The Hon. the Speaker: Not really, as there are just eight seconds left. Is Senator Dalphond asking for extra time?

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Honourable senators, I had a question, but, with five seconds left, I do not have time to ask it. I have no prepared notes, but, as always, Senators Woo and Dalphond raise very interesting points. They should be addressed so that colleagues have a clearer picture of what is going on.

I completely reject Senator Woo’s comments about what the motives might be of people who favour this bill. In my part of Canada, the farmers do not have any natural gas to assist them. The fact that the price of natural gas has gone down substantially has been a theme of both speeches we heard tonight. The farmers in Prince Edward Island have limited resources of energy. We have some solar and some wind, and the rest is oil and propane that is imported, so the costs are completely different.

Senator Dalphond raised a number of interesting points. I might start off by talking about some of his suggestions for the Rules Committee to consider, which I think are very interesting. Senator Dalphond also highlighted the prosperity of farmers, and he gave a very good argument for supply management and the benefits of supply management. It would be the hope of all of us that all farmers would have the same income and stability that other Canadians have, and supply management provides that.

However, there is a large group of farmers who do not benefit from supply management. For potato farmers in Prince Edward Island, the local joke is that you may as well roll the dice in Las Vegas as throw the seeds in the field because you don’t know what the crop will be, what the weather will be and what the price will be. It’s a high-risk business. The additional cost of the measures proposed by the government is unfair on a regional basis. As a regional chamber, we should keep that in mind, with the lack of natural gas.

The other thing we should recall, colleagues, is how this bill got here. This is a bill proposed by a Conservative MP. They don’t have a majority in the House of Commons. A number of Liberal MPs had to recognize the importance of this and support it to pass it. It’s interesting that the two senators who spoke tonight are from cities. They support farmers, but they think their position is more important than farmers’ success and prosperity. The Liberal MPs who voted for this bill took a high risk. Unlike in this chamber, MPs who deviate from the party line are subject to a range of punishments, I would call them — restrictions on what they can do, speaking time and committees. So they were very good representatives of their regions. They recognized the concerns expressed by the farming community, and they supported this legislation. That’s how it ended up here. I’m surprised senators tonight have embraced the views of the Liberal cabinet as opposed to those MPs who spoke and voted in an independent manner, which is what we’re striving to do here on a regular basis.

Colleagues, there are lots of good things in this bill and lots of proposals, but I’ll conclude with these comments: We all remember when, during the pandemic, we had shortages in our country because of things we could not get because they were offshore. We see President Biden onshoring as much as he can in a whole range of industries. We have to be very careful in this country. If the food supply system is threatened and if farmers go out of business, if they’re gone, they’re not coming back. We do not want to be dependent in this country on food coming from other countries. We want food security in our country. The only way to do that is to have successful, prosperous farmers in our country. This bill would help achieve that.

Thank you, colleagues.

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond, pursuant to notice of June 8, 2023, moved:

That the Senate acknowledge that Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza — recipient of the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, a Senior Fellow of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and a friend of the Parliament of Canada — is an internationally recognized champion for human rights and democracy, whose wrongful imprisonment for dissenting against the unjust war in Ukraine is emblematic of thousands of political prisoners in Russia and around the world; and

That the Senate resolve to bestow the title “honorary Canadian citizen” on Vladimir Kara-Murza and call for his immediate release.

He said: Honourable senators, I rise to co-propose that the Senate join with the House of Commons’ unanimous vote last week to grant honorary Canadian citizenship to Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza. Thank you to Senators Housakos, Omidvar, Miville-Dechêne and Patterson (Ontario) for your collaborative efforts towards this goal.

As this motion states, Vladimir Kara-Murza is an internationally recognized champion for human rights and democracy. He is a recipient of the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize and a Senior Fellow of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in Montreal. Mr. Kara-Murza’s wrongful imprisonment for dissenting against the unjust war in Ukraine is emblematic of thousands of political prisoners in Russia and around the world.

After surviving two assassination attempts, Mr. Kara-Murza is currently serving a 25-year sentence in Russia imposed further to a mockery of a trial held after he courageously returned to his homeland last year.

Senators, the Parliament of Canada must stand with such a hero and a friend of Canada. Mr. Kara-Murza visited our Parliament twice. In 2016, he appeared before the Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee to urge the adoption of the Sergei Magnitsky Law named after another victim of the Putin regime, which became law in 2017.

In 2019, Mr. Kara-Murza assisted the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, alongside the Honourable Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, in relation to the human rights situation in Russia.

Vladimir’s spouse Evgenia Kara-Murza is the Advocacy Coordinator of the Free Russia Foundation. She assisted the same House committee last October in relation to a study of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. She told MPs that 19,335 people have been arbitrarily detained in Russia since February 2022, the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

That same week Ms. Kara-Murza was a guest of this chamber. Many of us had the great honour of speaking with her. This year, senators have spoken of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s situation in this chamber, including Senators Boehm, McPhedran and Gold.

[Translation]

Last April, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, condemned the guilty verdict of Vladimir Kara‑Murza. She stated, and I quote:

Mr. Kara-Murza stands as a symbol of the courageous and principled defence of democratic values and human rights. Russia’s attempts to silence people of conscience only makes their voices more powerful.

At the beginning of the month, Senator Omidvar co-led a press conference with the Honourable Irwin Cotler and a group of parliamentarians, including Senator Miville-Dechêne and myself, to establish the basis for this motion. If Mr. Kara-Murza is aware of our efforts, he must know that his friends, the Honourable Irwin Cotler, Bill Browder, Brandon Silver and many others tirelessly defended his cause until today.

I also want to mention a letter of support for this initiative by the League for Human Rights, an agency of B’nai Brith Canada. I will quote an excerpt from this letter:

Kara-Murza is a beacon of hope for a population that is increasingly oppressed by Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, which seeks to crush any dissidence while continuing its criminal war against its neighbour, Ukraine.

Honourable senators, honorary Canadian citizenship is an honour rarely bestowed by Parliament. It is done through a motion of the House of Commons and the Senate. Among the few who have received this honour in the past are heroes of humanity, such as Raoul Wallenberg, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai.

[English]

On June 8, last Thursday, Conservative MP Tom Kmiec rose and found unanimous consent of elected members of Parliament to a motion to confer honorary citizenship on Vladimir Kara‑Murza and to call on the Russian Federation to set him free.

By adopting the motion before us, the Senate of Canada will join the other place in showing the world that the Parliament of Canada stands up for our friends and for political prisoners around the world. With this motion, let us speak with a united voice for freedom and justice for Vladimir Kara-Murza. Let us send a powerful message to dissenters against tyranny who are imprisoned worldwide, “In Canada, you are not forgotten.”

Last year, Mr. Kara-Murza’s spouse, Evgenia, received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize on her husband’s behalf, which was awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In a statement she read on his behalf, Mr. Kara-Murza dedicated the prize to the many thousands of Russians jailed for speaking out against the war who chose not to remain “. . . silent in the face of this atrocity, even at the cost of personal freedom.”

He added:

. . . I look forward to . . . when a peaceful, democratic and Putin-free Russia returns to this Assembly and to this Council; and when we can finally start building that whole, free and peaceful Europe we all want to see. Even today, in the darkest of hours, I firmly believe that time will come.

Senators, with this motion, let us make those brave words of an honorary Canadian citizen. Let us honour Vladimir Kara-Murza, a star of hope in the Russian sky, and stand with him in the hour of his struggle. I invite senators to adopt this motion. Thank you, meegwetch.