Hon. Peter Harder moved third reading of Bill S-8, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, as amended.

Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer: Honourable senators, I also rise today to speak on World Refugee Day and to thank Canadians for opening your doors and your hearts to my refugee family and many other South Asians who fled Uganda 50 years ago.

In June 1972 — 50 years ago — I was a student living in London, England, with my three siblings. My mother was visiting and was with us when we received the worst phone call of our lives, informing us that my father, a Ugandan member of Parliament, had been killed by President Idi Amin’s soldiers.

Our world came crashing down, but my mother did not give up hope. The next day, we heard a knock on the door. It was my father, Sherali Bandali Jaffer, who had fled Uganda to come to England. We could not believe our eyes. My father never shared the details of how he escaped with us, but we know that he had help from his friends in the military. Many of his colleagues were not so fortunate.

My husband and I went back to Uganda and were there on August 3, 1972, when the president declared that he would be expelling all Ugandan Asians. My husband and I were in the process of leaving Uganda when the army showed up at my in-laws’ home. I will never forget that day.

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Young military men had four guns pointing towards my husband — two facing his head and two poking his stomach, forcing him into a jeep. Luckily for us, the police arrived and insisted that my husband be taken to the police station and not army barracks. Luckily, my husband, Nuralla, was released later that day and we left Uganda as soon as we could.

His Highness the Aga Khan and his uncle Prince Sadruddin, who was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees at the time, intervened. They convinced former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and several other global leaders to help us. We were fortunate to be rescued so quickly and are forever grateful to Canadian immigration officials like Mike Molloy, who came to Uganda and quite literally saved our lives.

My story is not unique. Hundreds of refugees before me and after me have had similar experiences.

Honourable senators, on this World Refugee Day let us not forget the women, men and children languishing in refugee camps all over the world. They have lost everything, and we are in a privileged position to provide them with something that they long for: hope. Hope for a brighter future for themselves and for their families.

I will forever remain indebted to Canadians for opening their doors to me and my family when we needed you. I hope that we can keep our hearts and our doors open to refugees around the world and give them hope for a better tomorrow. Thank you, senators.

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, I know your government doesn’t share my views. That’s why we have huge backlogs at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, enormous lineups at Canadian passport offices and, of course, the only thing your government has really unleashed is terrible inflation that we have not seen in 30 years.

Senator Gold, Canada’s largest airport, Toronto Pearson, remains paralyzed because of the doubled processing times caused by the mandatory use of ArriveCAN. At the same time, we have tourism industry representatives and mayors of Canada’s border towns calling for its discontinuation because of its negative impact on tourism across the border.

Your government claims it invoked the Emergencies Act over concerns for economic reputation. What about the damage to our economic reputation over the petulant insistence of your government to hold on to this ridiculous app? Is that of any concern to you and your government?

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise to speak very briefly on Bill S-8, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. I was unable to lend my support to this bill at second reading, and therefore I am taking a bit of your time today to do so.

I will not repeat the essential features of the bill. You have heard them from the sponsor, Senator Harder, and from others.

In a nutshell, this bill aligns our aspirations in the sanctions regime with appropriate legislation in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to ensure that individuals who are sanctioned for various reasons under either the Special Economic Measures Act or the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act are not inadvertently admitted into Canada.

The right hand must know what the left hand is doing, and this is what the bill seeks to ensure.

I think of this as a bit of a cleanup bill, but a bill that is nevertheless urgent in that we must make sure that we are clapping with both hands.

These amendments are essential. For one, the horrifying context in Ukraine — cities and communities decimated, thousands dead, brutal carnage which has been left behind by the invaders, mass graves, people with hands tied behind their back, torture, rape, et cetera.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has displaced close to 7 million people who have fled to Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and also into Canada. Unfortunately, as this conflict sees no end, I fear that more will be displaced.

We also know that Russia is forcing tens of thousands of Ukrainians into camps in Russia. An estimated 200,000 children are among the people who have been removed from Ukraine into Russia. Russia has, in essence, kidnapped them.

This is all horrifying, but if there is one tiny sliver of a silver lining, then it is the alignment of like-minded nation states to come together on sanctioning Russians in different ways.

An example is, of course, the swift and severe sanctions that have been imposed on Russia at SWIFT, and others, too, have been implemented. I am pleased that the government, through this bill and through other proposed changes in the budget implementation act on the repurposing and confiscation of frozen assets, is now taking a more expansive measure to approach our sanction regimes. Both measures will further strengthen Canada’s commitment to holding foreign corrupt leaders, henchmen and entities to account for committing human rights abuses and grave breaches of peace and security.

No one sanction regime imposed by any one jurisdiction can be as effective as when we collaborate and coordinate our responses with other like-minded jurisdictions. But in the least, we need to ensure internal coordination and alignment.

As the sponsor has pointed out, the application of this bill is broader than simply that to Russia and Belarus. It will apply, and can apply, to other sanctioned individuals and entities from places like Iran, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and North Korea.

This bill makes sense in other ways as well. First of all, on the basic point, we don’t want sanctioned individuals coming to Canada. We don’t want their money and we do not want their presence, and Canada should in no way be a temporary or a permanent safe haven for them.

Second, it makes sense to align the Special Economic Measures Act with the Sergei Magnitsky Law. Magnitsky already has inadmissibility grounds for individuals that have committed grave human rights violations, torture and grand corruption. Having sanction regimes that are consistent from one to the other also makes good sense.

Finally, we know that sanctions applied by Canada and by others are having some effect. We know and we have read that there are a few Russian oligarchs who are already speaking out, and we need to tighten the noose every which way we can.

In conclusion, colleagues, for far too long corrupt, brutal and criminal foreign officials and entities have acted with impunity. The government needs more tools to hold brutal leaders to account, and Bill S-8 provides another way to do so. Calling them out is not enough. Sanctioning them is not enough. We must ensure that they never set foot in Canada because I think we all know that once you are in Canada it is extremely difficult to remove an individual.

I will borrow a line from Senator Woo’s speech on Bill S-6 when he urged us to send that bill to the other house. I will urge you to do the same by adding a yellow sticky note and marking it, “super urgent.” Thank you, honourable senators.