Bill S-7 (Historical)

Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to specify that a permanent resident or foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of practising polygamy in Canada.
Part 2 amends the Civil Marriage Act to provide for the legal requirements for a free and enlightened consent to marriage and for any previous marriage to be dissolved or declared null before a new marriage is contracted. Those requirements are currently provided for in the Federal Law—Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1 only in respect of Quebec and under the common law in the other provinces. It also amends the Civil Marriage Act to provide for the requirement of a minimum age of 16 years for marriage. This requirement is currently provided for in the Federal Law—Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1 only in respect of Quebec.
Part 3 amends the Criminal Code to
(a) clarify that it is an offence for an officiant to knowingly solemnize a marriage in contravention of federal law;
(b) provide that it is an offence to celebrate, aid or participate in a marriage rite or ceremony knowing that one of the persons being married is doing so against their will or is under the age of 16 years;
(c) provide that it is an offence to remove a child from Canada with the intention that an act be committed outside Canada that, if it were committed in Canada, would constitute the offence of celebrating, aiding or participating in a marriage rite or ceremony knowing that the child is doing so against their will or is under the age of 16 years;
(d) provide that a judge may order a person to enter into a recognizance with conditions to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for the purpose of preventing the person from committing an offence relating to the marriage of a person against their will or the marriage of a person under the age of 16 years or relating to the removal of a child from Canada with the intention of committing an act that, if it were committed in Canada, would be such an offence; and
(e) provide that the defence of provocation is restricted to circumstances in which the victim engaged in conduct that would constitute an indictable offence under the Criminal Code that is punishable by five years or more in prison.
Finally, the enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill S-7, an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported with amendments from the committee.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

There are 17 motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill S-7.

Motions Nos. 1 to 17 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I will now put Motions Nos. 1 to 17 to the House.

Motions in Amendment

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting the long title.

Motion No. 2

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting the short title.

Motion No. 3

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 2.

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

moved:

Motion No. 4

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 3.

Motion No. 5

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 4.

Motion No. 6

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

Motion No. 7

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 6.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

moved:

Motion No. 8

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 7.

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

moved:

Motion No. 9

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 8.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

moved:

Motion No. 10

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 9.

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

moved:

Motion No. 11

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 10.

Motion No. 12

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 11.

Motion No. 13

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 12.

Motion No. 14

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 13.

Motion No. 15

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 14.

Motion No. 16

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 15.

Motion No.17

That Bill S-7 be amended by deleting Clause 16.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise once again in the House to speak to Bill S-7, which is before us today. You just read the motions that were moved by the various opposition parties, and if I am not mistaken, you did not read out any motions from the Conservative Party. That is because there probably were none, just like there were none proposed by the Conservatives in committee. Furthermore, just like all of the opposition's amendments in committee at second reading stage, all of these ones were rejected.

I obviously support the idea behind Bill S-7, which is to address violence against women and children, particularly in the context of forced marriages, child marriages and honour crimes, and also to address polygamy. This is the type of violence that Bill S-7 supposedly addresses.

The NDP, like all the parties in the House, wants to ensure that we have meaningful measures to address violence against women and children. Everyone supports that. I wanted to point that out, since some members claim that other members do not care about protecting women and children. That is an all-time low of partisanship in a debate like this one.

We also support other aspects of this bill. We are not necessarily opposed to all aspects of the bill. For example, we support the establishment of a minimum age for marriage, and we also support making it an offence to knowingly solemnize a forced marriage. We support these two measures. However, there are other measures in the bill that are worrisome and that we must review carefully.

The NDP is proposing amendments at report stage that would entirely remove certain parts of Bill S-7, because the Senate's study of this bill and that of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration brought to light a number of worrisome points related to the specific measures we are seeking to remove.

When so many experts working on the ground with the victims tell us that we are at risk of making the victims we wish to protect even more vulnerable, we must take these warnings seriously, withdraw the elements that cause serious concern from the bill, re-examine them and propose measures that will not make the situation worse for victims. So far, unfortunately, the government has not shown any willingness to consider these necessary changes.

The first clause we wish to delete is the short title, “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”. The NDP proposed a motion to amend it, but that motion was rejected by the Conservatives.

This title has stirred a debate among Canadians, because many people felt they were being singled out, as if they were part of a barbaric culture. In fact, saying “barbaric cultural practices” makes one think that certain cultures are in favour of violence against women and children.

In the Canadian cultural context where considerable racism, discrimination and—we must say it—Islamophobia exist, we must be careful with the words we use. If certain cultural communities living in Canada feel hurt and targeted by such a title, the simple solution is to get rid of it.

Are the practices mentioned in the bill barbaric? Indeed, they are cruel. They might be called “barbaric” or “unacceptable” but are they cultural? That is the problem. In the title of a bill, the word “cultural” does not add much.

How can this word prevent us from achieving the purpose of this bill? That is the question.

Julie Miville-Dechêne, president of Quebec's Conseil du statut de la femme, said:

...we need communities to be with us and not against us. That is why the title of this legislation must absolutely be changed.

If the title of a bill antagonizes the very people on the front lines who can help us solve this problem, that is problematic. That is what is happening. Associations of Muslim, South Asian and Chinese people—women—tell us that this title does not work for them. It threatens and hurts them. Why not remove that word to gain as many allies as possible in the fight against violence against women?

Yao-Yao Go, director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, also said that the title invokes racist stereotypes and fuels xenophobia towards certain racialized communities. Why not change the short title of a bill when it could undermine the very purpose of the bill?

The second amendment we are proposing today also deletes a clause, clause 2, which deals with denying access to Canadian territory to persons charged with polygamy. I would like to give a little more background on this.

This targets not only people charged with practising polygamy, but also people suspected of having practised it or currently practising it, and people who might practise it in the future. Based on suspicion alone, an immigration officer can deny entry into Canada not only to people who want to live here, but also people who want to visit Canada. Officers can also deport individuals suspected of having practised polygamy or currently practising it, and people who might practise it in the future.

The officers' latitude of interpretation is problematic, and some people have suggested that we need to be very careful. Telling officers they can guess whether someone might eventually practise polygamy opens the door to discrimination. The last thing we want is for any particular group to be discriminated against as a result of this.

On that point, Rupaleem Bhuyan, a professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto, added:

The low burden of proof may lead to racist discrimination against immigrants from particular regions of the world who are considered undesirable. This provision would also put women who are spouses of polygamous men at risk of being deported or being separated from their children.

That is another problem. If we deport people who practise polygamy because we want to protect women, let us not forget that the women are also part of the polygamous relationship. If, in order to protect women, we deport them with their husband, then how exactly are we protecting them? Perhaps that was an oversight by the people who drafted this bill, but it raises serious concerns about the fact that the women we want to protect will be made even more vulnerable because of this bill.

Chantal Desloges also mentioned another problem with this provision in the bill. She said:

If there will be serious consequences such as deportation attached to this behaviour [polygamy], I think we need to draw a clear line in the sand so that people can amend their behaviour to know if they're going to be onside or offside of the legislation.

There is no clear definition of polygamy and that in itself is a problem.

We also want to get rid of the part of this bill that makes it a crime to attend a marriage ceremony knowing that one of the persons being married is being forced to do so. The NDP does not have a problem with criminalization, but the goal here is to protect the victims. If they know that by reporting the people who attended their forced marriage they are helping to criminalize them all and put them in prison, then many victims will remain silent for fear of criminalizing their entire family or community. People who work in the field tell us that this is a real danger.

For example, I will quote Ms. Siddiqui, the head of policy and research at Southall Black Sisters. She works in the United Kingdom, a country that has explored several approaches to criminalizing forced marriage. She says that the young girls and women she has been working with in the field for many years have told her that they want to be protected by the police, but do not want their parents or families to be prosecuted or to go to prison. These victims say that if they talked to the police and their family or community were accused of crimes, they would refuse to lay charges. When such pressure is put on the victims and secrecy is encouraged about something—forced marriage—that is already too much of a secret, there is a problem.

In short, Bill S-7 does not address our major concerns; it does not make it possible to achieve its stated goals; and it even threatens to make the victims more vulnerable. That is why we have proposed the amendments the House is debating today.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the member's dissertation about the bill. The member sits on the Standing Committee for Citizenship and Immigration as the NDP critic.

We heard very compelling testimony from women who were victims of barbaric cultural practices. They spoke with passion at the committee about how their culture and their families subjected them to years of abuse in very difficult relationships. One lady had to have her jaw reconstructed. To us, on this side of the House, the most compelling testimony came from the victims themselves.

Why do the member and the NDP have such difficulty understanding that in some cultures, abuse of women, particularly at a very young age, is rooted in their particular culture? Why do they have a problem with our naming this bill “zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act?”

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the practices my colleague referred to are barbaric practices. However, violence against women is not unique to one culture. We find it all over the world and even in Canada's families and communities. The hon. member also sits on the committee. Of course, the victims demanded that we take action. They are asking us for the tools to better protect women and children. I agree with him on that.

I asked one of the victims who appeared before the committee if she could name one single aspect of Bill S-7 that would have protected her, as a victim. She said no, that she did not know the exact details of the bill, but she was in favour of its intent.

Many experts also appeared before the committee, people who know our Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, people who have done doctoral studies specifically on the topic of criminalizing forced marriages. Their conclusion was that the measures in Bill S-7 will aggravate the problem and make the victims more vulnerable.

If this subject really is close to the hearts of the hon. member and his Conservative colleagues, they will withdraw certain elements from this bill and try harder to understand the phenomena they are trying to tackle, in order to produce an intelligent bill that really deals with the problem.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Pierrefonds—Dollard for her excellent work on the committee. I am in complete agreement with all her criticism of Bill S-7.

I would simply like to ask her if she thinks that the Conservatives are introducing a bill that would eliminate activities that are already illegal.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say why the Conservatives do one thing or another because I am not inside their heads; I think things are better that way. On the other hand, I will say that many witnesses who appeared before the committee said that the Criminal Code already makes it possible to punish forced marriage and polygamy, as well as sexual abuse or threats and physical violence. In short, the Criminal Code already contains measures that would enable us to act.

The main problem is the lack of resources on the ground. Many victims and experts told us that if we really want to protect women we have to make sure they have the resources that would enable them, first, to break the silence and second, to go through the healing process and the criminal proceedings, if that is what they want.

How many forced marriages are currently hidden in silence? What can we do to really tackle the roots of this problem? First we need to understand it and then create the tools that will really help the victims on the ground.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have never, not in all the time I went to law school and read legislation, and certainly not in the last four years that I have had the honour to serve the constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands in this place, seen such an absurd excuse for legislation as this piece of nonsense. This law, this so-called zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, is nothing more than a bumper sticker in search of an offence.

I am deeply offended that this place has had to waste its time with debating this law. It is defended by those who stand on the Conservative side of the House say how could we not act to end honour killings. If honour killings were rampant and Canada had no laws against honour killings, I would say that we are well past time, by God, to eliminate honour killings.

However, murder has been against the law in Canada for a really long time, ever since Confederation, and well before it. It is extraordinary that something that goes under the absurdly exaggerated and emotionally-laden, manipulative title of “zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act” could be brought to this place at all.

We are also told we must end polygamy and forced marriage. These things are already illegal. Polygamy is illegal in Canada. Kidnapping someone and forcing that person into marriage is already illegal.

This act, issue on issue, is nothing more than emotionally-manipulative nonsense.

I started thinking of amendments and I started thinking that if we wanted to have a bill like this, zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, it was about time we eliminated and made it illegal to stone people in the village square. Long since time, this Parliament acted against that. Why do we not have it in our laws that it would be illegal to tie women to a stake and burn them at the stake?

The bill speaks to things that are already illegal. Therefore, what would it do to actually change the current laws?

This is where I am also indebted to the speech we have just heard from my hon. friend in the New Democratic Party who identified many of the failings in the legislation.

The legislation has had significant criticism for groups, such as UNICEF and the Canadian Bar Association. They are concerned that if this law goes forward in the absence of any public policy reason to bring forward Bill S-7 at all, it will actually do damage to the scheme of laws in our country.

I also put forward amendments at committee to try to improve the sections of this law that would do harm to the scheme of laws in Canada, to ensure that children would not be caught up in this legislation. For instance, under this legislation, anyone who assists in the celebration of a marriage could be subject to penalty, and that could include children who are present who assist in the form of a marriage, who are part of a family that is engaged in polygamy illegally. Certainly, children should not be subject to criminal activities.

My amendments to eliminate children from the celebratory observing of an illegal marriage were unsuccessful, as were similar attempts from the New Democrats.

We have legislation that is designed for election purposes. When I say “bumper sticker”, I mean it literally. It will not respond to a public policy problem. Honour killings are, of course, deeply offensive, and are against the fabric of laws in our country. They are against our values. They speak to a manipulation and suppression of women, and that is unacceptable. All of that is already illegal.

Let us look at what the law would do that could affect the lives of children.

UNICEF said this in its brief, and it is always important to go back to the testimony of expert witness:

UNICEF Canada is concerned about the risk of retribution to children implicated in a forced marriage situation that can result when a family member or an adult agent acting on their behalf is summoned to appear before a court, and possibly subject to a peace bond pursuant to proposed Criminal Code provisions.

UNICEF continues:

We recommend that law enforcement authorities consult with child protection specialists...to the extent possible, prior to commencing a legal process involving criminal law sanctions so that less intrusive and/or supportive alternatives to protect and assist the child(ren) and restore or preserve their familial relations can be identified...

I will skip down to another conclusion in the UNICEF brief, because it is an important evidence that an organization dedicated to the rights of children globally would have found problems with a Canadian law. I do not think I have ever seen UNICEF present a brief to a Canadian legislative tribunal committee related to legislation like this.

It recommends:

We recommend that Canada take all due legal and administrative measures to ensure the unfettered access across borders by a child or children to a parent from whom they have been separated in the context of immigration - such as where a parent dissolves a polygamous union for the purpose of emigration to Canada and leaves a child or children behind in the country of origin, or where a parent is removed from Canada due to a polygamous union, but their Canadian-born children remain in Canada.

The fact again is the concerns for children, and I think quite inadvertent implications for depriving children of their rights, as well, as my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard had already mentioned in detail, we could actually be subjecting women to greater punishment through legislation that is at least ostensibly about acting to protect the rights of women.

We have seen a number of briefs come forward that were concerned about this issue of the rights of women, and I turn to the brief from the Canadian Bar Association. It also said:

Rather than protecting women, this would go against Canada’s obligation to protect the human rights of all women, particularly those forced or coerced to comply with certain cultural practices against their will. Those women will not have the opportunity to come to Canada and be afforded the respect and protection that Canadian women are offered.

I will turn to another section of the bill. In addition to the fact that the bill is unnecessary and is making illegal things that are already illegal, while trying to stir up the populace that somehow Canada is at risk from barbaric cultural practices, we see a quite unnecessary and regressive step in this legislation, and that is the change to access to the criminal defence of provocation.

As a former lawyer myself, although I did not practice in criminal law but I certainly remember my criminal law jurisprudence, the defence of provocation is not one that could ever apply in an honour killing situation. It is by definition a defence that is raised when something happens in the heat of the moment. This is when someone is overcome and lacks the ability to think through a situation because he or she is so provoked by the situation in front of him or her.

Criminal law experts spoke to the committee, and I will cite the evidence of one in particular, Mr. Michael Spratt, who was at one point in the Canadian Bar Association and head of their criminal law subsection. He is a criminal lawyer and was at one point vice-president of the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa. Mr. Spratt spoke to the unintentional consequences, or perhaps intentional if one were to be cynical, of depriving a defendant who needed the defence of provocation in a situation where manslaughter or murder had been committed. Mr. Spratt said:

—provocation requires that there be a wrongful act or insult that would be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control. Honour killings, the purported justification for the amendments to provocation in this bill, don't meet that criteria. Our courts have time and time again rejected religion and honour as a basis for provocation.

What the criminal bar goes on to point out, and this was not the only submission, is that by depriving the defence of provocation where it is needed, one could do serious injustice in other cases. Therefore, in monkeying about with the defence of provocation in the guise of eliminating that defence for someone who commits an honour killing, this will undermine the criminal law system in our country beyond the specifics of honour killing.

I close by saying I hope that, after October 19, we will not see any other government deciding to misuse the legislative process to invent titles for bills that are intended to excite the population, titles of bills that are invented solely for electioneering. I hope we can go back in this place to doing the people's business by identifying public policy problems, bringing the best minds to bear, and bringing forth legislation that meets a real need, not a bumper sticker.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's rampage against this particular piece of legislation. I did not heckle when she was speaking and I would appreciate it if she did not while I am responding to or asking a question on her dissertation.

I will, however, say this. This is not a piece of legislation, as the member suggests, that is created for a partisan political advantage of some sort. She mentioned after October 19, and so forth. When we are debating a piece of legislation in the House, it is good if we focus on the legislation itself and keep that kind of rhetoric out of it. I know the member wants to satisfy some of her friends by reacting in the way that she is.

There are certain things in this piece of legislation that make it illegal for anyone to knowingly participate in an act that forces a marriage on someone who does not want to get married. Specifically, it would amend the Criminal Code to introduce two new offences: celebrating, aiding, or participating in a forced marriage ceremony; and celebrating, aiding, or participating in a marriage ceremony of a person under the age of 16. These are clearly offences that are not in the act right now. These are offences that this particular bill would deal with.

Does she not see that it is important to penalize those who assist in these atrocious acts being—

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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

First, Mr. Speaker, I almost feel I need to rise on a point of personal privilege on this, but since I have the opportunity to respond to the parliamentary secretary's question, I would like to state for the record—and he cannot contradict this, because it is fact—that since the moment I took my seat in this place, I have not heckled any member at all, not once, never. I found it gratuitous and insulting that he would begin his question by asking that I not heckle him. I have never heckled anyone, and I plan to continue in that practice.

Second, let me read the section that the hon. parliamentary secretary glossed over. Clause 293.2 reads as follows:

Everyone who celebrates, aids or participates in a marriage rite or ceremony knowing that one of the persons being married is under the age of 16 years is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

My attempt to make sure that this only applied to people 18 years of age and older was defeated at committee. On the face of it, the language “celebrates, aids or participates” is a very broad net and would include people who could well be under 18 with no capacity to have been found guilty of an indictable offence, but here they would be.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find the comments from the parliamentary secretary very disturbing on this particular issue.

We have to look at the title. I think it has been brought to light by the speaker so far that one of the words that is very problematic is the word “cultural”. From what we have seen with Conservatives' bills, which find themselves before the courts and they lose, for the most part, it is actually inciting racism and discrimination. Maybe my colleague could speak on that. When something like that is put forward, whether it is Bill C-51 or a national inquiry for missing and murdered indigenous women put forward by the NDP, the government keeps pointing the finger at the culture as opposed to looking at the systemic problem.

We have seen in the U.K. that there is an opportunity to actually invest in services. It is the same thing in Demark. People there say they need more services. This is the way to go.

I am wondering if my colleague can talk about how this legislation is inciting more racism and discrimination as opposed to dealing with it, as well as how important it is to invest in services that actually help victims.

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

Mr. Speaker, I agree entirely with my hon. colleague. This is part of a fabric. The member is certainly aware of it, as are a lot of us here, and it is disturbing.

Canada's greatness, and what makes this the best place in the world to live, is our extraordinary success in multicultural harmony. We enjoy the fact that people come here from all around the world. All of us here who are not first nations have come from somewhere else. It is not just tolerance, not just that we can put up with one another; we actually are enriched by the diversity, culturally.

Whether it was the fake controversy over a woman wearing a niqab to a citizenship ceremony, stirring the pot, or the Prime Minister in this place saying that the culture was anti-women, these kinds of comments that become anti-Muslim are unhelpful. This is unhelpful at a time when we should be, as the member suggests, investing in services, increasing the levels of communication, avoiding radicalization, and assuring those people, wherever they come from around the world, that they are welcome and respected here.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this important debate today.

In our most recent Speech from the Throne, our government indicated we would address the vulnerability of women in the context of immigration. The government committed to ensure that women and girls would no longer be brutalized by violence, including through the inhumane practice of early and forced marriage, on Canadian soil.

I am very pleased that our government is focused on strengthening the protection of vulnerable women in Canada's immigration system and on forcefully and resolutely supporting the rights of immigrant and newcomer women.

To do so, our government must ensure that Canada's immigration policies and practices are especially focused on strengthening the protection of immigrant and newcomer women. Indeed, it is deeply troubling that harmful cultural practices such as polygamy and forced and underage marriage still exist as a reality for some Canadian women.

That is why I am happy to note the government's proactive approach to date toward decreasing the vulnerability of immigrant and newcomer women.

For example, regulations put in place in recent years have made it much more difficult for people convicted of crimes that result in bodily harm against members of their family, or other particularly violent offences, to sponsor any family class member to come to Canada.

Better guidelines and training have been introduced to assist front-line officers in processing requests for exemptions based on abuse or neglect and in handling sensitive information related to abusive situations.

My colleague, the hon. member for Mississauga South, introduced a motion last fall in this very place to bar the recognition of proxy, telephone, Internet, and fax marriages for immigration purposes, because they may facilitate non-consensual marriages, and our government was proud to support this motion.

While it should be noted that the practice of forced marriage can also victimize men and boys, it disproportionately affects women and girls. Women and girls who are forced to marry someone against their wishes are almost always also beset by a list of other restrictions of their human rights, restrictions that deny them an education or the opportunity to find employment and limit their mobility. These are all abhorrent to our Canadian values of individual freedom for all.

Why are immigrant women particularly vulnerable to the harm caused by these practices?

For one, they are more likely to lack proficiency in English or French, which can be a barrier to accessing social services and information on their legal rights in an abusive relationship. They may also lack the economic independence to leave abusive situations, especially if they are underage.

Under Canada's settlement program for newcomers, the government also provides funding to a variety of organizations that offer programs and services that respond to the specific needs of permanent residents, including immigrant women and their families who may find themselves in vulnerable situations.

Also, both Canada's citizenship study guide, Discover Canada, and the Welcome to Canada orientation guide were recently updated to reflect the fact that Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to harmful practices such as forced marriage or other forms of gender-based family violence.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and I have devoted a considerable amount of time meeting with individuals and representatives of organizations that provide services to immigrant women, as well as with victims of abuse, at a number of round table discussions across the country.

These important discussions focused on domestic violence, polygamy, forced marriage, the immigration process, and how to strengthen the protection of vulnerable women and girls.

I was also proud to participate in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration study on strengthening the protection of women in our immigration system. We were fortunate to hear from expert witnesses and victims of so-called honour-based violence; yes, right here in our own country.

These discussions, of course, strongly informed Bill S-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act.

Bill S-7 is yet another example of the government's commitment to the protection of vulnerable Canadians, particularly newcomer women. These measures would do the following: render permanent and temporary residents inadmissible if they practice polygamy in Canada; strengthen Canadian marriage laws by establishing a new national minimum age for marriage of 16 years old, and codify the existing legal requirements for free and enlightened consent for marriage and for ending an existing marriage prior to entering another; criminalize certain conduct related to underage and forced marriage ceremonies, including the act of removing a child from Canada for the purpose of such marriages; help protect potential victims of underage or forced marriages by creating a new specific court-ordered peace bond where there are grounds to fear someone would commit an offence in this area; and ensure the defence of provocation would not apply in so-called “honour” killings and many spousal homicides.

Canada is a generous and tolerant country. However, I am sure that we would all agree that Canada's openness and generosity does not extend to underage and forced or polygamous marriage or other practices that deny gender equality.

In summary, the measures in Bill S-7 would strengthen our laws to protect Canadians and newcomers to Canada from barbaric cultural practices. The measures in Bill S-7 would provide protection and support for vulnerable individuals, especially women and girls, by rendering permanent and temporary residents inadmissible if they practice polygamy in Canada, by strengthening Canadian marriage and criminal laws in order to combat forced and underage marriage, and by ensuring that defence of provocation would not apply in so-called “honour” killings, and many spousal homicides. That is why this bill is so important.

As legislators, it is our duty to uphold the equality of men and women under the law. I would go so far as to say that this is a fundamental Canadian value. Nevertheless, we must recognize that thousands of Canadian women and girls continue to be subject to violence, and barbaric cultural practices still exist as a reality for many Canadian women. By supporting these measures and ensuring that they pass into law, Parliament would be sending a strong message that we will not tolerate any practices that deprive anyone of their human rights on Canadian soil. I have no doubt that everyone in this House would all agree that in our capacity as representatives of the people of Canada, we have an obligation to always support victims of violence and abuse, and to do everything we can to prevent such practices from happening in this country.

For all of the reasons I have outlined today, I urge my honourable colleagues to support Bill S-7. With that, I conclude my remarks on this bill today.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the parliamentary secretary that yesterday, when he had the opportunity to rise in the House to vote in favour of our motion to end violence against women, he sadly decided to vote against it.

I understand his speech, but I think it is a bit rich of him to point his finger at the NDP, which moved the motion his own government voted against. The biggest problem here is that while we are talking about victims, we are also making criminals of them.

The Conservatives did the same thing with Bill C-36 concerning prostitution. They said that women who worked as prostitutes were victims, but they forgot that their bill turned them into criminals. Then they proposed an amendment to their bill, but it still made criminals of the victims in certain circumstances.

They are doing the same thing today: they are making criminals of the people they say are victims. That does not work, and all the experts agree.

What facts or scientific studies do they have to show that making victims into criminals will improve the situation?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, I take exception to the member's point. This bill would not do that. The zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act would actually send a clear message to individuals coming to this country that their harmful and violent cultural practices are unacceptable in Canada.

It is also unacceptable to have children who are born in Canada whose parents promised when they were born for them to be married to somebody. When they reach 14 years of age, they find themselves on an airplane going to a country they do not even know, or even within the community where they live, and forced to marry an individual with whom they have had no personal contact other than being promised to that individual when they were born, against their will.

These are abuses that are happening in this country. They are rooted in some cultures, and the member should be supportive of this legislation that would stop these atrocious acts from happening on Canadian soil.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there are certain aspects of the legislation for which there is no doubt some limited support. However, there are also aspects of the legislation that have offended a great number of people. Using the combination of words “barbaric cultural” is one of the things that the government has been called to further explain. At the end of the day, it does raise some issues of some very strong racial background as to why the government chooses to use such strong wording. It would appear on the surface that the Conservatives are more concerned about having some sort of strong spun-out message coming from the Prime Minister's Office.

I wonder if the member could provide some explanation as to why the Conservatives felt compelled to use such strong wording in the title of the legislation, which is offending many individuals in our community.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not accept the premise of the question. The title does not, nor does the legislation at any point, name any particular culture. The fact of the matter is that certain practices are based and rooted in some cultures. We did not name one particular culture. We did not say it is a particular group that is guilty of these actions. However, these are actions that are defended by those who perpetrate these atrocious actions on their own children by pointing to their particular culture or tradition. This is why the word “cultural” is important.

In Canada, people should have the right to a consensual marriage, not something that is forced on them because they were told that it is somehow rooted in their culture.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak on the bill. Since the parliamentary secretary has just referred to the word “cultural”, maybe that is a good place to begin. We in the Liberal Party proposed an amendment to remove the word “cultural” from the title, which would then read: zero tolerance for barbaric practices act. We thought it was totally unnecessary and offensive to some to include the word “cultural”. Whatever the government's intent might be, certain communities viewed themselves as being targeted by the use of this word. The word does nothing to enhance the content of the legislation, it is not necessary in any way, yet it is offensive to some. Therefore, I see absolutely nothing to gain, but something to lose, by keeping the word “cultural” in the title of the bill.

The government, through some convoluted argument, which I have heard several times and never understood because I do not think it makes sense, did not agree to that. Therefore, the word “cultural” remains. However, that is not sufficient enough for the Liberal Party to vote against the bill, because we mainly go by the content of a bill rather than by the sometimes ridiculous Conservative title.

In terms of the content, we have reservations in some areas, which I will allude to in a minute or two. However, overall, we think there is enough that is positive in the bill that we will support it.

I will go through the four elements in the bill, which are the provisions on honour killing, and related to that, the defence of provocation; polygamy; the age of marriage; and forced marriage. I think it is pretty well self-evident, and I cannot speak for other parties, but speaking for the Liberal Party, we regard all of these practices as undesirable things that ought to be totally illegal. Therefore, if the bill in some respects can define them better or make them more illegal, then we would be in favour.

Particularly, the two substantive items in the bill that we do like are: one, for the first time we have a minimum age of marriage at 16; and second, the innovation in the bill that it would be a crime to participate in a forced marriage. We think those are both advanced and we support those two items.

In terms of reservations, we think that the defence of provocation in the context of honour killing is really just a political show, because the lawyers who testified before us made it very clear that the defence of provocation would never be accepted by any court in this country in the case of an honour killing. Therefore, it is redundant and I think something the Conservatives brought in for political effect.

I also think that the Conservatives' definition of what would constitute acceptable provocation is inappropriate. The crimes they listed included fairly minor things, such as theft, and we think the crimes should be more major. The minister seemed to agree with that, but he did not understand that the bill did include minor crimes. That is one thing in the bill that we would like to see changed, but it is not enough to cause us to vote against it.

On polygamy, there was some discussion as to whether there should be a definition of polygamy, because if someone is not allowed into the country because of polygamy or deported because of polygamy, it might be a good idea to have a definition as to what it is. One can see the scope for abuse of people's rights if the offence for which they might be charged is not properly defined.

On the age of marriage, according to the bill, if a person is 16 or 17 years old, marriage would be allowed with parental consent, and parental consent alone would be sufficient. However, we thought that if we are into a world of potential forced marriages, then parental consent might not be sufficient. If it is a forced marriage, then the consent of the parent would be a part of that forced marriage scenario, which we want to stop.

For this reason, we propose that there be some judicial mechanism, which I believe exists in some provinces, in addition to parental consent in the case of the marriages of 16- and 17-year-olds.

In essence, what I am saying is that there is enough that we like in this bill to make us think it is worth supporting overall, but there are various things that we would add to the very long list of other things that the Conservatives have done with which we disagree. Should we become the government at some point, I suppose we would add these items to the already long list of things done by the Conservative government that we would want to undo. The list is a very long one.

Just in the immigration area, for example, approximately 99% of the content of the Citizenship Act constitutes additional hurdles and barriers that we would want to remove. However, in the case of this particular bill, we think that there is enough merit in it that we in the Liberal Party will vote in support of it.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a very well reasoned and sensible response to the bill. He has some good suggestions and has raised some reasonable concerns. That is the kind of debate we should have.

I sat on the public safety committee this morning. We heard an expert on terrorism and radicalization tell us that there are materials being distributed in Canada today that say that beating women is an act of kindness and love and that women owe a duty to their husbands, a duty that includes obedience and not withholding intimacy.

There are documented activities taking place in our country that are not only physically dangerous to women but also hostile in a very cultural sense.

I would ask my colleague why we need to avoid the world “culture” when clearly there are cultural dimensions to this danger to women.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comment. I also commend her for her eloquent S. O. 31 statement on the occasion of her impending departure—not too soon, but at some point. She showed that we can fit a lot of content into 60 seconds. It was a very excellent statement.

I also like the first part of her comment, when she said that some of the things that I said were reasonable—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

That is so unusual.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

It is because he is supporting it.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding some reservations.

I think perhaps where I differ most acutely is on this word “cultural”, because I see it as being offensive to communities and because we do not gain anything by its inclusion.

If we look at the groups who are offending society in areas of polygamy and other bad things, we see they are not just Muslims. There were Jewish groups in the news for that. There were fundamentalist Christian groups based in British Columbia. There are a number of different religious groups or sects, or whatever we want to call them, that are guilty of these crimes, but only certain groups take offence to the use of the word “culture”, thinking that it is directed at them.

From a practical point of view, if the word offends some people but does not add anything to the final product, why put it in? I would say to take it out.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will ask my colleague the same question that I asked the parliamentary secretary because I believe that the problem here is the criminalization of victims.

We have debated a number of bills in the House of Commons describing a person as a victim, but criminalizing them at the same time. I do not understand. I know that he briefly spoke to that in his speech.

Why is it that, in some debates, the Liberals condemn the Conservatives for wanting to make criminals of the victims and in others they support the fact that the victims will be criminalized and, therefore, marginalized and unfortunately left to fend for themselves with no help?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we could say that the victims are criminalized to some degree, and we could debate that. However, I have confidence in our justice system. We have special proceedings for youth, for those under 18 years of age. In that case, the system can act judiciously.

For example, take the case of a young man who is 17, and thus a minor, who participates in the forced marriage of his sister. Perhaps he should be treated as a criminal. It seems to me that we could debate the issues raised by the member. Nevertheless, we want to vote for this bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Before we resume debate, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Québec, Consumer Protection; the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou, the Environment.

Resuming debate, the hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, of course in this debate we are again hearing from the Liberals that they would like to take the word “cultural” out of the title because, as we have heard throughout many months of debate in this place and outside of it, the Liberals still accept that there is a possible defence of violence against women and girls in the name of culture.

We believe there is no such defence. We believe there is no such defence in the name of tradition or in the name of honour. Violence is violence. It is a crime, and we will not stand for that amendment or any of the others that would water down this important bill.

It is not surprising that this kind of proposal continues to come from the Liberal Party, because over 13 years in government it did nothing on these issues. Instead of waking up to the issue of human smuggling, the Liberals listed bringing exotic dancers to Canada, not in the hundreds but in the thousands, as a legitimate occupation under our temporary foreign worker program. Many of them went into the sex trade and many of them went into exploitative roles. We ended that and we are proud of it.

If I can throw members' minds back nine years, it was in 2006 that this process of reforming Canadian immigration began. We inherited backlogs and abuse. We still see an unwillingness from the Liberal Party of today to acknowledge that there had been abuse and that the residency rules for citizenship for permanent residents had been flouted. The immigrant investor program in effect brought some money as loans to provinces and territories but brought very few people to Canada, because there was an industry of consultants and lawyers who systematically sought to ensure that large populations of people could pretend they were living in Canada when in fact they were elsewhere. This was unacceptable. It was unacceptable to leave the immigration consultants' world unregulated, as the Liberals did not just for those 13 years in government but for decades.

That is why I am proud, as I know everyone is on our side, to be speaking to the zero tolerance for barbaric practices bill at report stage, not only because of its own merits but because it builds on a solid and wide legacy of achievement by this government over nine years.

Not only have we legislated to protect women and girls in the spousal program in our refugee streams across the board, but we have also legislated to remove foreign criminals faster from this country to make sure our asylum system is not open to abuse and to make sure that human smugglers do not have the incentive to bring people to our shores on unsafe journeys of the kind we see in the Mediterranean today, where thousands are dying every month. Those risks are unacceptable.

Canada's generosity should not be generating new risk or putting people's lives at risk in new ways. We should be saving lives. That is exactly what we have been doing since these reforms came into effect, even as we have been strengthening the value of Canadian citizenship and restoring the pride that Canadians have always had, a pride that was threatened after the reforms the Liberals brought forward in 1977.

We have reformed every economic immigration program we have. The Liberals pointed to the federal skilled worker program, our flagship program, as their top achievement in immigration, yet it took six to eight years for people to come through that program, even at the beginning of our time in government, because it was very difficult for us to act in a minority situation. We have brought it to the point where last week I met someone in British Columbia who had been processed under express entry as a federal skilled worker in two weeks. That person gained the opportunity to be selected to come to Canada through a comparison that was made of her skills and education with those of other candidates. That is the way we need to go and that is the way we have gone.

We ended the failed immigrant investor program and replaced it with a start-up visa for entrepreneurs, the first in the world. We replaced it with an immigrant investor venture capital pilot program, which is bringing larger-scale resources into the venture capital sector, which has so much potential to bring a whole new generation of start-up companies through the various stages of growth and expansion to be major employers in Canada. We also launched the action plan for faster family reunification and the super visa.

We will never hear a Liberal mention any of these initiatives. They deny that they even exist, that 75,000 parents and grandparents have come to Canada in only three years or that 50,000 visitors have received super visas, the right to come to Canada for up to 10 years and to be here for up to two years at a time, with health insurance paid by the inviting party. It is a revolution in the ability of families to choose the right tool to allow them to come together for family occasions, for births, for weddings, and for anniversaries here in Canada. It has been of enormous benefit, as anyone who speaks to newcomer groups knows.

We have also enhanced our refugee programs, not just by agreeing to take 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, next year, and in the following year but also by focusing on the resettlement of the most vulnerable the world over. We see that with our current target of 23,000 Iraqi refugees, many of them from vulnerable religious and ethnic minorities, over 20,000 of whom are already here.

We also launched the federal skilled trades program, which is very much needed and very much overdue, and created the Canadian experience class, which invites those who have already studied and worked in Canada, who have the experience and have proven themselves in our market, to come to Canada. Some 23,000 will do so this year.

We have also extended the provincial nominee program seven times beyond what it was under the Liberals to make sure that immigrants are going to every province and territory, to larger communities and smaller ones, to meet the needs of employers and meet the needs of this growing country.

Immigration is not an end in itself. This country is based on it, absolutely, but immigrants want to work. They want to be part of a successful economy. That is the opportunity this government has given. We have strong immigration programs because we have shown the ability to manage this economy strongly, to return to balance, to keep this a low-tax jurisdiction for jobs and growth, to attract international investment, and to open markets. That is what is attracting newcomers to this country.

We select them on the basis of their skills and experience while respecting the principle of family reunification, while being more generous to refugees than we have ever been on a sustained basis, and while strengthening the value of our citizenship. It is economic prosperity. It is the responsibilities of citizenship, which include the dedication newcomers have, in very large measure, to the rule of law and to justice in this country. It is our duty of protection to those in our immigration programs and those beyond our shores who would dearly love to come here.

What would Bill S-7 do to enhance this?

It would make polygamists inadmissible to Canada. Second, it would raise the national minimum age for marriage to 16. Third, it would require those marrying to dissolve all their previous unions. Fourth, it would require those marrying to give their free and enlightened consent and to ensure that it is truly enlightened. Fifth, it would criminalize active and knowing participation in forced marriage or the removal of a person from Canada for the purpose of underage or forced marriage. Sixth, it would limit the defence of provocation to cases where the defendant was him or herself the victim of a indictable offence punishable by up to five years' imprisonment. In other words, one could only cite provocation, once Bill S-7 becomes law, if one had been the victim of a serious violent crime. Seventh, it would establish access to peace bonds to prevent forced marriage, underage marriage, or removal for those purposes.

This is about the protection of women and girls. This is about ending domestic violence. This is about joining up with the work John Baird did as foreign minister to partner with United Nations agencies and countries around the world to end forced and underage marriage.

It is astonishing that the NDP would oppose every aspect of the bill. It is typical that the Liberals would be strongly in opposition to the bill at the start and then, once they saw how strongly Canadians supported it, would migrate over to our position while hiding behind the fig leaf of wanting to change a single word to show that somehow they have a principle and a policy to stand on.

Liberal ambiguity on immigration, Liberal inability to apply the rules, even of their own ill-conceived programs before 2006, gave this country a legacy of decades of darkness and abuse in immigration. This Conservative government spent nine years cleaning that mess up. We have ended abuse, we have curbed vulnerability, and we have taken criminality out of our immigration flows, and Bill S-7 is a fitting capstone to a proud legacy of achievement for this government.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what he is saying is preposterous. After 10 years in office, the Conservative government is basically taking Canada in the wrong direction again.

There are already laws that make most of what he is talking about illegal. He knows that when it comes to allowing people to come to Canada, whether on visas or as permanent residents, the government already has the power to deny people. If the government knows that people are practising polygamy and it does not want them in Canada, it has the authority to do that.

Canadian criminal law provides for a lot of the actions he is talking about. Uttering threats is covered in the Criminal Code under section 264.1. Aggravated assault is under section 265 and in section 268 for bodily harm. There is sexual assault, and the list goes on and on. We already have laws. The Conservatives are just trying to pull the wool over Canadians' eyes. They are promoting discrimination and racism, as I said a while ago.

If they are so serious about dealing with violence against women, why is it that they will not call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women? Why are they not investing in shelters for people? Why are they not investing in housing for people? It is shameful.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as with missing and murdered aboriginal women, so with regard to forced marriage, polygamy, honour-based violence, and violence against women and girls across the board. We are not looking for new plans, new reports, and new exercises in reflection, where NDP supporters can come together and decide that they are going to do nothing, once again. We are looking at taking action, and that is precisely what we are doing in the bill.

The member opposite thinks that everything is fine, that the status quo is perfect. She has not even spoken to her own supporters in downtown Toronto and elsewhere across the country. Agencies funded by us, but who clearly support the opposition on almost everything, have themselves identified hundreds of cases of forced marriage and hundreds of cases of polygamy that lead to terrible cases of mental anguish and lifelong violence.

It is unacceptable for these things to be happening in Canada. It is not enough to have the law as it is. Bill S-7 will protect women and girls, and the NDP should understand that.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has drunk so much Kool-Aid, and there is such an air of almost total unreality to every word he says, that it is almost impossible to know where to begin.

However, the good news is that the new Canadians I see in these communities agree with me. They know from their own experience that the system is broken, and they reject the argument that it is somehow a nine-year transition period and that everything that is wrong today is because of what happened under the Liberals 10 years ago. The most elementary logic suggests that this makes zero sense.

I would like to ask the minister about two examples. Perhaps the most egregious example was in answer to my colleague in question period when he complained about the denial rate for caregivers being 97% under the new Conservative program from January to March of 2015. Somehow this was the fault of the Liberals. A program the Conservatives had just brought in in 2014-15, with a denial rate of 97%, was the fault of the Liberals.

We can also look at the processing times in 2007. They went up, up, up and dramatically up in 2011, when the Conservatives cut funding. That is the fault of the Liberals. How can the minister sustain such an entirely illogical narrative and expect anyone to believe it?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we on this side are proud to report that we have not been drinking the same things as the member for Markham—Unionville.

We are equally proud to point out to this audience and beyond that the member who is the critic for this portfolio cannot even find a single question relating to Bill S-7 to ask in this debate. That is after opposing the bill through second reading, in public, furiously, saying that it would do no good. He has clearly come around to what works, because Conservative policies on immigration work.

On the caregiver program, it was established in a form that was guaranteed to provide backlogs and guaranteed to separate caregivers from their families for up to 10 years. We have changed that. The backlog will be gone within two years. A huge number of caregivers have been approved under the new program.

The Liberals will always cherry-pick the statistics they want. The reality is that hundreds of caregivers are here under the new reform. The program is working faster. They are going to have better career prospects than ever before.

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for giving me the opportunity to speak to this bill.

It is strange to see that our colleagues in the Conservative caucus, including the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, have taken up this Senate bill here in the House.

I want to start by reaffirming what my colleague from Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing said so well. For 10 years, the Conservative government repeatedly led Canada in the wrong direction, and this bill is just one of many others. My colleague was right to point out that there are already provisions in the Criminal Code and in the Civil Code to combat everything this bill claims to address.

To my knowledge, naturally, it is quite rare in Canada to hear about polygamy, forced marriage or early marriage, except in some very specific situations. I remember a part of the Civil Code that deals with the emancipation of minors through marriage. The provision allowed for minors who willingly entered into a marriage to be considered as adults.

I also want to explain why I am happy to be discussing this bill, despite its many problems. I am doing so to show my support for all the amendments that were proposed by the NDP caucus in committee, as well as by other opposition members.

At the beginning of today's debate, I heard that the opposition brought forward 17 motions, and the Conservatives rejected all of them in committee, right before second reading. The Conservatives did not propose any amendments. How is it that a bill can come to us from the Senate and it can be taken on by a minister and his parliamentary secretary, who both know very well that we have the Canadian Multiculturalism Act?

They say that we should pass the bill so we can protect these people, which does not make any sense, when they have no intention of taking it seriously or analyzing the contents of the 17 amendments that were brought forward.

In principle, the bill is commendable, for it is meant to combat polygamy, and early and forced marriage, which definitely should be stopped. However, the proposed approach is not the right one.

If the Conservatives had been able to support the motion and accept the amendments, we could have improved the bill and made it effective. It is our duty as legislators to introduce legislation that makes sense.

Once again, in the title alone, there is something unusual. As my colleague, the member for La Pointe-de-l'Île, did such a good job of explaining, the title, which is appalling, points a finger right at women from certain communities and stigmatizes certain cultures deemed “barbaric”. There is something missing somewhere.

That reminds me of something that still surprises me. Just yesterday, Motion No. 444 was rejected. That was a motion to end violence against women. The entire Conservative caucus rejected it. Once again, I was surprised to see that of the 159 members of the Conservative caucus, 28 are women, which represents about 17.5%. That is not a big number, relatively speaking, but it nevertheless seems to me that those women should have taken an interest in the intention of the motion.

Getting back to Bill S-7, regardless of its appalling title, which the Conservatives never wanted to change, what we need to do is come up with a bill that really tackles the source of the problem. Of course, as I said earlier, I do not believe that this problem is particularly widespread here in Canada, except among immigrants from other cultures who engage in these practices, which seems to be the case. However, it also seems to me, as my Liberal Party colleague explained, that there are safeguards. Our Citizenship and Immigration Canada officers in visa sections in embassies have the means to detect all kinds of irregularities, and they can really be strict about saying that such practices are not allowed in Canada. It therefore has to be something that really violates what has already been established in our Civil Code or in common law on the English side.

I discovered another rather interesting situation. At the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the members of our party tried several times to amend the bill, especially the title and certain concepts in the clauses, in order to ensure that the victims would not be penalized. That did not happen. We end up with the same situation, as usual with the Conservatives. As our opposition colleagues mentioned, the mission of the Conservative caucus is to let things drag on. The Conservatives have been in power for 10 years, and they have not really found solutions. The expression “working together” means absolutely nothing to them. They insist, with a degree of arrogance, on imposing closure and putting an end to debate.

What everyone is objecting to is primarily the title. Many witnesses who came before the committee found the title offensive and unacceptable.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, several times the member referred to amendments at committee. Had he taken the time to read the transcript, the minutes of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration deliberations on this particular bill, he would know that many of those amendments were ruled out of order on the advice of the House of Commons-appointed clerk on the committee. Those that were not, did not succeed and clearly were not substantive enough to substantiate a change to the bill that dealt with the issue in depth.

As I said in my speech, our government will not tolerate cultural traditions in Canada that deprive individuals of their human rights, such as forced marriage, honour killings, polygamy and so forth.

My question to the member is simple. Does he believe that acts such as forced marriage, honour killings and polygamy are actually barbaric when they are forced on innocent women and girls who do not give their consent?

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Parliamentary Secretary for his question. He began by asking if I had read the amendments. Obviously the answer is no. I have no knowledge of these amendments because I am not a member of the committee.

With respect to his last question about the bill, what we are saying and keep repeating is that our members' suggestions in committee should help improve the bill and make it more effective. In principle, that is what should happen. Our members try to improve the bill by moving amendments. However, the Conservatives reject the amendments. They only want to keep the original, no matter how badly worded. They do not care. They want to do things their way.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in listening to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration we hear a litany of what I would classify as falsehoods indicating just how wonderfully the government is doing on the immigration file.

When I reflect on the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's speech and when he made the statement that Bill S-7 kind of puts a cap on all these wonderful achievements, I cannot help but wonder, if only the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration had as much enthusiasm at resolving the types of problems that are in the immigration department today, let alone citizenship, if Canadians would be that much further ahead.

Would the member agree with that assessment?

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Winnipeg North for his question. He is absolutely right. The minister was bragging about the success of his management approach, but in my riding, there is a fairly high number of immigrants from different ethnic backgrounds. They come to my office to get information on topics that are directly related to this minister's management of the department. Recently, I even approached the minister directly, in person, to ask him some questions. He has a very laissez-faire attitude. I do not see why he says that his management approach is such a success or how they are able to detect anything at all.

Although this bill comes from the Senate, it has the government's support. I do not believe that the government is really going to get members to support a bill if it imposes gag orders and forces the vote in its usual arrogant manner so that the bill passes in the form the government wants.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to address this important piece of legislation in the House today on behalf of my constituents in the great riding of Wetaskiwin. I always stand never knowing for sure if this is going to be the last time I speak as a member of Parliament for Wetaskiwin, but I certainly take every opportunity to recognize the great people that I have been fortunate to represent for the last 10 years. The ridings are changing in Alberta and half of my riding will be lost, so it is always nice to acknowledge the folks who sent me here on their behalf. Many of them communicate to me their strong desires on certain issues. I have no doubt where the people in my constituency stand on this issue.

I am pleased to have the opportunity today to speak about Bill S-7, which is an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to a few other pieces of legislation. Bill S-7 aims to ensure that early and forced marriage and other harmful cultural practices, such as polygamist marriages and so-called “honour-based” violence, do not occur on Canadian soil. It would do so by amending the Civil Marriage Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and, of course, the Criminal Code.

Today I would like to speak to the proposed amendment to the Criminal Code, the defence of provocation. The provocation defence applies only to a murder charge and, when successful, reduces a murder charge down to manslaughter, thereby giving rise to wide judicial discretion in sentencing and, in most cases, significantly lower sentences than if the person had been convicted of murder. The proposed amendment would limit the defence so that it would only apply where a person is killed in response to provoking conduct by the victim that was objectively serious and contrary to the norms and behaviours set down for all of society.

More specifically, the provocation by the victim would have to amount to a criminal offence with a maximum sentence of at least five years. The defence would continue to be available where a person loses control and kills someone suddenly upon finding that person assaulting or abusing a family member, or committing any number of other serious criminal offences. The amendment is not only intended to stop the defence from being raised in honour killings but also from being raised in spousal killing situations where it is still sometimes successful. There are situations where people who kill will often claim to have done so in response to some lawful, albeit insulting, conduct by the victim.

This reform responds to two decades of criticism that the defence of provocation in these cases operates to excuse male violence against women and to reaffirm men's beliefs that they are entitled to possess and control women regardless of what those women want. This, of course, is a very similar dynamic to what is seen in honour killing cases, where men, whether it be a father, a husband or brother, but sometimes also women, seek to kill women or girls in their families when they make their own choices about how to behave that are in conflict with the wishes of other family members.

Many of the commentators who testified before the committee said that the proposed provocation reforms were unnecessary because the courts have already made clear that provocation is not available in an honour killing context. This has been the case argued by some across the floor. Even if the courts are in the process of narrowing the scope of the provocation defence, it begs the question: Why are the courts, rather than Parliament, addressing problems with the law? It is Parliament's job and the job of every person in the chamber to make law and correct legal problems.

Bill S-7 is Parliament's opportunity to change the law, to say that murder is not less serious just because the victim offended the killer in the moments before the killing. Critics of this proposal also ignore the fact that our government has said on many occasions that this proposed reform is also meant to address spousal killings that are not characterized as honour killings. Many who claim the defence of provocation are men who have killed their current or former partners because the relationship ended, because there was infidelity or because of verbal insults about sexual performance, and so on.

It is true that these claims are becoming less and less successful in Canadian courts, but, nonetheless, such claims do sometimes succeed. None of the witnesses who criticized this amendment addressed the fact that men in Canada sometimes still benefit from the provocation defence when they kill their current or former partners. Instead, the critics talked only about cases in which provocation claims failed, where the circumstances were characterized as honour killings.

They seem to agree that the victims of honour killings must be treated as murder victims and those who kill them as murderers, yet they do not appear to be concerned that victims of domestic killings that are not honour killings may receive a different quality of justice and are instead sometimes treated as victims of the lesser crime of manslaughter. These killers are back on the streets within a few years in some cases.

Our government believes all persons who kill their partners in response to lawful, albeit insulting, behaviour should be convicted of murder. We also believe that it is Parliament's job to make this happen by changing the law to accord with this value. It is not enough to sit back and hope that the courts will do the right thing on a case-by-case basis. In any event, it is simply not true that the courts have ruled definitively in this area.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal, in the case of R. v. Nehar, 2004 BCCA, actually found that the cultural background of the accused was relevant to his provocation claim. This case remains binding authority in British Columbia, which means that cultural claims can be accepted in the context of a provocation defence.

Many commentators have suggested that the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in the case of Humaid definitely rules out the provocation defence in honour killing cases. In that ruling, the Ontario Court of Appeal made clear that the defence failed because the Crown proved that the killing was pre-meditated, so it was not of a sudden nature and, therefore, not provoked. Having found that the appeal was resolved on the grounds that the Crown proved pre-meditation, the court said it did not have to resolve the issue about whether the accused's cultural beliefs were relevant to provocation. The court discussed what the considerations would be in resolving this issue, but expressly stated:

The resolution of this difficult issue awaits a case in which it must be resolved.

That is from the Ontario Court of Appeal in R. v. Humaid 2006, on the order paper 1507, paragraph 94.

Where does all of this leave us? It is wishful thinking and legally inaccurate to state that provocation cannot, as a matter of law, be raised by an accused who is alleged to have killed in an honour killing context. It is true that the provocation claims in honour killing cases are likely to be rejected by judges and juries, but the critics are incorrect when they suggest that the defence cannot even be raised or considered. We have already seen that it has been considered in British Columbia, and court is awaiting a case where it can be considered in Ontario.

These claims will be made again, and they will produce more appeals, which will cost the justice system more time and energy, and which will bring more pain to the families of the victims, who have to face longer trials and appeals. We, as legislators, can stop that from happening by passing Bill S-7 as soon as possible and by declaring that no one is entitled to leniency for intentionally killing another because of any type of insult that is otherwise lawful.

Some critics are concerned about unintended consequences of limiting the provocation defence. Scenarios involving racial slurs were mentioned on a few occasions. In most such cases, both parties are drunk, both parties are insulting each other, and in many cases, both parties are also assaulting or threatening each other, which is unlawful conduct in and of itself. No cases were identified wherein a person who was minding his or her own business and was aggressively verbally assaulted with racial insults was thus provoked to kill. This is a very unlikely occurrence.

There are risks of retaining provocation for racial insults. A 2013 case from Ontario involved a successful provocation defence by a man who brutally killed his wife in the context of a marriage breakdown. The accused alleged that his wife made a racial slur, the contents of which were not disclosed in the court's reasons. The accused was, therefore, convicted of manslaughter, a lesser charge, not murder, and sentenced to serve only four years and four months' imprisonment, despite the sentencing judge finding the provocation to be of little mitigating value.

The danger of retaining provocation in order to show leniency to those who are racially insulted is that it can also apply in the context of a relationship breakdown, where people offer up insults in order to hurt each other emotionally with some regularity.

There are other safeguards built into our criminal justice system that should not be forgotten in the event that there is an unforeseen but genuinely sympathetic set of circumstances for which the provocation defence would no longer apply. For example, the Crown could find that it is not in the public interest to prosecute that person for murder and can accept a guilty plea to manslaughter without any need for the accused to raise the provocation defence.

In closing, to better protect women and girls in this country, the time has come for Canada to bring the law of provocation out of the 17th century and into conformity with our modern values as other like-minded nations have done. I hope that all members will support this proposal and all other elements of Bill S-7. It is time we moved forward with this very valuable legislation. We continue to stand up for victims, to put victims' needs first, and to protect those who are most vulnerable in our society, namely women and small girls.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the problems we identified in the bill was the short title, which refers to cultural practices. The problem is that one in every three women is a victim of violence or sexual violence in Canada, no matter their background or whatever cultural definition the government has in mind when it uses the word “cultural”.

My only question is this. Why add this word if we know that one in every three women is a victim of violence or sexual violence? Why identify only cultural violence? Violence is a systemic problem in our society, so why not target violence against women? What is the purpose of using the word “cultural”?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the word “cultural” is clearly meant to include all cultures where some of these issues are actually fairly common practice.

The witnesses who testified before the committee clearly said on the record that some of these issues are deeply rooted in their particular culture, and their testimony is there for anybody who cares to read the testimony of those who appeared before the committee that has debated and argued this particular piece of legislation. It does not make sense to ignore the obvious, while it does not do any harm to put it in.

These kinds of practices, we clearly know, are rooted in some cultures. We have not identified a particular culture, in order to be as tolerant as possible when it comes to this, but we cannot not call a spade a spade either when it comes to these particular issues.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the member's answer. He said it is there and it is part of cultures and so forth and it applies to all cultures.

I am wondering why he would not make it even more profound in terms of saying, “culture, religions, et cetera”. Why just limit it to culture?

Surely to goodness the member can recognize that just dropping that word does not do anything in terms of taking away from the legislation itself. It is the word that has offended many. Why would the government be so persistent in accepting and keeping the word when, in fact, whether the word is there or not has absolutely no impact on the legislation?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there we go again, seeing the Liberals standing up for the rights of the accused rather than the rights of the victims by trying to acknowledge that the perpetrators of these cultural practices, these barbaric practices, somehow need their feelings to be taken into consideration when they have done terrible and heinous things to members of their own family, to women, or to girls.

Canadians can trust that only a Conservative government will actually stand up for the rights of victims in this country and put the rights of those victims first.

None of the victims that have testified before the committee had any problem with the words “barbaric cultural practices”.

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.

Unfortunately, we completely disagree with several of his principles. My colleague said that the Conservatives were standing up for victims, when we see that, in a number of respects, they have no regard for victims, particularly for the aboriginal women who have been going missing for years. The government is doing absolutely nothing for these women who are the victims of violence and who have been going missing. The Conservatives are all about smoke and mirrors. This bill, which is supposed to help combat violence against women, is another example of this. There are a number of laws in place to protect women, yet the Conservatives are introducing dangerous measures that could have the opposite effect and that will not help victims.

Why is the government saying that it wants to help victims when it has no consideration for the aboriginal women in our country? Why does it not take measures that could help those women deal with the violence they are facing?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

There we go again, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member has no questions about the bill, which means that he has to ask a question about something else, which means he is in support of the bill, even though he will probably be forced to vote against it, according to his own party lines. He is trying to deflect the question, but I will be happy to address it.

There are a lot of legal changes that would be made in this particular bill. He says there are some things that already protect women. Of course there are, but there is no age of marriage law in Canada, so we would be changing that. There needs to be clarification on the provocation clauses, and we would be amending them. These are things that need to be amended and updated from time to time.

When it comes to missing and murdered aboriginal women, I proudly represent the community of Maskwacis in my constituency of Wetaskiwin, which has some 12,000 Cree first nations people, all very good, hard-working people who want the same things, a good quality of life, a safe place to raise their families and children. They want jobs and economic opportunities, but they also know, and the police will show this, that all the records and the information we have show that the majority of aboriginal women go missing at the hands of their spouses or partners, just as it is for any woman of any other ethnic origin in Canada.

We already know this. The time for action is now. We can do something now by passing the bill or we can follow the NDP's lead, which is to dither and delay and not take action on these measures.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is appropriate that I rise in the House today with great disappointment to debate Bill S-7 , which is offensively called a zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act.

Yesterday, the government members of the House had the opportunity to vote to create a national action plan to end violence against women, and all but one chose to vote against a plan that would genuinely work to end violence against women. Instead, here we are faced with Bill S-7 , which will likely pass and will likely inflict more violence on women.

I would like to state for the record that the crimes the government would see as “barbaric cultural practices” are found in all cultural groups and among all communities. Gender-based violence includes what the Conservatives like to call “honour killings”, forced marriages, and polygamy, and all of these can be found in white, Christian homes that have been in Canada since Confederation.

What does serve to make immigrant and refugee women more vulnerable in Canada is a culture that marginalizes them, a society that racializes and stereotypes them and a political climate that places systemic barriers between them and their ability to claim the rights to which they are entitled.

Bill S-7 works to fan the flames of the Islamophobic and racist stigma that immigrant women face. It names problems that all women face as “cultural” and then, in practice, it clamps down on immigration policy that is already discriminating against refugees and immigrants from South Asian, Arab, and African states.

I, alongside my feminist colleagues from all regions, are sick and tired of having to battle against xenophobic, misogynistic legislation that masquerades as feminism in Parliament.

Alia Hogben, the executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, came to testify at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women this year when we were studying violence against women. There she said:

lt is dehumanizing and degrading to label certain forms of violence as barbaric when all of it is so. Why are some politicians labelling some practices as barbaric and linking it with immigrants only? Polygamy, femicide, and forced marriages are all present in our Canadian society with one significant example of the Mormon community of Bountiful, which has been practising all of these since the 1950s. Why the blame and targeting of immigrants or visible minority groups?

Throughout my mandate as the critic for the status of women, I worked closely with a brilliant lawyer and advocate from the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario. Deepa Mattoo has taken it upon herself to do some of the most extensive research on early and forced marriage that we have in Canada. Therefore, she is an expert on the crimes that the bill claims to address. She stands in fervent opposition to it, as do the vast majority of the advocates, lawyers, and community representatives who actually work with the victims of gender-based violence. This is what Deepa Mattoo has to say about Bill S-7 's offensive short title:

Giving it a shock factor name will not eliminate the issue. Instead it will force perpetrators to take this underground, ensuring the victims and potential victims are isolated from any resources. This causes a greater risk to their safety, not to mention their emotional and mental well-being.

At its core, Bill S-7 would create dangerous conditions for women who may indeed be in a vulnerable situation. However, instead of empowering these women and girls with the culturally appropriate education, tools, and services they need to claim their rights, Bill S-7 would see them deported or denied entry into Canada. What is incredibly threatening about the language of the bill is that it says that Canada can deny entry or deport people “if they are or will be practising polygamy”. This provision is problematic on every level. How can anyone deny immigration status to someone based on the suspicion that they will practise polygamy in the future? How can we start criminalizing individuals based on crimes we fear they might commit in the future? Last I checked, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is not empowered with telepathic powers.

The government has already passed legislation that gives tremendous powers to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, so transparency in the immigration and refugee system in our country barely exists at all anymore.

The NDP has repeatedly pointed out that making an individual's refugee status entirely contingent upon the discretion of the minister contravenes international human rights conventions. The government is now writing immigration law that would be adjudicated only by the discretion of the minister and would allow us to discriminate based on the suspicion of future crimes or the marriage practices of one's relatives or the practices of the community one comes from.

Dr. Hannana Siddiqui, from Southall Black Sisters in the U.K., said:

...the thing is deportation has always been a problem. It's not just for the man; it's for the women and the children. It doesn't resolve the problem of polygamy itself. It just creates discrimination, alienation and mistrust within minority communities.

I think you have to look at other ways of trying to resolve the problem.

When will this government understand? Deportation is never a solution to violence against women. When immigrant and refugee women are facing gender-based violence, the threat of deportation for themselves, their children, or their family will work to keep them in a violent domestic situation.

I would like to end my speech by talking in positive terms about what the Conservatives can do right now to substantially address violence against women.

First, they can listen to women themselves who have been the victims of violence. Bill S-7, along with almost all the legislation the government passes under the auspices of saving women, is paternalistic and does not benefit from any form of adequate consultation with the communities it would affect.

Second, they can listen to the experts, the advocates and service providers who are telling them that this bill is a terrible way to address violence against women and would likely create more violence in women's lives.

Third, they can take up the content of my Motion No. 444, which was in front of us yesterday, to create with all due haste a national action plan to end violence against women. This national action plan is what the advocates, experts, and service providers are asking for. This is what women themselves are asking for.

Fourth and finally, they can make substantive immigration reform that would ensure that women are never subject to deportation, detention, or removal if they are victims of violence or fear violence.

We must work to keep families together. We must inform women of their rights. We must create culturally appropriate services and shelters. We must end the threat of random, unfounded deportations, and we must work as a society and as a government to counteract racism and stigma.

This is what we can do.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a very eloquent and powerful sharing of thoughts.

We hear the title of the bill and we are told by the Conservatives that it does not mean anything, that it is not separating anybody. However, we use the terms “cultural diversity” and “cultural communities”. We are using the term “barbaric cultural practices”. People hear the word “cultural”, and there is an instinctive walk toward certain communities.

I would ask my hon. colleague if she would care to comment on whether she feels this bill would actually open the door, on an immigration level, to a certain type of profiling—cultural profiling, if you will. I would ask my colleague to comment on that.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising the issue of the kind of explosive language that the government is using in the bill. It is the kind of language that we often see in the legislation that the government puts forward.

What is clear, what we heard from witness after witness, and what we heard in the status of women committee as well when we were looking at violence against women is that language matters. In this case, the connection was often made between the kind of language we have seen from the current government, in Bill S-7 but in other legislation as well, that seeks to fan the flames of racism and Islamophobia in our country. It is no accident that those kinds of connections are made by the current government. It is not just in terms of Bill S-7. We have heard it in pronouncements from members of the government in various forms.

The reality is that not only are we connecting it here to a situation that stands to create more violence in women's lives, but the Conservatives are also using this as an excuse to hack away at our immigration system to make it less transparent, to leave more power to the minister, and ultimately to change the face of Canada as they see fit.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues in the NDP against Bill S-7 and against the kind of regressive and frankly misogynistic legislation that the current government puts forward time and again.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments, because they are so significant in regard to what we heard in the citizenship and immigration committee.

I was a member of that committee. I heard testimony from representatives of the Canadian Bar Association, and they advised the Conservatives to simply scrap Bill S-7 because it would do far more harm than good, since it would jeopardize the victims of violence and potentially marginalize them from their families if they came forward. It would criminalize people and make women and children open to deportation.

What on earth would happen to these women and children who are deported because they are in a polygamist situation? They would go back to a country where they have no one and nothing.

When I asked the minister on Tuesday about the recommendations from the Canadian Bar Association, his response was simply to dismiss them. He said that their representatives were just a bunch of card-carrying Liberals and it did not matter what they had to say.

I wonder what my colleague has to say in regard to dismissing the concerns of the Canadian Bar Association.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who was the former critic on the status of women and is an incredible feminist member of Parliament. She is outspoken on the issues that matter to women in Canada.

It is absolutely ludicrous to hear the government not just dismiss but turn around and offend the Canadian Bar Association, a respected body that came out with a very strong recommendation against Bill S-7. Unfortunately, this behaviour shocks few of us anymore. The kind of interaction and attitude we see daily at committee vis-à-vis witnesses who do not agree with the Conservative government leads to all sorts of despicable behaviour.

As I said in my speech, it is so important for the government to listen to the witnesses who know most about this issue. They need to move away from their ideological agenda and actually hear from the advocates and community organizations that see this issue up close and personal every day.

I think of the work of Deepa Mattoo, who has moved heaven and earth to come up with research on the issue of forced marriage here in Canada and around the world. She is a woman who deeply cares about these issues. She came out and said we should say no to Bill S-7.

It is a bill that reeks of racism and discrimination. Let us stand up to build a better Canada. I am proud to be part of a team that does that.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and have an opportunity to speak on Bill S-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act.

This bill takes a strong stance to ensure that no woman or girl in Canada becomes a victim of any violent practice that violates basic human rights. Bill S-7 sends a clear message to individuals coming to this country that harmful and violent cultural practices are unacceptable in Canada. These practices are incompatible with Canadian values and will not be tolerated.

Bill S-7 strengthens laws in Canada through amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act, and the Criminal Code.

We have had the benefit of hearing from a number of experts in the field during the citizenship and immigration committee hearings. Some have criticized the bill; others have been in full support. All, however, agree that combatting violence against women and girls is an important and laudable goal.

I would like to paraphrase one of the witnesses who came before the committee. Ms. Chantal Desloges, an immigration lawyer, said very aptly that this bill sends a concrete statement about Canadian values.

Within Canada, there is no room for a culture of violence against women and girls. I believe that when there are gaps in legislation that have allowed perpetrators to abuse those very people who count on them for protection or that have prevented victims from getting help, it is our responsibility to ensure that those gaps are closed.

Among other things, this bill proposes to fill gaps that have been identified with regard to early and forced marriage. These deplorable practices principally victimize young women and are often carried out by their own parents or other family members.

If I may, I will paraphrase from another witness before committee. Ms. Lee Marsh, a victim herself of a forced marriage, testified that if she had known that what her mother was doing was against the law, she might have felt better equipped to refuse that marriage.

Ms. Marsh also told the committee that this bill in isolation is not enough to combat these practices. We on the government side agree. This bill provides solid ground to give tools to law enforcement and front-line service providers to bring perpetrators to justice and to protect victims, but in addition to the legislation, people need to be aware of Canadian laws and values. We are not ignoring the importance of raising awareness or of providing training and resources, nor are we overlooking the importance of working together with our provincial and territorial counterparts and community partners in the field. Our government, through various departments, has been working diligently for years with many different stakeholders on these very issues.

Just to give a few examples, Justice Canada and Status of Women Canada have provided funding to a number of non-governmental organizations to conduct awareness raising and training on honour-based violence and forced marriages. Justice Canada contributed funding for the development of a high school curriculum that will teach students about human rights, including those related to early and forced marriages.

Over the years, Justice Canada has organized workshops with front-line workers across the country, including child protection workers, shelter workers, community-based workers, police officers, and crown prosecutors to share expertise, create networks, and discuss risk assessments and appropriate services for victims of these horrendous acts.

Justice Canada and Status of Women Canada co-chair an interdepartmental working group on early and forced marriage, honour-based violence, and female genital mutilation. This working group is creating a federal-provincial-territorial working group on these same issues.

The justice department has published public legal education and information materials on family violence that include information on early and forced marriages, honour-based violence and female genital mutilation.

Justice Canada and the RCMP have also created training materials for police officers on these issues as part of their domestic violence training. This training will be updated to reflect the changes in Bill S-7.

As I have demonstrated, there are many layers to our government's approach to tackling these issues.

The bill is but one aspect of the ongoing and collaborative efforts being undertaken by this government to address these disturbing issues. It is an integral and necessary part of the government's multi-faceted approach to tackling the issues, which includes prevention, denunciation, awareness-raising, training, consultation and collaboration.

Some critics of the bill are nervous that by criminalizing these forms of violence, we risk stigmatizing people who are already vulnerable. We believe that it is imperative to recognize that these forms of violence exist and to address and denounce them. We need to send clear messages to victims that they have a right of refusal and we need to let potential perpetrators know that forced marriage is a crime. It is not acceptable to turn a blind eye to child abuse or spousal assault just because it happens behind closed doors.

Similarly, we should not shy away from denouncing early and forced marriage as forms of family violence that will not be tolerated in our society.

Bill S-7 would complement existing Canadian initiatives, both at home and abroad, put an end to barbaric cultural practices that go against Canadian values because they cause harm to women and girls and prevent their full participation in society. These practices that we have already talked about, which include early and forced marriage, honour-based violence and female genital mutilation or cutting, have no place in Canada's free and democratic society.

Canada has long been a leader in this, and these are some of the things we have done on the international stage. Canada has made ending child, early, and forced marriage, or the CEFM as it is referred to, a foreign policy and development priority and is intensifying programming and advocacy efforts to address CEFM. These are some examples, and I will just name a few of them.

Canada spearheaded the initiative to establish the International Day of the Girl Child, which focused upon CEFM in 2012, which was its first year.

Then, in October 2013, Canada announced $5 million in new funding to address the causes and consequences of CEFM around the world. These funds were used for programs in many different countries.

In 2014, then minister Baird announced that Canada was contributing $20 million, over two years, to UNICEF toward ending CEFM. Also, in 2014, Canada committed institutional support to the efforts of the Royal Commonwealth Society to raise awareness in commonwealth countries about the need to end CEFM. Canada contributes to efforts to combat female genital mutilation by working with UN agencies and bilaterally with other countries, supporting projects to address violence against women and eliminate harmful cultural practices.

Those are just a few of the ways that Canada has been contributing to the international field in ending these barbaric practices. I am very proud that it is this Conservative government that is sending a strong message to Canadian society and to the world that Canada will not tolerate violence against women and girls. I would strongly encourage members of the House to give Bill S-7 their full support.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what the government has been doing is putting in legislation that promotes discrimination and racism.

What happens when it is a Canadian-born person from a different culture that may be practising some of these? This is the discrimination piece. The government is saying to an immigrant that he can go back home, but someone born in Canada who does this will face the Criminal Code of Canada. We have legislation to deal with these issues, so why do we not use it?

It is the same with the terrorism bill. Conservatives were saying that Bill C-51 was the be-all and end-all, yet before it was even passed, they actually arrested people they felt were going abroad to be part of terrorism.

All in all, why is the government putting in place legislation that continues to discriminate and promote racism? Why is it not investing in services that would actually assist women?

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am really glad that question was asked because I just went through outlining a whole lot of things Canada was doing. While I did outline many things we were doing internationally, I really did not have enough time in my original remarks to talk about everything we were doing at home. In a minute I will tell the House about a few of the things we are doing at home as well.

I want to reiterate, however, as has been said over and over this afternoon, the bill does not talk about any particular racial or cultural practices. The bill does refer to any violence against women and girls. It sends a clear message to individuals coming to our country that harmful and violent cultural practices are unacceptable in Canada. I cannot understand why any Canadian would not want to ensure that people would know these types of harmful and violent cultural practices would not accepted in Canada.

Part of the question was why we were not doing some things. We are doing a lot of things. We are working in conjunction with many groups. Citizenship and Immigration Canada is working together with Justice Canada and the Status of Women Canada. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has many programs in place, as do the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Public Health Agency of Canada. These people are all working together. There are many programs in place, not only internationally but also domestically.

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from May 28 consideration of Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am standing today at report stage on Bill S-7, which has the very unfortunate short title “the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act”. I stand in opposition to the main motion and in support of the NDP's proposed amendments to the bill.

I want to stress that I support the intent of the bill. No woman or child should be subject to any form of violence and certainly not to the forms of gender-based violence, such as forced marriage, polygamy, and underage marriage, the bill purports to address. Further, the fact of these forms of gender-based violence in Canadian society is not in dispute here, and neither is the fact that there are things we can do and ought to do to prevent and respond to the practices at issue.

However, the bill is not the appropriate response and needs at a minimum to be amended, because it threatens to aggravate, not help, existing circumstances and to further victimize or re-victimize those subject to the practices the bill purports to address.

The precautionary principle ought to apply here. The Conservative government has heard enough from enough knowledgeable people on the matter of the bill from those with experience and expertise in these matters to stop this here, to take a step back, and rethink its approach to this issue before it does more harm than good to people who need help.

Here are the main provisions of the bill. It amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to make polygamy grounds for inadmissibility to or removal from Canada of immigrants and permanent residents if there are reasonable grounds to believe that these individuals have practised, are practising, or may in future practise polygamy.

It amends the Civil Marriage Act to make free and enlightened consent to marriage a legal requirement and to require that any previous marriage be dissolved or declared null before a new marriage is contracted and to make 16 years of age the minimum legal age for marriage.

It amends the Criminal Code to clarify that it is an offence for an officiant to knowingly solemnize a marriage in contravention of federal law; to make it an offence to celebrate, aid or participate in a marriage rite or ceremony knowing that one of the persons being married is doing so against their will or is under the age of 16 years; to make it an offence to remove a child from Canada to marry a child against that child's will or if the child is under 16; to allow a judge to issue a peace bond for a period of up to two years if a person is suspected on reasonable grounds of preparing to force someone else to marry, to marry a child, or to remove a child from Canada for one of these purposes; and to address the issue of so-called honour killings to limit the defence of provocation to circumstances in which the victim engaged in conduct that would constitute an indictable offence under the Criminal Code that is punishable by five years or more in prison.

However, stakeholders and expert witnesses have testified before the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that the bill is also likely to have many and serious unintended consequences. For example, the bill makes no provision to allow women who are conditional permanent residents to remain in Canada if their polygamist partner is deported.

There is no clear definition of polygamy, leading, likely, to confusion and potentially arbitrary decisions regarding deportation and inadmissibility and discrimination against nationals from certain countries.

UNICEF has expressed concern that the bill would criminalize minors who celebrate, aid, or participate in forced marriages, and UNICEF has recommended exemptions for children and young people from certain provisions in the bill.

Criminalization, in the context of family and social relations, may end up simply driving these practices underground.

In all of this, the bill falls in a long line of socially insensitive, ham-fisted and unsophisticated responses to complex social issues by the Conservative government.

In March 2012, for example, the Conservatives introduced new measures to crack down on marriage fraud, including a requirement for a sponsored spouse to live with the sponsor for two years or face deportation and possible criminal charges. Clearly, this measure leaves women reluctant to report abuse, because they fear losing permanent residency. Consequently, they are vulnerable to abuse.

In April 2014, the Conservative member for Mississauga South introduced a motion that purported to deal with forced marriages by banning marriages by proxy or by telephone, for example, from qualifying for spousal sponsorship. Distance marriages of this sort are largely conducted by refugees, so we have the consequence that this motion would serve to limit family reunification rather than limit forced marriages.

These are the kinds of sensitivities, nuances, understandings, et cetera, missing from the Conservative government's world view, and it is problematic.

Beyond that, and just as egregiously, the current Conservative government forgoes opportunities to even consider, much less heed, the advice of those who actually understand the complexity of these issues. For example, during the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration's study on strengthening the protection of women in our immigration system, most witnesses insisted that newcomers must be informed, in their language of origin, and before coming to Canada, of their rights in Canada and about the resources available to them in Canada. The committee recommended in its report to the House:

... that the Government of Canada expand pre-arrival orientation to ensure sponsored spouses receive information in a language they understand and to ensure that the topics covered include gender equality, women's rights, their legal rights, what constitutes abuse in Canada and how to seek help.

However, no funds were earmarked in the 2015 budget to implement this recommendation.

Here is another example of the government ignoring expertise and forgoing data and information and in so doing putting people at risk, sacrificing vulnerable people on the altar of political expediency. I call it political expediency quite deliberately, because the truth here is that so much of what is in the bill actually duplicates existing laws.

For example, the bill would amend the Civil Marriage Act to make free and enlightened consent legal requirements for marriage, but these requirements already exist as part of the civil code of Quebec and of common law in other provinces. The bill would limit the defence of provocation, ostensibly to exclude honour killings, but the courts have already ruled that the concept of honour and a culturally driven sense of what is an appropriate response does not count as provocation under the Criminal Code. The Canadian Criminal Code also already provides recourse that is relevant in most cases involving forced marriages, prior to and after marriage, as well as in cases of travelling with minors with the intent of forcing them to marry.

There is a broad range of existing Criminal Code provisions on everything from intimidation to forceful confinement to sexual assault that deal with these issues already.

So much of what we are talking about here today in this House stands as so fully representative of the four years of the 41st Parliament and the style and substance of the current Conservative government. It takes complex social issues, with real victims, and responds the only way it seems to know how, with its reflex to criminalization without regard to evidence, experience, expertise, or the potential of the unintended consequences of its reflex.

Witness its response to the over 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women: no inquiry, no search for intelligence or understanding, just criminalize, as though that helps victims, as though that will somehow prevent having more victims.

With so few days left in the 41st Parliament, this elected chamber is here considering a bill put forward by a chamber of unelected people. We have a Conservative government giving priority or ceding priority to an ill-considered, reactionary, and potentially harmful bill from the unelected Senate while at the same time it is shutting down debate in this elected chamber, as it has done 100 times already, as has been the fate of nearly 60 bills to date, on matters that elected representatives of this chamber want to debate.

In all, what a fitting way for the current government to close out the final days of this Parliament, and what an unfortunate way for Canada and Canadians.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to my colleague's speech. I am struggling to find in this bill something that is not already illegal. It is almost like we are making it illegal twice because we hate it so much. In doing so, we are ignoring what I think is the real cruelty in the government's current legislation with respect to marriage, in particular marriage that spans the globe, which is that families have had their separation extended from 11 months to 29 months almost arbitrarily.

I was in a restaurant on Queen Street, in my riding, when a young chef came out from the back of the fast-food restaurant and said, “What happened? My spouse was told that she would have to wait 11 months to come to this country. I just checked the website, and it is 29 months.”

I am not very familiar with the cultural customs on the Barbary Coast from 1,500 years ago, but it seems to me like a cruel practice to make young people suffer like that, yet that is legal in this country. Yet all the steps in this bill simply make what is illegal already illegal twice. It is like the Conservatives like it so much they thought that doing it twice would make it even more of a vice.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a habit the current government has of not paying attention to the criminal provisions that already exist in the Canadian Criminal Code across a broad range of issues. The Conservatives put forth legislation in this House that duplicates existing provisions, as though these things are not already taken care of. What is most problematic is not just the reflex to criminalization but the insensitivity to the fact that when they deal with matters of family and social relations through criminalization or immigration only, they are inevitably catching in their web family issues and are doing harm to families.

At committee, there were experts talking about this issue. For example, Dr. Hannana Siddiqui, head of policy and research at Southall Black Sisters in London, the United Kingdom, said:

Anything that you introduce around immigration is not going to affect just the perpetrator but the whole family—the women and children in that polygamous relationship; and that can have a detrimental effect on them as well.

According to Avvy Go, director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, the bill seeks to deport people who are engaged in polygamy, and that would include the very women the government claims to be trying to protect. These are the unintended consequences and the insensitivities I talked about in my speech.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Beaches—East York for his wonderful speech on this matter. I would appreciate it if the member for Beaches—East York could tell us a bit about the amendments that were suggested by the NDP at committee, which were rejected.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member will recall that at second reading, the NDP actually put forward a motion in response to this bill. It was rejected. It was a comprehensive motion that was intended to capture a whole bunch of issues that this bill, in its reflex to criminalization, did not capture. The issues dealt with the need for support for families and for social services.

Repeatedly we see that these things are not dealt with by the government. It is a bill that is missing, for example, the social support required by people caught up in a web of domestic violence. It omits, for example, as UNICEF has called for, educational support and mental health services for people who are caught in these circumstances.

Most critically, and we hear this time and again, this is a bill that is missing anything on affordable housing. We had a budget tabled not long ago by the current government that was missing the same thing. Affordable housing is cited by many as the single most important factor in permitting women and children to escape circumstances of domestic violence and abuse. There is nothing in the Conservative budget to deal with affordable housing. There is nothing to deal with that practical response here in this bill. The amendments proposed by the NDP are intended to build into this bill some of those critical supports for people caught in these cultural practices.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate on Bill S-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. This bill proposes to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code. The amendments proposed in Bill S-7 would provide more protection and support for vulnerable individuals, most especially women and children.

The passage of Bill S-7 would render permanent and temporary residents inadmissible if they practice polygamy in Canada. It would strengthen Canadian marriage laws by establishing a new national minimum age for marriage of 16 years and by codifying the existing legal requirements for free and enlightened consent for marriage and for ending an existing marriage prior to entering another. It would criminalize certain conduct related to underage and forced marriage ceremonies, including the act of removing a child from Canada for the purpose of such marriages. It would help protect potential victims of underage or forced marriages by creating a new specific court-ordered peace bond where there are grounds to fear someone would commit an offence in this area and ensure that the defence of provocation could not be used in so-called honour killings and many spousal homicides.

Undertaking these measures would support the government's throne speech commitment to ensure that barbaric cultural practices do not occur on Canadian soil. Women seeking better lives for themselves and their families in Canada should never be subject to constant fear and threat of violence or death simply for living their lives and pursuing better opportunities for themselves. Practices that include early and forced marriages, polygamy and any so-called honour-based violence run counter to Canadian values and democratic norms. They often contravene basic human rights, especially subjecting women and girls to brutal and inhumane treatment.

The negative impacts these practices have on families and society in general range from influencing immigration outcomes to reducing opportunities for integration and success while also limiting the free choice of vulnerable women and children. We know that there are additional barriers for immigrant and newcomer women and girls who wish to protect themselves and seek help. We want to ensure that help and protection is available if and when they need it.

I would like to speak on one specific measure proposed by Bill S-7. I would like to focus the remainder of my time on the provision that aims to augment tools that currently exist to counter the practice of polygamy.

As we know, polygamy has been illegal in Canada for 125 years. For many years we have recognized in this country that this practice is an affront to Canadian values. Polygamist marriages are not legally valid in Canada and are currently prohibited in the Criminal Code. As well, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act already specifies that polygamist spouses cannot be sponsored.

When he upheld Canada's criminal law ban on the practice of polygamy, the hon. Chief Justice Bauman of British Columbia's Supreme Court recognized the physical, psychological and social harms associated with the practice of polygamist marriage. For these reasons, it remains against the criminal law in Canada to practice polygamy or to enter into a polygamist union.

While the responsibility for the prosecution of most crimes, including polygamy, rests with the provincial attorneys general, the prohibition in the Criminal Code upheld in 2011 is the responsibility of this Parliament. In turn, this Parliament and the Government of Canada also have jurisdiction over immigration laws and their enforcement. Since polygamy does occur in some countries from which Canada draws immigrants, we need to ensure that our immigration system has the necessary tools to counter it. Bill S-7 would give us these additional tools.

Bill S-7 would create a new ground of inadmissibility in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for practising polygamy, increasing our ability to prevent polygamy from occurring on Canadian soil and ensuring that the immigration system is not enabling this practice in any way.

The bill would give immigration officers enhanced tools with which to render both temporary and permanent residents inadmissible for practising polygamy. The new inadmissibility would mean that those in polygamous marriages abroad wanting to enter Canada on a temporary basis would only be able to enter this country alone, without their spouses. Those who cease to practise polygamy would, of course, no longer be inadmissible.

It also means that permanent residents found to be practising polygamy could lose their status and be removed from Canada on that basis alone. Further, we would no longer need a criminal conviction or a finding of misrepresentation in order to begin removal proceedings.

We know that more needs to be done to protect women and girls in our immigration system, despite all of our government's best efforts and intentions. That is why it is so important that the measures in Bill S-7, including the additional measures I have discussed regarding polygamy, are enacted. If passed, they would strengthen our laws to protect Canadians and newcomers to Canada from barbaric cultural practices.

This bill sends a clear message to anyone coming to Canada that such practices are not acceptable and run counter to our principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act stands up for immigrant women and girls who have come to Canada for a better life and better opportunities, ensuring that they have every chance to succeed and make their own choices about the way they want to live their lives.

As legislators, it is our responsibility to prevent those practices that abuse vulnerable women and children, such as polygamy, from happening on our Canadian soil. By ensuring the passage into law of the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, we will be taking a major step towards the goal by increasing the Government of Canada's ability to prevent polygamy from occurring in this country.

I strongly encourage all members to join me in supporting Bill S-7.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. We are both members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, so we participated in the same study. I am surprised that he did not talk about the many expert witnesses who expressed concerns about Bill S-7. Maybe he remembers that everyone, including all of the witnesses who appeared before the committee, agreed with the intent of the bill, which is to protect women. However, the debate actually centred on aspects of the bill that could put some victims at risk and make them even more vulnerable.

Experts on the ground who work with these victims every day told the committee to be careful because this could discourage victims from seeking help or result in women being deported or fearing deportation if they report their husband. It is unbelievable that this is not reflected in the amendments to this bill or in the speeches by my colleagues who heard what these experts had to say.

Lawyers and people who are experts on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Criminal Code agreed. They said that some terms are poorly defined and will be open to interpretation. They also said that many of the provisions could do more harm than good because the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act already contain provisions that cover these practices.

Does my colleague remember hearing from the experts who expressed their concerns to us? Why did he not say more about that in his speech?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I did hear those arguments coming from our witnesses, but we had many witnesses there.

I take into consideration the statements made by people such as Aruna Papp who said it is about time. She said:

I commend the government for its leadership in taking a stand on a very difficult issue and for defending the human rights of vulnerable women who are unable to speak for themselves.

She is a victim. I listened to her. I listened to many victims. I listened to many lawyers. I listened to many other people. People will always argue on the rights and wrongs, but I believe this bill is the right bill for Canada and for the women and children of this country.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member talk about the needs of victims to be addressed in a proactive manner: to craft legislation and government action to try and prevent victimization, as opposed to simply respond to victimization; and rather than simply respond to a problem, actually anticipate the problem and put in place the measures needed to protect people ahead of them being harmed, as opposed to simply tracking the perpetrators afterwards.

If that is the value system and the approach to solving legal challenges and moral dilemmas in this country, why on God's earth are the cases of 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women being responded to with a data bank for DNA instead of housing; investments in education; and investments in aboriginal, first nations, Métis and Inuit communities?

Why, if proactive action is the order of the day, is the Conservative government so silent on the 1,200 Canadian women who are missing, and it is unacceptably tolerated by this House?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that question, but I am not exactly sure where he wanted me to go with it.

I will only deal with the first part: What have we done to protect these people prior?

Let us look at the CIC-funded organizations, which provide targeted programming for these individuals. In addition, special language programs are available for immigrant and refugee women. There is a Canadian citizenship study guide, Discover Canada, and the Welcome to Canada orientation guide, which explains the rights of newcomers to Canada, the rights and wrongs, what we expect in Canada and what we tolerate in Canada. CIC also disseminates a brochure and information for sponsored spouses or partners.

We are actively participating in meeting with immigrants before they even come to Canada. We make sure that they see the information they need so that they will understand what the laws are in Canada and how they can protect themselves when they arrive here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, would like to share some thoughts in regards to Bill S-7.

The Liberal Party will be supporting Bill S-7. I have had the opportunity in the past to stand and express a great deal of concern in terms of the title of the bill, but there are aspects of the legislation that do warrant support. Therefore, the Liberal Party will be supporting the bill.

However, I will pick up on an issue that my colleague for Trinity—Spadina just made reference to, which is the 1,200-plus murdered and missing first nations aboriginal women and girls, and the lack of action.

I bring this up, and I suspect my colleague brought it up, because if we take a look at this piece of legislation before us, it attempts to deal with gender-based violence or biases. We need to emphasize that every society has some form of gender-based violence.

This is one of the reasons we opposed the short title of the legislation, which has a lot more to do with the spin that the Prime Minister's Office wants to see than it does in terms of what Canadians want to see. That is the reason for the bizarre title, “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”, and many would suggest racially based rationale that the Conservatives threw in the word “cultural”. This has offended many people in every region of our country, many different stakeholder groups, because of the Conservative government's attitude toward culture.

When we talk about the violence and exploitation that takes place, as I said, every society has some form of gender-based violence. Here in Canada even, we will find it time and time again, and I am one of the members of Parliament, and only one, who has raised the issue of the first nations aboriginal women and girls who have been murdered and missing over the years. In fact, many of those young ladies and girls at one point were in Winnipeg North—

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Are you the only one who spoke out on the first nations women—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Winnipeg North has the floor.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will allow the New Democrat member of Parliament to reflect on and perhaps read what I said, and I am sure he will answer his own question and assertion. I indicated that there have been many members of Parliament. If the member would listen a little closer, maybe he would be better informed.

The issue is of critical importance. We have raised the issue and will continue to do so. The government has been found wanting on that very important issue.

Before us today is Bill S-7, and there are aspects of the bill that could be supported. I will spend a minute or two on that issue first.

With respect to polygamous marriages, I would suggest that there would be few individuals who call Canada home who would support that. It is a barbaric practice, something that defies what we believe are Canadian values.

Forced marriages are completely unacceptable based on Canadian values. The idea of setting a minimum age for marriage is something that could be supported, as many Canadians would respond quite negatively to the idea of a 12-year-old girl being married off. This, again, is one of the reasons there is some value in the clarity that the legislation brings to the Criminal Code.

I will emphasize the fourth point, which is domestic violence, something that again goes against Canadian values.

Therefore, I would suggest that although there is concern with the title of the bill, as well as concerns that other members have raised with respect to the legislation, members would find that there is value in supporting the bill.

The name is something that I have made reference to and is the greatest issue with respect to the legislation. I talked about the Prime Minister and his office. It is not the first time we have seen these names drawn up to appeal to the public at large as opposed to what makes sense for the legislation itself. I have asked numerous questions on behalf of the Liberal Party, and other members have asked, with respect to why the government has chosen to incorporate the word culture in the short title of the bill, which is called the “zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act”. We know, through canvassing and talking with stakeholders and a good number of Canadians, that the incorporation of the word culture is not necessary.

We believe that the Prime Minister, through his office, has instructed that this name be tagged to the legislation, and at a fairly significant cost. At times it appears that the government gives an impression that many would interpret as being of a racial nature, such as with this piece of legislation. Yesterday, during question period, the Liberal critic for immigration questioned comments by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration with respect to answering why the government chooses words in order to sensationalize. That is what is happening. The government is sensationalizing certain issues, which ultimately have a fairly negative impact on racial tolerance. This is not new.

When I was the immigration critic, I saw a picture of a boat that came to the shores of B.C. The minister of immigration talked about boat people landing in Canada and how we were going to get tough and bring in legislation to prevent that from happening.The whole “let us get tough” talk does not match the reality or the complexity of many of the different issues that come before the House.

It is interesting that the government has been so keen to bring forward Bill S-7. It has been pushing on this legislation. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has made it a personal priority to make sure that this legislation passes, and he has spent a great deal of resources on it.

An earlier speaker made reference to immigration and another form of cruelty there. I would suggest that there are other priorities that the government, particularly the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, need to get their heads around and start acting on. One of those is processing times for marriages. It is getting worse. The government has created a problem with huge unacceptable delays, and it wants to blame that problem on an administration from years ago. The minister needs to take responsibility for his actions and start cleaning up the mess they have created.

I only wish he would put as much energy in wanting to clean up his mess in processing times as he has in pushing Bill S-7.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. He talked about a very wide range of things and addressed some aspects of the bill. His position on the bill at the final stage still is not entirely clear, so perhaps he could clarify whether he supports it or not.

Perhaps he could also talk about the fact that in committee, many experts who work on the ground shared their concerns regarding the fact that the bill could victimize people and make the victims even more vulnerable.

Yes, criminalization is needed; yes, we must intervene to provide assistance to victims, because it is definitely a problem. I agree with my colleague that we need to do something for the victims. However, is Bill S-7 really the right approach, when the experts told us in committee that it could make the victims even more vulnerable?

Would a responsible government not remove this bill and do more studies to ensure that the measures in it do not defeat the very purpose of the bill?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of my remarks, I made reference to the fact that the Liberal Party will be voting in favour of Bill S-7, even though there are some concerns, particularly with the title of the bill. We understand and appreciate a number of concerns that were expressed at the committee stage.

Having said that, if the member had been listening to her colleague who started off the debate on the bill this morning, she would have heard him acknowledge that there are many aspects of the legislation that even the NDP supports. I am not sure how the NDP is going to be voting on the legislation; I have been told that the New Democrats will be voting against it. However, I will let them make that determination when the vote occurs.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure who is not listening to whom here.

The NDP has been clear that we will be opposing this bill, as we did at second reading. Our reasons for doing so are very simple and have been clearly explained. If my colleague would like to know what they are, everything is in the committee minutes.

When so many experts agree that some measures in the bill, never mind the title, will discourage victims from reporting forced marriages and polygamy for fear of being deported, and so many experts who are familiar with the Criminal Code and the immigration act tell us that this bill is dangerous, it is impossible for the NDP to support it. If we take the committee study seriously, it is obvious that this bill must be stopped and we must adopt better measures.

However, the Liberals are displaying their typical reaction, which is to say they disagree with a bill and then turn around and vote for it anyway.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would have to agree to disagree with the member. If anything is classical, it is the attitude of the NDP in saying that there are many things good in the bill but because they are opposition that means they have to vote against the bill.

We should recognize that at times there is legislation that could improve upon a law, and on balance if it is good legislation it is something that can be supported. We have even seen that the New Democrats will often support government legislation.

We had concerns with the legislation, but in dealing with the issues of polygamous, forced, and early marriages, and the issue of domestic violence, there would be clarification in acts that would assist in dealing with these issues in a more progressive way. Therefore, it is legislation that is ultimately worth voting for.

It is unfortunate that the government has labelled the bill as barbaric culture, but that is not something that is incorporated into the legislation itself, even though it would have been a good amendment.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill S-7, zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act.

I want to comment on two confusions that have arisen in the context of the debate of the bill and were also reflected in some of the testimony before committee.

I want to briefly touch on two topics today: the first concerning the proposed minimum age for marriage; and the second, about the definition of “practising polygamy”.

During the debate and in the testimony before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, there was considerable discussion about whether the bill should have set the minimum age for marriage even higher than 16 years of age, as is proposed, with some suggesting that age 18 would be more appropriate.

In Canada, the age at which individuals can marry without additional consent is either 18 or 19, depending on the province or territory. Under our Constitution, it is within provincial and territorial jurisdiction to make the determination of “independent marriage age”.

Under our Constitution, it is the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada to determine the age below which no minor may legally marry, sometimes called the “absolute minimum age for marriage”. Right now in Canadian law, federal legislation specifies that age 16 is the absolute minimum age for marriage only for the purposes of the law in the province of Quebec. Elsewhere in Canada, because there is no federal legislation, the common law still applies and it is usually interpreted as an absolute minimum age for girls of 12 and for boys of 14.

The other issue I wanted to touch on is concern that the bill has no definition of “practising polygamy”. One witness before the Committee referred to the decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court in the Polygamy Reference case and suggested that it did not determine the meaning. This is incorrect.

There was disagreement before the court on the correct interpretation of the Criminal Code polygamy offence, but Justice Bauman clearly indicated that polygamy was a form of marriage involving more than two people, and included legal marriages, as well as “purported forms of marriage”, meaning religious marriages that were not recognized in law, but where the parties believe they were bound together. He further accepted the Attorney General of Canada's argument that “marriage” was a form of union that is dependent on an event, a ceremony of some kind that sanctions a union of individuals. It is absolutely clear that polygamy does not include common law relationships or other informal relationships, such as polyamory or affairs.

All of the evidence presented demonstrated the harms, both to individuals and to society, of multi-party marriage. These harms of polygamy caused Justice Bauman to find the prohibition against polygamy constitutional .

Clear guidance with respect to the meaning of "practising polygamy" will be provided to front-line immigration officials.

Another witness suggested that only the man was practising polygamy because of his union with more than one spouse, but that the women in a polygamous union should not be included because their union was to only one spouse. This suggestion, while I am sure well-meaning, completely defies logic.

The final point I want to make concerns another confusion. Some have suggested that a person who is married to someone and either does not know that the person is already married to someone else, or who is forced into that marriage, would be considered to be practising polygamy. This is completely untrue. Under the Criminal Code, a person who has no actual knowledge that he or she are in a polygamous union, or a person who was forced into such a union, has not behaved in a morally blameworthy manner, which is the cornerstone of the criminal law. If a person is unaware of relevant facts, or has been compelled to act, he or she is not guilty of a criminal offence.

Bill S-7 would protect young people from early marriages by enacting a new, national, absolute minimum age for marriage that would apply to all marriages performed in Canada, and to all marriages performed outside of Canada that involved young people ordinarily resident here. This is an important protection for all our young people. I have been told of instances where young people are excused from classes to be married by telephone at age 12 and 13. That will no longer be possible once the bill receives royal assent.

The bill would also give young people the ability to tell their parents that they could not be forced to marry someone they did not want to marry because it was against the law. It would give young people the ability to ask for a court order to take their passports from their parents if they were afraid they may be taken out of the country to marry.

These are important changes in the law to protect vulnerable youth until they are old enough to better know their own minds. Marriage is hard enough, and young married couples will face many challenges without adding to them the burden of marrying too young or marrying someone they do not wish to marry.

Our government is taking a strong stance against these practices and is leading international efforts to address them as a violation of basic human rights. I hope all members of the House will join with me in supporting this important bill.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I have taken this bill to heart. It is one that resonates with almost every woman across the country. In fact, I wrote to every woman in my constituency and I received back unanimous support. Every person who wrote back to me was in favour of the bill for the very reasons that it would protect women and girls.

This could also happen to a young man or boy, however, the reality is that it is young affects women and girls. How important is it to stand up and protect vulnerable women and young children in our country?

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for her hard work on this bill that is aimed at protecting the most vulnerable, women and young women and also, males, because it is a universal application.

I have three daughters and I can hardly envision a situation where the parents would force them into a relationship that they would not be willing to undertake of their own free volition. As I commented earlier, it is hard enough leading a married life with someone one truly loves, but to be forced into a situation where one has no control because of the wishes of parents is beyond any element of human dignity.

This is an important bill, and I would ask all members to get on board and support it. It is for protecting the most vulnerable.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the definitions he provided to us today in his speech. However, I want to go to the basic idea that we are passing this law that is going to do something.

In Denmark, the parliament there unanimously passed a law making it a criminal offence to force anyone to marry. Six years after the law was enacted, not one single charge has been brought up under that law. The people who deal with these types of issues in Denmark say that they do not think the law has had any impact. In fact, it might have a negative impact of driving the process of forced marriages underground and increasing the sophistication of those who make these decisions for their children. That is what has happened with that law.

We have gone into this time allocation procedure on a law that affects many people in our country. Marriage laws are extremely important to people and now we have made a decision about this. Is this going to help? We do not know whether it will. Therefore, why does the member think that by criminalizing this act somehow it will change the cultures of the people who are involved in it?

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot speak to the willingness of the Denmark law enforcement officials to enforce their laws in a country over which we have absolutely no jurisdiction. However, we are now in an age today with the Internet. Young people are on the Internet and on Facebook. There was a time when a child would come to us and say “Dad, can you fix my car?” Now I go to my daughters and ask “Can you fix my computer?”

The abundance of information is out there, despite the cultural bounds of from whatever family one comes. This information will be readily available to children. We are a Canadian society and they will be encouraged to come forth. I am confident they will come forth and the authorities will act accordingly.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democrats have put forward a number of amendments to this bill, a bill with a title that seems almost silly that it would be put forward for a bill of this nature. We have proposed amendments that try to enhance or fix the bill, but we do not anticipate these amendments will pass and we will likely oppose the bill at report stage.

Dealing with this issue is fine, but, as I pointed out in a previous question, we would simply be criminalizing an action that takes place within families and between individuals. This action is normally considered to be very much a decision made by those people, not by the state, not by the community, engaged in matrimonial practices. The bill very clearly states that marriages cannot be forced and someone cannot be forced into marriage.

This is my 40th year of a happy marriage, and I am very proud of having accomplished that. Luckily enough, I did not force anyone into a marriage. Due to her beauty, charm and good nature, it made it unbelievably compelling for me to enter into marriage and, luckily, she said yes.

We are concerned that this be dealt with in a very careful fashion. We are concerned that the criminalization of these acts is probably not the appropriate method to deal with this situation. It will not make the difference that needs to be made.

When we talk about marriage laws, the age of marriage in the Northwest Territories, under the NWT marriage act, is 15. That is what has been determined by the NWT government and put into place under section 46 of its act. Under this proposed bill, we will have to change the law now to 16 years of age. Any marriages that are contemplated in the next while by people under the age of 16 will have to wait. That is fair enough.

I wonder what consultation the government conducted with the provinces and territories about what they considered to be a fair age and how the provinces and territories felt about having their authority to set the age of marriage as they deem fit taken away from them and established by Parliament. I would like to some answers to those questions. I think we all would.

When it comes to violence against women and children in society, all of us in the House want to do things to prevent that, to change society so it is less violent, so people can live their lives in a good fashion, free from duress and living under the control of others, whether it is in marriage or the relationship after marriage. We are all in favour of those things.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

I regret having to interrupt the member for the Northwest Territories. He will have five minutes remaining when this matter returns before the House.

The House resumed consideration of Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported without amendment from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

When this matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Northwest Territories had five minutes remaining in his remarks.

The hon. member for Northwest Territories.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak again to this bill in short order after question period. Prior to question period, I talked about some of the issues that were involved with the bill. I want to speak now about what is ahead of us on family matters.

I would refer the House to a Globe and Mail article this morning that talked about a Nanos poll. Nanos indicates:

When asked which federal party was most trusted to help Canadian families, 34 per cent of the poll’s respondents picked the NDP. That compared with the 27 per cent who chose the Liberals and the 26 per cent who chose the Conservatives.

This speaks directly to the problems with this bill. The Conservatives have proposed an approach on marriage, a part of the family cycle that is so valuable to everyone. They proposed changes to it without consultation with the provinces and territories, putting forward an idea that really does not accomplish much. The laws of duress are already in place. Other countries that have established similar laws have shown no results from them.

What the NDP would do for families and for women to deal with violence was very clearly articulated by the member for Churchill when she put forward Motion No. 444. It was a motion to establish a coordinated national action plan to address violence against women. Part of that would be strategies that address the specific needs and vulnerabilities of different communities, including specific attention to aboriginal women, women with disabilities, women from minority groups, and young women.

What we proposed in our national action plan was to get to the bottom of the issues surrounding groups such as those. Certainly the ideas that the Conservatives are concerned about and would deal with by criminalizing forced marriages would be dealt with inside a framework that would look for actual solutions to the problems rather than by criminalizing those engaged in it, and criminalizing them in a very broad and capricious way that really does not allow for definition or for any kind of rational action on that part.

I think this is really important, as it comes on the heels of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report, which followed many groups in society by asking for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.

Violence against women is one of the biggest and most pressing problems that we have with families in this country, and the need for that public inquiry is so important. Why is it so important? The Prime Minister said that this is not a social issue. Of course it is a social issue, much as forced marriages are a social issue. All of these are social issues that need to be dealt with in a respectful, responsible fashion. We need to get to the bottom of the issues in society that create the conditions that lead to violence and forced marriages and all of the things that all of us in this House today would not want to have happen in our families, in aboriginal families, or in minority group families.

Yes, we are concerned about it, but using retail politics to put forward a bill that does nothing except provide a title to an issue is really the wrong approach. That is why the polling results that we see today across this country with respect to who the Canadian population trusts to deal with issues for families are so revealing. We talk about real ways to come to grips with society's ills. That is not through legislation; that is through careful, enunciated conditions that arise out of a careful examination of the issues.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very intently to the member's earlier speech before question period. He made a comment questioning why there would be criminal charges if it is within a family. Child abuse and incest are within a family as well, and thank goodness we have laws against those offences to protect young people across this country.

The member also scoffs at the title of this bill, saying that it should not be called “barbaric cultural practices”. When someone who is a minor, a child, a girl of 12 or 13, is forced into an early marriage with a man 40 years old who is overseas, from another country, that young woman, that young girl, that child is going to be raped every single day for the rest of her life.

How could the member not think that is barbaric? Does he just simply think it is all in the family?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree with what the member pointed out that I supposedly said. I will look at the record to make sure that it was not said.

All of the things the member is talking about are laws that now exist in society. All of the things she is talking about are issues that we have legal recourse to deal with in society. Those are not issues that stand outside of society today.

We support the intent of the bill. We are just saying that it does not work. It will not be competent in what it is going to do for society.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. We are faced with two typical attitudes.

On the one hand, the Conservatives are saying they want to tackle crime, but they are not providing the means to have a positive impact on victims. On top of that, they allow for a committee study, but then they ignore the recommendations made by experts who work with victims and people who are very familiar with our Criminal Code and immigration act.

On the other hand, we have the Liberals' typical attitude, which is to speak out against a bill, but then turn around and vote for it anyway.

I wonder if these kinds of attitudes surprise my colleague. Personally, I am disappointed, but not all that surprised, unfortunately.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, sincerity in politics is sometimes considerably abused.

In the case of Bill C-51, the Liberals were concerned that by not supporting the bill, they might somehow be tainted in the view of some important constituencies out there, so they decided to support it. I think that is what is going on in this case as well. If the Liberals say they do not like what is in the bill, if they say they think the bill is inadequate and they do not see that it is going to provide the proper results, then, by golly, they should stand up and vote against it.

We are not here to make bad legislation. We are not here to put laws on the books simply to have laws on the books. We are here to do things for society that work. That is very important. That is why the New Democratic Party is trusted by Canadian families. It is because they know we want to do things that actually work for them.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill S-7, zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act.

The measures contained in Bill S-7 are the culmination of the Government of Canada's commitment to improving protection and support for vulnerable individuals, primarily women and children.

In the most recent Speech from the Throne, our Prime Minister acknowledged that millions of women and girls around the world continue to suffer from violence, including the disturbing practices of early and forced marriage. The Speech from the Throne underscored our government's commitment to ensuring that such barbaric cultural practices do not occur in this country. They have no place here in Canada.

In his appearance before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights on the bill, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration made it clear that any practice that involves violence directed at women is barbaric. I think if we asked most Canadians across this country, especially women, they would agree with that statement.

The measures in the bill would help vulnerable women and children in a number of ways.

First, it would strengthen Canadian marriage laws by establishing a new national minimum age for marriage of 16 years old, and by codifying the existing legal requirements for free and enlightened consent for marriage and for ending an existing marriage prior to entering another.

They would render permanent and temporary residents inadmissible if they practised polygamy in Canada. They would criminalize certain conduct related to underage and forced marriage ceremonies, including the act of removing a child from Canada for the purpose of such marriage ceremonies.

It would also create a new and specific preventive court-ordered peace bond to help protect potential victims of underage or forced marriages where there are grounds to fear someone would commit an offence. They would ensure that the defence of provocation would not apply in many spousal homicides and so-called honour killings.

I would like to take a few moments to focus specifically on those measures in Bill S-7 that address early and forced marriages, practices that contradict Canadian values and cause great harm to their victims.

There is currently no national minimum age for marrying in Canada. Provincial and territorial legislation set out certain ages for additional requirements, such as parental consent for those under the age of majority, or court approval for even younger children. However, they lack the constitutional jurisdiction to set the absolute minimum age below which no child can marry. Again, it is lacking.

Federal law currently sets the absolute minimum age at 16 years old, but only in Quebec. In other parts of Canada, the common law applies because there is no federal legislation. The common law minimum age causes uncertainty. It is usually interpreted as a minimum of 12 years of age for girls and 14 years of age for boys. That is 12 for girls, and 14 for boys.

Amending the Civil Marriage Act to set a national minimum age of 16 years old for marriage would make it clear that underage marriage is unacceptable in Canada and will not be tolerated. Even though, in practice, very few marriages in Canada now involve people under the age of 16, it is important that we clarify the law.

Other significant amendments to the Civil Marriage Act proposed in Bill S-7 include codifying the requirement that those getting married must give their free and enlightened consent to marry each other. The amendments would codify the requirement for the dissolution of any previous marriage as well.

Continuing on from proposed amendments to the Civil Marriage Act, Bill S-7 also contains measures that would amend the Criminal Code to help deter and prevent forced or underage marriage. These measures would criminalize knowingly officiating at an underage or forced marriage; actively participating in a wedding ceremony, knowing that one party is marrying another against his or her will or is under 16 years old; and removing a minor from Canada for a forced or underage marriage.

There is also a new peace bond, which would give courts the power to impose conditions on an individual when there are reasonable grounds to fear that a forced marriage, or a marriage under the age of 16, would otherwise occur. The ways such a peace bond could be used to prevent an underage or forced marriage include requiring the surrender of a passport and preventing a child from being taken out of Canada.

This is important for young women, women across this country, and for our children. It would help to prevent family members from taking them out of the country to be forcibly married, without being placed in the difficult situation of requiring individual women or girls to press criminal charges against another family member.

All of the provisions in Bill S-7, including those that address underage and forced marriage, would help to ensure that women and girls are protected from isolation and violence.

Women seeking a better life in Canada should never be subjected to fear and threat of violence or death simply for seeking better opportunities for themselves and living their lives the way they choose to.

We know that immigrant and newcomer women and girls may face additional barriers in protecting themselves and seeking assistance compared to women who are born in Canada. We want to ensure that the protection and assistance they need is available when they need it. Everyone here in Canada deserves the same protection.

All violence directed against women and girls, including the practices for early and forced marriage, have a very negative impact on families and society in general. They also seriously affect all those who are directly involved, from influencing immigration outcomes, to breaking down opportunities for integration and success and creating isolation and fear.

Bill S-7 would strengthen our laws, protecting women and girls from violent and barbaric cultural practices. I am sure we would all agree that we must stand up for all victims of violence and abuse and take the necessary actions to prevent these practices from happening in Canada.

By enacting Bill S-7, our government is sending a strong message to those in Canada, and also those who wish to come to Canada, that we will not tolerate activities in this country that deprive individuals of their human rights. We are sending a signal that we respect the freedom of choice of all individuals, regardless of gender.

That is exactly what we would do by ensuring that the bill is passed into law. I urge all of my hon. colleagues in the House who will be voting on the bill to stand up for the rights of vulnerable women and children, vulnerable women and girls, and join me in supporting the passage of the bill.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I especially want to thank the parliamentary secretary for her hard work on this issue, both in this place, this government, and in her home riding of Scarborough Centre.

Does the parliamentary secretary not agree that the NDP opposing the bill, opposing a minimum age for marriage, opposing the criminalization of facilitation of forced marriage, is absolutely unacceptable in this day and age? We heard testimony at committee of women who had their jaws broken, were forced into marriage, were raped, patterns of rape that threaten to last a lifetime?

Does she not agree that inaction on these issues, which matter for every Canadian community, every Canadian woman and girl, is absolutely inexcusable, and that the NDP are completely out of line on this front?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with everything the minister just said. The NDP members are absolutely on the wrong side of this issue.

I wrote to the majority of women in my constituency of Scarborough Centre. I outlined the aspects of the bill and I asked for their feedback. Overwhelmingly, every single response that came in agreed on these issues and supported our government's stance. Unfortunately, I did not include in that letter notice of the opposition and obstruction of the bill by both the NDP and the Liberals. It is actually very sad.

Prior to being the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, I sat on the status of women committee and the immigration and citizenship committee, and this issue is very dear to my heart.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, I was in Malawi three years ago with the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, and I sat in front of a group of women who were begging our association to speak out in Malawi about the issue of early and forced marriage.

I was in Dakar, with the Prime Minister, for the Summit of the Francophonie, and we were taken to a museum where our whole delegation was shown the pictures of girls who had been forced into early marriage.

I was at the Girl Summit in England last summer, with David Cameron, where the topic of early and forced marriage was the topic of the day.

Our government has put this issue on the table. Our former foreign minister took this to the United Nations and said that Canada was going to lead on this. We are leading on child protection globally. We have put maternal, newborn, and child health on the table, and we have a number of other donor countries that are helping us with this.

Early and forced marriage is one of the issues that goes against the grain of protecting children. I wonder if my colleague has any comments on why Canada should not take issue with it here at home when we are being so vocal on the world stage.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, for all of the work she does in this area as well.

Canada is absolutely a leader when it comes to standing up for human rights and the protection of women, girls, and children, for people all around the world.

As I stated in my previous answer, I did sit on the committee for the status of women, and previously on the citizenship and immigration committee, and this is an issue that is extremely concerning to me. Standing up for the rights of women and the protection of our children is the absolute priority that every single Canadian across this country must take to heart and must stand united on.

It is very unfortunate that the Liberals and the NDP have voted against this bill, are poised to vote against it again at the next reading, and are trying to obstruct it. I am not sure why. It is perhaps that they are trying to win some votes in certain communities. However, I think many of those same communities that they are trying to win votes from actually support this legislation, for all the reasons that our government has brought it forward.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am standing in the House to speak out firmly against this bill.

My intention was to discuss it through two lenses. The first is the lens of unintended consequences, because when we present legislation, we need to think about what the consequences will be. Sometimes there are unintended consequences, and there are a lot in this bill. The second lens I want to apply is what we would do if we actually wanted to stop forced marriages. What kind of legislation or policy could we bring forward if we were really serious about putting an end to underage marriages in Canada? I will talk about those two things, because the NDP is very serious about bringing forward legislation and policy that can put an end to underage marriage and put an end to forced marriages.

First though, I want to tackle the issue of the title. We heard a little bit of a back and forth between my colleague from Northwest Territories and the parliamentary secretary about the title.

The title of this bill is the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. I have a big problem with this title. The parliamentary secretary stood here, wrung her hands, implored us to think of the children, and asked if this was not a barbaric cultural practice. We all agree that these are terrible practices. However, when we have this kind of provocative title it is not about working together to eliminate this kind of behaviour or these practices. What this title does is fuel racist stereotypes. It creates xenophobia toward very particular groups in Canada. We are targeting particular groups with this title.

I think about the other barbaric cultural practices happening in this country. Why are the Conservatives not standing up against other barbaric cultural practices? I happen to think it is a barbaric cultural practice that a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant is forced to carry that baby to term because she cannot access abortion services in this country. I happen to think it is a barbaric cultural practice, yet I do not see the Conservatives standing up and fighting for that.

I happen to think it is a barbaric cultural practice to force a woman to bring a baby to term if she does not want to have that baby, but we do not see the Conservatives crusading to change the fact that only 16% of hospitals in Canada offer abortion services. They are not champions on the lack of access to abortion services in Canada.

I think it is a barbaric cultural act that we have created a culture that puts such shame on women. It shames them to the point that they will do anything to terminate a pregnancy without having to tell someone, like throwing themselves down the stairs, taking drugs to self-abort, and using coat hangers. I happen to think this is a barbaric cultural practice, yet I hear silence in the House about putting an end to that.

In Prince Edward Island, a woman took medication to induce an abortion and had a complication. She went to the ER. She was bleeding. She did not know if she was bleeding to death. She had no idea. She waited for five hours in the ER. When someone actually came in to talk to her about what was going on, the attending health care provider told her that he was not comfortable treating her and that she should go to Halifax. Halifax is not down the street. Halifax is 300 kilometres away. I happen to think it is a barbaric cultural practice to have left that woman in that ER for five hours, not knowing about the health or the state of her fetus, not knowing about her own health, and not knowing if she was going to bleed to death and then having the doctor say that he was not comfortable treating her.

I happen to think that was a barbaric cultural practice, yet I do not see the Conservatives standing up to enforce the Canada Health Act to ensure that we have equal access to health services across this country. Come to think of it, I do not see any of the Liberals standing up to talk about this either. It is a Liberal government in P.E.I. There are three Liberal MPs here in the House of Commons, and we have a whole lot of silence when it comes to standing up for women's rights and their ability to access abortion services.

Moving on, let us get back to unintended consequences.

If we are serious about putting an end to these practices, then let us look at how we do it. Let us draft some legislation and think about what the consequences are, both intended and unintended. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unintended consequences here.

We have heard several of my colleagues talk about these unintended consequences. I think they are really serious. I think they are so serious that we cannot support the bill.

There is something as simple as the definition of polygamy. There is no real definition of polygamy here. We might think we all know what polygamy is, so what is the big deal? Well, it is a big deal. We are playing with people's lives here. We need a definition.

We heard testimony at committee about what would happen if there was a legally sanctioned marriage and one that was not legally sanctioned. For example, a person is married, the partners split up, and the person gets into a common-law relationship. If that first relationship has not been legally terminated and that person is in a new common-law relationship, is that polygamy? We do not know. What may be perceived as a small detail could have serious consequences for all kinds of people in Canada who might not know that they are in a polygamous relationship.

However, this is a small detail that I can maybe even wrap my head around, but there are other unintended consequences that are beyond the pale.

If we are trying to help marginalized and disadvantaged women, then we cannot put them in situations where they are so fearful that they cannot come forward. We heard tons of expert testimony about this. It is actually shocking when we look at the transcripts from committee how passionate some of these witnesses were about the fact that this legislation would drive those women deeper underground. If we want to help these women and children, we cannot have them be fearful that they will be deported.

Imagine if this deportation happened. It would not be just for the big bad guy we are always talking about, the one who is forcing a little girl into marriage. I heard the minister talk about forced rape for the rest of her life. If that little girl does not know she can get protection from our government, why would she come forward? If there are laws that say that everyone involved in a polygamous marriage will be deported, that will include that little girl. How does it help that little girl to send her to another country where there are no protections, where there probably are not even opportunities for her to go to school?

How about we put an end to that kind of barbaric cultural practice? Imagine sending a little girl out of the country when all she wants is protection. That is an unintended consequence I cannot get past. The legislation before us is full of these unintended consequences.

I will skip to how we can work together. We had some really good testimony at committee about how we need to have institutional support for these victims. We can have that kind of support without alienating and harming the women who are involved in forced marriage and gender-based violence. We need to have those institutional supports for them.

UNICEF talks a lot about the fact that if we are going to protect children from human trafficking, we have to recognize the failures in the system that allow those women and children to be trafficked. We have to recognize that they often come from low-income families without access to community support, without access to settlement services, and without access to people in the community they can turn to about their situation to ask for help.

If we were serious, we could get together, sit down, scrap Bill S-7, and start over. We would come to the table and talk about what would help these women and children and what kinds of supports we could give them. I do not think deporting them is exactly what we had in mind when we thought we wanted to put an end polygamy, underage marriage, and forced marriage in this country. I do not think that is the right solution. I think if we took our partisan hats off for a minute, many of us would come to that conclusion.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, it must have been very painful for the member opposite to make that speech, because she clearly understands that women are facing violence in our country and are facing barbaric practices, yet she just spent 10 minutes telling the House and all Canadians why there is no need to take action with legislation to protect women and girls.

The member said that settlement services are needed and that funding and programs are needed to protect women and girls who are victims of forced marriage, polygamy, sexual violence, or honour-based violence. Yet she will not, and the NDP will not, afford these same women and girls the protection of the law, of Canadian statute, of the Criminal Code.

Why does the member not accept that there should be a minimum age for marriage in our country? Why does the member not understand that there is a definition of polygamy in this law and in this country, and it is marriage to multiple people? Why does she not understand those basic facts? Why is she not willing to take action to protect women and girls today?

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it was not painful for me to give that speech at all. It might have been painful for the minister to hear it, because I was speaking the truth, and that probably hurt a little.

The NDP is really clear. It supports a minimum age for marriage. Full stop, period.

I know I cannot ask him a question back, but if he gets another chance to stand, I would ask him to answer this question. How does deporting a woman or a girl who is in a forced marriage protect her? It is beyond any kind of comprehension to think that this is what would help women. If we were going to help women, we would have an opportunity for them to exit that marriage, not for us to kick them out of the country. I would love for him to answer that.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Halifax for the speech she just delivered to the House.

During the debate on this bill, we have been talking a lot about trying to help women. Women are generally marginalized enough already. Is marginalizing them even more with Bill S-7 really a step in the right direction?

I would just like to hear what my colleague from Halifax thinks about the Conservatives' chronic hypocrisy when it comes to the status of women in general in Canada. The first thing that comes to mind is the issue of murdered and missing aboriginal women. The Conservatives refuse to take any action on that or follow the recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Could my colleague comment on the Conservatives' double-talk and hypocrisy regarding the marginalization of women in Canada?

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for her question. She underscored the double-talk aspect.

What we have here in the House is legislation that proposes to put an end to barbaric practices. What about the fact that if someone is an aboriginal women, she is more likely to be murdered than someone who looks like me. I do not think that is justice. I do not think that is the kind of Canada we intended to create. However, we are there. Why are we not taking action? There was a truth and reconciliation commission. The report said clearly that it was cultural genocide that was attempted in residential schools. How is it that we do not see any action? There were 94 recommendations, and we have not heard a peep.

If we want to talk about hypocrisy, it is pretty easy. Just come into the House and listen to what the Conservatives have to say about some groups but not others. They are certainly leaving the first nations communities out in the cold.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House to speak to Bill S-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act.

Our government is committed to protecting young women and girls from early and forced marriage and other barbaric practices. During my speech, I would like to highlight the provisions of the bill that are designed to protect Canadian children from early and forced marriage.

Although we lack national statistics on the incidence of early and forced marriage among children in Canada because these practices are kept hidden, there are indications that children in Canada are in fact subjected to the barbaric practices of early and forced marriage. According to the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario's study on forced marriages, in Ontario between 2010 and 2012, 10% of the 219 victims identified were between the ages of 12 and 15 and 25% were between the ages of 16 and 18.

International studies have shown that girls are predominantly the victims of a child marriage, increasing their risk of being exposed to violence and complications in childbirth and creating a significant barrier to achieving gender equality, as they are regularly forced to disrupt or abandon their education.

A number of witnesses testified during the committee's hearings about the very disturbing cases of girls in Canada who had been forced to marry or who had been taken abroad to get married, despite their young age or lack of consent. In some instances, young girls are tricked into leaving the country, supposedly to attend a wedding ceremony of a relative, only to discover that the wedding is their own.

While there are currently some legislative tools available in Canada to prevent and respond to underage and forced marriages of children, there are some significant gaps in the law that Bill S-7 aims to fill.

First, there is currently no national minimum age below which children are not legally capable of consenting to marriage. In Canada, the free age of marriage—the age at which children become adults and can give consent to marry on their own, with no additional requirements—is 18 or 19 years of age, depending on the province or territory where the marriage takes place.

All provincial and territorial marriage acts set out additional requirements for minors to marry, such as parental consent, a court order, or proof of pregnancy. Under the Constitution, setting the absolute minimum age for marriage is a matter of federal jurisdiction. However, apart from federal legislation that sets the minimum age of 16 years for marriages in Quebec, the minimum age elsewhere in Canada is set out in the common law, or court decisions. This old common law sets the minimum age at 14 for boys and 12 for girls. There is no clear minimum age across the country setting the absolute minimum age.

Bill S-7 would enact changes to the Civil Marriage Act that would effectively prevent marriage of any person under the age of 16 from occurring anywhere in Canada. This will close the current legislative gap and set a national minimum age for marriage across Canada that would be consistent with countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Further, by making all children under age 16 legally incapable of consenting to marriage, Bill S-7 would also ensure that if a child is taken out of Canada and married in a country where such child marriages are legal, upon the child's return to Canada, the underage marriage would be voidable because the child lacked the legal capacity to marry.

Bill S-7 would amend the Criminal Code to provide criminal protections against underage and forced marriages. The new provisions are directed to the public sanctioning of an underage and forced marriage ceremony, which creates an unwanted and harmful legal bond within which sexual offences are expected to occur.

The two new offences would criminalize conduct related to knowingly officiating or knowingly and actively participating in a marriage ceremony in which one or both of the spouses is either under the age of 16 or marrying against their will. While a person will not be prosecuted for just being a guest at the wedding, those who conduct the marriage ceremony and those, including family members, who actively engage in conduct directed at facilitating the underage or forced marriage ceremony with full knowledge that one party is underage or marrying against his or her will may be criminally liable.

In keeping with the objective of the criminal law to deter people from committing crimes, these new provisions send a clear and important message about the need for all Canadians to reject the misguided belief that any underage or forced marriage can be in a child's best interest.

As well, the bill would make it an offence to remove a child from Canada for the purposes of a forced or underage marriage ceremony outside of Canada. It would build upon an existing provision in the Criminal Code that makes it an offence to remove a child for the purposes of committing certain crimes, such as child sexual offences and female genital mutilation.

Bill S-7 would add the new offences related to officiating or actively participating in an underage or forced marriage ceremony to the list of offences in the existing provision. This would effectively punish those who attempt to, or who do, remove a child from Canada for the purposes of an underage or forced marriage ceremony abroad. It should also serve to prevent these removals from taking place at all because it would allow officials to intervene before the child left the country.

Without this amendment, the current law requires authorities to have evidence that a sexual offence is intended to be committed abroad following the marriage. With the amendment, evidence of an intended forced or early marriage will enable preventive measures to be taken.

I want to take this opportunity to respond to comments that I have heard many times about how child victims of forced marriages are reluctant to contact the authorities prior to the marriage because they do not want their parents or other relatives prosecuted.

The Criminal Code amendments in Bill S-7 that I have just noted would provide the foundation for a very important prevention measure. Bill S-7 would provide for specific forced or underage marriage peace bonds, which would provide courts with the power to impose conditions on an individual when there were reasonable grounds to fear that a forced or underage marriage would otherwise occur.

For example, an order under the new peace bond provision could prevent a victim from being taken out of Canada or require the surrender of a passport. These peace bonds are available to victims who want protection but do not want their parents or other relatives prosecuted. People subjected to peace bonds are not charged with a criminal offence unless they breach the conditions of the order.

It is important to point out that a third party, such as a social worker, a police officer or a relative, can intervene to request the peace bond on the child's behalf.

It is important that everyone know and understand that this conduct is illegal because it is the most vulnerable in our society, our children, who suffer serious harm when forced, usually by their family members, to marry underage or against their will. How can we not do everything possible to stop this?

Our government is taking steps to strengthen the laws to help to ensure that no young girl or woman in Canada becomes a victim of early or forced marriage, polygamy, so-called honour-based violence or any other form of harmful cultural practices.

I am proud to support the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech and I agree with a number of things she said.

Firstly, I agree on the intention of the bill. It is important to act swiftly and forcefully to address inexcusable and cruel crimes like the ones she mentioned. Secondly, I agree with the hon. member when she says that this type of violence against women and children is completely unacceptable, even barbaric, if that is truly the word they want to use. We all agree on that.

The thing we disagree on is the most effective way of fighting this type of crime. The debate we are having is not unreasonable, considering that so many experts who work with victims and who have expertise in the Criminal Code and immigration law raised some legitimate concerns. It is disappointing to see that despite all these interventions by experts in committee, the government did not accept any amendments and did not even question what it is proposing.

Can my colleague tell me whether she knew about the warnings issued by people who are saying, for example, that the victims will shy away from asking for help—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. The parliamentary secretary.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, no government has done more to protect women and girls than this government with a number of the legislation we have put forward. I have read carefully the testimony that was presented at committee. I would remind the member that the provisions in the bill would allow women and girls to be protected through this legislation.

For example, currently there is no clear minimum age across the country. Setting the absolute minimum age for marriage falls under federal jurisdiction. The measures in the act would go very far in protecting all women and girls.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke at length about the national minimum age. Quite frankly, I was surprised to learn that there was no national minimum age.

She also spoke about some international focus on this topic. Could the member talk about some of the other countries that have set a national minimum age, and what is Canada doing in light of those decisions other countries have made?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway and the U.K. have 16 as the minimum wage below which no one can marry, even with parental consent. This is consistent with the approach in the bill that we are debating here today.

Several like-minded countries have set 18 as the age of marriage without additional consent from parents or the courts, but have no minimum age of marriage, for example, Belgium, France, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and most of the United States. This is similar to the current law in Canada.

Setting a national minimum age of 16 years for marriage is consistent with the current federal legislation that applies only with regard to the province of Quebec. It is also consistent with what happens now in Canada, where very few provinces have set that. It does fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government to set this minimum age.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour for me to rise in the House to speak on behalf of the people of Alfred-Pellan in Laval, whom I have been fortunate to represent for the past four years.

Today, I am speaking to Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, or as the Conservatives like to call it, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.

In the speeches that were made today, I heard many references to equal opportunities for women and the marginalization of women. I would really like to talk about that aspect in particular. However, first, I would like to mention a few little things that are directly related to the Conservative government's proposal and the work that my colleagues on this side of the House have done on Bill S-7.

To begin, I would like to thank my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard, our immigration critic, who did an incredible job examining Bill S-7. I saw the work that she did in committee and the amendments that she wants to propose. She has my full support for the amendments she wants to make to improve Bill S-7, as it now stands.

First of all, I have to say that I support the intent of the bill, which seeks to combat polygamy and forced and underage marriage. I also recognize that any violence against women and children is completely unacceptable and that there is still a lot of work to be done to prevent and crack down on these crimes.

However, I remain convinced that this bill does not adequately respond to such serious problems. In fact, Bill S-7 could make existing problems worse. It is important to mention that no woman should be subjected to gender-based violence, and that includes forced and underage marriage. This bill could inadvertently have very serious consequences for women and children by putting more social pressure on the victims of forced marriage and deporting victims of polygamy, for example.

If, as they often say, the Conservatives really care about the victims, they will heed the warnings of the different experts who appeared before the committee and conduct more detailed studies before adopting measures such as the ones proposed here. Instead of focusing on such a sensationalistic bill, with the short title proposed by the Conservatives, a bill that does not address the root of the problem, I sincerely believe that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration should conduct serious, large-scale consultations with community groups and experts to fix the real problem of sexual violence.

There are a number of things that the government could do to help women who are marginalized. Despite the fact that the number of women MPs in the House of Commons has reached a record high, women have a long way to go to achieve equal representation. However, I hope we will steadily approach that target as more women stand for office. Nonetheless, there are different measures that the government could adopt to help women throughout the world take an interest in politics—whether municipal, provincial or federal—and in changing laws to meet their needs. We know that when more women hold power, the laws and approaches are very different. Problems are solved by women for women. It has been shown that it is very positive to have a parliament composed of 50% or more women. This leads to changes in the bills that are introduced.

This is an extremely sensationalistic bill, and I deplore that. I sincerely hope that my colleagues on the other side of the House will take the time to examine the amendments put forward by my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard, who simply wants to bring some common sense to this bill. Once again, I still believe in and have a lot of faith in this Parliament, and that will not stop. I sincerely believe that we can work together.

The House of Commons has committees to study bills with various experts, such as community leaders and experts in general law, civil law or immigration.

These experts did not have harsh words, but they did share some concerns. On this side of the House I would say that we did some worthwhile work with the proposals made by the experts and others invited to the committee. We took their ideas to try to improve this bill, because what we have been trying to propose all along is common sense. However, the concrete measures set out in Bill S-7 will unfortunately not have the desired impact.

I am making a heartfelt plea to the Minister of Immigration today. I ask him to consider these amendments, eliminate the sensationalistic and partisan aspects of this bill, and bring some common sense to this bill. A real consultation on Bill S-7 is needed.

From what I read of the testimony, there was a lack of consultation. I would like to quote a statement by Action Canada for Sexual Rights and Health:

The bill reflects a lack of consultation (closed-door meetings and invitation-only consultations), and a lack of transparency, participation and public debate. The proposed amendments are not based on the experiences of women and girls who have survived acts of violence, such as forced marriage.

That is pretty serious testimony about the lack of consultation. I sincerely believe that if a bill purports to help women and children across Canada in terms of forced marriage and violence against women, it should include real solutions to help them.

All members of the House are very familiar with the organizations in their ridings and the incredible work they do. In Laval, many organizations work to help women in various ways. They might be active in politics, encouraging women to run for office and participate actively in elections. Organizations also help women who are often in need. One that comes to mind is the Table de concertation de Laval en condition féminine. Many of my colleagues on this side of the House also have Afeas in their ridings. I see my colleague from Laval—Les Îles nodding. That organization is very visible in my riding; I am speaking for both of us. Afeas is very visible in Laval. Its goal is to help women, help them escape marginalization and misery, and ensure that women have the same rights as men across the country. So much needs to be done.

I see that my time is almost up, but I would like to comment briefly on what could be done to help women across the country. It is not necessarily just what is being put forward in Bill S-7. There are a lot of things we could do to help women in different communities.

When I asked my colleague from Halifax a question, I mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which recently submitted its report and 94 recommendations. I think the federal government has a role to play in about a good third of the recommendations. It could do something about the issue of murdered and missing indigenous women all across Canada. It should have done something about that issue a long time ago. I truly believe that if the government really wanted to help murdered and missing indigenous women and their families, it would do something.

A number of other subjects could have been addressed to end the marginalization of women. Two examples that come to mind are pay equity and women's leadership on corporate boards, whether public or private. Something really meaningful could have been done.

Regarding Bill S-7, I have to point out again that we could make it better. It is not too late. The NDP has proposed some amendments. I still hope that the Conservatives will agree to compromise a little, ensure that these amendments are incorporated into the bill and put an end to all the smoke and mirrors. In the end, that is all that Bill S-7 really is.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, one way to evaluate the quality of a bill is to look at how it could change things in very real situations, instead of listening to the wild speculation coming from across the aisle. For instance, in the case of the Shafia family, how would this legislation have changed things for the women in that family? They would have most likely been deported back to Afghanistan, where they could have been quietly killed, away from prying eyes. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle for his questions and his interest in Bill S-7.

As I said, a number of things could be done differently when it comes to Bill S-7. It is up to the Conservatives to make the necessary concrete changes to the bill.

We are proposing some extremely worthwhile improvements to the bill. For example, the government could commit to consulting stakeholders, such as front-line workers and experts, on the programs and measures that would most effectively prevent and combat gender-based violence and the best ways to put these practices in place in Canada.

We are also proposing that the government recognize the need to provide more prevention services and support to the victims of forced and underage marriages and female victims of any type of violence.

These very sensible suggestions were made by a host of witnesses and experts. These are concrete ideas. It is a matter of putting in place prevention and education measures. To me it makes sense.

I sincerely hope that the government will support the amendments proposed by my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Mr. Speaker, It being 1:15 p.m., pursuant to an order made Tuesday, June 9, 2015, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the report stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on Motion No. 1 stands deferred. The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 2, 3, 8 and 10.

The next question is on Motion No. 4. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

I declare Motion No. 4 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 5 to 7, 9, and 11 to 17 defeated.

(Motions Nos. 4 to 7, 9 and 11 to 17 negatived)

Normally at this time the House would proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division at the report stage of the bill, however, pursuant to Standing Order 45 the recorded division stands deferred until Monday, June 15, at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Minister of State and Chief Government Whip]

Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I think you will find agreement to see the clock at 1:30 p.m.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Accordingly the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.