountability and other dimensions of accountability.
This is horrifying. It is horrifying for all of us to listen to. It is horrifying to have to say. It is with that in mind that we must continue our support for Ukraine.
I was so proud I was able to move the motion in this House, with the support of every member of the House of Commons, to declare a genocide was being committed against the people of Ukraine. I was so proud on April 27 to be able to bring that motion. I was proud that, on April 4, we were able to have a motion on what happened with those initial and horrific reports coming out of Bucha with the mass graves and the crimes against humanity that were happening there. Again, there was unanimous support in the House.
Even before February 24 when the war began, or I guess we can say “renewed”, I brought forward a motion at the foreign affairs committee to study what was happening in Ukraine because Ukrainians were telling us this was coming. We had people here saying that it was not, that it would be okay and that Putin was just doing exercises in Belarus. We knew better. We knew better at that time, so I brought forward the motion at the foreign affairs committee to examine that.
I do feel, when I stand in this place, that we have the support of all parties to support Ukraine, but there is a moment in time where we need to look at how effective we have been and we need to be able to ask what more Canada needs to do.
The Speaker will not be surprised that I have some concerns about our humanitarian aid. The Government of Canada has committed a dollar figure to help the people of Ukraine, or it has announced it. The problem is that it has not gone out the door. It has not gone to help Ukrainians. It has not been allocated. It has not been spent. Frankly, it is October, and winter is coming. We need that humanitarian support to get to Ukrainians now. No, scratch that. We needed that support going to Ukrainians months ago. That should have been in place months ago.
One of the things I wonder if the Government of Canada has done is whether it has summoned Russian diplomats like the Europeans are doing. What is the state of this diplomacy in Canada right now? Has the minister spoken to the diplomats? Has the minister asked for this meeting? Has this been moved?
I have deep concerns about our failing diplomatic core in this country. Increasingly, it appears our foreign policy is dictated by whim and trade, and that we do not have a meaningful role to play in the world anymore. I need to know the minister is moving on that.
I want to understand why we still have not ended the waiver for the turbines going back to Russia. I want to understand why we have not stopped the waiver of our sanctions regime. We have now seen sabotage on the Nord Stream 1 and 2. Why are we still, in this House, pretending it is okay to send turbines back to Russia and that it is going to act in good faith and is not weaponizing energy and food? Why is that still happening? This seems like a very low bar to me.
I need to understand how our sanctions regime is working. I have asked many times in this House. I have asked questions during question period. I have asked questions during debate and I have asked questions on the Order Paper. In fact, I was so bothered by the response I received from the questions on the Order Paper I brought in a point of privilege to the Speaker to ask why members of this House, members of this Parliament, cannot get the answers we need on the sanctions regime.
Realistically, right now we have actually seized $120 million of Russian assets. That is barely the couch on one of those yachts. Where are the rest of the seizures? Where are the rest of the sanctions? Where are we enforcing that? Why can we not get the information about it?
We are seeing the same thing right now with Iran. It is vitally important that the horrific murderers who are committing the crimes in Iran against women are sanctioned and that those sanctions are enforced, but we do not know how well the sanctions are being enforced anywhere in the word, in Ukraine or anywhere. We need to have that information. We need to make sure that we are able to ensure our sanctions are accurate.
I am going to finish by saying that, right now, Ukrainian forces are liberating their country. They are doing things that I do not think very many people around the world imagined they could. Their heroic actions to take back their country, to defend their country, have been nothing short of stupendous, amazing, incredible. We all must be proud of that. We all must be proud of what they have been achieving. More than that, more than standing with them, more than showing our support, we have to be there for Ukraine. We have to be there until the end. We cannot change the channel. We cannot look away. Part of that is making sure that Russia knows that we will never accept the annexation of Ukraine's territory.
Ukraine will win. Ukraine is winning. Canada must stand with Ukraine and with the heroic Ukrainians who are defending their country and defending all of us, defending human rights, international law and democracies around the world.
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