James Bezan

[Committees of the House, November 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, we know that our current Victoria class submarines cannot go under the ice. We know that, right now, only two of our submarines have had any sea time, and even at that, the two of them combined were out at sea for fewer than 100 days in 2022. We have to get serious about having a conversation about having brand new submarines. My colleague from London—Fanshawe knows from testimony that we have heard at committee that there are no plans by the government to actually look at replacing our current Victoria class submarines. We know for a fact that a defence policy update should be addressing the issue, but it has been sitting in limbo now for over 16 months, and we are stilling waiting to see whether the government's defence policy update will actually contain some hard dollars and hard direction on replacing the submarines that we need in order to defend our Arctic and our coastlines at all three levels. That means that we have to be in the sea, on the sea and above the sea to actually be able to protect our country on the Atlantic, on the Pacific and in the Arctic.

[Committees of the House, November 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, climate change was actually one of the key parts of the report we did at the national defence committee. We all recognized at committee that with the disappearing Arctic sea ice, the Arctic is opening up for greater transit by other nations. That is why we can see countries like the People's Republic of China showing more interest in making use of the transportation routes through our Northwest Passage and elsewhere.

That is why Canada has to be more prepared to make sure we are defending and using our Arctic. If we are not up there and actually capitalizing on the opportunities, supporting our northern communities and building infrastructure to do that, often in a dual-use circumstance, taking into consideration warming temperatures, then we are not going to address the real needs of the people who are up there or be able to defend our own Arctic sovereignty. However, Arctic sovereignty comes at a cost, and we do not see it in the budget by the current government. I do not think the Prime Minister really cares that much about the Arctic.

[Committees of the House, November 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, who is the shadow minister for the Arctic and Northern Affairs for the Conservative Party.

I am glad to get the debate back on the report. We just listened to a bunch of bafflegab, but I am going to drill down on the issues at hand.

I am really pleased with the third report, which came from the national defence committee, on having a secure and sovereign Arctic. I like how the report was organized. It started off by talking about the threats in the Arctic, climate change and its impact, the great power struggles going on that also pull in the Arctic, like the Russian threat, the threat from Beijing and how we might be able to overcome that.

Then it talks about what we are doing there from the standpoint of domain awareness and surveillance. It talks about the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, as we call it, and its modernization, as well as missile defence, which is very important. That is not just about ballistic missile defence but also other threats, such as cruise missiles and hypersonics, and what types of air defence systems we should have in Canada to defend the Arctic, as well as our coasts.

I will talk about readiness in the Arctic: the equipment, the personnel, the search and rescue, and the infrastructure. I want to drill down on the threat environment; all too often, this is one thing that Canadians do not think is at risk at all in the Arctic. We know for a fact that the People's Republic of China now sees itself as a near-Arctic state or near-Arctic power. It has great interest in having a northern passage to move its goods from Asia to Europe and the other side of North America, for that matter, the Atlantic side, and making use of the Northwest Passage to do it.

The PRC has more icebreakers now than Canada and the United States combined that are employed by our coast guards and navy. When we start talking about the heavy Arctic polar icebreakers, the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army Navy have more than the United States and Canada do. That is a very strong indication of their seriousness about accessing the international waters in the Arctic, as well as fulfilling their own belt and road initiative. We know that, within the belt and road initiative, there is a policy called the polar silk road and using the polar silk road as a way to move more of the goods they need to sell and export out of China, as well as to bring more imports back. That transit through the Arctic cuts off over two weeks of what it takes if it needs to go through the Panama Canal. That interest is something we have to take very seriously.

We also know that the People's Republic of China's navy has been there doing surveillance. We saw in a report by The Globe and Mail on February 21 that, in fall 2022, under Operation Limpid, the Canadian Armed Forces retrieved a number of surveillance buoys that were floating in the Arctic Ocean. Retired General Joseph Day assumed that those buoys were there to watch over not just the transit of Canadian ships but submarines, etc., from our allies, especially the Americans, and monitoring their passage through the Northwest Passage and farther north through the Arctic. It has already been there dropping surveillance buoys, electronic surveillance with which it can collect all the data and send it back to Beijing.

In February, there were spy balloons over the Arctic from Beijing. One was shot down in Yukon. One went through Alaska to B.C. and across western Canada down to the United States, which was finally shot down. That one is still being completely analyzed to find out what information the PRC was picking up. Therefore, we really are concerned about what the interest is of the Chinese Communist Party in our Arctic.

Then there is the Russian Federation. We know about Putin's war in Ukraine and how bad it is. We all stand with Ukraine. Despite the rhetoric that comes from the other side, all of us in the Conservative Party stand with Ukraine. The only way this thing ends well is if Ukraine wins, so its sovereign territory has to be protected.

However, as Canadians, we can never forget that we are a neighbour to Russia in the Arctic. We are sharing the Arctic Ocean with Russia, which has a great interest in it. As a matter of fact, we remember a stunt from about 10 years ago when the Russians sent a mini-submarine to the North Pole and dropped a Russian flag on the seabed to claim it as their own. They have put in claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea claiming the entire Arctic seabed as their own, coming right up to within 200 miles of the continental shelf in North America. Right up to where Canada's economic maritime zone ends is what they are trying to claim as a Russian interest and what they want to develop. Of course, we can never forget that the Russians continue to fly fighter jets and Bear bombers into our airspace.

We must look at those threats and combine them with North Korea and its aspirations to have nuclear warheads. It is estimated right now by the Arms Control Association that North Korea already has 30 nuclear warheads and has enough fissile material to build another 50 to 70 nuclear warheads. If it ever accomplishes its intercontinental ballistic missile program, it will be able to reach out and touch North America.

This is why we have to take a very serious look at how we protect our Arctic sovereignty and protect Canada and our allies. We have to project our power and protect our Arctic. This is our backyard. Canadians see themselves as an Arctic nation, yet 95% of Canadians have never been to the Arctic. They expect us to protect it, and we better protect it. “Use it or lose it” is the way we often talk about our sovereign territory.

We also have to deter and defend. We have to deter those who want to attack us and defend our continent, not just Canada. We have a responsibility to the United States and our other continental partners to ensure that we are secure here at home. Maintaining continental security, being a trusted ally and being a neighbour and friend are things we have to do, and that is why NORAD modernization is so critical.

However, as we are looking to put all these dollars into modernizing NORAD, the Liberals just cut $1 billion from the defence budget. They have allowed $10 billion to lapse. The question is, how do we rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces? We are short 16,000 troops right now and have another 10,000 troops who are undertrained and non-deployable. How do we do that if we do not have the budget and we do not have the kit? We have to do more.

If we look at the recommendations that came out of this report, there is so much the government should act upon. We came to an all-party decision on all of these recommendations; it was a unanimous report. We need to make sure we have underwater surveillance capabilities in the Canadian Arctic. As in recommendation 2, we need new submarines that are able to go under the ice. How are we going to pay for that when we have a government that continues to cut from national defence? The best way to surveil and deter submarines, which is one of the biggest proliferation weapon systems out there right now, is to have submarines, and our old Victoria-class submarines are at the end of their life and there is no plan to replace them.

We need a partnership with the U.S. ballistic missile defence system. BMD is the way we can protect against things like the North Korean nuclear warhead threat. However, what about other air defences? How are we going to protect against cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles, which are now being proliferated around the world and could be used to attack Canada? We need to make sure we continue to have those discussions.

We have talked about upgrading NORAD with the over-the-horizon radar system, which has a big price tag. It is over $25 billion to put a couple of those in place. At the same time, what about updating RADARSAT? What about getting drones? We were promised in “Strong, Secure, Engaged” that the Liberals would buy new drones by 2025, and that has been punted down the road to at least 2028. We also need low-earth orbit satellites.

All the equipment and personnel we need to defend North America, protect our Arctic and secure our own sovereignty costs money, and the Liberals are not serious about investing in the Canadian Armed Forces or the Arctic.

[Committees of the House, November 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Nunavut for bringing to light the parts of this report that are very important to her.

My mother was born in Chesterfield Inlet and spent most of her childhood in the Arctic. She has great memories of her time there, with two different tours through Pangnirtung. Most of the time she was there, but she was also in Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet, as they worked for the northern stores department of the Hudson's Bay Company.

I want to ask my colleague about recommendation 5 from the report. We heard from Madeleine Redfern, former mayor of Iqaluit, at committee about making sure we know what infrastructure is out there. How can we make dual use of infrastructure for communities and the Canadian Armed Forces as we modernize NORAD and continue to make sure we have a more positive posture in the Arctic, knowing the threats we are currently facing from Russia, the PRC and other nations that want to take advantage of the great outdoors we have in Canada's north?

[Points of Order, November 27th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, want to say that I am very proud of my Ukrainian heritage. I am a proud Canadian, I am a patriotic Ukrainian, and everyone in the House knows how passionately I have been defending Ukraine for all these years. For the government House leader, the member of Parliament for Burlington, to actually suggest that any one of us of Ukrainian heritage on the Conservative side would at all be supporting Putin in any way, shape or form is incredibly disappointing. It is gutter politics, and she has taken it to a whole new level. I would ask that the member be reprimanded and forced to apologize in this place, because she has offended all Ukrainians and Canadians and especially everybody in our Conservative caucus for making such an allegation.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, November 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, Liberal times are always tough times. All we have to do is look at their record. When we look at the misery index, which is the combination of inflation rates, unemployment rates and mortgage rates that usually lead to the highest suicide rates, they happened 40 years ago under Pierre Elliott Trudeau and they are happening today under the Liberals. Housing costs have doubled, violent crime is up 39% and two million people are standing in lines at food banks because these guys have mismanaged the economy.

We have a situation where the Liberals continue to talk the game, but, in reality, have made things worse. The member wants to talk about deficits. They have not balanced the books yet. Under the Prime Minister, they have doubled the national debt that is more than all previous prime ministers in the history of Canada combined. The member has nothing to brag about. Liberals are making things worse and they are going to be punishing our kids, our grandkids and our great-grandchildren with these huge deficits, high interest rates and high mortgages.

[Ukraine, November 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, this year marks the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine and genocide of 1932-33.

This genocide was deliberately planned and executed by the communist Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin to systemically destroy the culture, language and, indeed, the very ethnicity of the people of Ukraine. Sadly, several million innocent men, women and children were starved and slowly murdered by Stalin for one reason. They were patriotic Ukrainians.

Fifteen years ago, Canada became the first western nation to officially recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. As we commemorate the Holodomor this Saturday, let us not forget that Vladimir Putin is repeating history by illegally invading Ukraine, destroying Ukrainian lives and threatening their freedom, all in an attempt to repeat Stalin's Russification of Ukraine.

We stand with the brave people of Ukraine in their fight for sovereignty, democracy and liberty. We remember the victims and honour the survivors of the Holodomor, as well as the Maidan, and pray for those fighting against Russia's barbaric invasion today.

May their memories be eternal. Vichnaya pamyat.

[Committees of the House, November 22nd, 2023]

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.

[Committees of the House, November 22nd, 2023]

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.

[Committees of the House, November 22nd, 2023]

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.