44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 24, 2022 11:00AM
- Oct/24/22 12:38:31 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member for Timmins—James Bay listened to my speech on Bill S-5 from the other day. I talked about how the ozone layer was fixed, how the acid rain stuff was fixed and how the automotive industry had really contributed to that.
I am concerned about this bill. The right to a clean environment is like boiling the ocean. It is not very specific. I wonder if he has comments around that. Particularly, fixing the hole in the ozone layer and acid rain were very specific things we tackled. What specifically would this bill tackle?
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- Oct/24/22 4:01:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that the forced organ harvesting that is happening in these communities is something the member has been raising awareness about for as long as I have known him.
I am just wondering if he can outline a little the situation around the forced organ harvesting that is happening in northern China and just how the airports are participating in that.
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- Oct/24/22 4:09:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present today.
The first petition I want to present is from people across Canada in support of Bill S-223, a bill that seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. This bill has been before this place for over 15 years, and the petitioners are urging the Parliament of Canada to move quickly on proposed legislation so as to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to prohibit Canadians from travelling abroad to acquire human organs that might be removed without consent, as we have heard. I am happy to present that petition.
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- Oct/24/22 4:13:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from coast to coast who are concerned about the government's overreach during the times of COVID. They are asking for an end to all COVID-19 mandates, for everyone who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 mandates to be reinstated in their jobs and a return to prepandemic life.
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- Oct/24/22 4:13:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from across the country who are looking for age verification software. The petitioners are concerned about vulnerable Canadians who are not adequately protected on social media platforms and online platforms from potential exploitation. The petitioners note that age verification can determine the age and identity of users and prevent exploitation. The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to commit to defending vulnerable persons and for the government to enact age verification legislation.
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- Oct/24/22 4:13:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I want to present is from Canadians across Canada who are concerned about the Liberal Party of Canada's election promise to revoke charitable status from pro-life organizations such as pregnancy crisis centres, which counsel young women and men and save countless lives every year. Revoking the charitable status of pro-life organizations is the first step to the politicization of charitable status. People are calling on the Liberal Party to not go forward with this, and they are calling on members of Parliament to oppose this at every turn.
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- Oct/24/22 4:13:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I want to present is from Canadians from across the country who are in support of Bill S-211, the supply chain reporting bill. They state that modern slavery is deeply embedded within our Canadian economic supply chains. Approximately 152 million children are in child labour and 20 million adults are in forced labour. Approximately 20 billion dollars' worth of goods imported each year are at risk of being produced through modern slavery. They also state that large companies are not required to report measures taken to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains.
As such, these petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to pass Bill S-211, an act that would enact the fighting against forced labour and child labour in supply chains act and to amend the customs tariff, and when and if it is passed by the Senate, for it to be sent to the House for consideration.
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- Oct/24/22 4:13:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the final petition today is from the folks from Fox Creek and Swan Hills. These are two towns in northern Alberta that are just below the northern living allowance cut-off. They are within 15 miles of that line, yet they are some of the most remote communities in northern Alberta. They are calling on the government to extend the intermediate prescribed zone in Alberta down to their two communities, given the fact these are truly remote communities. Swan Hills is one of the highest elevation communities in North America and, therefore, lives with winter longer than most communities. They are calling on the Government of Canada to include Fox Creek and Swan Hills as communities within the prescribed intermediate zone and allow the residents of these communities to claim the residency deduction for living in northern Alberta.
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- Oct/24/22 8:40:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member across the way for his work on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights and for his work in passing the report through this place, calling for the government to recognize the genocide that is happening there.
I note that this member is very active on it, but my question for him is this. If we continue to wait for the government to take action on it, when does he think the government will be taking action on this declaration of Uighur genocide?
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- Oct/24/22 8:55:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, several petitions were presented on combatting forced organ harvesting around the world.
Does the hon. member have any thoughts or opinions about the passage of Bill S-223 through the House?
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- Oct/24/22 8:56:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise to speak to this motion.
Way back in the day, in 2015, just after I was elected, I was invited to a Christian embassy Christmas dinner and was seated at a table with a gentleman named David Kilgour. David Kilgour was a former member of Parliament when I met him, and he had represented a riding in Alberta. Interestingly, he had been a member of the Conservative caucus and a member of the Liberal caucus and he had sat as an independent, so he had seen the House of Commons from all sides.
We got into a heated debate at that Christmas dinner on issues I did not agree with him over, but I guess the fact I was willing to argue with him made us immediate friends. From that point onward until his death just recently, I had probably seen David Kilgour on a monthly basis in and around Parliament Hill.
David Kilgour was a human rights lawyer and former member of Parliament, and he was the one who really opened my eyes to the situation of the Uighur population in China and the forced organ harvesting that happens in China. Forced organ harvesting is something that, just on the face of it, sounds terrible, yet David Kilgour went through the effort of building reports to prove the Chinese Communist Party and government officials are complicit in this. They are actively participating in it and have created entire systems to facilitate forced organ harvesting in China.
I commend the work of David Kilgour. It is really too bad he is no longer with us. He died suddenly just a couple of months ago. He made the calculations around the number of foreigners coming into China for organ harvesting. He was tipped off originally and started to monitor that, and it was dramatically more people than was possible given the natural occurrence of accidents, overdoses and things like that from which one usually harvests organs. He said that, given the size of the population of China and the expected number of organs that would be available for donation, one would expect a certain amount of people to be able to get a donor, given there has to be an alignment of the ability to donate from one person to the other. It was an order of magnitude of 10 times more people going to China for organ harvesting than he calculated to be possible.
Then he received a phone call from an Israeli doctor who said that the darndest thing had just happened to him. He said that he had just been able to book an organ transplant. He said that never in his life had he been able to book an organ transplant. Typically, one waits on a waiting list for a donor and a match. One waits and waits, because this is a life-and-death situation for the person receiving an organ. Lo and behold, when one comes available it is like winning the lottery. The person travels across the world to find their specific donor who happens to be a match, and on a moment's notice a person needs to drop everything and go to get this organ donation.
The doctor said it was the weirdest thing. He said he now could book two weeks out from today and had scheduled an organ transplant, and that something was odd about it. He knew Mr. Kilgour was investigating this already, so that was kind of the first tipoff. I think that was probably almost 20 years ago now that Mr. Kilgour received that phone call.
As Mr. Kilgour was investigating these things, it came to light that, yes indeed, there was a systematic process of organ harvesting happening in China, but the Chinese government said it was using folks who were on death row, hardened criminals who were being executed. It said it was using organs from those people. It said it was using it from accidents, from other tragedies and also from criminals who were being executed. I think we would all have our foibles about that a little bit.
The other interesting thing is that the Chinese have an extensive network of political dissidents who are imprisoned. We were considering whether the Chinese are using political prisoners as organ donors. Mr. Kilgour made the case that this is in fact happening.
Mr. Kilgour then showed us a lot of footage from the particular regions of China where most of the organ harvesting is happening. It happens to be not in Shanghai, not in the centre of China, but out in the more mountainous regions, in more remote communities. This is for a couple of reasons. Typically the air quality is better, so lungs and organs are in better shape because of that. Also, the people are less educated and are less aware of what is going on.
He showed that these marginal populations in Canada were being targeted for organ harvesting. The Uighurs have been a victim of this, there is no doubt. It gets crazier, so I cannot say that is the craziest part, but if one lands in particular airports in China, they have signs in English saying “This is the organ donor expressway.”
They have yellow markings on the floor and yellow signs saying that those who are there for an organ donation are to follow the signs. There is an entire system set up from the moment people land at the airport, so they do not get lost, and so they can rush, as people are typically in a hurry in these are life-and-death situations. There is an entire system of signage, shuttle buses and specialized elevators, with yellow signage and yellow arrows on the floor to tell people who are there for an organ to follow the signs and they will get where they need to go. That is organized.
Then there needs to be a supply of organs. Mr. Kilgour showed us complete remote villages of people all getting blood tests, and nobody seemed to know what they were getting them for, but they were getting a blood test. Everybody had to show up at the school to get their blood test, and then everybody went home again. Later on, people would randomly go missing. Mr. Kilgour was making the case that this was part of that organ harvesting that is happening in certain populations in China.
This is the greatest connection to the Uyghur population. The Uyghur population are of the Muslim faith, and what is interesting about that is that, particularly when it comes to the organ harvesting, there is a demand for organs that come from a Muslim person. China seems to be using the Uighur population to fill that demand.
This is another thing that Mr. Kilgour pointed out to us. Between the forced organ harvesting happening in China, the particular community of the Uighur population being targeted for this, and the amount of effort the Chinese Communist Party has gone through to make the Uighur people pariahs in their communities, so they are reported by their fellow countrymen and not associated with, make it so they are not missed when they are taken. It makes it so they are seen as lesser than human and generally reported to the government.
Interestingly, this happens to the Uighur people and it also happens to the Falun Gong. Again, Falun Gong is a unique religion, but they also have a very healthy lifestyle and are excellent organ donors. It just seems interesting that the Chinese government would turn the Falun Gong into social pariahs, people their neighbours would turn in for what seems to me to be a steady, healthy supply of organs.
That is the story that I have been told by Mr. Kilgour. I will be forever indebted to him and the work that he has done.
I also want to recognize Francis Yell, who took many trips with Mr. Kilgour to China to investigate a lot of these things. A lot of times, Mr. Kilgour did this at great personal cost, so I want to recognize his legacy. I also want to recognize this motion as being great work by my colleague.
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- Oct/24/22 9:07:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the basic idea of human rights. What are human rights? Do all human beings get human rights? Those are my questions. For me, human rights come to us because we are created in the image of God. Therefore, all of humanity is equal and worthy of dignity and respect.
Particularly when it comes to children, that is definitely the case. Regardless, innocent human life should not be taken. I do not know much about the specific thing the member is referencing, but those are my views on human life and human rights, and I defend human life and human rights wherever I can.
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- Oct/24/22 9:09:16 p.m.
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Oh boy, do I ever, Mr. Speaker. I think I would need a whole other speech just to address that.
What I would point out is that there is currently a bill in front of the foreign affairs committee, Bill S-211, that deals with supply chain reporting. It deals with big companies that operate in the west or in Canada. In particular, they would have to do a report on the impacts of their companies on human trafficking and forced labour. That is for sure a bill I would like to get passed.
The other thing is what the Americans are doing. They are identifying the province of Xinjiang as a place where forced labour is a problem, so for any products that are coming out of that area, there is a reverse onus and companies must prove that forced labour is not being used in their products. That is another initiative that I could get behind, and I look forward to the government moving on that.
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- Oct/24/22 9:10:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for highlighting the work I do in combatting human trafficking both here in Canada and around the world.
Human trafficking for the Uighur population mostly looks like forced labour. It is a big challenge for Canada to identify who is being trafficked and forced into labour in some instances. In some places, it is not at all.
In some instances, people who have worked for a company for 20 years got their job all on their own and they are of the Uighur ethnicity or religion but have moved into the city and now work there. Sometimes we struggle or grapple with how to identify a person who took that job on their own and another person who has been trafficked into it, but it is definitely the case that it happens.
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