44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2023 02:00PM
- Nov/22/23 2:29:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, actually what is up is that the Prime Minister has once again betrayed Ukraine. He betrayed Ukraine when he gave Putin that big turbine to pump his gas and fund his war. He betrayed Ukraine when he refused to sell Canadian gas to break European dependence on Putin. He betrayed Ukraine by failing to vet someone celebrated in the House who turned out to be a Nazi. He is betraying Ukraine with this terrible agreement to force a carbon tax on Ukrainians that would destroy their ability to fight a war and rebuild their economy. We would axe the tax and stand unequivocally with Ukrainians in their fight for freedom.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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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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- Nov/22/23 6:39:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I forgive the member for always using bully-boy attacks and for his rhetoric. The idea of trying to tie us to something happening south of the border is ridiculous. Anyone who knows the current Conservative Party and knows the leader of the Conservative Party knows that the leader stands with Ukraine. I personally confess that I have seen him passionately defend Ukraine. He is opposed to Russia's aggression. He is opposed to Putin's dictatorship and the atrocities that Russia is committing in Ukraine. He is a leader who stands for freedom, for democracy and for human rights, and he stands with Ukraine. I have no doubt of that, and neither should any other member of the House. In spreading misinformation and disinformation, the member is only helping Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
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- Nov/22/23 6:41:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do want to thank the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for his passion and his advocacy, and for the leadership he has shown on this.
I was disappointed that the Liberals voted against the amendment to the act that would have provided more opportunity to produce weapons and ammunition to send to Ukraine. We started advocating the provision of weapons in 2018. We had sniper rifles and the Carl-Gustaf anti-tank weapons. We had rocket propeller grenades and side arms that we wanted to send to Ukraine that were sitting in storage, collecting dust and going nowhere. We asked the Liberals to send them, but they did not send them until after the war started in 2022, four and a half years after we started asking them to send them. The Liberal-NDP coalition called me a warmonger.
The truth is that we all knew Putin was going to try to fully invade Ukraine. We are coming up to the Holodomor commemoration on Saturday. We are having a commemoration here on the Hill tomorrow. It was the genocide of several million Ukrainians by Stalin and his Communist thugs to wipe the Ukrainian nation off the earth. It is happening again. It is being done again by Moscow, by Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin kleptocrats. We have to stand with Ukraine. It needs weapons and not a carbon tax.
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- Nov/22/23 6:43:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on the discussion about the report from the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade entitled, “The Russian State's Illegal War of Aggression Against Ukraine”.
As Canadians know, Conservatives have always stood with Ukraine. Those who have had the pleasure of hearing at committee some stories from my personal history will have heard that, back in 1991, when the Soviet Union was collapsing, I was the senior adviser to Canada's foreign minister.
I can remember the weekend that I spent on the phone with the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office and former deputy prime minister Don Mazankowski, the first Ukrainian deputy prime minister of Canada, discussing what we should do. The Soviet Union had not quite collapsed, and Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to institute his glasnost reforms. It looked like, within a few weeks, there would be a collapse.
We had a long discussion about recognizing Ukraine first. We were the party that recognized Ukraine on that weekend, December 2, and we were the first country in the world to recognize Ukraine as an independent country, separate from the old Soviet Union. That was a momentous thing because, of course, we have a large diaspora of Ukrainians in Canada. I am proud to have played a very small and minor role as a senior adviser to the then minister of foreign affairs, Hon. Barbara McDougall, when we did that.
We do support all of the recommendations in this report, but I would like to draw attention to a couple of particular interest to us. The previous speaker spoke about recommendations 12 and 13, and I will come to that, but I would like to focus a little on recommendation 8, which says:
That the Government of Canada work with its international and domestic partners to improve the coordinated implementation and enforcement of sanctions against Russia, by working to identify all assets connected to designated persons and closing any loopholes that may exist.
There are a lot of loopholes that still exist today. Not to toot my own horn, but I worked on creating the legislation the Government of Canada still uses today back in 1991, when there was the coup in Haiti. We wanted to impose economic sanctions, globally through the OAS and then through the UN, on Haiti and the illegal coup of Haiti's first democratically elected president.
There was no power to quickly impose economic sanctions. We quickly created within about four days a piece of legislation that was introduced and passed unanimously through the House and Senate within about 48 hours to create a bill that gave the Governor in Council the power to quickly move and impose economic sanctions.
We know these sanctions are leaking, and I have raised this before in committee. I said it as a member of the fisheries committee. While the government has targeted specific individuals, and all of those are justified, what it has not done is looked at the leakiness of the sanctions overall. I have an example that has had a very large impact on Atlantic Canada. The snow crab fishery is a very big fishery off Newfoundland, and 52% of the crab fishery caught in Newfoundland was, until this war happened last year, bought by Japan, through contracts.
When the war broke out and Russia was desperate for cash, it started to sell their snow crab at a much cheaper price on the global markets. Most countries respected the fact that that money would be used for fuelling Putin's illegal war and did not bite. Japan did bite, broke every contract in Newfoundland and stopped buying all their snow crab from Newfoundland. Now Japan buys most of their snow crab from Russia, helping to fund their war.
The minister and the Liberal government have never raised those kinds of issues with counterparts. We have raised them with the minister, and the minister was totally unaware that this had happened.
It is not unusual for a Liberal minister to be unaware, but one would think that, when we are dealing with sanctions in a war, it is not just about the individuals but is about the flow of cash that is going in by buying goods of our G7 allies.
I would also like to comment on recommendation 12, which reads, “That the Government of Canada not grant a sanctions waiver to Siemens Energy Canada Limited for Nord Stream 1 pipeline turbines....”
Remember, with the turbine, Russia did this fake thing about needing the turbine for the pipeline that brought natural gas and oil into Europe. It brought in a need for repair, and the government said it was no problem, to bring it in here and we would repair it. Then the war broke out and Russia said it wanted it back in order to facilitate the continued supply of that oil and natural gas, supposedly. The government acquiesced, granted a waiver, sent it back to Russia and allowed it to continue to ship oil and natural gas to fund its war.
In fact, if we look at some of the testimony in this report, it quite clearly shows that a number of witnesses were flabbergasted the Government of Canada would allow such fakery to happen.
In addition, in a rare moment of clarity on the liquefied natural gas issue, the Minister of Natural Resources said at the time, and this is from page 31 of the unanimous report, that he could not “overemphasize the depth of concern on the part of the Germans, but also on the part of the European Union, with respect to the potential implications associated with their effectively not being able to access natural gas.”
The report goes on:
In addition to the concerns expressed by Germany and the EU, the Minister [of Natural Resources] noted that, in conversations had with the United States, “they reflected and shared the concerns about the divisions that could end up undermining support for Ukraine....”
That was the Liberal minister, but yet when the Chancellor of Germany came to Canada and Germany was begging for our natural gas to deal with the issue of the impact on energy supply in Europe because of this illegal war, the Prime Minister said that there was no business case to ship it oil.
Maybe there is a case to get it done because there is a war on, but of course we were not ready to do that. When the Prime Minister and these Liberals came to power in 2015, there were 15 LNG plants on the books. As they progressed with their agenda, their no-pipelines bill, Bill C-69, or the “no capital bill”, as I call it, to drive capital out of Canada, we have how many? I am sure there are members here who could tell me how many have been built since those 15 were proposed and going through the environmental system.
I hear a colleague say zero. Maybe the true answer the Prime Minister should have given the Chancellor of Germany is that he messed up and that he was not ready to deal with the issue of making sure good, clean, ethical Canadian natural gas could be accessed by Europe, which has become totally dependent on Russia, in case of emergencies. Unfortunately, that was not his answer. He glibly said that there was no business case for it. I am not sure the Prime Minister has actually ever read a business plan, but he told the Chancellor that, and so Germany went and obtained the natural gas it needed from dirty dictatorships. That is the great foreign policy we have had.
My colleague mentioned the fact that if the Liberals were truly interested in supporting Ukraine, they would have put provisions in the free trade bill to enable and foster the ability of our country to supply more munitions to Ukraine and to manufacture them. In fact, if there is a gap in political risk insurance by the EDC, it is easy for the Government of Canada to show its commitment to Ukraine by using the Canada account to help Canadian munitions manufacturers located in Germany and deal with the risk insurance issue.
Have the Liberals used the Canada account to do that? No, so their commitment to Ukraine is, like all other things, fairly superficial and not done with the seriousness one would expect from an ally of an important democratic country in this world and of our diaspora of 1.5 million Ukrainians in Canada who expect more from the government.
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- Nov/22/23 7:29:55 p.m.
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I absolutely do not, Madam Speaker. I will not stand here and vote for something that would export the worst, most harmful policy that the current Liberal government has come up with in decades. It is creating the misery that is in Canada.
However, what this member and Liberals should all be ashamed of is that they granted the export waiver that is allowing Russia to pump more oil. The member has the audacity to say that we have given Vladimir Putin a win by exercising our right as the opposition to oppose a bad trade deal, when the Liberals granted the waiver that increases Russian blood money. They are disgraceful.
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- Nov/22/23 7:33:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hypocrisy is stunning. The Liberals granted a turbine to fund Putin's war machine and voted against munitions. The NDP is just merrily along for the ride.
The NDP members on the committee voted against expanding the trade agreement to include critical munitions exports. How dare he say that we betrayed Ukraine. They did it.
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- Nov/22/23 7:34:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, given the hypocrisy of what we have heard from the Conservatives tonight, I am pleased to rise to defend the recommendations made by the foreign affairs committee, which the Conservatives are trying to gut. More importantly, I want to come back to the importance of adopting concurrence on the report rather than seeing it gutted, as we are seeing, by the Conservatives. In a procedural sleight of hand, they are trying to destroy all of the recommendations that form part of a consensus we have had since Putin invaded Ukraine.
We have seen the appalling civilian casualties. We have seen the evidence of war crimes and sexual abuse. We have seen the appalling bombings of hospitals, schools and apartment buildings. We have all seen that. It is fair to say there was initially a consensus, and it is reflected in the report the Conservatives are now trying to gut, trying to destroy. It was reflected as well in President Zelenskyy's comments to us parliamentarians. He asked, on behalf of the people of Ukraine, to adopt the Canada-Ukraine trade deal. This resonated across Canada and should have resonated with Conservative members given that a million and a half Canadians are of Ukrainian origin and they believe strongly in Canada supporting Ukraine.
Yesterday was no simple day. It was the 10th anniversary of the Day of Dignity and Freedom for Ukrainian people. It is important symbolism, a profound symbolic act of Canada standing in support of Ukraine. Ukrainians could not celebrate that day because they are trying to defend their villages, farms and homes. What we saw yesterday, on the Day of Dignity and Freedom, was the entire Conservative caucus, not just the leader, the member for Carleton, whose extremist views we know about, rising one after the other to betray Ukraine, to betray the commitment that all Canadians feel they have to Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian ambassador to Canada asked us, as an act of solidarity and support for the Ukrainian people, to adopt the trade agreement, and every single member in this House except Conservatives rose as one to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Every single member of the Conservative caucus betrayed the consensus we have had since the beginning of the horrific invasion and horrific violence that has been engendered toward the Ukrainian people. Conservatives decided to choose the Day of Dignity and Freedom to betray Ukrainian Canadians and betray Ukraine.
I continue to believe that this vote lives in infamy. The member for Carleton has an obsession with the federal price on carbon, which does not even apply in my province of British Columbia, in Quebec or in the Northwest Territories, and demands that the federal price on carbon be part of a carbon election. What does that mean for my province or our second-largest province, the Quebec nation? What does that mean for the Northwest Territories and other jurisdictions where the federal price on carbon does not even apply? He has never even asked that question, but his obsession with the price on carbon and his obsession with the denial of climate change I find to be profoundly disturbing.
This is a step further. This is taking the extremism of the Republican Party in the United States, which is rejecting supports for Ukraine and refusing to stand with the Ukrainian people as we speak, and manifesting it here in this chamber. Canadians were all witness to it yesterday, on a symbolic day of such importance.
The Day of Dignity and Freedom is the day the Conservative MPs chose to betray Ukraine. That was the day the entire Conservative caucus turned its back on Ukraine. The Day of Dignity and Freedom was hard fought by Ukrainians, to establish their democracy, to fight back against this totalitarian, authoritarian dictator Putin who has ravaged the country. That was the day Conservatives chose to side, not with the Ukrainian people but, with the extremists that we see in the Republican Party. I find that profoundly disturbing.
Not a single Conservative MP rose to stand with Ukraine. How could they go back to their constituents with this weird extremist obsession of their new leader, the member for Carleton, with the price on carbon and denying climate change? How could they go back and say that their obsession with the price on carbon was what led them to betray Ukraine?
Today, we have a report from the foreign affairs committee. This is part of the consensus that Canadians saw, in a very positive light, since the invasion of Ukraine, since the horrific violence brought against the people of Ukraine. There was an all-party consensus that lasted up until the Day of Dignity and Freedom, when Conservatives betrayed and turned their back on the people of Ukraine, breaking that consensus.
Then tonight, we have another example. We have a report that has come forward with the consensus of all parties, that speaks to Canada taking a leading role against the crimes against humanity, the war crimes, the violations of international human rights, the gender-based and sexual violence, with Canada play a leading role in that prosecution. Conservatives said no, that they were going to gut the report, and were—
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- Nov/22/23 7:50:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity this evening to follow up on a question that I asked in question period on October 20 regarding the Liberal government’s opposition to liquefied natural gas exports to Europe.
For context, shortly after Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the leaders of western European countries started to take steps to end their dependence on oil and gas imports from Russia. This makes a great deal of sense, because buying oil and gas from Russia means funding Vladimir Putin’s war machine against Ukraine.
What exactly did the leaders of Europe do? In August of last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany visited Canada looking to buy more oil and gas from this country. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister told him that there has never been a strong business case for Canadian oil and gas exports to Europe.
What did the German chancellor do next? He flew to the Middle East to see if the dictators of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar felt that there was a strong business case for oil and gas exports to Europe. Those Middle Eastern dictators were happy to sign a multi-year memorandum of understanding that will guarantee steady oil and gas exports to Germany for years to come.
The story does not end there. Last month, France, the Netherlands and Italy all signed separate agreements to import LNG from Qatar for the next 27 years. This raises a question: Why is Canada not exporting LNG to Europe?
According to a report released by the Fraser Institute shortly after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year, “Unfortunately, despite being the world’s fifth-largest producer of natural gas, Canada has missed the opportunity to expand our supply of LNG to overseas markets due to a lack of export infrastructure, largely due to regulatory barriers and environmental activism.”
In fact, Canada does not have a single operational LNG export facility, and only one is under construction. This is the Coastal GasLink project in British Columbia.
That brings us to my question in question period last month, when I asked if the Liberal government still believes that there is no business case for Canadian LNG exports. What was the government's response? It was, “Mr. Speaker, it is really shameful that the Conservative Party would use this humanitarian situation to peddle conspiracy theories.”
There are some things I would really like to know. What conspiracy theories was the Liberal minister referring to? Were last year’s German LNG deals with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates all conspiracy theories? When Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Canada last year, was he part of the conspiracy? What about the three agreements that Qatar signed last month with France, the Netherlands and Italy? Are they in on the conspiracy as well? What about the 6,000 people who worked on the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline? Does the Liberal minister think that they are part of the conspiracy too?
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