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Member of Parliament

James Bezan

  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
  • Manitoba
  • Voting Attendance: 68%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 173 - Mar/27/23
Mr. James Bezan (Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, CPC)
  • Mar/27/23 5:56:03 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-41 
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to rise in the House and speak to Bill C-41. I am going to be supporting this bill to get it to committee so it can undergo the vigorous review it needs to ease the concerns Canadians have. There are organizations that want to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan in particular, but also to other areas of the world where terrorist organizations are in control, and they need to be able to do so without any repercussions here in Canada. As we know, this bill would make some major changes to the Criminal Code to impact those individuals and organizations that are trying to help people who are the least privileged in the world and who are in crisis right now, especially in Afghanistan. There are over four million people who are starving. There is a lack of food and resources available to support the citizens. Those are largely women, girls and single-family units that do not have the ability to raise money. In saying that, I want to first and foremost pay tribute to the brave women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces who served in the conflict in Afghanistan. Over 40,000 Canadians went to war in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and against the Taliban because of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. They served from 2001 to 2011, and the last of our troops came home in 2014. We witnessed 165 Canadians die; 158 of them were brave soldiers of the Canadian Armed Forces and seven of them were civilians who were there assisting our forces, assisting the Government of Canada, working on diplomatic missions and working on things like humanitarian relief. We have seen the consequences of that war for those who served. Thousands have come back with both physical and invisible injuries, whether it is PTSD and other operational stress injuries, or actual physical injuries, such as missing limbs. This still impacts our veteran community with a high level of suicide. Over 2,000 members were physically wounded or injured while serving in Afghanistan, and we have to continue to be with them. I want to make the point that Canada committed itself to this war against terror in Afghanistan. It cost us in lives, we spilled blood and we spent a good portion of the treasury in fighting against the Taliban. It cost $18 billion just in military contributions, as well as in provincial reconstruction. In addition to that, another $3.9 billion over two decades, from 2001 to 2021, was spent in humanitarian assistance building schools, building roads and infrastructure, and providing meals. We made sure Afghanistan converted from a poppy agricultural industry providing opium and other opioids on the illicit drug trafficking market around the world, to actual commodities it could trade legally in the global context that would provide a better, more sustainable way of life. However, here we are today with an illegitimate government led by Taliban leaders who were complicit in the crimes against humanity that we witnessed before 2001 and that they are now undertaking today in Afghanistan. There are an illegitimate prime minister, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, and supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada. These are people who helped orchestrate attacks against our own soldiers and our own civilians working in Afghanistan. They have banned girls and women from going to school. They have taken most women out of the workforce so they are unable to provide for their families. They have reinstated the mandatory wearing of the burka, and other very misogynistic and chauvinistic policies that continue to trample on the rights of women, minority groups and minority religions. We know that the Taliban today is actively hunting those Afghans who worked alongside our Canadian Armed Forces as interpreters, truck drivers and support workers in our military bases and forward operating locations throughout the Panjwai district where Canada served, and in Kandahar. Something we need to remember is that those we fought against are again back in control. We all saw on TV how it played out in 2021, as Afghans ran to planes to get out of the country, climbing aboard wherever they could. They were begging us to come back and begging Canada, the United States and others to come get those who wanted to go to our countries. We knew this was coming as well. We knew that the U.S. had announced it was going to do its drawdown in 2021 when it announced it the previous year. Global Affairs Canada was raising this with the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, saying that we had to act to get our Canadians, as well as our friends and allies, out. It was not until the actual collapse of Kabul started that we finally saw some action. The first to come out was our diplomat corps, on a half-empty airplane. It was a disappointment for all Canadians and an embarrassment for the government, that we could have saved more and decided not to. Over 17,000 Afghans who served with Canada made application to come here. Over 11,000 of them have been approved, and over the past three years, about 9,500 have been able to make it to Canada. A lot of us, in our offices, continue to advocate and find ways out for those who served alongside our forces. We had some luck a couple of weeks ago in having another Afghan interpreter get to safety here in Canada, but the support in Afghanistan from the government is non-existent. We know that these Criminal Code amendments are necessary to ensure that those out there wanting to do God's work in Afghanistan would not be turned into people who are considered complicit in terrorism. We want to make sure that organizations like World Vision, the Red Cross and Red Crescent are able to go out there and help those in need without having to worry about whether they are going to be charged back here in Canada. However, we have to be diligent, and one thing we need to find out through committee study is how the government would continue to monitor the situation. How would the government decide whether organizations are being coerced or are having to pay big bribes to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations around the world and essentially redirect money that would help the terrorist activity, the human rights violations and the atrocities that we, all too often, are witnessing? We have to be diligent and vigilant in making sure the government and the department are continuing to oversee this. As we look at Bill C-41 and start providing exemptions for different organizations and individuals, we have to go into this with eyes wide open. We have witnessed other terrorist organizations raising money here in Canada. Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS all have been able to raise funds in the past to fund their terrorist activities around the world, so we have to be very diligent. The House of Commons passed a motion unanimously in 2018 recognizing the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, as a terrorist entity. If the Government of Canada would finally list it as a terrorist organization, we could also make sure it could not raise money here in Canada now that it does actually have assets. Though I support getting this bill to committee and making sure we provide relief to those who need it the most, the most disadvantaged people in the world, we also have to be extremely critical in our analysis at committee to ensure that those who want to have other nefarious means do not exploit this for their own terrorist ideologies.
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