SoVote

Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

May/12/22 11:29:38 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is my honour, as always, to speak in this place and share my thoughts. I want to start today by saying that I appreciate very much the incredible insight of my colleague from London—Fanshawe, so I will be splitting my time with her today. This motion is very difficult for me, to be perfectly honest. I am going to spend the next few minutes talking about things that I am very supportive of with regard to this motion and things that I think are very problematic with it. I want to thank my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills for bringing this motion forward. I have great respect for the member. I think he is very knowledgeable and experienced. I have depended on his experience in the past. I appreciate the portion of this motion that notes: Canadians of Chinese descent have made immeasurable contributions to Canada I think that is an important note we need to make. It also says: the people of China are part of an ancient civilization that has contributed much to humanity That is also an extremely important piece to this. I support the idea of Parliament and members of this place spending more time looking at our relationship with China. We have seen very problematic things coming out of the China-Canada relationship. Many of them are very well known to all of the members of the House. I have been listening to the debate this morning, and I have been hearing people say that this can happen at the foreign affairs committee. I am going to touch on this a bit later on, but I have to say that the foreign affairs committee has not been particularly good at getting things through when either the Conservatives or the Liberals do not want them to get through. I am going to touch on that later. Just so members know, we have constraints within the foreign affairs committee because of the enormous amount of work we need to do, and also because there are tricks and whatnot being used within the foreign affairs committee to limit the amount of work we can do, by both the government and the opposition, to clarify. The Canada-China committee would be an opportunity for us to look at those myriad issues that affect Canadians with regard to our relationship with China. I have met with many stakeholders and many constituents who are deeply concerned about that relationship. It is a vital relationship. We have an incredibly strong economic relationship with China that should have parliamentary oversight. However, we have serious concerns about what is happening with regard to human rights in China and other areas of the world. As someone who has spoken many times to Hong Kongers who are deeply alarmed and devastated by what has happened in Hong Kong, and as someone who has spoken to people in Taiwan who are quite worried, I know a lot is happening. Consider the situation with the Uighurs. I was a member of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights that did the initial study on the genocide against the Uighur people. I heard the harrowing testimony from witnesses, experts and legal scholars on the genocide that is happening in China. That is very important as well. We were all seized by the hostage-taking of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, but they were not the only Canadians who have been held in detention. There are still Canadians being held in detention, and we need to find a way to work with China to have that situation resolved. Even just recently, I was deeply concerned about the news I heard that our previous ambassador, Ambassador Barton, was able to take a very lucrative job with a mining company after meeting with that company as an employee of the Crown. After holding that highest of positions, he was able to translate it into a lucrative opportunity for himself. I know, because I did check with the Ethics Commissioner, that laws were not broken in that situation, but it certainly did not pass the smell test for me and I am sure for many other Canadians around the world. There is a rationale for this committee. However, I have some serious concerns, and I think I share them with many members of the House. A lot of them stem from this question: Why should we single out China at this time? Knowing the scenario we are in and knowing there is a war after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, which is deeply troubling for all parliamentarians, the use of this motion to single out the issues we have with China is problematic for me. I want to go through a few of the areas where we could also have committees. I look at what is happening in Ethiopia. I look at what is happening to the Tigrayan people. It is devastating to see what is happening to the Tigrayan people. We have a Tigrayan diaspora, and it has reached out to me so many times to ask for help and ask for us to do more, so work needs to be done there as well. I look at Yemen. My goodness. The Conservatives and the Liberals have sold arms to Saudi Arabia, which is fuelling the violence in Yemen to the point that Canada has been called out by the United Nations. Canada has been called out and shamed at the United Nations for fuelling a conflict. David Beasley from the World Food Programme has said it is the “worst place on earth”. Maybe we need to have a conversation about that. Maybe we need to have a conversation or committee about arms sales and where we are selling arms in this country. We are also selling them to Israel. We have not, at the foreign affairs committee, looked at what is happening in the Middle East. Yesterday, we brought forward a motion in the House about a journalist who was murdered. He was shot and killed, and we condemn violence against journalists. However, the Conservatives did not allow that motion to go forward. If we are so concerned about human rights abuses around the world, which members know is something that I deeply believe in, then protecting human rights is protecting human rights. Why does it only count in some situations? Why does it not count when it is a journalist attacked in the Middle East? Why does that not count, yet something happening to the Uighur people does? It is of course something we need to look at and study, but I do not understand how the Conservatives pick and choose. How do they cherry-pick human rights? Human rights are human rights, whether they happen in Canada or any other country in the world. When I started, I talked about the foreign affairs committee. I agree with my colleague from the Bloc that the foreign affairs committee is extremely busy right now. Everyone in this House can appreciate the amount of work and effort that we are putting toward the conflict in Ukraine. It is seizing our attention and we are deeply engaged in that particular issue. I see the need to have other opportunities to look at other conflicts. Maybe we need two foreign affairs committees, to be perfectly honest, because the world has changed. The world is a very difficult place at the moment. However, I want to reiterate that the foreign affairs committee has made choices in the past not to study things that are important. Members of that committee have made choices to filibuster, to delay and to use stall tactics so that we do not always meaningfully look at Canada's role in the world and the important role Canada could, should and used to play in the world. There is something to be discussed in that place as well. I am going to spend the next several days really thinking about this motion. I am going to be talking to my constituents. I am going to be talking to stakeholders. I am going to be engaging with the community. I am going to be talking to my colleagues. We have to have a bigger conversation about how we want Canada's role in the world to be articulated and how we as parliamentarians want to move forward in this changing geopolitical climate. I will end my remarks there. I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

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Context: House Hansard - 70 - May/12/22

Mr. James Bezan (Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, CPC)

May/12/22 12:13:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed an honour to stand today to talk about the re-establishment of the Canada-China special committee and the work we need to undertake with respect to our relationship with China. I want to thank my colleague from Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley for his very strong intervention, and indeed all members of the House as we consider taking on this important work. The month of May is Asian Heritage Month, and I want to recognize all the great contributions that Asians and Chinese Canadians have made to this country. I want to mention the Hon. Philip Lee, who was the lieutenant governor of Manitoba, and the great work he did in representing the Crown in Manitoba, which he did with dignity and grace. He was an excellent representative of the Government of Manitoba. Earlier this week, a number of my colleagues were outside on the front lawn talking about the 30th anniversary of Falun Dafa, which is known as World Falun Dafa Day. We talked about all of the great contributions that Asian Canadians are making to Canada. We can look at how Falun Gong practitioners have come here and how they practise what they preach: truthfulness, tolerance and forbearance. They have brought those qualities and values to Canada and made us a better country. Unfortunately, Falun Gong practitioners in China are being persecuted, arrested, subjected to illegal organ harvesting, which is disgusting, and brutalized by the communist regime in Beijing. They expect us to use this committee to get to the bottom of what is happening under the communist regime and to stop it by sanctioning those who profiteer from this disgusting illegal organ harvesting. We need to make sure there is legislation coming through. There is a bill coming from the Senate, Bill S-223, that will address this issue and hold to account not just those who are committing the atrocities in China, but those around the world who are paying for and benefiting from those organs in a way that would be considered illegal in Canada. We need to put a stop to it. As we look at the work that this special committee on Canada-China relations can do, it can dig down into the human rights abuses that are happening, not only to the Falun Gong practitioners I have mentioned, but also to the Uighurs, Tibetans, Christians and other minority religious groups throughout China that have been completely ostracized by the regime in Beijing. We know they are not allowed to practise freedom of religion. We know they have not been able to assemble peacefully because they will be arrested and ultimately end up in prison or in forced labour. We are seeing more and more the Chinese government using people of ethnic and religious diversities as forced labour, and we have to make sure that no Canadian companies are profiteering or using supply chains that involve this type of forced, illegal labour. We have talked about supply chains. If we look at what has happened in Canada during the pandemic, the supply chains have been disrupted, partly because so much of that is coming out of China itself. We need to have sovereign control over a lot of those supply chains. We need to make sure we are working with our friends and allies around the world so we can have dependable supply chains, so we can get the electronic chips that go into the cars that are now sitting at parking lots and auto dealerships around the country; they cannot move because they lack some of the computer chips that are needed to operate the vehicles. We know that supply chains were disrupted when it comes to PPE and that we were scrambling because of the unwillingness of mainland China to bring forward any of the supply we so desperately needed. We need to look at how we can strengthen our supply chain and work more with our allies and trading partners without having Chinese companies, which are often controlled by the state, coming into that supply chain and disrupting it. For our own economy, for our own citizens, it is important that we have control. It is about national security. One of the biggest disappointments in the past six years under the Liberal government, and now the Liberal-NDP coalition, is that Huawei is still out there as a potential supplier of 5G technology to our mobile cellular system and Wi-Fi systems. We know Huawei has been tied to espionage around the world. That is why our Five Eyes partners, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, have all banned Huawei from their mobile systems, yet here we are, still waffling because the government cannot make a decision. That is despicable. We need to make these decisions. We can look at how Huawei in particular has worked, even here in Canada. When I was parliamentary secretary for national defence, we took over the Nortel campus, when Nortel unfortunately closed its doors, and made that into the new campus for National Defence. It took years to clean out all the switches and wiring installed by Huawei, which had the ability to spy on Nortel, and ultimately on National Defence as it took over these buildings. National Defence was not there when this was originally installed in the Nortel campus, and it was not meant to be used against National Defence, but with National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces moving into the Nortel campus, the dynamics changed completely. There is a huge track record by Huawei of not being trustworthy. It is under the Communist Party of China's control through its own charter as a corporation, and it has to co-operate with the Government of China when it wants Huawei to spy on other nations, corporations or individuals. We need to be very forthright in how we deal with it. One of the things the committee should look at is how Canada can insert itself in some of the national security conversations that are happening on a global scale. In the Pacific, there is already what is called the quadrilateral dialogue, which involves India, Japan, the United States and Australia. Canada is not part of that discussion, and it should be. This committee should look at how Canada can get involved in these conversations to strengthen the Indo-Pacific region, how we can make sure we counteract some of those geopolitical games that the communist regime in Beijing has been playing in the South China Sea, how it has been rattling sabres to scare Taiwan, and how it has installed a new administrator for Hong Kong and continues to violate the democratic and civil liberties of the Chinese community in Hong Kong, which includes 300,000 Canadians. We need to make sure we deal with this at the special committee on Canada-China relations. The other organization that was just set up is being built around a national defence co-operation agreement called AUKUS, which includes Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. They are co-operating not just on intelligence sharing, which the Five Eyes has done, but also on national defence issues, including empowering the Australian navy with submarines, as well as on greater training, co-operation and collaboration among those three allies of Canada. We should be part of that group. It may be too late for us to get in, and maybe there needs to be a path forward on how Canada can become part of that security agreement, but we are a Pacific nation. As a Pacific nation, we should be more involved in defence issues in the South Pacific, and indeed in the Indo-Pacific region, to counterbalance what is happening with the Chinese geopolitical sphere and the way China is trying to influence and potentially use force as it builds up its military to levels we have never seen. Finally, when we look at China through this committee, we also need to look at how China is being used as a back door to take Russian goods and enrich the Russian military machine that we see waging war in Ukraine today. We need to make sure we are counterbalancing that, by looking at China and trying to get it to move away from enriching Putin and his kleptocrats. We need to make sure we get more sanctions on Russia, and that includes talking to China about how it should participate in the rule of law under the international agreements we have and isolate Russia, rather than enriching it so it can wage war on the great people of Ukraine.

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Context: House Hansard - 70 - May/12/22

Ms. Anju Dhillon (Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, Lib.)

May/12/22 3:06:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada recently announced many contributions to support Quebec businesses, including $1.2 million in financial assistance for Chocolat Lamontagne, in Sherbrooke. Could the minister tell us how this sort of contribution will help this and other Quebec businesses that have received or will receive financial assistance from the federal government?

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