- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
- Mar/28/23 11:24:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise and have this debate in our House, the House of Canadians, where we are allowed to bring forward issues that are important to Canadians, including those people in the diaspora community from Iran. I want to remind everyone that this motion from the immigration and citizenship committee was based upon two facts.
First, the IRGC attacked Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752. It was determined to be an act of terrorism, and the Iranian regime needs to be held to account for it. Of the 176 people who died on that plane, 55 of them were Canadian citizens and 30 of them were permanent residents. On top of that, numerous young Iranians were coming to Canada to study.
The Liberals have suggested that we are taking up valuable, precious time from the government's agenda by having this debate to highlight the shortfalls of the Liberal government in addressing the needs of those who were impacted: the families in Canada, the victims of those terrorist acts and those who lost loved ones. I want to say, on the House of Commons floor, that it is our right as parliamentarians to bring forward these types of concurrence motions, to have these discussions and to do it in a respectful way.
I am disappointed when the member for Winnipeg North continues to cry about the fact that this is taking away from the debate on Bill C-27. I remind the parliamentary secretary that this bill was tabled in the House of Commons in June 2022. I remind him that the Liberals have only brought this forward on three occasions for debate. Therefore, the digital charter that he is decrying as being so important to Canadians has not been a priority for the government as it has not brought it forward very often over the last nine months.
Taking three hours today to debate this important issue and to talk about how the Government of Canada has not listed the IRGC as a terrorist organization is something all Canadians need to understand. This is about Canada. This is about the threat environment that we are facing.
We know there is an increasing threat from the IRGC. Its terrorist activity is not just against the people of Iran. It is not just against the people who were unfortunate enough to be on flight PS752 and were shot down and killed. We have to remember that the IRGC is exporting its terrorism around the world. It is on the ground, as we have just witnessed in Syria, killing American soldiers. We know that the IRGC has been supporting the genocidal Assad regime in Syria. We know that the IRGC has been helping Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria. It has been helping Hamas carry out terrorist attacks against the State of Israel. We know that today, in Ukraine, the IRGC is on the ground, operating drones, killing Ukrainian civilians and bombing Ukrainian infrastructure. All of these are atrocities, war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention. If there is any organization that ever deserved to be listed as a terrorist organization, it is the IRGC from Iran.
When the Liberals talk about the response to the committee report, it is that they have taken some measures. They are targeting individuals, including 1,000-plus people who are part of the IRGC leadership. However, let us remember that this is an elite fighting force that the Iranian terrorist regime has brought forward, recruited and moulded. These are the people who continue to serve even though there is only a one-year mandatory service. These are the people who stay and they are more than happy to go out and kill those whom they consider as being unclean.
We see it active in Canada. Today, the Persian community faces coercion, intimidation and death threats from operatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. We have seen it interfere with our politics.
We are having this discussion right now about the foreign interference by the People's Republic of China, by the Communist regime in Beijing, influencing the elections here in 2019 and 2021. We also know that Iran has been active in trying to intimidate and coerce the Persian community to support its efforts, its cause and its potential for election outcomes.
In this motion, we think about Mahsa Amini, women, life and freedom. She was a brave, young Kurdish girl who stood on the streets of Tehran and refused to put on her head scarf. The morality police, under the direction of the IRGC, beat her to death. That has sparked civil disobedience, protests throughout Iran, and rallies of support across Canada and around the world.
I have had the pleasure of joining our Persian community and standing with it in solidarity, fighting for women, life and freedom, the things that we take for granted here. Our diaspora community from Iran expects the government to do better in supporting their cause, those who seek democracy and liberty, and enjoy the life we have in Canada. They expect us to be there for them.
As we have witnessed, the IRGC continues to crack down on those who take to the streets. Not only is it going after those brave women and those who stand beside them fighting for equal rights for an egalitarian society, for a pluralistic culture, but it is also cracking down on religious and ethnic minorities, like the Kurds, the Baha'is, the Baluch and the Azerbaijanis. The IRGC continues to target them, make them political prisoners and torture them in those prisons.
It is time for us, as Canadians, and for the government under the Liberal Party to stand up for those people who are fighting so hard for that opportunity to have freedom, democracy and a rule of law that respects individuals, not their ideology.
I call on the government to do more than just list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. We should be paving the way at the International Criminal Court to ensure that those responsible for the attack on flight PS752 and those who are responsible for the attacks against those innocent civilians, be dragged in front of the Hague and tried for the atrocities they are committing.
The crimes against humanity are so easily documented. If we believe in the Geneva Convention and if we believe in an International Criminal Court, then this is the time to start bringing forward the cases, as we have done with Vladimir Putin and Russia to ensure that he is held responsible for his crimes against humanity with the kidnapping of thousands of children from Ukraine and brainwashing them in Russia.
This is also ensuring that those in the regime in Tehran, those fanatics, are also dragged in front of the Hague for the crimes they are committing against their own people, for the crimes they are committing throughout the Middle East, for the crimes they are committing against Ukraine, both in shooting down PS752 as well as going to war with Russia in Ukraine, flying those kamikaze drones against civilians and civilian infrastructure.
I call on the government to use Magnitsky sanctions once and for all, which it quit using in 2018, especially against the IRGC that is standing shoulder to shoulder with Putin. Let us call them out under the Magnitsky sanctions, recognizing that they are both gross human rights violators as well as corrupt foreign officials.
As this motion calls on the government, let us finally do the right thing and list the IRGC for what it truly is: a terrorist organization and it should never be allowed to have any assets or the ability to raise funds in Canada, directly or indirectly, that benefit its ideology as well as its terrorist activities.
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- Feb/17/22 8:12:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think it is pretty clear that we have had such weak leadership from the Prime Minister. He has not, at all, provided any direction. The public safety minister and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness have not been at all concerned about this until it came to the eleventh hour. They should have been acting on this sooner. They should have had more police on the streets. They should have had proper ticketing and arresting of individuals, especially those who were promoting hate out on the streets.
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- Feb/17/22 8:10:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that there are a number of provincial, municipal and federal laws that are already in place, including the Criminal Code, that can be used to deal with the situation out on the street. Sitting on the street illegally parking, guess what, they get a parking ticket and they get towed. It is just a matter of having enough police members out there to do it.
As I used in an example, we witnessed, with both the Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver as well as the G20 meeting in Toronto in August 2010, that there were lots of police able to be brought in from across the country by using federal, provincial and municipal powers to provide the proper security at the Olympics and to arrest over 1,100 protesters that were at the G20 summit and have them all locked away to make sure that everyone else was safe.
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- Feb/17/22 8:08:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the minister misunderstood what I was saying about the tow truck drivers. How can they have section 8 of the charter security when they are being forced to pull people that they do not want to tow? We have already heard this. A lot of tow truck drivers do not want to be out there towing because these are their customers. These are the people that they work with every day, and they do not want to be put in a position that is adversarial in nature. That is their concern. It is not that they are going to hurt them. It is that these are their friends. These are their customers, and why should they be forced into it? Their charter rights are being violated in this as well.
If the government is so concerned about foreign interference, why has it not denounced what we have already seen and what was linked to the Communist regime in Beijing interfering in the last federal election here that cost us as the Conservative Party at least nine seats? Why do they not denounce when Tides Foundation and other money from the U.S. flows up and funds things to block our energy products and our transportation systems in this country?
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- Feb/17/22 7:56:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing that we are here debating the use of emergency powers as has been laid out by the Prime Minister. This is really an indictment of failed leadership. This is about a Prime Minister who has not only dropped the ball when it comes to dealing with this crisis, but has also failed to unite Canadians because he constantly divides, stigmatizes, insults and marginalizes those who have concerns about vaccine mandates and the restrictions that have been brought in by the federal government. He does not seem to listen.
I do not believe the Emergencies Act needs to be used. I do not believe the threshold has been met under the definitions of the Emergencies Act. I do not believe the federal government has used the powers it already possesses to deal with these situations. What I do believe is that in this order in council, under I believe section 19 of the Emergencies Act, there are open-ended powers being handed over to the current Prime Minister.
We know that, at the beginning of this pandemic, the Prime Minister tried to ascertain how much power and control was possible over Parliament, the treasury and the executive of the government, because he thought he needed to grab on to that power. We know that his lust for power brought us to an early election, because he thought he could win a majority in the middle of a pandemic. He ignored the plight of Canadians who were dealing with the issues surrounding the pandemic and he ignored the plight of the Afghan refugees who had worked alongside our soldiers and were trying to get to Canada, all because he wanted more power and thought he could get his majority.
In the past, we had the War Measures Act. I acknowledge that the Emergencies Act is a modernized version of that, but it still has the same ultimate goal of dealing with major catastrophes in our country. Have we had a major hurricane or an earthquake? Were we attacked? No, we were not. Are we in a world war, such as World War I or II? Have we gone through something like the 1970 FLQ crisis? Have leaders of government been kidnapped or murdered? No, there have not. There is no way that the sovereign nation of Canada is under threat so that we have to use the Emergencies Act.
What we see out on the streets is sometimes annoying to those who live there. I am a property owner. There is no doubt, and I denounce all of those who show signs of hate. I have spent my entire political career, and before that, denouncing racism, anti-Semitism and those who fly Nazi flags and dress up as Nazi soldiers. I denounce those who are carrying Confederate flags. We have to stop racism. Each and every one of those people who have infiltrated the convoy need to be called out and held responsible for those hateful acts.
However, at times, to get attention and make a point, part of being a Canadian is to have a peaceful protest. Sometimes that includes civil disobedience. I have said this in the House before. When the Liberals had their long gun registry I refused to register my long guns. That was my act of civil disobedience, to stand against an overbearing, overreaching Liberal government policy.
I will also say this because there is a lot of concern about how traffic, borders and infrastructure have been blocked. I always oppose blockades. We cannot hold our economy hostage. I believe everybody has made their point. I am glad they are going home, and they are going home from our border points without the use of the Emergencies Act. It was provincial governments, local policing and local municipal leaders who were able to negotiate and remove those blockades, the same way the current government has dealt with blockades in the past at our Vancouver port, pipelines and railway crossings. They went on for days. We did not call in the Emergencies Act to get those blockades removed, because we listened to the people and their concerns. The government refuses to talk with the truckers on Wellington Street. That is disturbing to say the least.
The biggest concern I have is that this is suspending our civil liberties and charter rights because it is open-ended at this point in time.
I am of Ukrainian descent and I want to remind everyone that under the War Measures Act, in World War I, my baba and gedo came to Canada on Austrian passports. They were declared enemy aliens and for four years had to go 20 miles one way to the RCMP station every week to register. Summer, winter, fall and spring, it did not matter what they were doing on the farm, they had to register, even though my baba's brother was fighting for Canada in World War I. They still had to report in and they had to for two years after the war ended because the government refused to lift the War Measures Act and that violation of their charter rights.
I am concerned that the Liberal government will want to continue to erode the civil liberties that we have now. We have to make sure that does not happen. I do appreciate and acknowledge that the Emergencies Act does provide parliamentary oversight, and that is why we are having this debate tonight, to make sure that we can ask for it to be revoked if it passes with the support of the NDP. I have to say that I am really upset that the NDP would stand against freedom and the charter and support the Liberals and the Prime Minister in this ham-fisted approach to dealing with the crisis they think is out on the street.
Section 2 of the charter, peaceful assembly, right now is undermined. I walk through the convoy every day. Everybody says hi and has been very polite. Sometimes they honk the horns, which at 10 minutes to seven this morning was annoying, but they do not do it all day long, just for short periods here and there. The first week it was a bit overbearing, I will say that.
Section 7 is life, liberty and security. How are the Liberals going to ensure those things to the tow truck companies when they are commandeering equipment to tow away the vehicles on the street right now? What is beyond the pale in all of this is that they are violating section 8 of the charter, unreasonable search and seizure. They are locking down the bank accounts of people who gave generously to help the trucking convoy. They could not join and felt they had no other voice, so they financially supported the convoy. Now having their bank accounts locked down is disgusting. This is an overreach of the Government of Canada and I am concerned, now that they are on FINTRAC, that they are going to be treated like they were funding a terrorist organization and will not be able to get loans, access their savings accounts or even get mortgages. That, to me, is really disturbing.
Really, what is next? Section 19 of the Emergencies Act and referenced in the order in council says that there are going to be other temporary measures authorized under section 19 of the act. That is not known.
I again come back to the issue of failed leadership, inaction and paralysis by the Prime Minister. I have been here for quite a while, 17 years, and I am shocked that we do not have an emergency management plan for the Parliament buildings and Ottawa as the capital city. I was here when the terrorist attack happened in 2014. We witnessed what happened January 6, 2021, when the riot occurred on Capitol Hill. We know there should have been plans made to deal with a situation like this.
When the Minister of Emergency Preparedness was the Toronto police chief in 2010 and protests were taking place at the G20 in Toronto, in a couple of days 1,100 protesters were arrested. The RCMP, the OPP, the Toronto city police and regional police in the area were brought in to deal with the situation. If we did not need an Emergencies Act to do that then, why do we need it now?
It is time to de-escalate this situation. The Prime Minister has to stop stigmatizing, marginalizing, traumatizing and name-calling those who do not agree with his policies and bring people around, take the heat off and end these restrictive and divisive mandates so that we can get back to a normal life again and live as a strong, united Canada.
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