SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 170 - Mar/21/23

Mar/21/23 12:40:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not sure which book the member is referring to. I kind of missed that part. I did catch the word “inquiry”, though, and I notice that we are still waiting to hear how the New Democrats intend to vote on our motion to call the Prime Minister's chief of staff to testify before a committee of the House.

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Mr. Kyle Seeback (Dufferin—Caledon, CPC)

Mar/21/23 12:41:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is an advisory that has been put out by the Government of Canada that says, “The Government of Canada is deeply concerned by reports and documentary evidence of repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities by Chinese authorities”. The U.S. version says, “The People’s Republic of China (PRC) government continues to carry out genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang), China. The PRC’s crimes against humanity include imprisonment, torture, rape, forced sterilization, and persecution”. I wonder if the member could comment on why the Government of Canada's approach to this, including not seizing any goods, is seemingly so at odds with our number one ally and trading partner.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Mar/21/23 12:41:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. He named some of the crimes that we see happening against the Turkic Uighur people in the Xinjiang province, which have really ramped up since 2017, the start of these formal labour camps that the regime in Beijing keeps referring to as “vocational schools”, typically. That is kind of the nomenclature it uses. As someone of Polish heritage, I am pretty used to this from Communist regimes. They give everything weird names. “Potemkin village” comes to mind as well. This is consistently done by regimes like this. We should be aligned in this case with our partners in the USMCA, who have done a much better job, especially the Americans, in enforcing the rules. If we are going to take this to heart, we have to enforce the sanction regimes passed by the House.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

Mar/21/23 12:42:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the answer we were given earlier, that consultations are being held on the steps to be taken to improve the forced labour situation, that is to say to eradicate it. With respect to children, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was signed on November 20, 1989, or almost 34 years ago. They have had 34 years for consultations, so we wonder if they are asking all eight billion people on earth what concrete steps should be taken. I would like to hear what my colleague thinks about this.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Mar/21/23 12:43:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member. As I said, this reminds me of the Yiddish proverb: “A drowning man will reach even for the point of a sword”. With respect to this file, the government talks about consultations, commissions, websites and attestations. That is not good enough. What we need are results from the CBSA, to ensure that goods imported into our country are not made with forced labour.

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Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC)

Mar/21/23 12:44:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government can introduce all the legislation it wants and Parliament can adopt all the legislation the government presents. The government can introduce all the regulation it wants and it can sign all the treaties it wants. However, if it does not operationalize that legislation, does not operationalize those regulations and does not put into effect those treaties, it is all for nought. What is going on with Xinjiang is a good example of this. Clearly, a genocide is taking place in Xinjiang. As members know, Canada is obligated under the genocide convention to prevent genocide. Article 1 of that convention says, “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.” One of the elements of a genocide is “[i]mposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the birth rate in Xinjiang plummeted by 50%, one half, between 2017 and 2019. In two short years, 24 months, the birth rate went from 16 births per 1,000 people to eight births per 1,000 people. Clearly, one element of the genocide is taking place. Two other elements of genocide under the convention are “[c]ausing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” and, second, “[d]eliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. There is evidence that both of these elements are also in place in the massive detention camps the PRC has set up in Xinjiang. There is evidence based on satellite imagery, survivor testimony, investigative journalism, leaked documents, smuggled videos and so many other pieces of evidence, documenting hundreds of detention camps built by the PRC in Xinjiang province. It is estimated that more than two million Uighur Muslims have been detained in these camps. Some experts have called these camps the greatest detention of a group of people since the Second World War. PRC authorities first denied the very existence of these camps, but when presented with high-resolution satellite evidence, they recanted and explained them away as simply educational camps. Documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have highlighted what is going on in these camps, including torture and forced labour. There is evidence that Uighurs are being forced to pick cotton and produce tomatoes that the PRC is exporting around the world, which is just like what happened during another genocide. During the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainian peasants were forced to produce grain that Stalin then exported to the rest of the world, leaving them with nothing, not even seed grain for the next year's planting and harvest. As a result, over three million Ukrainians starved to death. Therefore, clearly, a genocide is taking place in Xinjiang. Parliament recognized that a genocide was taking place in early 2021 by adopting a resolution in the House. It is now time for the government to uphold the international rules-based order. It is now up to the government to uphold two treaties to which this country is a party. It needs to uphold, first, the 1948 genocide convention by preventing genocide from continuing, by preventing the importation of products like tomatoes and cotton that have been produced using forced Uighur labour. Another treaty that the government should be upholding, if it is serious about upholding the international rules-based order, is our obligation under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. Article 23.6 of the agreement requires Canada to ban imports produced by forced or slave labour. The agreement says, “Accordingly, each Party shall prohibit the importation of goods into its territory from other sources produced in whole or in part by forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory child labor.” Subsequent to the signing of the USMCA several years ago, Canada and the United States adopted legislation to implement the elements of the CUSMA treaty that ban imports that have been produced using forced or slave labour. Parliament amended the Customs Tariff Act in July 2020 to bring Canada's laws into conformity with CUSMA, and the government published regulations stemming from those changes to the Customs Tariff Act that came into effect that same month, July 2020, some two and a half, almost three, years ago. A year later, the United States also changed its laws to bring them into conformity with the CUSMA treaty, but here is where the similarities end. While the similarity between Canada and the United States is that both of us have implemented laws bringing CUSMA into effect, and both are party to the genocide convention, it ends there. Since these laws have come into force, the United States has stopped thousands of cargo container shipments from entering the United States from Xinjiang, but Canada has not stopped a single shipment from entering this country. In fact, the government temporarily halted one shipment from coming into Canada and subsequently released it. I believe that was in the province of Quebec. No shipment has been blocked, interdicted and prevented from entering Canada, despite the fact that, south of the border, the U.S. government is upholding the rules-based international order and has prevented the importation of thousands of cargo containers containing things such as tomatoes, cotton and solar panels that have been produced using a labour force of millions of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province. Despite the U.S. interdicting thousands of shipments, the U.S. government has admitted that this is not good enough. In fact, it has plans to hire over 300 new positions at the border to continue to interdict even more products coming into its country from Xinjiang. It has plans to implement new computer systems and new training, and to conduct outreach to importers to prevent further shipments from arriving on American shores. However, in Canada, nothing has happened, despite the fact the law came into effect almost three years ago. One shipment was temporarily blocked and then admitted into Canada. Meanwhile, thousands of cargo container shipments have been blocked from Xinjiang by the U.S. government because it is upholding its treaty obligations, its laws, the regulations it has published and the rules-based international order, which the current government says it supports. However, as the CBC, The Globe and Mail, and so many other investigative journalists have reported, tomatoes and cotton produced in Xinjiang, likely with forced labour, have continued to flood Canadian supermarket shelves and retail shops. The government turns a blind eye despite the fact it has these treaty obligations under CUSMA, it has these laws in place, and there are regulations that have been gazetted. Let me conclude by saying this. The government can introduce all the regulations it wants, Parliament can pass all the laws it wants and the government can sign all the treaties it wants, but none of this has any effect unless the Government of Canada and its agencies operationalizes these laws and regulations, upholds these treaties and starts putting the work in place to actually block shipments from Xinjiang from coming into Canada. That is why I will support the motion in front of the House. If the government is truly going to uphold our international reputation and the rules-based international order that it says it so deeply believes in, then that starts with doing exactly what we are calling for in this motion: to start blocking cargo container shipments at the Port of Vancouver and other Canadian ports that contain tomatoes and cotton from Xinjiang that have been produced using forced and slave labour.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/21/23 12:54:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things I made reference to during my comments was in regard to the Minister of Labour and the mandate letter provided by the Prime Minister, which gives very a clear indication that we are to be developing legislation. That legislation is, in fact, in the works. I am not going to indicate when we will see it, because I am sure the member can appreciate that it does require a great deal of consultation and working with a wide spectrum of different types of stakeholders. Could the member provide his thoughts in regard to the type of work that should be done prior to introducing legislation, given the consequences of a substantive piece of legislation that we hope to be producing at some time, whether it is in months or years?

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Hon. Michael Chong

Mar/21/23 12:55:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government does not need new legislation. It has immense powers under existing framework legislation. It has immense powers under the Customs Tariff Act and its regulations. The government needs to get its hands dirty and figure out exactly what it needs to do to empower the Canada Border Services Agency officers to interdict these shipments. It needs to sit down with frontline officers and ask what they need, in terms of training, computer systems and personnel. Let us get this done in the next six months so we can stop bringing in these products that have been produced using Uighur forced labour.

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Ms. Monique Pauzé (Repentigny, BQ)

Mar/21/23 12:56:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I have to say that I completely agree with him on the answer he just gave to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government. We do not need consultations or other measures. Billions of dollars are at stake. That may be why the situation is not going to change anytime soon and also why the government is acting with a little too much caution. Between 2015 and 2020, there was even an increase in the estimated dollar value linked to forced labour. My colleague provided many suggestions about how to improve all of this. Does he believe that transparency and perhaps even labelling could also be solutions?

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Hon. Michael Chong

Mar/21/23 12:56:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question. I believe that the government needs to provide us with more information. I believe that is a problem here in Ottawa. We could even say that this place is information-free compared to the capitals of other G7 countries. It is a huge problem with the lack of transparency and information. It is very difficult to find out from the government whether or not shipments have been interdicted and blocked. We often have to get that information through access to information requests or other investigative techniques, rather than the government being transparent about what is going on by default. That adds to the problem. People are generally not aware that we are not upholding our treaty obligations. We are not upholding the rules-based international order when it comes to preventing imports using forced Uighur labour. Part of that problem is the lack of transparency from the government about what exactly is going to be interdicted at the border. We do know one thing, which is that no shipment has been blocked from Xinjiang that has been produced using forced Uighur labour.

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Mr. Brian Masse (Windsor West, NDP)

Mar/21/23 12:58:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with regard to the CBSA officers, one of the things we had this summer was mandatory working during vacation time and mandatory overtime. One of the things we could do is actually expand their operations and boots on the ground, so to speak. What are the member's comments about that, versus what right now is an agenda to actually move to more automation? Where do the Conservatives stand on that?

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Hon. Michael Chong

Mar/21/23 12:58:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard for me to give a specific answer to that question, because we are not presently in government and I do not have access to that information, unfortunately. The minister should sit down with frontline CBSA officers and, obviously, the head of the CBSA, to talk about what resources and tools they actually need to start blocking these cargo container shipments. Ninety-eight percent or so of the world's trade arrives on these cargo containers. There has to be a way to implement computer systems, training and other measures in order to interdict these shipments. The United States has been doing it and they are further improving on their record. There is no reason why Canada cannot do the same.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Mar/21/23 12:59:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to talk a bit about the forced labour happening around the world and the concerns around the importation into Canada of some of the products that have been produced by forced labour. I want to talk a bit today about products that get a free pass. Increasingly, we have these environmental, social and governance indicators, or ESG indicators. To some degree, that ends up having a watering-down effect and folks who have a so-called environmental footprint get a free pass on some of the other issues. A number of organizations around the world have pursued looking at so-called green technology, wind turbines or solar panels, for example. What happens then is that these products get a great brand around their environmental bona fides. People with solar panels or wind turbines get a relatively free pass. We can override a number of other issues. We have seen this right here in the province of Ontario. A lot of locals who live in areas where wind turbines or solar fields are being put up are frustrated. They do not necessarily appreciate these, yet they have little recourse to fight them. We see the same thing happen when it comes to forced labour around the world. When it comes to the production of wind turbines or solar panels, for example, a blind eye is turned to the use of forced labour. For instance, most of the cobalt in the world, if not all the cobalt in the world, comes out of Congo. Vast amounts of that cobalt are harvested by forced labour and child labour. There have been examples from the U.S. Department of Labor, where up to 75% of the polysilicon that goes into the making of solar panels comes from forced labour around the world. Reports have identified 90 Chinese and international companies whose supply chains for these solar panels come from forced labourers. Seven of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers come out of China and over 50% of the installations around the world come from these seven companies in China. Most of these companies have been identified by the Sheffield Hallam University. It has shown that forced labour is a major part of all of these companies' supply chains. I want to highlight today that while these are green technologies, they sometimes allow us to overlook the forced labour that is in many of these products.

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The Deputy Speaker

Mar/21/23 1:02:56 p.m.
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It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith the question necessary to dispose of the motion now before the House. The question is on the motion. If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

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Interrupt

Mr. Kyle Seeback

Mar/21/23 1:03:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would request a recorded division.

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The Deputy Speaker

Mar/21/23 1:03:31 p.m.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the division stands deferred until later this day at the expiry of time provided for Oral Questions.

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Mr. Scot Davidson (York—Simcoe, CPC)

Mar/21/23 1:04:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by thousands of Canadians, including the residents of the Town of Georgina and the small but mighty community of Pefferlaw. The petition calls on the government to prohibit the development of the so-called Baldwin east aerodrome. To date, the Liberals have done nothing to prevent the planned dumping of more than 1.2 million cubic metres of potentially contaminated soil on the environmentally sensitive area within the Lake Simcoe watershed and have ignored the previous involvement of the aerodrome proponents in waste management and illegal fill dumping. The petitioners call on the Minister of Transport to prohibit the construction of the Baldwin east aerodrome and amend related Transport Canada regulations to ensure that the false pretense of building an aerodrome could not be used to illegally dump fill. We need action.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Mar/21/23 1:04:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this petition comes from constituents of mine, who are calling on the government to prioritize Hazaras coming into Canada as part of the target of 40,000 Afghani refugees. The petitioners draw the attention of the House to the fact that over 28,000 Afghans have been brought to Canada as refugees. They also remind the House that for the past 130 years, the Hazara ethnic group has faced genocide and systemic ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan; that since the fall of Kabul in August 2021, Hazaras have once again been targeted by the Taliban regime, as they are also a minority religious community; that the Taliban regime is responsible for the massacre and genocide of Hazaras; and that Taliban gunmen have directly been involved in executing Hazaras and forcing them to leave their homeland. Again, the petitioners remind the Government of Canada that, as part of its international obligations, it has an obligation to also ensure that the Hazaras form a sizable portion of the 40,000 Afghans who are being brought to Canada as refugees.

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

Mar/21/23 1:06:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I rise to present a petition today, I am struck by how timely it is. We would not have known, when I pulled this petition for today, what we would be debating in a concurrence debate. The petitioners from my riding are calling on Canada to pay attention to the fact that companies within Canada, Canadian-based companies, are responsible for human rights abuses around the world, such as killing, attacking, harassing indigenous peoples and other citizens in societies around the world and marginalized groups, and are on their way to also damaging the environment in those countries. The petitioners call on the House of Commons to require, through new legislation to protect human rights and environmental due diligence, that Canadian companies prevent adverse human rights impacts and environmental damage throughout their activities and supply chains; to require these companies to do due diligence as to subcontractors and so on; to be sure that the products Canadians buy from them do not involve human rights abuses, forced labour or slavery; to avoid, insofar as it is possible, environmental damage around the world; and to establish a legal right for people who have been harmed by Canadian companies overseas to seek justice in Canadian courts.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/21/23 1:07:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

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