Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I’m also very proud and happy to rise and lend my name and the support of the Conservative caucus to this initiative by Senator Dalphond. I’m very happy to see that we have a renewed sense of enthusiasm for human rights here in the Senate of Canada in a collegial way. I’m pleased to work with Senators Dalphond, Omidvar and Miville-Dechêne, and everyone else who obviously recognizes the plight of Vladimir Kara-Murza.

We all recognize that he is a politician, a journalist, an advocate for democracy and freedom, he is a recipient of The Civil Courage Prize, a fellow of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and he has been recognized by Amnesty International for his work for human rights and fighting against authoritarianism. More importantly, he is a son, a husband and a father. At the end of the day, he is in prison and his life was put at risk, facing a couple of assassination attempts for the simple fact of doing what we should be doing and are doing here on a regular basis: getting on our feet and calling into question a government when they overreach, calling into question public policy in a democracy, criticizing his government, calling into question an outrageous war, a crisis against humanity and what is being done in Ukraine by this brutal regime and a bully.

Of course, we lend our support in recognition and highlighting the challenges of Vladimir Kara-Murza. It would be an honour for Canada to have this gentleman be bestowed the right of honorary citizenship.

I also want to point out that even though it is noble that we are taking this action — and, of course, the House of Commons has been working at this for a number of months — I ask: Why is it taking so long? I applaud the work of Irwin Cotler, a great former parliamentarian and defender of human rights, and Bill Browder. However, it should not have taken an intervention on the part of Bill Browder and Irwin Cotler to shame our government into recognizing that this should not be taking months. The great parliamentarian who stood up on principle here is member of Parliament Tom Kmiec, who moved this motion in the House of Commons in early April. He moved this motion, seconded by member of Parliament James Bezan, because, at the end of the day, colleagues — and I have said this before — human rights should not be a partisan issue. Human rights should be a core value and principle of what we are all about as a Canadian society. We should stand up for these values on a regular basis because that is what Canada is all about. It’s about freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human rights.

Never more than in 2023 is democracy facing precarious times. Democracies are being challenged around the world and many times we are letting this happen at our own peril and our own fault because we’ve become a bit transactional when it comes to our values. Once upon a time, we had Canadians dying on the shores of Europe for freedom and liberty but today we’re willing to sell drones to a country that is murdering people in Artsakh or shutting down corridors in Lachin and not allowing food and medicine to go to people. We’re allowing governments, again for transactional reasons, to abstain from votes in recognizing what is going on with the Uighur people or we are going to turn a blind eye to all of the people in prison and all those fighting for democracy in Cuba because, you know what, there are a couple of companies in Canada sending planeloads of Canadians to beaches for cheap. When we do that for a few million dollars or a few hundreds of millions of dollars, we really trade away who we are as nations.

When Tom Kmiec and James Bezan move a motion to bestow the right of honorary citizenship on Mr. Vladimir Kara-Murza in the House of Commons committee and it is supported by the Conservatives, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québecois, it should be an automatic reflex from the executive branch. They should not be amending it, colleagues, which they did in April, basically suggesting that they put out a message of condemnation and solidarity. Why the backpedalling on such an obvious motion? It’s obvious to all of us in this place. Why is the government vacillating? Why are they hesitating in calling this out, especially after all of the effort we put into supporting the cause in Ukraine?

It took three months. It took the intervention of Irwin Cotler and Bill Browder to step up to the government and say, “This is not a partisan issue, guys. This is an issue about humanity and human rights.”

I applaud them for stepping out and doing it, but we have to be vigilant and ask ourselves why what is going on with Vladimir Kara-Murza is more important than what’s going on with the Uighur people. I remind people in this chamber that this very chamber voted against a motion to recognize what is going with the Uighur people as genocide.

We also have an executive branch of government ignoring motions in the House of Commons calling on the government to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a terrorist group. Again, in this new-found enthusiasm to support human rights, last week Senator Omidvar had a fantastic motion on behalf of the Senate calling for the IRGC to be listed. We unanimously supported that motion — except for the government. Right? We had the government on division, not supporting the motion.

Will Senator Dalphond, Senator Omidvar, former Minister Cotler and Bill Browder call on the government leader in this chamber to get up and unanimously support this legitimate call for Vladimir Kara-Murza to receive honorary citizenship? At the end of the day, Parliament speaks on behalf of the will of the people, especially the House of Commons because they are elected. The government has to step up and respect the will of the people. So when you have whatever variety of motions as we have seen now, time and again, with the will of Parliament, it does not matter if we’re calling for the listing of the IRGC, or if we’re recognizing what is going on with the Uighur people as a genocide, or if it’s a simple motion calling for a public inquiry; they get majority support in the House of Commons but the government says, “Well, it is not binding on us.”

That calls into question, Senator Dalphond, all of these motions. Why are we doing all of this? We’re not doing it just to be an echo chamber or doing it to put out a communique to say, “Look how noble we are.” That’s great. Nobility is a fantastic thing, but if it isn’t followed with some action and some tangible support from the Crown and from our executive branch, it is all in vain. At the end of the day, when we move these motions, unless we have some kind of certainty that they will be followed up, we now have a tangible motion by MP Kmiec that was unanimously supported a few days ago in the House of Commons. I hope it will be unanimously supported, and not on division, in this chamber. You cannot get a more unanimous parliamentary call. I hope that the government will do this in an expeditious fashion.

Colleagues, it is not the first time that governments have stood up and given honorary citizenship to great human rights activists. It has happened before. Perhaps it hasn’t happened in the last eight years, but it has happened before. It happened in 2014, when Malala Yousafzai was given honorary citizenship; the Aga Khan, in 2010, was given honorary citizenship; the Dalai Lama, in 2006; Nelson Mandela, in 2001, and none other than Raoul Wallenberg in 1985.

I hope that this motion will pass unanimously and I hope that this renewed sense of enthusiasm for human rights is not a one-off. Furthermore, I hope that when it comes to human rights we put our partisan politics aside and work in unison.

Last week, when I was speaking to Benedict Rogers, Executive Director of Hong Kong Watch, he asked me, “What is going on with your country’s action on foreign interference?” By the way, colleagues, Russia is one of the primary culprits when it comes to foreign interference. It is one of the primary culprits when they put into place cyberattacks on our country; when they try to manipulate our social media. Right now, we have oligarchs that we know are running mining operations in my home province of Quebec and our Minister of Foreign Affairs has not taken action to shut them down yet. It was in the news a few months ago. We have asked questions about it in the House. I would like to see some action from our government to go after the Russian regime in a tangible way, put into place Magnitsky sanctions and give honorary citizenship to worthy individuals like Vladimir Kara-Murza but go through the further steps required and ban all the oligarchs coming into Canada and using this place as an ATM. 

The point that I am trying to make is when Benedict Rogers was here last week he said, “Why is it only in Ottawa that issues like the Uighur genocide or foreign interference is a partisan issue? In Washington, London, Paris, Australia and in every other Western democracy, they are trying to deal with foreign interference and trying to find out how Western democracies can find their way back to becoming defenders of human rights in a tangible way rather than being transactional in our foreign policy.” He said, “The only place that I have visited where it seems to be a partisan issue,” — and had I no answer because there is no explanation. There is no way that I can say with a straight face that our government, no matter what stripe it is, is in favour of authoritarian regimes. It is clear to me that they are either trying to be transactional and putting economic interests ahead of human rights or they’re being incompetent or ambivalent. Either way, it has to stop.

Colleagues, I know I’ve gone on a bit too long, given the time, but it’s an issue that’s important for me and I think it’s an important issue for Vladimir Kara-Murza and an important issue for all the political prisoners across this country. It doesn’t matter if they are in Turkey, in China, in Russia or in Iran; we have an obligation to be a voice for what’s just and what’s right. Thank you.