- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
- May/8/24 10:23:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the ruling that we need to look into this, and it needs to go to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a fulsome investigation. The privileges of members of Parliament here are really sacrosanct, and we need to make sure that we are protecting them. I am concerned that privilege has been violated.
I am one of the 18 Canadian parliamentarians targeted by APT31, a hacking group from the People's Republic of China working under the Ministry of State Security. The role of APT31 includes transnational repression, economic espionage and foreign interference operations on behalf of the People's Republic of China. That Communist regime, of course, has been interfering in our operations and elections here in Canada. It has been trying to quash members of Parliament who are speaking out against the Communist regime, the way that it has been violating human rights and interfering in geopolitics around the world.
The reason we know that Canadian parliamentarians were targeted is because the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment from the FBI on seven individuals from APT31 on March 25. It charged seven PRC nationals with espionage and foreign interference. The U.S. Department of Justice put sanctions on these individuals. The U.S. State Department is also offering rewards for more information about them. When reading through the indictment and some of the activities of APT31, we realize that they had conducted over 10,000 different cyber-hacks around the world, predominantly targeting legislators.
It specifies that the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, IPAC, was targeted in 2021. I am a member of IPAC, and all 18 members in Canada who were targeted are also members of IPAC. IPAC was quite shocked to see that this had happened when it realized this in April; it quickly notified all its members in Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia. Of course, the Americans already knew about it. The FBI had alerted their congressmen and senators. They were very concerned.
Let us go through the timeline. APT31 targeted me and my colleagues, the 18 of us, in a phishing cyber-hack into our emails. The FBI discovered this in 2021-22. It let U.S. legislators know and then followed the proper Five Eyes protocol and let CSE in Canada know. CSE then contacted House of Commons services through its IT branch, but nothing happened. There were crickets. None of the Canadian parliamentarians were notified by CSE, by the government of Canada or by the House of Commons protective services. It was all mute.
IPAC found out in 2024 that its membership around the world, including 18 members in Canada, were targeted; this was two years after the hacking event happened, two years after CSE and the House of Commons were notified that it happened. Nobody thought it important enough to contact the parliamentarians to tell us that our emails and online services were potentially compromised. At that time, in 2019 and 2021, we were already witnessing foreign interference taking place in our federal elections. The PRC was using operatives to intimidate members of Parliament and their families, as we saw with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills with his family back in Hong Kong. They were trying to intimidate him and all the people here in Canada.
We know that PRC police stations were set up across this country to interfere with and intimidate the Chinese nationals who call Canada home. We know the PRC was using foreign students to flood nomination meetings. Throughout all that time, the Liberal government turned a blind eye.
The Liberals have no problem with the PRC interfering in our election processes when it undermines people like the Conservative member for Wellington—Halton Hills or Kenny Chiu, our former Conservative member of Parliament from Vancouver who lost his riding. As long as the Liberals think they are benefiting, they are prepared not to do anything about it.
We know, through Justice Hogue and her commission on foreign interference, that there is sound evidence to show that foreign interference is undermining our democratic institutions. I have been very active, of course, on standing up for Ukraine and holding Russian oligarchs and corrupt foreign officials around the world to account. I am trolled all the time on social media by Russian trolls. I was even asked to appear as a witness at the Hogue commission because of the ongoing attacks that happened on my social media platforms.
I am also a patron of Hong Kong Watch Canada, again standing up for democracy and civil liberties in Hong Kong because of the Communist regime's activities there, quashing any individual rights and liberties, especially free and fair elections in Hong Kong.
Also, I am the shadow minister for national defence for the official opposition. Therefore, if one thinks about my email potentially getting hacked by operatives for the People's Liberation Army in China, one would think somebody would have called to let me know that I was being targeted. In 2021-22, somebody should have made that call.
I am also the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence. We often deal with information on national security, our Canadian Armed Forces and our operations in Europe under NATO. I am always advocating for supplying more weapons to Ukraine. Members would think that would be enough of a red flag to see the Liberal Government of Canada contact us and say that we need to take precautionary measures to protect the information that I have and I am sharing with my colleagues, including other members on the Standing Committee on National Defence.
However, I was never notified by the CSE. I was never notified by the Parliamentary Protective Service. I was not notified by CSIS or the RCMP. Nobody from the Government of Canada has ever reached out to me to inform me that I was at risk or my colleagues were at risk and that we were potentially being undermined.
Surprisingly, I am going to get a briefing this week, tomorrow actually, from the FBI. The FBI is going to inform us, as parliamentarians, those of us who were targeted by APT31, to get the information out. One would think that the RCMP, CSIS or the CSE would be stepping up, or at the very least somebody from the Liberal government, but, no, it is mute.
That comes down to the fact that we have a Liberal government that has not taken foreign interference seriously. We have a Prime Minister who has never made national security a priority. National security should always be a priority for the Prime Minister, but it is something that is an afterthought for him. He has always downplayed the seriousness of the threats from Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. He has never stood up for us as parliamentarians to protect our democratic institutions. He has never stood up to say that we are going to protect the diaspora communities here, whether Chinese, Ukrainian or Persian, who have run away from oppression, dictatorships and totalitarian regimes.
I can tell members this. Our leader of the official opposition, the leader of Canada's Conservatives, will always defend our freedom, our democracy and our national security. We will always put Canada first. We will always stand up for the democratic rights and privileges of those of us who serve in this elected chamber, this hallowed chamber. I know that things will be better under a prime minister who represents the Conservative Party of Canada.
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- Nov/22/23 6:28:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for South Shore—St. Margarets.
The report that came forward from the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development was well done, and I congratulate the committee for that work. I particularly want to draw attention to recommendations 12 and 13. Recommendation 12 is that Canada not grant a sanctions waiver to Siemens Energy Canada, which was trying to send over the natural gas pipeline turbines to power Nord Stream 1, pump more Russian natural gas into Europe and fund Putin's war machine. Recommendation 13 was to make sure that there was a real policy goal enhancement of the energy security of Canada's democratic allies, while fully complying with Canada’s domestic and international obligations related to climate change. This speaks to the issues around energy security in Europe and in Ukraine, and how Europe is reliant on Russian LNG and Russian oil.
I can say without any argument that I am proud of my Ukrainian heritage and that I have been a long-standing supporter of Ukraine. I have been banned from Russia since 2014 because of my ongoing advocacy for Ukraine, and that support is unwavering. The Conservative Party stands with Ukraine, and its support is unequivocal. However, there has been a lot of talk over the last couple of days about the Conservatives' concerns around the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement that has been negotiated by the Liberal government.
Let us put this in perspective. First and foremost, the current Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement was actually negotiated by the former Conservative government under Stephen Harper. Our trade minister at that time, the member for Abbotsford, negotiated a very good free trade agreement that has been in effect for only seven years. The Liberals signed that free trade agreement when they formed government in 2015, and it went into effect the next year, so we have free trade with Ukraine already in effect.
We are supportive of most of the free trade agreement that is at committee, but the Liberals have stuck in a very slim amendment to the free trade agreement, which is the first one in Canadian history. No other free trade agreement has it, and no free trade agreement that the government is currently negotiating with other countries includes carbon pricing, carbon taxes and carbon leakage. That has very little to do with trade, and it disadvantages the people of Ukraine, who are today fighting a hot war against Russia, Putin and his barbarians. To put our values onto the people of Ukraine is, I think, distasteful at a time when they are dealing with their own future.
The international trade committee has been studying this issue, and one of the academics who showed up at the committee, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, when asked about the free trade agreement, the carbon tax and other parts of it, said, “I would see it more as an imposition to be honest. On the one side, I would see there is a very western value being imposed on a country that has been devastated by war. Secondly, we also need to question the mechanism itself, the carbon tax. There is literature out there suggesting that sometimes the carbon tax may not actually achieve the goals that we are trying to reach from an environmental perspective, so we need to make really sure that whatever we're imposing on Ukraine actually works, and that it actually can make a difference. I'm not sure there's consensus there.”
He went on to say, “I've said it before and I'll say it again: I actually do think we need to be careful, extremely careful, with how we see our values and how we impose our values on a great partner like Ukraine. Ukraine will absolutely need more help from Canada than we need help from them, especially over the short term. Again, I see this as an imposition from Canada, in my perspective.”
Thus, he has said that this is an unfair section of the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement.
As we know, it is fundamental to our Conservative Party to oppose the carbon tax in Canada. Why would we support any agreement that ratifies a carbon tax for both Canada and Ukraine? Again, it is something that is not welcome.
If we really wanted to help Ukraine, we would do it through the free trade agreement by ensuring that we have its need for energy security taken care of. There is nothing in the agreement that addresses the issues around helping it rebuild its nuclear energy plants, helping it adapt Canadian technology from our SMRs and helping it adapt technology in developing its LNG. It has natural gas fields. Yesterday, it found a new field in the Carpathians and needs Canadian technology to access it. It has also found the ability to claim more natural gas from fields in the Carpathians that it considered exhausted. Now, it knows there is more natural gas down there it can pump out, and it is asking Canada for more technology. The free trade agreement has nothing in it to help with that.
I was in Ukraine in August. I can say that its infrastructure has been devastated by the indiscriminate bombing done by Russia and by the war crimes and atrocities Russia has committed against the civilians of Ukraine. Ukraine needs help in rebuilding its ports and its grain-handling infrastructure in its railways, things that Canada is very good at but which are absent from the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement.
We have been arguing for years, as Conservatives, to send more weapons to Ukraine, and more munitions, especially as we listen to experts from Ukraine telling us it is using 3,000 to 5,000 artillery shells each and every day, 155-millimetre shells that go into the M777 Howitzers that we sent from Canada, and that other countries sent as well, and into the M109 self-propelled Howitzer and other artillery guns. We build the shells here in Canada, but the Liberal government has not been able to get an increase in production for the past 22 months. Ukraine has been at war now for 638 days, on the front line, pushing back against Russian barbarians who are invading it in this illegal war. We need to continue to provide everything we can, and one thing we can do here is build more munitions. However, we still build only 3,000 rounds of shells per month. That does not even give Ukraine shells for half a day.
One of the things I have heard many times from Canadian companies that want to invest in Ukraine is that there is no war risk insurance. There are Canadian companies that would go over there and build things like sniper rifles, armoured vehicles and munition plants, and set up infrastructure companies to help build Ukraine so it can build back stronger, yet there is no war risk insurance offered in the free trade agreement. The agreement is mute.
I am proud of the Conservative history on what we have done in Ukraine. It was a Conservative government that first recognized Ukraine's independence in 1991. It was a Conservative government's prime minister, Stephen Harper, who was the first western leader to go to Ukraine after Russia illegally occupied and annexed Crimea and started the war in Donbass in 2014. It was a Conservative government that made sure that Putin got kicked out of the G8, turning it into the G7. It was a Conservative government that sent the first military equipment over there. I actually accompanied some of those shipments as the parliamentary secretary for national defence in 2014 and 2015. It was a Conservative government that started Operation Unifier, training tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. I want to thank the Liberal government for always renewing that and for now starting it in England, where I had a chance to see it in operation.
Once again, Conservatives support Ukraine. I love Ukraine. I support it 110% and will until the day I die.
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Madam Speaker, it was foreign interference. We are talking about national security and, of course, we know that we have had foreign interference in our democratic institutions right here. It all ties in together very well.
I will continue with how critical supply chains are. Although we may not be able to produce all things right here in Canada, we should be producing them at least within our Five Eyes, where we know there are the same security controls and concerns that we have here in Canada. Thus, we can ensure that we have control of things that are important for building defence infrastructure and national security infrastructure, as well as providing security and public safety for Canadians at large. Again, we fail to see that recognized to any great degree.
All we have to do is look at the recent record of the Liberal government when it comes to foreign companies owning businesses here that have engaged in espionage and continue to raise major security issues. We can also look at what is happening in our universities and what happened at the Winnipeg labs, where the government allowed and gave work visas to people who were doing research on behalf of the People's Liberation Army. That is the Communist Party of China's military organization. Scientists from the PLA were put into our universities and the Winnipeg labs; they got information on all sorts of intel and then were able to take that back to mainland China.
We have already talked about Sinclair Technologies, which provides a lot of the security screening equipment that we see at our embassies and that is used by the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and our airports. That company was bought up by Hytera, but the government continued to award contracts to Sinclair Technologies, which was now under the control of Beijing.
No one can forget about Huawei and the way the Liberals dithered, delayed and dragged their feet, kicking and screaming, until they finally banned Huawei from our 5G network here in Canada. This was after the United States raised red flags and banned it from its 5G network, as well as after Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom did so. Our Five Eyes partners stepped up and said, “We are banning Huawei, why aren't you?” However, there was no good answer coming from the government. It took another 24 months before finally making the decision to ban Huawei, which had incredible switches and back doors linking intel right into the PRC at its headquarters in Beijing.
We could also talk about TikTok. It is an app that many of our young Canadians are familiar with, and it is used around the world. We banned it from all our devices here in Parliament and in the Government of Canada. However, I know that there is great concern being raised in the United States about this technology, which is still being used by our millennials and by generation X. We know that the PRC's socialist ideology has been instilled in and permeated through TikTok, and it has been promoted and used more and more. We have to take these things seriously, because these state-controlled enterprises are not so much worried about the consumer. They are definitely not worried about our democracy right here in Canada or our allies; they are doing everything they can to undermine it.
I now want to talk about something that is very important to us, which is our critical minerals. We have large deposits of lithium across this country. We have already talked about Neo Lithium, which is now owned by Zijin Mining out of Beijing, and it is hoping to develop those mineral resources here and take them back to China rather than developing them in Canada.
We have Sinomine here, which got access to three large lithium deposits in northwestern Ontario. I will give credit, because the government actually made it divest those resources and sell them back into Canadian control. However, the government still lets Sinomine operate in Canada. If the government is so concerned about Sinomine controlling those lithium deposits in Ontario, why was it not concerned about Sinomine, just in 2019, buying Tanco mines in Manitoba? It also has a mine just outside my riding, headquartered in my riding in Lac du Bonnet, that has lithium and 65% of the world's cesium. It also produces tantalum, which is used in electronics and warheads on nuclear missiles.
All of the ore that they are producing right now in Manitoba is not refined in Manitoba. They ship it out raw, back to mainland China, and none of it ever comes back to Canada. This is something very concerning. The government turned a blind eye in 2019. Rather than looking at lithium and the Tanco mine, which, at that point in time, was U.S.-owned, and saying it wanted to make sure those critical minerals stay within Canadian or at least North American ownership, it allowed a Chinese company to come in here, buy it up and take all those resources straight back to China.
That undermines our overall goal. The Government of Canada has a goal to produce more electric vehicle batteries, and the lithium being produced right now in Canada is actually all going to China, undermining our ability to sustain the critical supply line to the EV battery plants that are being built in Ontario.
I just want to say that we do have a lack of coordination with the government, between its foreign investment plan and its Special Economic Measures Act, SEMA, which sanctions those who are responsible for gross human rights violations and for destabilizing peace and security in the world. We have things that have happened here in Canada. I will use Roman Abramovich as an example. He owned Evraz, the steel mills in western Canada. Again, we have not seen those holdings liquidated and provided to support Ukraine's war effort against the Russian invaders. We know there are Russian hawks out there who own things like Buhler Industries, which also sells out of Russia. Konstantin Babkin, one of the top people there, has been out there supporting Russia and denouncing Ukraine, yet they are still allowed to benefit from Canada's economy and our strong manufacturing industry.
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- Mar/28/23 11:38:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hope the member, as part of the Liberal-NDP coalition, would be able to put pressure on the Liberals to finally do the risk analysis and provide the exemptions required to ensure Canadians who are of Iranian descent are not caught up in these sanctions being brought forward. More important, they need to have a better explanation why one of the most murderous regimes in the world, one of the greatest terrorist organizations we have ever witnessed, has not been listed by the Government of Canada.
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-324, An Act to amend the Special Economic Measures Act.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Calgary Rocky Ridge for seconding this bill.
The bill that I am bringing forward is about changing the name of the Special Economic Measures Act to the Sergei Magnitsky global sanctions act. As many in the House know, in 2015, Senator Raynell Andreychuk, as well as myself, had introduced, in the Senate and in the House, the Sergei Magnitsky law to sanction gross human rights violators and corrupt foreign officials.
Since it was passed in the House in 2017, it has only been used on 70 individuals. The first name on the list is the President of Venezuela, President Maduro. It is about making sure that we go after those who are creating the greatest crimes against their own citizens and enriching themselves through that process.
What we need to do is make sure that the Liberal government is always naming people who have committed human rights violations and who are destabilizing peace and security in the world by using the name Sergei Magnitsky. This is about the standardization of our nomenclature of our Canadian sanctions regime.
We have to remember that Sergei Magnitsky, who was a Russian lawyer and accountant, fought against corruption in Russia. He was arrested, falsely accused, tortured and killed while in detention and while he was defending Bill Browder. A lot of us know Bill Browder. He was a business person in Russia at the time and has been living in London, England, since then. He wrote a number of books, two of which are Red Notice and Freezing Order. I encourage everyone to read those books to understand how corrupt the Russian regime is under Vladimir Putin.
The Special Economic Measures Act has been used roughly 1,300 times against Russian individuals and entities. The majority of the people we are sanctioning now, because of the war in Ukraine and crimes committed against humanity, are Russian kleptocrats and Vladimir Putin himself. Therefore, let us make sure that we are consistent with our allies when we use sanctions and we say that we are using the Sergei Magnitsky sanctions to honour the legacy of Sergei Magnitsky. Let us make sure that his name is synonymous with standing up for human rights, for the rule of law, for democracy and for standing against corruption.
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Madam Speaker, I am proud to stand today to speak to Bill C-281, the international human rights act. I want to thank the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South for bringing forward this important piece of legislation, which would amend legislation I introduced in the House back in 2018, Bill S-226. My partner in crime in the Senate at that time was Senator Raynell Andreychuk, who worked very hard on that bill. She and I had had numerous meetings with the government, to the point where we had unanimous consent on the bill. The legislation we are debating today reintroduces some of the changes to the earlier iterations of Bill S-226.
We have to make sure everybody understands that we use Magnitsky sanctions to move in lockstep with our allies. When the parliamentary secretary says we want to have a coordinated response with our allies, our allies, whether it is the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia, are all using Magnitsky sanctions. Unfortunately, the government has not used Magnitsky sanctions since 2018.
All the sanctions that have been brought against some of the corrupt foreign officials and gross human rights violators we are seeing today in the war in Ukraine, and what Russia has been doing with its kleptocracy, have all been under the Special Economic Measures Act. We know that act does not have the same teeth or accountability built into it as the Magnitsky law itself. Having Parliament provide a mechanism to put names on a list to present to the government through the foreign affairs committees of either the Senate or the House would provide more accountability, as well as debate and discussion as to why certain names should be added to the list.
I have worked with numerous communities for years to try to get more of these gross human rights violators and corrupt foreign officials on the list. We have submitted names to the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development and the Department of Justice, and none of those names have ended up on any sanctions list, either SEMA or the Magnitsky law. The Vietnamese community, the Cambodian community and Falun Gong practitioners have dozens of names of people proven to have committed gross human rights violations against citizens in those countries, yet the government sits idle.
Amending the Magnitsky act, as has been brought forward by my colleague from Northumberland—Peterborough South, would address that shortfall. It would allow communities and parliamentarians to come forward with names. Then, the ultimate accountability of the government would be to report back within 40 days as to why it is either taking action or not taking action. It would also file annual reports. The bigger goals are naming and shaming those committing gross human rights violations around the world.
We have to make sure we move forward with this legislation. I am glad we are getting to the point of probably having unanimous consent for sending this bill to committee, but I would say to my colleagues in the Liberal Party that, instead of trying to make a whole bunch of amendments to the bill at committee, they actually listen to the people who have suffered violations of their human rights because of corrupt foreign officials, the human rights violators who put their own ideology or wealth ahead of that of the citizens they are supposed to be serving.
We have to make sure we go back to using Magnitsky sanctions, just as our allies do, to ensure there is one declaration that these individuals have violated the human rights of their citizens, are corrupt, they are being held to account and cannot use Canada as a safe haven. I know the government has been apprehensive about using Magnitsky sanctions because it is required to report on financial institutions on a quarterly basis whether any of the names on the sanctions lists we have under Magnitsky are making use of our financial institutions to hide their wealth, or hiding their families here and taking advantage of our great universities. Those practices have to be monitored, and the best way to do that is through the amendments suggested in Bill C-281.
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- Oct/17/22 2:00:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested in April by Vladimir Putin's thugs on a trumped-up charge of spreading false information about the Russian military. His supposed crime: condemning Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine while speaking on U.S. soil. Just last week, the Kremlin kleptocrats and their kangaroo court have upped the ante by charging Mr. Kara-Murza with treason, which carries a 20-year sentence. This is a despicable show trial by Putin and his cronies.
Clearly, the corrupt Russian court system is helping Putin punish his political opponents and muzzle anyone who dares to speak the truth about his barbaric invasion and genocide he is committing in Ukraine. These are the kinds of gross human rights violations the Magnitsky act was designed to address. If Russia refuses to bow to pressure and release Vladimir Kara-Murza, the full force of sanctions must rain down on all responsible for this abuse of authority.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a political prisoner, a prisoner of conscience and a human rights defender. Canada must speak up on the international stage and forcefully call for his immediate release.
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- Feb/28/22 9:33:13 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I am splitting my time with the member for South Surrey—White Rock and I want to thank her for her leadership as our shadow minister for national defence on this file on Ukraine, along with the great work that has been done by my friend, the shadow minister for foreign affairs, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.
I also want to thank the government for coming up with the sanctions and delivering the lethal weapons that we have been calling for and that Ukraine has desperately needed. There is another bunch of weapons that were announced today that are going to go to Ukraine, which will go a long way in helping them defend their homeland.
What we have been witnessing over the last five days I think all of us find surreal. It is heartbreaking for those of us who have friends and family still in Ukraine. It is hard to watch, as I am hearing tonight that Russia has gotten way more aggressive in dropping in thermobaric warheads. This is a step down from nuclear. This is a very catastrophic event that is happening tonight and one that should be classified as a war crime. I think all of us here are keeping the people of Ukraine in our thoughts and prayers as this is playing out before the world on TV. It is heartbreaking and it is something that is going to take a long time to get over.
At the same time, we have all been inspired by the leadership of the Government of Ukraine and what it has been able to do in mobilizing its citizens. We have been inspired by the bravery and courage of regular people picking up arms to defend their country and fight side by side with their soldiers who have been courageous in warding off the invading hordes coming across the border from Russia.
Because of that tenacity that Putin did not count on, he completely miscalculated going forward with this invasion of Ukraine. We have to keep in mind why Ukraine has been able to hold off one of the greatest military powers in the world. It is because, when we look at the Russian troops, they are fighting for a tyrannical dictator. If we look at the people of Ukraine, what are they fighting for? They are fighting for their country. They are fighting for their democracy. They are fighting to protect their freedom. They are fighting because they are trying to protect the European aspirations that they have had since the Maidan in 2014. Of course, they are fighting to protect Ukraine's culture and, most importantly, they are trying to protect their families. That is why we see men and women who have picked up arms. These are true patriots.
We have witnessed already Putin's revisionist history, his toxic rhetoric, and we all know from everything leading up to this that Putin is a pathological liar and we should never trust him. That is why diplomacy will never work with this man. We have to do everything we can to help Ukraine and everything we can to stop Putin's war machine.
There are three things that we have to do. We have to go ahead with breaking Russia's financial bank. That is why sanctions are important. That is why using SWIFT to target Russian banks is important. That is why we have to replace Russian energy and take away the ability for Russia to finance its war machine. We have to keep sending more and more support to Ukraine so they have that ability to fight back. The lethal weapons, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, anti-missile systems are what they need right now so that they can continue on with the fight, and more ammo. We do not want to see them run out of ammo in the street fights that are taking place today.
We need humanitarian aid. One of the things I have heard in the last little bit is that we can use improved first aid kits and send those over. We have them here in Canada, so we can send them to the front line. We have role 3 hospitals that I know the government purchased for the purpose of COVID. They are still sitting in their containers. Let us put them on the C-17s and get those role 3 hospitals over there to deal with the trauma that is happening. Of course, we have to continue on with isolating Russia on the world stage, suspending it from the G20, the OSCE and other international organizations.
The end of the Cold War gave us peace dividends, but the whole mirage of peace dividends has now been shattered. We have to do more and spend more on defence. We cannot do defence on the cheap anymore. We have to step up with our deterrents and our investments in NATO, in NORAD and in our Arctic sovereignty, because if do not, dictators, despots and tyrants will keep redrawing international borders through force. We cannot let that happen. We have to stand with Ukraine. They are the front line today.
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- Feb/28/22 7:41:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP talked about Magnitsky sanctions. As a matter of fact, I worked very closely with Bill Browder when former senator Raynell Andreychuk, who was from the other place, and I brought forward legislation in 2017 to have the Magnitsky Act become legislation. Unfortunately, the federal government has not used Magnitsky sanctions since 2018.
For people to understand how the kleptocracy works in the Kremlin and Russia and how corrupt Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are, everyone needs to read Red Notice. Bill Browder wrote that book about Sergei Magnitsky, who his lawyer and accountant at the time, and who was trying to tell the truth of what was happening there. Sadly, of course, he was arrested, impugned and beaten. He then died from his injuries in prison.
We know we have a lot more work to do. I would ask the leader of the NDP to talk more about how the government should be using Magnitsky sanctions because it sends the message, in concert with our allies from around the world, that our country cannot be used as a safe haven for corrupt foreign officials, for those who steal from their own citizenry and commit gross human rights violations. We have never seen human rights violations for a long time at the level we are witnessing right now in Ukraine, and they are all being carried out by Vladimir Putin and his war machine.
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