House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 54% of the vote.
Public Safety June 1st, 2021
Mr. Speaker, as we have said before, the two individuals in question are no longer employed at the laboratory, and we cannot provide any further details.
As to the origin of COVID-19, we believe and support the approach taken by President Biden to investigate something that has turned the world upside-down and killed over three million people. We feel it is important to do everything we can to determine where COVID-19 originated from.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, let me be clear: Those children are with parents. Parents have custody of the children. If the parents do not want their children to be separated from them, that is something we need to respect.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, again, I reject those comments. They are very inflammatory comments about fuelling a war and unrest. I totally reject them.
Canada is a member of the United Nations. Yes, perhaps sometime in the future we will have a seat on the Security Council, but we will continue to work within the United Nations' multilateral body.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, I reject the premise of that question. We are providing humanitarian aid to Yemen, a very stricken area. We also have, separately from that, very strict requirements with respect to the export of arms. We are respecting that requirement as well.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, there are also examples in the area of peacekeeping, such as the Elsie initiative. We are a country that has an ambassador for women, peace and security. We are very proud of the multi-functional approach we are taking to foreign feminist policy.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, Canada is very proud that it has a foreign feminist policy. In fact, we will be delivering a white paper fairly shortly, after a great deal of consultation. We are one of the countries leading the world on feminist foreign policy. Sweden was the first and we were essentially the second. Now a number of other countries are also embarking on it, such as France, Mexico and Luxembourg.
We are very proud of what we have done, and I look forward to the release of the white paper shortly. Then I would be happy to take questions from my colleague.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, we have imposed sanctions, and we do this judiciously against a number of countries, whether Belarus recently because of the fraudulent elections last year and the forced Ryanair landing there, or Iran because of its human rights record and sponsorship of terrorist organizations. There are some sanctions against the Democratic Republic of North Korea. I am going by memory here, but we have some in a number of other countries. I am not going to venture any others forth at this point because my memory is not that good.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, in total, Canada has currently 440-odd sanctions either in accordance with the Magnitsky sanctions or, as these are against individuals or entities, under the Special Economic Measures Act or the United Nations Act. These are sanctions against individuals and entities in Russia both in relation to what it has done in Ukraine as well as its human rights record, especially with respect to Alexei Navalny.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, I had a very frank discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov about two issues that have been very much in the news these days and for which Canada has imposed sanctions on Russia. These are its troop buildup around Ukraine, the fact that it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and has been very active in the Donbass on the eastern frontier of Ukraine, as well as its human rights record, especially with respect to Alexei Navalny, whom it first attempted to poison and is currently detaining. We had a very blunt conversation about that.
Canada is a strong ally of Ukraine. We have put approximately $800 million into Ukraine since 2014. Operation Unifier is involved with training Ukrainian troops, and we have assured Ukraine of our steadfast support against the illegal annexation and aggressive behaviour against it.
Business of Supply May 31st, 2021
Mr. Chair, yes, I have just returned from the Arctic Council. The eight countries of the Arctic Council are really seized with the challenges of what is happening in the north, where climate change is causing the environment to change at an accelerated pace. It is, in fact, three times faster than the rest of the world. That has implications for transportation, biodiversity and the lives of the four million people who live around the Arctic regions of this country.
We reaffirmed that those were the priorities as we go forward. Sustainable development, understanding what is happening to the environment and focusing on the people who live in those regions, and who have been there for millennia, are the driving factors that have guided us in the past 25 years.
I had a bilateral meeting with Secretary Blinken, and among other things, we talked about our common purpose with respect to the Arctic region, the United States being one of the countries. I also spoke to my counterpart from Russia because Russia is taking over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council for the next two years. I am glad to report that, even though we have big differences of opinion on many subjects with Russia, it does have a strategic vision that aligns with the other seven members with respect to the next two years.