- 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
- Government Page
- Mar/18/24 12:40:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague has long spoken in the House about the need for peace in the Middle East and for the rights of Israeli and Palestinian people.
This moment in time is pivotal. It is vital. It is vital that we take the steps we can now, that we work with our allies and that we signal to the international community that human rights matter and they matter wherever those human rights are being attacked. Palestinian human rights are not less than those of any other person. Children, regardless of where those children live, deserve to grow up and they deserve to have enough food to eat.
Think about the acronym “wounded child, no surviving family”. That is why we need to do more. It is why we need to do more right now.
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- Mar/18/24 12:30:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as Canadians, we must stand for peace, we must stand for justice and we must uphold international law. What the member is suggesting is that children around the world should die, should be killed, should starve to death and that the Canadian Parliament should not act, should not take steps to put things into place that would help.
It is vitally important that this Parliament sends a clear message that, as Canadians, we believe in the rights of all people. We believe in Palestinian human rights. We believe in Israeli human rights. We believe that the international rule of law needs to be adhered to. We need to have the bravery and courage to say that in this place.
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- Sep/19/23 7:43:27 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, it has been a belief of mine for a very long time that Canada has moved too far away from our core values when it comes to our role in the world. We cannot put trade in front of human rights. Trade cannot be the priority instead of human rights.
We are looking at the Indo-Pacific strategy, which is a strategy that the current government has brought forward.
Making sure we are not engaging to the same level with China because of the human rights abuses that we know China is committing against the Uyghur people is very important. However, to then say that the human rights abuses by the Modi government that we are hearing about day in and day out do not deserve the same condemnation and do not deserve our standing up and and calling out that government for these abuses is wrong. If Canadians believe in human rights, we believe in human rights when they are in Canada, we believe in them when they are in India and we believe in them when they are in China. We believe in human rights anywhere in the world.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for all the work he did on this bill. It was a pleasure to work with him on this.
One of the amendments the NDP brought forward at committee regarding this bill was to have a human rights strategy in place. Of course, it is very difficult to measure how the government is doing on human rights if there is no strategy to measure this by. Unfortunately, the Liberals took an opportunity to vote against bringing forward that amendment.
How does the member feel about our ability as parliamentarians, as the government, to be able to measure how well we are doing on human rights if we do not even have a human rights strategy in this country?
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Madam Speaker, I would speak French but I find when I get upset, it is difficult to find the words in French. I am upset today because what we have in front of us is the situation the government has put us in, being 18 to 19 months too late. We are now having to judge between accepting and supporting bad legislation or giving the organizations that are desperately trying to help the Afghan people no legislation at all.
I will be speaking about my challenges later on today, but I wonder how the member reconciles that. I am finding it very difficult to reconcile this dilemma, the dilemma that will actually take away the rights that humanitarian organizations are by international law entitled to.
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Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I think you will find unanimous consent for the following.
I move:
That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of the House, on the day the House begins debate on the motion for second reading of Bill C-41, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, no later than the ordinary hour of daily adjournment or when no member rises to speak during the debate, whichever is earlier, the motion be deemed adopted on division and the bill be read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
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- Feb/9/23 4:26:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, a lot of my colleague's discussion today focused on human rights, which, of course, is very important to me. I do wonder why the government has not taken the opportunity to push for human rights for people around the world.
The people of Afghanistan have been waiting for a very long time for the government to do a humanitarian carve-out. It has been promising this for 18 months. If Liberals really do believe in human rights, why are they not pushing for that?
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- Feb/9/23 4:08:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, like the minister, I am very worried about the increasing use of the notwithstanding clause, and my focus will be on human rights.
In 2000, in Alberta, Ralph Klein tried to use the notwithstanding clause to take away the rights of the SOGI community to same-sex marriage. He was not successful because the Supreme Court was able to speak to that.
I wonder if the minister could talk a bit about some of the risks posed to individual human rights if people like Danielle Smith were given this tool to use more frequently.
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- Jan/30/23 3:14:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I believe, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion:
That, given reports of human rights abuses and attacks on civilians in Ukraine and other parts of the world by the Russian-supported Wagner Group, the House call upon the government to immediately designate the Wagner Group as a terrorist entity.
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- Dec/13/22 11:26:15 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I sit on three committees. The third is the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. It would be an excellent place for us to look at the rights of the Tibetan people.
I also sit on the Canada-China committee, which is another opportunity for us to look at this issue. Of course, there is the foreign affairs committee, but unfortunately the foreign affairs committee is no longer able to do this work. It is currently being filibustered, because one member of the Conservative Party does not want to speak about women's rights and does not think the rights of women warrant a study.
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- Dec/13/22 11:22:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been some really incredible leaders in the House of Commons who have fought for human rights. I as a New Democrat often think of Paul Dewar and Hélène Laverdière and the work they did on human rights.
I have to be honest, though. I stand in this place knowing that many of the members of my caucus have fought for human rights. The member for Winnipeg Centre, for example, has been a tireless advocate for indigenous women and the rights of indigenous people in our country. While we do have a long history of fighting for human rights in this place, that history continues with some extremely strong voices that we have in this place right now. It is vitally important to depoliticize that and for us all to move in the same direction.
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- Dec/13/22 11:20:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there were discussions among the parties around our not being interested in doing this debate at this time, that it was not appropriate. However, that does not seem to have stopped the Conservative Party.
Certainly, when I raised the issue of Tibet at the beginning of my speech, I know that some members were not in the House at that time. I would never dare name who was not in the House when I was speaking about this and things that were important to me with regard to Tibet. However, I have stood many times in the House to ask and plead that we not politicize human rights, that we in fact look at human rights as something that we have a moral obligation to fight for and that we have a moral obligation to fight for human rights in Canada and around the world equally.
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Madam Speaker, I welcome everyone back to the House after a week in our constituencies. I ask everybody to give me a brief moment this morning to wish my father a happy 80th birthday. It is his 80th birthday today. Duke McPherson, my dad, who is Frederick Clark III but is in fact called Duke, is a bit of character. We were never quite sure who was the parent and who was the child, but we always had his unrelenting love, so I wanted to take a moment to wish him a happy birthday this morning.
Today we are talking about a piece of legislation brought forward by the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South. It is a very good piece of legislation. I have long suspected the member of being an NDP at heart, because he does recognize the important value of human rights. This piece of legislation is something that all of us in the House can agree closes some of the gaps in the human rights legislation in this country. It closes some of the holes present in our human rights legislation.
Human rights, for me, is an extraordinarily important part of what we do. Canada has an obligation to be a leader in human rights. Canada has shown itself in the past to be a leader, and there are so many more things we need to do as parliamentarians, as a Parliament, as a government and as people representing our constituents to ensure human rights are protected in Canada, because many human rights are not being protected here. We also need to ensure that human rights around the world are being protected. This stems from the fact that for many, many years, Canadians have expressed concerns about Canada's human rights and the approach that our governments have had with regard to human rights, and not just the current government but previous governments as well.
We know we must do better. We know that no person should profit off the use of cluster munitions. We know foreign nationals involved in genocide or human rights abuses should not be able to broadcast in Canada. We know the Government of Canada must be more transparent with its sanctions regime, as well as the work it is taking on to defend prisoners of conscience.
While this is a very good bill that would close some gaps, there are some things it would not do. There would still be loopholes in Canada's cluster munitions legislation. We will still need a fulsome review and fix of Canada's sanctions regime, in particular the enforcement of sanctions.
Many times in the House I have stood and asked questions of the government about the sanctions regime, particularly with regard to how it is being implemented against Russian oligarchs. It is very difficult to get information on how much has been seized and how effectively our sanctions regime has been enforced. This is something that I have used Order Paper questions for as well. In fact, I was told the government could not give me the answer for the sanctions questions I had because it was not sure it would have the right answer. It was therefore not able to give an answer at all.
Of course, there are more things we need to do. We need to make sure that Canada's approach to human rights is consistent. We have seen time and time again that our human rights approach has been inconsistent in this country. There are times when Canada has been very strong and has been a human rights leader, but there are notable blind spots.
One of those blind spots is Saudi Arabia. We continuously fail to stop the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia despite the fact that we know they are being used against civilians. We know they are being used brutally.
We fail to recognize that there is a disproportionate war happening in Palestine and Israel. International law is being broken at this moment, which is having implications for civilians.
We have not done enough to deal with the ongoing genocide happening against the Uighur people in China. The government worked very hard, and we are very grateful that we were able to get the two Michaels returned to Canada. However, there are other Canadians who are still being held in China, and we have not seen the same level of focus on them. Huseyin Celil has not seen his family in over 16 years. He is a Canadian citizen who has not seen his children in 16 years. This is a human rights atrocity that we should also be standing up for.
A personal issue that I have taken up with my Bill C-263 is with regard to our Canadian mining and extractive industries around the world and how we do not apply the same human rights lens to mining companies around the world like we do to other industries in other places. Ensuring that people in Latin America, in South Asia and in Africa are protected from the environmental and human rights abuses caused by Canadian mining companies is very important.
My colleague, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, has brought forward some forced labour legislation that is extremely strong. I certainly hope the government looks at the legislation that the member has prepared, which he has worked with the sector to prepare, as it looks at developing its own forced labour legislation going forward.
These are some of those gaps we see in Canada's human rights response and it is vital that we close them.
With regard to this bill, the idea of requiring the minister to publish an annual report that would outline the measures the minister has taken to advance human rights internationally as part of Canada's foreign policies is an excellent idea. We probably should already have that. It is an important step that will shed light on the government's priorities and give us more information about what we need to do to push them harder to do the right thing.
However, I do have a couple of concerns. One is that Canada needs an international human rights action strategy. If we had that, then there would be something clear and concrete against which we would measure this proposed report. We want to see the government produce an action plan that will then lead to an annual report on what it will do and whether it has done it. We need that response mechanism so we can keep that in place.
In addition, the bill would require that the government produce a list of prisoners of conscience, for whose release the Government of Canada is actively working toward. This is an excellent step and I am very thankful the member has brought it forward. It does give us some transparency and some accountability. However, there is no international legal definition of a prisoner of conscience and this could mean that some folks deserving of our attention would not be included on this list. For example, could we use a term such as “prisoners detained in contravention of human rights legal standards or legislation standards?”
Even just recently, for example, the family, a Canadian family, of Dong Guangping has no idea where he is. He went missing in Vietnam. We do not know where this gentleman is. Canada can do more to work on that, helping people like him find their way to Canada.
Moreover, we do have a concern that the public list of this kind may not provide the needed nuance or subtlety that Canada needs to employ in delicate cases. Should a name not be on the list, does that mean Canada is not working for that person? We would propose a meaningful plan of action and a set of guidelines for prisoners that would ensure greater consistency and transparency and accountability to families in civil society.
We need something more useful than the list. An actual change of behaviour from the Canadian government is something that we certainly would be proposing.
Giving the parliamentary committees the right to recommend Magnitsky sanctions is an excellent proposal. It is something we should already have done. We need to be using the Magnitsky sanctions more. We need to ensure that we are specifically targeting those individuals who are causing these crimes. The Magnitsky act, implemented by Bill Browder, on behalf of his friend Sergei Magnitsky, is one of the strongest pieces of legislation we have to hold individuals responsible for human rights abuses to account. I strongly support the ability of people who are studying issues, for example, at the foreign affairs committee or wherever, to be able to contribute to that and be part of that conversation.
I would like to thank the member for the bill. This is excellent legislation. We will be providing some friendly amendments. I look forward to closing some, though not all, of the gaps in Canadian human rights law.
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- Oct/24/22 9:06:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the importance of not recognizing lesser humans. He spoke of lesser humans, how there is this hierarchy and how dangerous that is.
One of the concerns I have, as I have mentioned in this place, is that we pick and choose which human rights to protect. Children are, of course, innocent regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in.
I wonder if my colleague is supportive of the notion that children need to be protected regardless. Would he stand with the NDP in calling for a special envoy for children in Palestine who are the victims of violence in Palestine?
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- May/12/22 11:44:45 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, we need to do a better job.
I brought forward a motion to look at reproductive rights around the world, and the Conservatives blocked that. I brought forward a motion to look at Palestinian rights, and the Conservatives blocked that. We do need to examine why we are picking and choosing.
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- Apr/4/22 2:45:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, women and children are being brutally murdered in Ukraine. Three hundred bodies have been discovered in a mass grave in Bucha, and more civilian bodies have been found in the street. Women, children and seniors have been senselessly murdered. There have been reports of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian invaders against women and children as young as 10. There is evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity everywhere.
We need to do everything we can to stand up for human rights in Ukraine and around the world. Will the government call for Russia to be removed from the United Nations Human Rights Council?
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