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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 309

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 6, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 309 - May/6/24
Mr. Mike Morrice (Kitchener Centre, GP)
  • May/6/24 10:21:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we speak tonight, Israel is launching its long-threatened ground invasion of densely populated Rafah in southern Gaza, and 1.4 million civilians are braced for what the United Nations warned could lead to a bloodbath. Meanwhile, Netanyahu's government has rejected the terms of a ceasefire agreement, 132 hostages remain held by Hamas, and the UN World Food Programme says that northern Gaza has entered full-blown famine. Even before tonight, over 35,000 Palestinians had already been killed in Gaza over the past seven months, including more than 15,000 children. This is all happening two months after the International Court of Justice called on the State of Israel to take six immediate steps to prevent genocide. The Canadian government must press Israel and the Netanyahu government to follow the ICJ ruling and avoid further civilian loss of life. I should not have to call for this. We already did it. In mid-March, Parliament passed a motion that called on the Government of Canada to take 10 actions. The terms of the motion are the will of Canadians as represented by a large majority of MPs in the House, and the parliamentary secretary and all but three of his Liberal colleagues supported the motion. We have now given the government plenty of time to demonstrate that it deserves the trust of Canadians in following through on the critical terms of the motion One of the actions, restoring funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, was followed. Disappointingly, however, many actions seem to have been ignored, including ending arms exports to Israel and placing sanctions on extremist settlers. Another action that seems to have been ignored was supporting the work of the International Court of Justice, and to support the ICJ, the Government of Canada must press the State of Israel to follow its ruling. One of the ICJ's six provisional measures issued in late January called for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, yet just over a month after the ruling, on February 29, we learned of the Flour Massacre, in which 118 Palestinians were killed and 760 were injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks in Gaza City. At the time, I had risen to press the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the ICJ measures to be followed, yet it got worse. Just over a month later, Israel said it mistakenly struck a World Central Kitchen convoy, killing seven aid workers, including dual Canada-U.S. citizen Jacob Flickinger. Two weeks later, a Canadian humanitarian aid organization, the International Development and Relief Foundation, IDRF, had its water truck bombed. The water truck was paid for entirely by Canadian donors, and thousands of people have been without water as a result of the bombing. No humanitarian aid worker should be killed in a conflict zone, yet according to the UN, more than 200 workers have died since October 7, 2023, in Gaza. Ensuring that humanitarian aid flows in Gaza is just one of six measures. As Greens, we continue to call for the government to press for all six measures to be followed by the State of Israel to prevent acts of genocide; for a ceasefire, as we have called for since October 8, 2023; for all hostages to be released by Hamas; for a two-way embargo on military equipment to Israel; and for sanctions on extremist settlers. The government should be doing everything possible to protect innocent civilians, including aid workers and the hostages, yet with the ground invasion of Rafah now under way, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has become all the more dire. Urgent action is needed from the Canadian government. Therefore, my question to the parliamentary secretary is this: What is his government doing in response to the invasion of Rafah, and what specifically is the government doing to call on the State of Israel to follow the ICJ ruling to prevent acts of genocide?
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