Bill C-41

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code in order to create a regime under which the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness may authorize an eligible person to carry out, in a geographic area that is controlled by a terrorist group and for certain purposes, activities that otherwise would be prohibited under paragraph 83.03(b) of that Act (which becomes subsection 83.03(2)). It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Criminal Code

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

moved that Bill C-41, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, it is truly an honour to begin debate today on Bill C-41. This legislation aims to address important aspects of the deepening crisis in Afghanistan and responds to Canadian humanitarian aid agencies and their pleas to be able to deliver relief to a country on the brink. This work stems from the cross-party collaborative efforts from the Special Committee on Afghanistan and the important recommendations put forward by members of that committee.

I am proud to have been a member of this committee, but this work is also thanks to the non-governmental organizations and humanitarian aid agencies that advocated and testified at committee for a pathway forward to deliver aid to Afghanistan. The testimony we heard was haunting. The Afghan people have persisted through four decades of war, and since the forceful capture of the country by the Taliban, the world has witnessed the erosion of fundamental rights and the steady deterioration of social and economic systems. This has created the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

Drawing on testimony from the committee, I want to remind the House that Afghanistan was a country that was reliant on foreign aid before the takeover by the Taliban. The committee’s report states the following:

The World Bank had assessed that Afghanistan’s economy was “shaped by fragility and aid dependence.” Grants were financing some 75% of total public expenditure and were responsible for around 45% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product in 2020. With the abrupt return to power of the Taliban, Afghanistan—whose currency reserves held abroad were frozen—experienced a significant fiscal contraction at the same time as it essentially became cut-off from the international banking and payments systems. That occurred because the Taliban have long been subject to sanctions in relation to terrorism.

The overall result for the country has been “near economic and institutional collapse, including an inability to provide most basic services and pay civil servant salaries.” The net effect for the Afghan people is that prices have increased, livelihoods have disappeared, and household resources have been exhausted...

To encapsulate the enormity of this situation, John Aylieff, Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific at the WFP, said: “Today, millions of people in Afghanistan—young children, families and communities—stand at the precipice of inhumane hunger and destitution.” Of the 23 million people who required food assistance, nearly 9 million were “one step away from famine,” while some 1 million children were “at risk of perishing this year from acute malnutrition.”

The population of Afghanistan is 40 million people, and 23 million people require food assistance.

What I have described is but a small sample of the testimony we heard. It was clear that Canadian aid agencies were ready and willing to help, but they were unable to do so. According to Michael Messenger, CEO of World Vision Canada, that organization had “two containers full of packets of ready-to-use therapeutic food…to treat children facing the severest forms of malnutrition…[that] can literally bring children back from the brink of death by starvation.” The committee report goes on to say, “The organization could not ship them to Afghanistan, despite the pleas from their team on the ground. Each container can help more than 900 children.”

I am proud of the report from the Special Committee on Afghanistan and am pleased this legislation is in line with recommendations 10 and 11, which called upon the government to ensure that registered Canadian organizations have the clarity and assurances needed to deliver humanitarian assistance to meet the basic needs of the people of Afghanistan without fear of prosecution for violating Canada’s anti-terrorism laws.

Canada has a long and rich history of fighting for human rights and delivering life-saving assistance abroad. Over the last 20 years, many Afghans experienced improved access to health services and education and were able to participate in efforts to build their democracy. This occurred in no small part thanks to the efforts of Canadian organizations providing aid in support of a generation of leaders, many of whom were women, who were building a better country for all Afghans.

The purpose of this bill is to address the fact that Canada’s current legal framework has limited the ability of Canadian aid organizations to provide assistance to the people of Afghanistan due to potential Criminal Code liability. Although the Taliban has taken over as the de facto national authority of Afghanistan, it remains a listed terrorist group under Canada’s Criminal Code.

The Taliban maintains close links with several terrorist groups, and the combination of a weak state and a collapsing economy gives terrorist groups a fertile ground within which to operate, but we must put in place needed reform to address the needs of the Afghan people and to facilitate the assistance they so desperately need. We will find a balanced course of action that will also seek to preserve the integrity of Canada’s counter-terrorism financing measures.

The proposed bill maintains strong counter-terrorist financing measures while presenting an authorization regime to provide protection from criminal liability for the delivery of humanitarian aid and other activities by Canadian organizations. Terrorist financing remains a criminal offence. Authorizations would only shield applicants from criminal liability for providing an unavoidable benefit to a terrorist group associated with activities that serve a specified purpose, subject to strict terms and conditions. An authorization would not shield efforts to deliberately leverage the authorization to provide a benefit to a terrorist group beyond what is incidental and covered by the authorization terms and conditions. Such activities would remain criminal.

We recognize that terrorism is a global threat that requires a concerted international response. Canada’s terrorist financing regime is contained in the Criminal Code and, because of this, aid agencies were restricted in delivering aid as it could be interpreted as providing indirect financial support to the Taliban, which is a criminal offence. This authorization tool would facilitate the delivery of certain activities, like humanitarian assistance, human rights programming and immigration services, in geographic areas controlled by terrorist groups. This means that Canadians holding an authorization and providing these services would no longer be at risk of committing a terrorist financing offence, and foreign citizens, like the people of Afghanistan, would be able to receive the assistance they need in their country or by resettling to Canada.

I have already heard anecdotally that some aid organizations are ramping up their operations in anticipation of the passage of this legislation so they can scale up their work in supporting the people of Afghanistan.

Further, the proposed authorization regime is not restricted to Afghanistan, in order to enable the Government of Canada to respond to similar situations elsewhere in the world, now and in the future.

Under this regime, the Minister of Public Safety would consider applications that have been referred by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and/or the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, who would first need to be satisfied that certain conditions were met. This includes, among other things, that the proposed activity aligns with a permitted purpose and responds to a real and important need.

Once the application has been referred, the Minister of Public Safety would conduct a security review that must assess the impact of granting the authorization on terrorist financing. Factors to be considered include, among others, whether the applicants or those involved in activity implementation have links to terrorist groups or were investigated, charged or convicted of terrorism offences. Those assessments would be led by Public Safety and undertaken by the national security agencies, such as CSIS, the RCMP and CSE, where required.

The issuance of an authorization would ultimately take into account an assessment of benefit, need and capability of the applicant against the assessment of risk of terrorist financing. Any eligible person or organization in Canada, or Canadian organization outside of Canada, could apply for an authorization. This could include Government of Canada officials, as well as persons associated with or acting on behalf of a registered or incorporated Canadian organization. The updated Criminal Code provisions would also set out permissible classes of activities that would achieve certain purposes.

In the current situation in Afghanistan, the delivery of aid and other forms of international assistance inevitably benefits the Taliban through taxation and other fees. This regime would allow Canadian organizations, including Government of Canada departments, to work within the defined scope of an authorization to achieve their goals without risk of running afoul of the law.

Simply put, the changes contemplated in Bill C-41 would allow our aid agencies to go back to what they do best: saving lives.

I know this is an issue that has touched the hearts of all who served on the Special Committee on Afghanistan. We were able to set aside partisan differences and work together to present our report. The bill responds to that report. I was heartened to see this place provide unanimous consent to a motion last week that will ensure that the bill is fast-tracked through the parliamentary process.

I began my speech by outlining the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, but it is not only food insecurity that threatens the lives of millions of Afghans. Health care is in crisis. Women and girls are facing human rights violations that are unthinkable. Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of those living with a disability in the world, after decades of war and land mines. Families have sold their daughters just to survive.

To be honest, the conditions in Afghanistan are beyond comprehension for all of us sitting here in Canada. Sadly, they are a reality for millions of Afghans living under the Taliban regime. Groups like Islamic Relief, World Vision, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Red Cross, CARE Canada and so many others are ready to provide aid to some of the world’s most vulnerable, but they need us to act.

In 2019, The Asia Foundation released a model disability survey of Afghanistan, which found that nearly 80% of adults in Afghanistan have a disability. As a result, many of the households in Afghanistan have become women-led. With the current regime in place, women have been forced out of the economy and out of schools, leaving many households in abject poverty. Those living with disabilities also face heightened violence and insecurity within conflict. Because of this, so many who have a disability in Afghanistan face more difficulties attempting to flee conflict, resulting in a higher reliance on humanitarian aid.

Bill C-41 would be able to reach this population, which has not had the same opportunity to seek refuge in other countries, and would allow for humanitarian aid to flow to Afghanistan to address the specific needs those with disabilities face.

The human rights abuses against women and girls, and the Hazaras, are particularly egregious. Women and girls have been denied their most basic rights, including their right to education and employment, at every turn. Finding different means to control women, the Taliban has imposed strict dress codes, forcing them to wear a burka, a full body covering that obscures their face and body. Women’s freedom of movement has also been severely restricted, with women being allowed to leave their homes only in the company of a male relative. Of course, those who do not comply are met with harassment, abuse and state-sanctioned violence.

The restrictions imposed on women’s education are devastating.

In March 2018, on the floor of the Library of Parliament, in the old Centre Block, at the heart of our democracy, I, along with the Minister of Science, the Minister for Women and Gender Equality, and the Prime Minister, met with the Afghan Dreamers. They were an all-women high school robotics team who, in partnership with FIRST Robotics Canada, had flown from Afghanistan to Canada to compete against high-school teams across the province. They brought their robot from Kabul to Canada.

It is hard to remember these young women and think about their lives today under the Taliban. They showed me what the future of Afghanistan was going to look like, and I remain in hope that this future comes to fruition. When I was speaking with these young women, they told me that when they left Canada to go back home they wanted to open a school dedicated to teaching other women and girls about science, technology, engineering and math. These young women were and continue to be Afghanistan's greatest resource.

Since returning to power, the Taliban has targeted schools like the one envisioned by The Afghan Dreamers, often destroying school buildings and threatening those who teach and attend them. At times, women have been prohibited from attending schools and universities. Women who are pursuing higher education have been forced to abandon their studies. Women are being used as a tool to advance the Taliban's power in the region.

Speaking at the UN Commission on the Status of Women on March 24, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan advocacy manager Sarah Keeler said:

But while girls the world over are out of education, the situation for girls and women in Afghanistan is unparalleled in its intensity and impact. Under repressive Taliban rule, Afghanistan is now the only country on the planet with the terrible distinction of denying women and girls their right to learn as a policy. Indeed, the Taliban's restrictions amount to system-wide gender persecution, in education and elsewhere.

For girls like Maryam, there are not just the barriers of poverty or lack of infrastructure, already overwhelming enough—there is also ideological malice that has intentionally robbed girls of their rights and hope for the future. “What crime have I committed?”, asks Maryam. She writes to us of feeling hopeless, suicidal and alone. All Afghan women and girls, but perhaps most of all the generation for whom two decades of democratic progress and investment in education provided the catalyst for real achievement and aspiration, are experiencing a profound mental health crisis.

The Hazara minority is no different. Through witnesses who appeared before committee, we heard about the devastation and persecution faced by the Hazara community. Hazaras are a predominantly Shia Muslim ethnic group that has faced systemic discrimination from the Taliban. From being subjected to attacks to forced displacement and other human rights abuses, the Hazara minority remains a vulnerable group in Afghanistan that is in dire need of the support this bill would allow.

Previously, Canada introduced special measures to support Afghans through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. We have welcomed over 29,000 Afghan refugees since August 2021. These special measures allow the expedited processing of applications from Afghan nationals seeking to immigrate to Canada. A dedicated channel was introduced for applications coming in from a number of measures Canada presented. The special immigration measures program aims to resettle 18,000 people. IRCC also introduced a temporary public policy that creates a pathway to permanent residence for extended family members of former Afghan interpreters who immigrated to Canada under the 2009 and 2012 public policies. More recently, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada introduced a temporary policy for extended family members of former language and cultural advisers. The work that our government has done has been important and life-changing.

While thousands of Afghan nationals have been able to seek refuge in Canada, there are millions more who need our support, and this bill would allow exactly that. We as parliamentarians have an obligation to all Afghans to pass this legislation quickly and judiciously. Aid to Afghanistan remains absolutely vital. With this legislative change, Canada is responding to the growing crisis in Afghanistan. This would also help our government work with like-minded countries and international partners to advance our priorities. Canada has a hard-earned international reputation as both a fierce protector and a steadfast source of humanitarian assistance.

I want to give a special thanks to those who worked on this issue. It is rare in this place that we work together with civil society to make such monumental change, but with this legislation, we will truly save the lives of some of the most vulnerable in the world.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I do not doubt the member's sincere personal feelings, but I have to say that the government has failed the people of Afghanistan for far too long.

If we reflect on the timelines, the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021. The Afghanistan standing committee report that the member referred to came out in June 2022. It has been nine months since then, and now we are debating this legislation at the end of March 2023. The foreign affairs committee unanimously passed a motion I put forward in the fall of last year reiterating the call from the Afghanistan committee, and passed a similar motion this spring.

This legislation, once passed, does not grant the exemptions yet. We will still have to wait for exemptions to be granted by the government through regulation. We have already been through two winters in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the very dire situations the member spoke about have persisted throughout that time. However, the government has been very late in responding to unanimous calls, and certainly calls from the opposition, for action. Why has it taken the government so long?

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member knows full well that Canada's terrorist financing regime is contained in the Criminal Code. Work needed to be done to ensure that we were amending the Criminal Code in a way that would give aid organizations the ability to deliver aid in Afghanistan. We also worked with those aid organizations. We took up the recommendations and testimony we heard at the special committee, because we wanted to ensure that we were getting right what we were doing.

I can assure the hon. member that with the regime in place and the authorization regime, we will be looking at things in a very timely manner, because we know the impact that it will have on the ground in Afghanistan.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Oakville North—Burlington for her speech. I share her sadness for the women of Afghanistan.

This situation has always had an emotional impact on me. During the crisis in the summer of 2021, I learned about a strong Afghan community settled in Granby. I had men coming to my office crying, worried about their wives and daughters. I discovered the solidarity and beauty of the Afghan people.

Last fall, I had the opportunity to meet with male Afghan elected officials in Rwanda. Unfortunately, the lone female Afghan representative was unable to attend. She was barred from leaving the country.

At the last IPU meeting I attended in Bahrain, I spoke about my concern for Afghan women, particularly those living in conflict zones, whose education has been disrupted.

It is true that this bill is an important step forward. However, as we have seen in the last few days, international co-operation groups are concerned because, in order to increase their assistance for women internationally, they say that they need financial resources from the Canadian government.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments on this.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I applaud the hon. member's advocacy and work on behalf of women and girls not just here in Canada but around the world. I know that groups like Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan are continuing to find ways to provide assistance to women and girls in Afghanistan, often doing it at great risk to their own lives.

I worry that Canadians have forgotten about Afghanistan, but through advocacy like ours and the hon. member's, we continue to shine a light on the abhorrent conditions that women and girls are facing in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. I think we all need to continue to speak up loudly on behalf of the women and girls in Afghanistan.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, I share in the hon. member's horror and grief at what is happening in Afghanistan, with the discrimination and persecution that women in Afghanistan are facing right now. It is part of the reason my NDP colleagues and I have been so frustrated that it has taken 18 months to get here. We have needed this legislation. However, now that it is here, we are hearing concerns from humanitarian organizations that it may contravene international law and Canada's international obligations. In particular, Doctors Without Borders Canada has expressed these concerns.

Why did the government not do a blanket exemption and carve-out, like many organizations have been requesting? There are no other countries doing the kind of bureaucratic process the government has chosen with a registry. I am curious if the member could explain how this does nor does not contravene our international obligations, and why the government did not listen to the organizations on the ground and do a blanket carve-out.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I had not heard those concerns, so I thank the hon. member for bringing them forward.

I will say that Canada was unique among other countries in the way that our terrorist financing regime was designed. It was included in the Criminal Code, so it made it more difficult to make exemptions compared to what other countries have done. I know other countries around the world have granted a blanket exemption, but their terrorist financing provisions were not included in a criminal code the way ours are.

I look forward to the hon. member passing on the concerns that she has heard to me, and I look forward to working with her to ensure that we put forward something that is able to deliver aid to Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I very much welcome this legislation coming forward, although I share some of the concerns of the hon. member for Victoria. Many of our allies and other donor countries did not have the problems we have had as a country with getting aid workers into Afghanistan without tripping up into the rules against terrorism. I welcome this legislation. We need to get it through quickly.

I was totally moved by my colleague's speech and her emotion about this issue, but our colleagues in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. did not have the problems that were created for us by the very strict and overly narrow definitions of terrorism that tripped up our aid efforts. Does she have any thoughts on what we can learn from this experience going forward?

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think there are lessons to be learned from how the original legislation was drafted. As the hon. member knows, the original legislation was drafted by a previous government. We have been trying to find a way to put in place something that respects what is in the Criminal Code but still allows agencies to deliver aid.

I wish we could have done this many months ago. I was haunted by the testimony we heard at committee. I think of the young women who came to Canada whose lives have been so disrupted by what has happened in their country, a country that at one time not too long ago had so much hope. We were dealing with a system that was already in place, and I think there are always lessons to be learned as we move forward.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is heartbreaking to hear what is happening. I was recently at an Nowruz event with thousands of Afghan women, and the stories we heard about what is happening were beyond belief.

One thing I wanted to ask about was the human rights programming aspect. The parliamentary secretary mentioned that in addition to humanitarian aid, we will now be able to help with human rights programming. Could you specifically address how we might be able to help young women and girls who are not able to get educated at this point through these programs?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am not able to answer that, but I will give it to the hon. member to answer. I would ask the hon. member to address all questions and comments through the Chair, not directly to the member.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, you are welcome to answer if you wish.

As I mentioned previously, groups like Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, which have been doing such incredible work under a previous Taliban regime, are going to be able to do what they do best on the ground. There are other organizations. I singled them out specifically, but other organizations have teams on the ground in Afghanistan that stand ready to deliver education, aid and whatever is needed for the people of Afghanistan.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, on September 11, 2001, a terrorist organization that was using Afghanistan as its base of operations attacked New York and Washington. In response to this attack, Canada joined an American-like coalition that worked to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban government and supported the transformation of Afghanistan into a free democracy. Canada also joined other countries in establishing tough new domestic anti-terrorism legislation that aided in preventing any kind of presence of or interaction with designated terrorist organizations.

The decision to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban government was seen as just and a form of retaliation for the lives lost on September 11, but it was also framed as a war for the liberation of the Afghan people. It was widely explained not as a war against Afghanistan but as a war for Afghanistan, in particular for the freedom of the Afghan people.

The spirit of that period was one of profound optimism about the universality of the human aspiration for freedom and democracy and about the possibility of external intervention quickly bringing about that democracy. This optimism was best expressed by then British prime minister Tony Blair, who said:

...ours are not Western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

The implication in the minds of many seemed to be that we could use superior firepower to chase out the bad guys, introduce democracy and then quickly move on with our lives.

As Canada joined military efforts to support the transformation of Afghanistan into a free democracy, Afghanistan also became a major focus of Canadian development systems. In this whole enterprise we were motivated by the highest aspirations: to sacrifice blood and treasure to allow women and men on the other side of the world to seize their birthright of freedom. However, on August 15, 2021, almost exactly 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, as the last allied soldiers were pulling out of Afghanistan, it was again overrun by Taliban forces. As of this moment in time at least, our great optimistic efforts to transform Afghanistan ended in failure.

On the same day that Kabul fell, rather than being at his desk working on the desperately needed response to these unfolding events, our Prime Minister was visiting the Governor General to call a domestic election, an election that we did not need, that featured more polarization and demonization of Canadians than any in recent memory and that returned a virtually unchanged Parliament. We would have been so much better off if the Prime Minister had been putting his responsibilities ahead of his perceived political interests.

Leading up to the fall of Afghanistan, the Conservatives had been calling on the government to use special immigration measures to assist the most vulnerable Afghans, those who assisted Canada during the previous 20 years, as well as ethnic and religious minorities, such as Hazaras, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians. In fact, the very first statement I ever made in this House back in 2015 was to call for special immigration measures for Afghan minorities. The government's response to these calls has ranged from slow to non-existent, and lives have been lost as a result.

Outside of the failures of our government, it is worth taking stock of what happened in general between September 11, 2001, and August 15, 2021. What caused the optimism for the expansion of freedom and democracy that drove nation building in Afghanistan post-9/11 to fade into the fatalistic acceptance of the apparent global democratic decline that led the United States and other countries to leave Afghanistan and effectively hand it back to the Taliban?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Repentigny on a point of order.