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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Feb/28/22 8:07:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River said something interesting. He said that the only brother who kills his brother is a madman. Well, a distant cousin who watches the brother kill his brother might also be described as a madman. What does my colleague think about the possibility of imposing equally severe sanctions on Belarus as are being imposed on Russia?

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Mr. Marcus Powlowski

Feb/28/22 8:08:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the truth is that I personally had not considered what we are going to do with Belarus when I was in question period today. In fact, I admit that when the Bloc brought up Belarus, it caught me off guard, but I absolutely agree with the member. I cannot speak for the government, but I agree that countries have to choose sides. It is the same with China: Choose a side. Either be on the side of globalization and the right side or be on the wrong side. Belarus chose. It chose to be on Russia's side. Let it suffer the same consequences as Russia.

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)

Feb/28/22 8:09:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's speech and I thank him for his passion. There is evidence that Russian forces have intentionally attacked civilians and civilian targets. I want to know his thoughts about how Canada can contribute to gathering evidence of possible war crimes and how we can hold the Russian military leadership to account and make sure they come to justice for the commission of any war crimes. Secondly, I was incredibly moved by the thousands of Russian citizens in St. Petersburg and Moscow who risked brutal imprisonment to protest for peace. I am wondering if he can comment on that, because we need to isolate Putin but not go after the Russian people, many of whom want peace and did not want this war in the first place.

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Mr. Marcus Powlowski

Feb/28/22 8:10:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, absolutely, the Russian people are not our enemy. The enemy is Putin. There are very many good Russian people. There are many people in Russia who are suffering, seeing their kids going off to fight a war that they themselves do not want. Certainly they are on our side. They are not on Putin's side. As for war crimes, I would take a step back further and even suggest this. What really galls me is the fact that Russia continues to sit on the Security Council and is the president of the proceedings dealing with what is happening in Ukraine. When they are part of the decision-making body in the UN, I think we have to fundamentally start looking at some of the underpinnings of the UN, including Russia, which is clearly not in favour of globalization and the world order, and its position in the international legal order.

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Hon. Erin O'Toole (Durham, CPC)

Feb/28/22 8:11:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House representing my home communities in Durham. The last time I rose in the House, on January 31, my speech was on Ukraine. A lot has changed since that speech, for me and where I sit in this chamber, but more important, and something that has had the world transfixed, is that our fears about a Russian invasion were actualized. We have seen horrific videos of indiscriminate violence toward the civilian population by Mr. Putin and his Russian aggression. We have seen inspiring stories of parliamentarians, of elderly people and of people who had never held a rifle picking one up to defend their land, to defend their community and to defend their country. Our fears have been actualized. When I last rose in the House, I never thought we would see the extent of aggression we see. It is good to be back. I want to start by thanking all members of the House for their remarks tonight. It has been nice to see all sides coming together to stand up for our friends in Ukraine. I want to thank the government for moving on weapons for our allies in Ukraine. That was the subject of our debate a month ago. I want to thank the government for the aid that has been provided, the move alongside our allies to take Russia out of the SWIFT financial system, and the restrictions on airspace. There must be a full-court press of both diplomatic and security pressures brought to bear to halt this aggression and save lives. I want to thank the government, and I want to thank the Conservative opposition and all members of the House for this debate tonight. I would also like to thank Canadians, business leaders, community and charity leaders across the country for stepping up, donating and doing drives to raise awareness and raise funds to help. Particularly, I want to thank the Ukrainian Canadian community, which has always inspired me, from my very first speech as a fledgling politician in the Dnipro Hall in Oshawa with members of the long-standing Ukrainian community there. The League of Ukrainian Canadians, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and charities and credit unions across this country are stepping up, and I know that it is providing hope. The debate we have here tonight is one of unity because it is about the values we represent as a country: the commitment to liberty, to democracy and to the rule of law that we want to see our millions of friends in Ukraine have as well. It has been shocking to hear some of the stories. This morning, I heard an interview with a Ukrainian member of parliament. She is 37, and her name is Inna Sovsun. Speaking to a Canadian journalist, she said, “I'm so much better with words than with arms, but I will pick up arms if it comes to that”. We are so fortunate in the House that we never have to worry about going beyond our words. We see the president, and all sides of their parliament stepping up, inspiring and even taking up arms to defend their land. It is something. As Canadians, we have to act and be relevant within NATO, the United Nations, the G7 and the G20 to make sure countries such as Ukraine do not face this brazen aggression, this hostility of the highest order, or else we will become a world where politicians have to stop the words and pick up the arms. That is a scary notion. I want Ms. Sovsun to know that parliamentarians around the world, including here in Canada, are going to fight hard to make sure she can continue to fight with her words and her democracy and not have to resort to picking up arms. In the spirit of co-operation, with my words of thanks I would like to provide two recommendations to the government in this debate. It is an honour for me to be here as the member for my home communities. I am a proud veteran. We need our foreign policy to be based on our values as a country and as a society. That policy also needs to be focused on our allies and our friends around the world, including Ukraine. There are two very specific recommendations that I would like to bring to the government's attention. The first is that we have to return to interest-based foreign policy. What are our interests, from an economic and trade standpoint? What are our diplomatic and humanitarian assistance interests as a nation? What are our security concerns? What are our defence alliances as a country? We are one of the most multilateral countries in the world because we have always had to be, as a trading nation: a nation that straddles the northern half of the Americas, a nation born not of revolution, but of evolution from an empire. We now stand as one of the world's great democracies. We have to have our foreign policy not based on appealing to small groups or appealing to the issue of the day. We have to make it based on our strategic, long-term interests as a country and on our values as a country. When the Deputy Prime Minister laid out the government's foreign policy approach in a speech in this place in 2017, she began her remarks with a question. She asked, “Is Canada an essential country at this time in the life of our planet?” The government then did not really lay out interests, but laid out a number of emerging issues. We have seen that repeatedly with progressive trade agendas, with climate change and other issues outflanking our economic, security, trade, diplomatic and humanitarian interests as a country. That has to change because all issues are a priority, from climate change to some of the progressive trade agenda that was promoted with the United States, but our security as a country, and our relevance within NATO and within NORAD, are critical to what our country must advance. I would ask the government, in the spirit of co-operation we see here, to make sure that we have the equipment we need for our Canadian Armed Forces, and that we arm our diplomats and our aid workers with the tools and the funds they need to assert our interests and will around the world. We have been lulled into a sense of complacency. The second recommendation I have relates to our Arctic. It is something that I have been talking about for many years. It is something that I was pleased to work on with Michael Levitt when he was chair of the foreign affairs committee. We conducted the most robust examination of our interests in the Arctic in a generation. It was titled, “Nation-Building at Home, Vigilance Beyond: Preparing for the Coming Decades in the Arctic”. The April 2019 report stated that, “The Arctic is a fundamental and indivisible part of Canada”, and that when we wrote it our sovereignty was at risk. The first section of that report dealt with Russia's military and security buildup in its portion of the Arctic, Russian interest in the continental shelf and Russian interest in polar trade and circumnavigation routes. We are decades behind where we need to be in asserting our Arctic sovereignty. “We the north” should be more than a hashtag we use when we are proud of our basketball team. This defining element of our country right now is in jeopardy, so we need the ships, the drones, the personnel, the rangers and the infrastructure investments to realize the true potential of Canada and recognize that we are a neighbouring country to Russia. Based on our national interests and a foreign policy based on that, we also have to help our friends in Ukraine. We need to provide that continued support through the winding down of the SWIFT financial system and with sanctions, including the Magnitsky sanctions brought in with the help of my friend for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman. We need to make sure that we have the military equipment needed for Ukraine to defend itself. We should work within NATO to see how we can use parameters, including looking at restricting the ability for Russia to inflict more damage, and then of course help with refugee support. The 1.4 million Ukrainian Canadians have helped build this country. Canada was the first nation to recognize Ukraine. Tonight, let us show, as parliamentarians, that we will continue to be one of the strongest, one of the most consistent and one of the most steadfast allies of Ukraine.

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Mr. Kody Blois (Kings—Hants, Lib.)

Feb/28/22 8:21:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is great to see the hon. member back in the House. Some things my hon. colleague touched upon are actually going to be in what I say later today. This gentleman, my colleague, has served in our Canadian Armed Forces. He has defended and protected our country, and I thank him for that. My question is actually around the military presence. The United States and Canada have ruled out the idea of having Canadian troops in Ukraine. Of course, the minister of defence has said that we will mobilize 3,500 troops to support our NATO commitments. The member served in that capacity. Could he give his thoughts to us, his colleagues in the House, about what point Canada has to mobilize beyond its initial 60,000? Are we at that point, in terms of our complement of Canadian Armed Forces, or do we have to be encouraging other Canadians that perhaps may take on the same profession that he did before he joined the House?

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Hon. Erin O'Toole

Feb/28/22 8:22:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know, that the hon. member has pride for the men and women who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces, as I do, particularly at CFB Greenwood. I was stationed at Shearwater and did a lot of training at that incredible air base. I think all parliamentarians are proud of any Canadian who steps up to put a uniform of service on for their country, whether service at home, which we have seen particularly in British Columbia in recent months, or abroad. We have also been steadfast, going back to the Conservative government, with operations such as Unifier and Reassurance. We have had great collaboration within NATO and particularly on training operations in Ukraine and in the Baltics to make sure we have a presence. I really do think that there has been a creeping barrage of aggression by Vladimir Putin and we have been lulled into a sense of complacency in the western world. It started in 2014 with the Revolution of Dignity, which led Mr. Putin to go into Crimea and into the Donbass. We saw Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down. We saw cyber-attacks in 2015 that took out part of the Ukraine energy grid. There has been a steadfast and consistent approach of aggression, and we had hoped that the post-war world order would not change. It has changed. I know that member shares an interest in our Canadian Armed Forces. In the spirit of co-operation, we need a non-partisan plan to build out capacity for our Canadian Armed Forces and to exert control over our land mass in the Arctic. With regard to that, right now even our friends in the U.S. have stepped away from the relationship Mr. Mulroney and former president Reagan negotiated with respect to the Northwest Passage. We must act now to help our friends in Ukraine, but also to make sure we defend our own territorial sovereignty.

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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Feb/28/22 8:25:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Durham said that the last time he rose in the House was on January 31. I too rose on that day to speak to the issue of Ukraine. At the time, the focus was on diplomacy. Many journalists had pointed out gaps in what was happening in government: high employee turnover, five different ministers in six years, no foreign policy white paper for at least 17 years. Are we at the stage where we need to revisit our diplomacy and use a much clearer, more structured approach?

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Hon. Erin O'Toole

Feb/28/22 8:25:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I gave a speech in January about the situation in Ukraine before Mr. Putin's invasion. Unfortunately, there is now an illegal war that contravenes international law. Our country needs a new approach to foreign affairs. As I stated in my speech, our country needs a foreign policy focused on our economic, security and diplomatic interests. Our approach must also reflect our values as a democratic country that has compassion for the poor around the world. The time has come to reinvigorate our policy. The time has come to work closely on our country's interests, human rights and the plight of Ukrainians.

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)

Feb/28/22 8:27:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a serious question, and I hope the House can unite around how important it is to ensure that we have visa-free requirements for Ukrainians seeking safety. Several times today this question has been posed, and I really hope that we can get some unity on this tonight. I would ask the member for Durham whether the Conservatives agree with the NDP's proposal, from at least 2018, to ensure that visa travel requirements for Ukrainians are waived.

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Hon. Erin O'Toole

Feb/28/22 8:27:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as this is the first time I have had the chance to respond to the new member for Edmonton Griesbach, I want to welcome him to the House. I remind him that the Conservatives have been asking for this for many years. My friend for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman whispered to me how many years and it has been four. One thing I think we are very proud of in the House is the strong, deep, historical ties between Ukraine and Canada. We can facilitate those ties through parental, grandparent and family travel, through business relationships and through the free trade agreement that my friend, the hon. member for Abbotsford, helped negotiate. These are the indications of a mature and important relationship for our country. I agree with the member, and I do think it is something we need. We also need to work with allies across Europe, particularly in Poland. We have seen 500,000 people already flee. I want to speak for a moment about someone who works on the Hill who just moved here from Ukraine a couple of years ago. She is a friend, Daria Fesenko. I spoke to her a few days ago. All of her family is in eastern Ukraine, and they have had to hide out in the country away from the war being inflicted there. Daria is in contact with them every day, and like so many Ukrainian Canadians, she is worried about her family. That is why it is so nice to see the House come together tonight and so nice to see Canada assert itself alongside our allies. Whatever we can do to help in this time of crisis, we need to do.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Feb/28/22 8:29:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is an evening of remarkable consensus on all sides of the House in our support for Ukraine, its people and its brave and inspiring president. I hate to find one small part of the member's speech to take up and ask him to rethink, but there was a notion, which he may not have meant to sound as strong as it did, that the government has spent too much time looking at things like climate change and needs to focus more on national security and the economy. Those are the same things: The climate crisis threatens national security and the economy, as a report that just came out today from the IPCC will further inform him. I want to put to the member some words, which I think make it hard to say there is too much attention on climate change. They come from Dr. Svitlana Krakowska, who was the head at the IPCC delegation from Ukraine. Today she said, “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots—fossil fuels—and our dependence on them.” She continued, “We will not surrender in Ukraine, and we hope that the world will not surrender in building a climate resilient future.” These are consistent and convergent goals, not competing ones.

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Hon. Erin O'Toole

Feb/28/22 8:31:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I note the report I referenced in my remarks, and I invite the hon. member to consult the report that our committee did in 2019: “Nation-Building at Home, Vigilance Beyond: Preparing for the Coming Decades in the Arctic”. Climate change is part of preparing for the Arctic. In fact, at the request of the Conservatives, that foreign affairs report was the first report that a parliamentary committee prepared in the indigenous languages of the partners we met with on the ground. That was a Conservative request, because the resilience and vigilance we need to build in our Arctic are about not only the rangers for security, but also the impact of climate change, particularly on traditional ways of life. The challenge I have with the government is that it will sometimes substitute these notions and ignore the hard-and-fast statecraft mechanisms we should have. The government completely ignored the need for us to be full partners in NORAD. That includes ballistic missile defence, and it means asserting our sovereignty in the Arctic and supplying ships to the Canadian Armed Forces. We have to look at the world the way it is, and that is what I hope tonight's debate can do. Let us make sure that Canada helps our friends in Ukraine, but let us also make sure we are prepared at home.

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Mr. Anthony Housefather (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Lib.)

Feb/28/22 8:32:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Kings—Hants. My time is short, so I will make some quick points. Over the last week, the world around us has changed and we need to adapt. We need to change with it. Last week, people across the world were treated to two horrifying events that occurred at exactly the same time. The first is what we have been talking about tonight: Russian missiles dropping on innocent civilians in the Ukraine, an illegal act of aggression committed by Vladimir Putin and his regime against a sovereign, independent neighbour. The second happened on our very continent in New York, where the Russian ambassador was chairing a meeting of the UN Security Council. The meeting was to discuss a resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine, and after denying that Russia ever intended to invade Ukraine, the ambassador was confronted during the meeting with news that missiles were dropping on Ukraine from Russian territory. The Russian ambassador was then allowed to continue to chair the meeting, to which his country was the named party, and then when his country was the only one to vote against the resolution, he was able to veto it. My first point is that the United Nations badly needs reform. Whether it is the Security Council or the Human Rights Council, where dictatorships that abuse human rights sit in judgment of democracies, we need to reform this organization. My second point is that we need to hold Vladimir Putin, those around him in his regime, his military commanders and those who support this aggression to account. That means we need to find a way to ensure that we let Vladimir Putin know that he will be brought before an international tribunal. The problem is that this international tribunal would be the International Criminal Court, and Russia has not acceded to the Rome Statute. Therefore, in my understanding, this would require a referral from the Security Council, where Russia would hold a veto. Coming back to my first point, we need to reform that organization. We all have been so incredibly proud to watch the resolve of the Ukrainian people. My heart goes out to all those suffering there and to the Ukrainian Canadian community. I am also part of a diaspora, and I think one needs to be part of a diaspora to fully understand the pain when one's ancestral homeland is attacked, no matter how many generations prior our ancestors were there. My heart goes out to those Canadians. My heart also goes out to the Ukrainians who are standing up not only for their democracy and freedom, but for ours and the democracy of the world. Canadians can be inspired and learn from Ukrainians. My third point is that nobody in Ukraine today is asking who they voted for in the last election or whether they believe in vaccine mandates. People are pulling together against a real threat to their country. We can use this example as a stark reminder that there are a lot of threats to Canada and the world and we need to pull together and stop being divisive. We as members of Parliament can set the example that we can disagree with people without disliking or hating them. We all believe in a strong, united Canada. We are all here to defend our country, and we need to pull together. For the last number of years, we have had warning signs of real threats to the world order: the rise of authoritarian strongman regimes, Russia's annexation of Crimea, repression by China in Hong Kong and its threatening actions in the South China Sea, the rise of Donald Trump and the rise of isolationism in the most powerful democracy in the world. The attack on Ukraine is a culmination of this and we need to rise to the challenge. My next point is that in this battle, Ukraine is our friend and ally and Putin is not. There are not two sides to this. We need to fully support Ukraine. We need to do everything we can to make sure that the economy of Russia is absolutely destroyed so that Putin's act of aggression ends and he is replaced. I have been very proud of how Canada has led in this regard. My last point is that we need to seriously look at increasing defence spending. I understand that military spending is not popular, but we are now faced with a world order that is changing and with new challenges posed by cybersecurity and disinformation. Russia is our neighbour in the Arctic, and we need to seriously consider whether we are prepared to confront this new world.

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Mr. Michael Kram (Regina—Wascana, CPC)

Feb/28/22 8:37:47 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, Vladimir Putin needs to understand that his invasion of Ukraine is totally unacceptable, and Russia needs to become a pariah on the world stage, just like North Korea. Will the government expel the Russian ambassador to Canada and at the same time recall Canada's ambassador to Russia?

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Mr. Anthony Housefather

Feb/28/22 8:38:10 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, as the hon. member knows, I do not speak for the government on this issue. However, in my view, that would depend on whether or not we believe the Canadian ambassador in Russia, who would clearly be expelled if we expelled the Russian ambassador, is able to find things out on the ground that we need to know. I have no personal objection to strongly considering the expulsion of the ambassador, but I think there are other things we need to do that are far more important, such as making sure that sanctions are imposed in the strongest manner against Russia and making sure there is so much pressure that Russians try to overthrow Putin. Finally, I am in agreement that Russia should not be part of international organizations as long as the Putin regime is in place.

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Mr. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas (Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ)

Feb/28/22 8:39:08 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague from Mount Royal for his speech. I listened carefully to my colleague and I heard him say the word “cybersecurity”. In the past few days, Aluminerie Alouette, which is based in Sept-Îles, was the victim of an attack and it is suspected that Russia was involved. Is the government prepared to face this type of attacks? What will it do in future?

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Mr. Anthony Housefather

Feb/28/22 8:39:31 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. Yes, the government is prepared. The Minister of National Defence answered a question today about cybersecurity. We absolutely recognize that we must protect government bodies but also all bodies and institutions across the country. Russia is absolutely engaging in cyber-attacks and we must be prepared. That is why, yesterday, I proposed increasing funding so we can better deal with these kinds of situations.

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Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Feb/28/22 8:40:15 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, it is great to see MPs across party lines united in their support for Ukraine and united in their condemnation of Putin. That is not the case everywhere. The member mentioned Donald Trump in his speech. It is appalling to see the former U.S. president praising Putin. Putin's government has a track record of using disinformation to target democracies. My question is about how disinformation has been used by Putin and by his regime to destabilize, to undermine support for Ukraine and to justify this unjustifiable war. Could the member speak to what the government needs to do to combat disinformation online, on social media and in our communities?

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Mr. Anthony Housefather

Feb/28/22 8:40:59 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we need to make sure that platforms are held accountable for driving traffic to disinformation. We have seen, over and over, that platforms seek to monetize and make revenue and make sure that people stay on platforms for as long as possible. Hate is driven to hate, and people who believe in one world theory are driven to other conspiracy theories that they would agree with, keeping them on a platform longer. We need to make sure that platforms are not allowed to continue to do that. We also need to make sure that disinformation is not only flagged but removed when it poses a threat to a nation's security. I think Russia has been the most culpable, but there are other foreign threats in this regard, and we need to take this very seriously.

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