Bill C-3 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Judges Act and the Criminal Code

This enactment amends the Judges Act to restrict eligibility for judicial appointment to persons who undertake to participate in continuing education on matters related to sexual assault law and social context. It also amends the Judges Act to provide that the Canadian Judicial Council should report on seminars offered for the continuing education of judges on matters related to sexual assault law and social context. Finally, it amends the Criminal Code to require that judges provide reasons for decisions in sexual assault proceedings.

[Carole Morency, Director General and Senior General Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Policy Sector, Department of Justice]

Thank you.

We are pleased to be here today to discuss the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and related efforts by the Department of Justice.

Ensuring access to justice for victims of crime and giving them a more effective voice in the criminal justice system has been a long‑standing commitment of the federal government.

Federal policy and legislative and programmatic measures in support of this commitment have been coordinated through the federal victims strategy. Established in 2000, this horizontal strategy is led by Justice Canada and includes Public Safety Canada, Correctional Service Canada, the Parole Board of Canada and the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.

The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights is an important cornerstone for continuing federal efforts to support victims of crime. Enacted in 2015, the CVBR gives victims of crime four statutory rights: the rights to information, to protection, to participation and to seek restitution. These rights apply throughout the criminal justice process. The CVBR also requires, to the extent possible, that all federal statutes be interpreted in a manner consistent with victims' rights under the CVBR. It provides a mechanism for victims to file a complaint when these rights have been breached by a federal department or agency.

As the committee knows, responsibility for our criminal justice system is shared between the federal, provincial and territorial governments. The federal government is responsible for criminal law and procedure, much of which is set out in the Criminal Code, as well as the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Provincial and territorial governments are responsible for the administration of justice, which includes enforcing and prosecuting Criminal Code offences, delivery of victim services and enacting their own victim legislation.

Since 2015, significant individual and collaborative measures have been taken by all governments to advance and strengthen implementation of victims' rights. For example, at the federal level, early actions to support the right to information focused on creating a series of fact sheets about victims' rights and related Criminal Code provisions. These have recently been made available in 11 indigenous languages.

Federal funding was also made available to provincial and territorial victim services to create or update their public legal education and information materials for victims, victims' advocates and criminal justice professionals, in addition to training on the CVBR.

The right to information has also been supported through the design and delivery of new models of victim-centred services. The creation of family information liaison units across Canada in 2016 has ensured that family members of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls have all the available information they are seeking about their loved ones as well as access to community-based supports. Justice Canada has also supported the right to participation through funding to the provinces and territories for the provision of testimonial aids to facilitate victim testimony.

Victims' rights to information, protection and participation have also been supported by federal funding for independent legal advice and representation programs for victims and survivors of sexual assault. These are currently being piloted in a number of jurisdictions in Canada. Justice Canada has also worked closely with provincial and territorial victim services to fund their design and delivery of jurisdiction-specific restitution programs.

Law reform continues to be an important tool to affect change and to implement victims' rights. In addition to the criminal law reforms that accompanied the CVBR, some recent legislative reforms support victims' participation and protection rights. For example, the recently enacted Bill C-3 requires candidates seeking appointment to a provincial superior court to participate in continuing education in sexual assault law and social context. It also requires judges to provide reasons for their decisions in sexual assault cases.

The former Bill C-75 on criminal justice system delays enhanced victim safety, particularly for victims of intimate partner violence, including at bail and sentencing. It also re-enacted a new victim surcharge regime—an important source of revenue for provinces and territories—in response to the Supreme Court's decision in R. v. Boudreault.

Following enactment of the CVBR, federal departments and agencies whose mandates involve working with victims of crime have implemented formal complaints mechanisms for victims. Justice Canada prepares an annual report on complaints and publishes it online. Provinces and territories also have their own complaint mechanisms.

Those are the items I'd like to highlight for Justice Canada.

Thank you.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month

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

Mr. Speaker, May is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Sexual violence continues to be under recognized within the criminal justice system and has increased significantly during the pandemic. May is a month for us to bring awareness to the realities of sexual violence within our communities and to recognize that certain communities are disproportionately impacted by sexual violence, in particular indigenous women.

I would like to thank SAVIS of Halton for educating our community on the realities of sexual violence while providing direct support and resources to survivors in Halton.

Last week, I was pleased to see Bill C-3 receive royal assent, which will ensure education is provided for judges on sexual assault and social context. I would like to give special thanks to Conor Lewis from my office, who worked on this bill since 2017.

Today and everyday, I send my support to all survivors, as we continue to advocate for the end of sexual violence in all forms.

Justice

[Jenica Atwin, Green, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, last week, Bill C-3 became law. It is an important step, but so much remains to be accomplished.

Whether the person was a member of the military or a victim of domestic violence, the evidence is unequivocal. The legal system is failing the vast majority of sexual assault survivors. Consultations have already taken place and experts have laid out a road map that includes establishing a specialized sexual assault and domestic violence court and ensuring consistency between criminal, family and youth protection court decisions.

Even if judges are now receiving training, they are still operating inside a broken system. Is the Minister of Justice ready to commit to doing more, to tabling legislation that would truly reform the system and ensure that all survivors of sexual assault could access justice?

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to speak to relevance. The member has been going off on a tangent that is nowhere near the concurrence report we are debating. He is talking about Bill C-3, Bill C-14, Bill C-19, all except the matter before the House right now. This is a concurrence report. We are supposed to be debating about Line 5. This is important.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, to say whether I am surprised or disappointed, the short answer would be no. I am not surprised that the Conservatives would move a motion of concurrence on a particular report. They have demonstrated in the recent months that they have really lost focus on the pandemic. I am trying to be nice in my criticism here, but I do believe at times that I need to be bold and to say what I believe the Conservatives are actually doing, which is not focusing at all or giving the attention that should be there from the official opposition in dealing with what is a very important issue to all Canadians.

The Conservatives continue to want to play partisan politics, and that is why I am not surprised, because they have been doing this for a while now. I am disappointed. I am disappointed again, and ongoing, because as the Conservatives insist on playing games on the floor of the House of Commons, they are filibustering whenever they can in an attempt to encourage a dysfunctional House of Commons and discourage important legislation from being debated so they can ultimately say that the government cannot even get its legislation through. If we look at the behaviour of the Conservative Party, it does not take a genius in a group of 12 to cause a lot of frustration on the floor of the House of Commons, and we get the official opposition choosing to do that.

Today is an excellent example. Earlier today, I was on a Zoom call with the Prime Minister, my Manitoba colleagues and a hundred nurses in the province of Manitoba. We were listening to what nurses in Manitoba had to say. That is the priority, and has been the priority, of this government from day one. I contrast that to what we have witnessed day in and day out over the last number of months coming from the Conservative Party of Canada. They should be ashamed of themselves.

The member for Chilliwack—Hope tries to give the impression that I do not care about Line 5 or the jobs and the other indirect and direct things related to Line 5 and that is why I do not support having us debate this motion we are debating today, the concurrence on the report. That is balderdash. It is just not true. Like all Liberals in the House of Commons, I am very much concerned about Line 5 and the impact it is having, not only on Canada, but also on the U.S. We understand and appreciate the importance of the issue. The Minister of Natural Resources, whether in question period or other debates, including the emergency debate, has been very clear on the issue.

The Conservative Party, surely to goodness, would recognize that we just had an emergency debate on the issue, just last Thursday. Members should listen and read in terms of what was actually said then. It started off with Conservatives just bashing Ottawa and saying how bad we are in regard to Alberta, to try to perpetuate more misinformation, as if this Prime Minister and this government do not care about the province of Alberta. Members can look and see what kind of ideas came from the Conservative Party in the emergency debate. There was not one Liberal who said “no” to having an emergency debate.

I had a chance to speak during that debate, and I am going to share some of the comments I made on Thursday night, but even with the emergency debate that took place, the Conservatives came up with this concurrence motion on a report that has absolutely nothing to do with Line 5 or a relationship between Canada and the U.S. For those who are listening or participating, or who care about what is taking place in the House, that is not the real motivation here. The Conservatives can say whatever they want and try to come across as meaningful as they want, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with frustrating the government's legislative agenda, the things we want to accomplish in the House of Commons.

They continue to push, saying that the House of Commons is dysfunctional. The Conservatives try to do two things. The first is character assassinations, and I understand I was one of them earlier today in an S.O. 31. The second is the ongoing filibustering taking place in the House of Commons so that important legislation cannot get through.

We should look at some of the debates and frustrations that have been sensed on the floor of the House of Commons because of the irresponsible official opposition. Those who might be sympathetic to their terrible behaviour should look at Bill C-3, as an example, and the hours and hours of debate on the education and training of judges in the future on sexual assault and so forth. It was a Conservative bill. It passed everything and is coming back. We introduced it as a government bill so we could put it in place. Everyone agreed to it, even in the Senate. It got royal assent very recently. The Conservatives debated that for hours and hours on the floor of the House of Commons. Was that really necessary? No.

What about Bill C-14? The economic statement was released in November, and the legislation was brought forward in December. No matter when we called it up, the Conservatives attempted to filibuster that through concurrence motions, too. In that legislation, there were important things to subsidize and support Canadians, individuals, families and small businesses. One would think the Conservative Party would have cared, but it had no problem filibustering that one, too.

We just had to bring in time allocation on Bill C-19. It is a minority government. We have to ensure, as much as possible, that Elections Canada is best prepared, enabling it to do a little more on a temporary basis. However, the political spinners within the Conservative Party do not want to go that way. They say they want to remain focused. Being focused to them is to push for a dysfunctional chamber and character assassination. That is what they are all about. It is—

Message from the Senate

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed Bill C‑3, an act to amend the Judges Act and the Criminal Code.

Criminal Code

[Jenica Atwin, Green, Fredericton, NB]

Madam Speaker, I will ask a question around prosecutorial and police discretion because I still have concerns about the lack of understanding that still exists in Canada.

I am wondering what other additional measures the member would like to see. I am thinking about Bill C-3, which made it mandatory for judges to have training around sexual assault. What about trauma-informed care? What about information around residential school experiences, or about Canadians who continue to be oppressed in our country? Are there additional measures that the member would like to see in this bill?

Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2020

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, earlier today I was part of a wonderful Zoom discussion. It was a great recognition of the importance of some health care workers, while at the same time a celebration of Canada's diversity. We also had some special guests.

On the call we had our Prime Minister, health care professionals from coast to coast, and a number of other special guests, all there to recognize a couple of things. The first was the fabulous work that our health care providers are providing Canadians in all regions of our country, day in and day out. We also recognized something important to the people who were participating in that call, and in fact to many Canadians, and that is the celebration of Vaisakhi.

It was really quite nice to be a part of that discussion, where we recognized our diversity and, at the same time, the Prime Minister listened to first-hand experiences of what is taking place at the ground level of our health institutions dealing with the coronavirus.

Having said that, it is important to recognize that from day one this Liberal government has been listening to Canadians. It has not been making political discussions as much as it has been listening to what health experts have had to say and following that advice, so Canadians would in fact be protected. From day one, the Prime Minister has been there to assure Canadians that, as a government, we will have their backs. We have done that in so many tangible ways.

Nothing has changed. We continue day in and day out to look at ways to support Canadians, the people and their businesses, get through this pandemic. We have seen a lot of highs and lot of lows. We could talk about the wonderful people who have made life that much easier for us during this pandemic and the difficulties we have had to overcome, which at times can be very hard on a person, whether mentally or physically. Through this pandemic, we have seen life and death.

It is so encouraging that we could finally see, in the not-too-distant future, things coming back to a new normal. I suspect I speak on behalf of all members of Parliament when I say that we want things back to that new normal as soon as possible.

I want to provide some thoughts, and some of them are a little critical of my Conservative friends. I have been listening to what they have had to say today. I must say that I am not surprised. I am a little disappointed, but not necessarily surprised.

I gave a little tease when I asked a member about the deficit. The Conservatives are once again becoming preoccupied with Canada's deficit at a time when Canadians in parts of the country are in lockdown situations and are looking for the government to demonstrate ongoing leadership. What we have clearly demonstrated is that we are working day in, day out with Canadians. From a national perspective, we are there for Canadians in tangible ways.

However, before I get into that, I want to hold the Conservative opposition to task for some of the things they have said, this whole preoccupation of theirs. On the one hand, Conservatives say they like the CERB program, the rent subsidy program and the wage subsidy program, which account for billions and billions of dollars in spending. That is, in good part, borrowed money. They are telling us that this is good stuff and we need it. Then, on the other hand, they are talking about the debt and saying there is too much spending from the government.

I can envision two or three years from now, the Conservatives will forget about the pandemic, even the fact that it occurred, and focus 100% of their attention on the deficit. I would like to suggest to my Conservative friends that, had we listened to the Conservative Party of Canada and its leadership within the House of Commons, Canada would not be doing anywhere near as well as it is today in its position to recover from the pandemic. I genuinely believe that to be the case.

If we asked people to reflect on what has taken place over the last number of months, I believe we would find a fairly even consensus among Canadians about their fear for the manner in which the Conservative Party would have managed us through this process. This is based on the types of questions Conservatives have been asking and the type of support they have been providing to legislation. I argue that in the last seven months, they have been more of a destructive force inside the House of Commons, rather than providing a proactive, constructive critique of the government and the policies we were making.

The member for Kildonan—St. Paul made reference to the Liberal Party and the Liberal government doing a terrible job pre-pandemic on the deficit and that we had a sluggish economy. If one wants to get a sense of the Conservative spin out there, all one needs to do is read the member's speech and listen to some of the other points that have been made. In many ways, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the first four years of our mandate, going into the fifth year, we had record highs in employment rates. We very much had a manageable deficit situation. We had created well over a million jobs. It took Stephen Harper, the former prime minister, nine years to accomplish what we were able to accomplish in four and a half years. We did a much better job on the financing of Canada than Stephen Harper did.

The programs, initiatives and impact we were having by working with our partners, whether they were Canadians, businesses or members at the provincial level, were having a profoundly positive impact on our economy. The numbers clearly demonstrated that.

Prior to the pandemic, Canada was doing exceptionally well. Then when we were hit by the pandemic, we took specific actions to protect Canadians. As we have gone through the pandemic, we have brought in important pieces of legislation, including Bill C-14. I find it truly amazing that Bill C-14 still has not passed the House of Commons, whether it is because of the Conservatives and their filibustering tactics or even other opposition parties that are at times preventing this legislation from ultimately being able to receive royal assent.

The economic statement was presented by the minister of finance back in November of last year. The bill was introduced in December so that members would be able to go over the bill during the late December-early January break. There was plenty of time for Conservative members to have discussions and raise it with ministers or whomever they chose to have a dialogue with. They come up with so many ways to prevent the legislation from even getting to a vote. They did not even want it to get out of second reading. They had to be shamed into doing it.

I remember the day the Conservatives put forward a concurrence motion that I believe was on human trafficking, something that could have passed by a unanimous vote. Who in the chamber did not support it? There are so many reports, but they used that report and that issue to filibuster, preventing Bill C-14 from passing. Here we are, in mid-April, still debating a bill that was based on the Deputy Prime Minister's speech back at the end of November. It is not because we have not attempted to put it on the agenda. We do not have the same sort of luxury as opposition parties in terms of opposition days where, at the end of the day, there is a vote because there is a process that enables a vote to occur.

In a minority situation, we have to give a lot more attention to what the opposition is doing, and it only takes one opposition party to prevent something from passing. I remember well how the Conservatives resisted the bill passing. Today, as I listen to my Conservative friends speak, they say they do not like the debt and so forth. Is that going to be their excuse for not wanting to pass it today or tomorrow? Are they going to say it is a whole lot of money and they want hours and hours of debate?

Do members remember Bill C-3, a non-controversial piece of legislation? It was actually a Conservative bill. There were hours and hours of debate on that bill and we debated it for a number of days, when we could have been debating other legislation. It would have freed up more time, so that when Bill C-14 came up for debate, there could have been more time to debate it. How about the MAID legislation? My colleague from Ontario asked for leave on several occasions to extend the debate in the evening so we could, in essence, free up more time for other government legislation that had to get debated. The MAID legislation was life-and-death legislation. It was a Superior Court decision that had to be dealt with.

The government has a number of pieces of legislation that have to be dealt with, yet the opposition continues to want to play games. Conservatives tell Canadians they are being a responsible opposition because, after all, it is worth billions of dollars. They are right that it is worth billions of dollars, but they are not recognizing the urgency. We have provided opportunities to get this bill through much earlier, and the Conservatives find one way or another not to, to the point that here we are debating it on April 12.

This legislation was brought in months ago, and the bill is finally in a position where it could pass. It has taken a long time to get this far, and I encourage Conservatives to pass it, as I did at second reading. It was not until the Conservatives started to feel embarrassed that they allowed the bill to pass. I think they need to be shamed into passing it at third reading or they will not do it. If they are not told to wise up and recognize that this bill is going to have a positive impact on the lives of Canadians during this pandemic, they are not going to pass it. They need to be held accountable for not recognizing how important this legislation is to Canadians.

We have indicated that our government will do whatever it takes. We are going to invest wherever it is necessary. We want to be helpful, and we will support Canadian families and businesses. This is very important legislation, and it would do all of that.

For example, this legislation introduces a temporary and immediate support for low- and middle-income families that are entitled to the Canada child benefit, over $1,000 in 2021 for each child under the age of six. It would ease the financial burden of student debt. It would provide for over half a billion dollars as part of a new strategy to deal with safe long-term care, funding to support long-term care facilities, including funding to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection, outbreaks and deaths in supportive care facilities. The vaccines have really helped, but these are the types of measures.

There is no reason this House could not have passed this bill back in February. It is not that the government did not want it passed, but every time the government would bring it up, the Conservatives would give some indication that it was not going to pass and would continue to be debated.

There is other legislation as well. I am the parliamentary secretary who is ultimately there to support the passage of Bill C-19, which is on the Canada Elections Act and the impact of the pandemic on elections, to ensure Canadians would be healthy. This is a minority government, and we never know when there is going to be an election. Bill C-19 is the responsible thing to do, but it is incredibly difficult to get legislation passed with the official opposition taking the approach it has during the pandemic, and it is unfortunate.

We understand and appreciate how difficult it has been for Canadians from coast to coast to coast over the last 12 months. The federal government, by working with Canadians and health care experts and listening to what is taking place, has done what is necessary in order to ensure that Canadians can have hope.

Contrary to the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, who was trying to marginalize it in terms of the number of doses earlier in her speech, we should listen to what the Minister of Public Services and Procurement stated earlier today in question period: “Canada now stands eighth in the G20 in terms of doses administered per 100 people. We have received 10.5 million doses in this country to date. We are on track to receive 44 million doses by the end of June”. We are a country of 37.5 million people.

The Conservatives love to twist the facts and give misinformation to Canadians. However, we have been consistent. Members can go back to December, when we were saying that we have targets and a portfolio to ensure that we will get the vaccinations. We have compensated as much as possible for not having that immediate manufacturing capability here in Canada. We understand the importance of the issue, and we will continue to have Canadians' backs throughout this process.

[Nelly Shin, Conservative, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Madam Deschamps, for appearing today and for your report. It's so refreshing. You speak my language.

As you know, Bill C-3 was passed in Parliament because we see a need to counter culture and systems that victimize women and promote toxic masculinity. Your report is important and our discussions today are important to help bring this cultural shift within the Canadian Armed Forces, but I believe it will also, as it gets resolved, bring change in other sectors of society.

The other day when I was questioning the minister, because I felt he wasn't getting the big picture, I pointed out that the purpose of processes and systems is not to exist for themselves but to help us bring justice and not hinder it. Processes and systems are there ideally to provide an environment that safeguards and maximizes the potential for accountability, integrity and safety to draw out truth and an outcome of justice.

However, if top authorities and leaders like the Minister of Defence are acting in a way or making decisions that are questionable, negligent or insensitive to reality—as the minister is, in my opinion—is there a process whereby those who are in more junior positions can file an appeal against those in higher authority about their decisions?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Garrison, for your collaboration on this bill and a variety of others.

You have my personal commitment to working with my colleagues around the table and with other parliamentarians to make sure we have those supports in place. One thing I can already cite is that in Bill C-3, part of the training of judges is precisely aimed at the kinds of questions we need to rectify in working with victims of conversion therapy. That will be part of the training that is part of that bill.

I'll continue to work with you and I'll continue to work with my colleagues to make sure we have the support. I agree with you that the criminal law power is a heavy-handed power, and we need to work on the other levers that we have in society in order to make sure conversion therapy doesn't happen.

International Women's Day

[Jenica Atwin, Green, Fredericton, NB]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to speak in the House of Commons. The magnitude of this reality is not lost on me, especially today on International Women's Day, a day when we celebrate and advocate for women's rights around the world. I wish I could simply deliver pleasantries, highlight the work of some incredible women and wish all present a happy International Women's Day, but based on the real experiences of women across the country and around the globe that would not be enough.

I would like to begin by exploring some of the history of the women's rights movement. It is rooted in struggle and conflict, intertwined with colonialism and racism. Before the suffragettes, colonists arrived in North America and deliberately tore apart the fabric of the matriarchal leadership of the first peoples of this land. The intergenerational trauma of these acts continues to ripple through indigenous communities today.

International Women's Day can be traced back to 1908, when thousands of working women in New York City marched to protest their working conditions. These women worked at low wages with no protection and regularly experienced sexual harassment and abuse. This uprising continued for more than a year, leading to National Woman's Day in the U.S. in 1909.

At an international conference of working women in 1910, the idea for an international movement advocating universal suffrage was born. The day took on a truly revolutionary form in Russia in 1917, in a country exhausted by war, widespread food shortages and escalating popular protests. Russian women demanded and gained the right to vote in 1917 as a direct consequence of the March protest.

Suffragettes in the U.K., and their counterparts in the U.S. and Canada, looked to Russia as an example. White women in Canada were enfranchised in 1918, but this right would not be extended to women of colour or indigenous women until decades later.

We have yet to fully embrace the layers of intersectionality in feminism and tear down the many ways women continue to be oppressed. The pandemic has plainly demonstrated how race, gender, class, disability and immigration status intersect and compound risk, resulting in worse health outcomes, increased rates of domestic violence and greater economic struggle.

International Women's Day remains steeped in the fight for all women's rights. I think about the women facing violence in their homes. I addressed the House regarding gender-based violence on February 25. That same day, a woman from my home province was murdered by her intimate partner. In Quebec, five women were killed by their partners in just one month.

The government has put money into supporting shelters and services for women fleeing domestic violence, but it is not enough. I think about the survivors of sexual assault being retraumatized and stigmatized, again and again, by a court system that was designed to protect property. Bill C-3 will finally require judges to receive sensitivity training on sexual assault, which is a step forward, but our judicial system is so deeply flawed that this is not enough.

I think of Chantel Moore and of Joyce Echaquan. These women's final moments on earth were spent facing down racism and misogyny. Our policing and health systems let them down. We let them down.

The government has initiated an anti-racism secretariat, but it seems to be operating quietly behind closed doors. This is not enough. I am discouraged by the failings of our systems, reinforced by almost every statistic and by almost every headline. I am discouraged that I hold a seat of power, yet I often feel powerless to right what remains so very wrong.

I look to what brings me hope. I think of my sisters, my friends and the women I work with. Through their trauma, I see their strength. I see their resilience. This year they have given birth without their loved ones present. They have loved and supported family members in mental health crises. They have taken in their adult children who could no longer support themselves financially. They have bravely served, overrepresented on the front lines of this pandemic. They have left abusive jobs, they have left abusive relationships and they stand strong but not unscathed. What I need from the government is leadership that sees their resilience and meets it with equal force.

International Women's Day has always been as much about struggle and solidarity as it is about celebration. Today, for women across the country, the struggle is real. With some direct action perhaps next year we will have more to celebrate.

Opposition Motion—Religious Minorities in China

[Nelly Shin, Conservative, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, it has been less than a month since I saw photo presentations of emaciated women and children lined up in the Auschwitz death camp and listened to Holocaust survivors talk about their scars from forced separation from family members, torture, the death of loved ones, gas chambers and the exploitation of their bodies for science experiments.

January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, and the phrase “never again” is solemnly spoken as a reminder to be vigilant and a call to action to prevent and stop genocide.

Today my Conservative colleagues and I are calling on the government and members to acknowledge that the Government of the People's Republic of China is subjecting Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims to genocide.

Numerous entities have drawn the conclusion that the Government of China is committing acts of genocide that include mass detention, systematic population control and sexual violence. The reports provide elaborate details on the depth of the abuses perpetrated by the government against this minority group.

The Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development released a statement October 21, 2020 that reads:

The Subcommittee unequivocally condemns the persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang by the Government of China. Based on the evidence put forward during the Subcommittee hearings, both in 2018 and 2020, the Subcommittee is persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention.

I just want to note here that this is a statement by a committee of members across all aisles. CBC News reported a statement by Bob Rae that there are aspects of what the Chinese government is doing that fit the definition of genocide in the genocide convention. I would also like to note that Bob Rae is Canada's ambassador to the UN. Genocide is defined by the genocide convention with respect to three constitutive elements.

First, the victims form part of a protected group of national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Second, the perpetrators committed one or more enumerated acts against members of the group, killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Third, the perpetrators acted with the intent to destroy the protected group in whole or in part.

All three elements are present a genocide in the heinous acts of persecution against the Uighur people.

On January 19, 2021, outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo said:

After careful examination of the available facts, I have determined that since at least March 2017, the People’s Republic of China, under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party, has committed crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.

The current U.S. Secretary of State Blinken has stated numerous times that he also believes genocide is being committed against the Uighurs. American officials acknowledge this as genocide. They are our neighbours and closest allies.

The existence of detention camps holding a million Uighurs has been confirmed through government documents, witness testimony and satellite imagery. Most people in the camps are innocent. They have not committed any crimes. They have no means to defend themselves. Human rights groups say their crime is being Muslim. They are being persecuted and killed because of their religion. This is unacceptable and it is not a time to be silent.

Between 2017 and 2019, approximately more than 80,000 Uighurs were forced from their homes to work in factories across China and in detention camps. The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote in a letter of “People being forcibly loaded onto trains, beards of religious men being trimmed, women being sterilised, and the grim spectre of concentration camps”.

This bears similarities to what happened in Nazi Germany 75 years ago. Indeed, Jonathan Sacks, the U.K.'s former chief rabbi, tweeted on July 22:

As a Jew, knowing our history, the sight of people being shaven headed, lined up, boarded onto trains, and sent to concentration camps is particularly harrowing.

Jewish leaders acknowledge the eerie familiarities of what is happening to Uighurs with what the Nazis did during World War II. These are serious statements coming from a community that experienced severe genocide.

In a BBC article earlier this month, according to independent testimonies, more than a million people have been detained in the internment camps. Former detainees have testified to having experienced or witnessed a system of organized mass rape, sexual abuse and torture. Women were also forcibly sterilized or fitted with IUDs. Many women turn to alcohol to cope with the trauma. One woman who fled Xinjiang says, of a victim who is now an addict, she was “like someone who simply existed, otherwise she was dead, completely finished by the rapes.... Their goal is to destroy everyone”, she said, “And everybody knows it.”

This is absolutely abhorrent. These women are experiencing trauma that will probably take a lifetime to overcome, if they survive: nightmares, anxiety, fear, depression, self-esteem issues, challenges in intimate relationships and the grief of forcibly losing one's ability to bear children.

When asked by reporters why the government has not yet acknowledged the actions of China's government against the Uighur Muslim minority as genocide, the Prime Minister said that the word “genocide” is “extremely loaded” and something that we should be looking at to determine if we can label it as genocide. The fact that leaders and members of his own party, Canada's ambassador to the UN and international communities are calling this genocide makes the Prime Minister's failure to acknowledge it as such disturbing.

On February 3, my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan asked the Prime Minister if he believed the testimony of female Uighur victims of systemic sexual violence in Chinese state-run concentration camps where sexual violence is sometimes paired with electrocution. The Prime Minister's response was:

For years now we have been advocating directly with Chinese leadership for transparency and better treatment of the Uighurs in western China...We need to have international investigators, including from the UN, accessing the Xinjiang province to be able to keep people safe there and everywhere around the world.

We know that the Government of China will not allow UN investigators access to its torture facilities. I wonder if the Prime Minister really understands the full ramifications of what is going on, because underneath his diplomatic response, it seem to me, as a woman, that the PM is saying, “I'll try to get the perpetrator's permission to check out the crime scene. If we can go there and see if what you're claiming is actually happening, well then we'll take it from there.”

Does he have more faith in the Chinese government to allow an investigation to take place or does he believe the victims? This is the same government that continues to disregard human rights and international law with regard to Hong Kong, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians and other minority groups. We also have the two Michaels still detained in China.

Going back to the Prime Minister's insensitivity, we just debated Bill C-3, and passed it unanimously. This piece of legislation had to be passed, because rape victims are often treated unfairly and often revictimized by judges who condemn the women and not the perpetrators, and their testimony is dismissed. The women relive their trauma and end up further victimized. Therefore, I would like to ask: Is it the Prime Minister's intention to gaslight the Uighur women who had the courage to step forward with their stories? By saying that he is consulting directly with the Government of China on these issues to seek investigations shows that he does not acknowledge the plight of these women.

My Conservative colleagues and I call on the Liberal government to join our allies in the U.S. to officially recognize the Uighur genocide, to take coordinated action with other countries internationally in response to this genocide and impose Magnitsky sanctions against those who are responsible for the heinous crimes being committed against the Uighurs.

I am sitting here in my constituency office today with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms behind me. This is our Canadian legacy. We stand for it at home. That is why we come to the House of Commons as parliamentarians: To uphold the dignity of every human being and do our best to allow each one to prosper uniquely in their own way. When we see our fellow humanity abroad suffering, as the Uighur and Turkic Muslims are in China, it is time to stand up and acknowledge the atrocity for what it is—genocide—and take realistic, practical steps with our international allies to hold the Government of China to account.

We have a moment of decision today on our values, the identity of Canada and what freedom and human rights are really about. There is no room for hypocrisy in this hour. I understand that there are complex economic and social layers in our relationship with China. However, genocide is genocide, human rights are human rights, and I implore the government and ask my colleagues across all aisles to adopt the position my Conservative colleagues and I are addressing today.

As we consider this motion, I would ask this: What is the legacy that my colleagues would like to leave behind? Is it one of fear or moral courage? We have come so far as a nation, and we still have a ways to go to really act with true freedom and moral courage, but in this hour there is an opportunity, and I fear that being indecisive about whether this is genocide is making us go backwards. Canada has a role—

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all the witnesses for your insight and all of the work and the advocacy that you're doing. It goes without saying that this is a really important study.

I just want to put in a comment and then ask two questions, possibly three.

First, I think there have been some steps made in the right direction towards the training piece with Bill C-3 on the judicial sensitization towards sexual assault law. All of us know that the definition of “family violence” in the Divorce Act has been coupled with training that's being put out by the Department of Justice for public legal education and information materials, and for legal advisers. Those are important steps in the right direction. The message I am getting is that we need a lot more of that.

I have a couple of questions, and I am going to start with Ms. Illingworth.

Thank you for your letter to Minister Lametti asking for this to be addressed. The question I have relates to what we heard in the last hour, and you heard the people. Your testimony just now and your letter talk a lot about intimate partner violence and no doubt that is at the crux of what we're talking about here. Some of the testimony we heard just in the previous hour also talked about women who are often on the blunt end of this kind of control, but who aren't necessarily in an intimate relationship. It might be an aunt, a mother, a grandmother or a niece. They're having relationships that are controlling, but don't have that nexus of intimacy.

I am wondering how we can ensure that whatever we do is comprehensive enough to ensure that it's dealing with coercive control that deals with intimate relationships, but not to the exclusion of some of those other relationships.

Ms. Illingworth, could you try to tackle that maybe in about 90 seconds? Thanks.

Criminal Code

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Madam Speaker, it gives me no pleasure to rise yet again to oppose this deeply flawed and dangerous legislation, Bill C-7. The Liberals have been complaining in the media that they think the Conservatives are holding up the legislation and that they are going to miss their court-imposed deadline of December 18, but they really have no one but themselves to blame. Conservatives are doing our constitutionally mandated job to hold the Liberal government accountable on its legislation.

Looking at the record over these past eight months, it is clear that my party has bent over backwards to give the Liberals the breathing room to implement emergency economic aid and other COVID-related measures. We have been very co-operative. We have also seen a great deal of government legislation move fairly quickly through the House just this fall, and in a minority Parliament at that.

Let us look at the Liberal record on moving the legislation forward. From the very beginning, the government really made its own bed on this one when it refused to defend its own legislation, Bill C-14, which was just passed in the last Parliament. Even some of its own members said on Twitter that the legislation was unconstitutional, admitting they felt it was unconstitutional even when they were voting for it, but they did not use the opportunity to appeal the legislation to the Supreme Court. That shows me that it was the government's intent to use the courts to circumvent Parliament.

Parliament was mandated, under Bill C-14, to conduct a thorough review of medical assistance in dying and that review was to occur next year. It is important to have these sorts of reviews built into legislation because when we talk about something as serious as medical assistance in dying, which is a novel legislation, a new innovation in our social fabric, Canadian people really have not had adequate time to digest how they feel about the legislation and to examine their lived experiences.

A five-year review was a very adequate provision to give Canadians a bit of time to assess the bill and then have Parliament make recommendations and possibly changes to the legislation so that we could fix the bill, whether that meant tightening up some things that were prone to abuse or maybe loosening up the legislation in cases where it was needed. However, with the Liberal government's desire to short-circuit the legislative process and the will of the previous Parliament, it chose to fast-track the legislation by not choosing to appeal it to the Supreme Court. I believe this was done very purposely to ensure the legislation would pass before a review took place.

If the review had gone forward, as we have seen from the Council of Canadian Academies, there are a lot of questions about the practice of the legislation and how it has been carried out over the past few years. Abuses have been raised in committee and in the House repeatedly, yet in the legislation the government has taken no efforts to take those experiences and make this a safer piece of legislation for vulnerable people.

Going to the next example of why the government's problem is one it made itself, with the COVID-19 pandemic, which I agree was not the government's fault, it was required to request several extensions of the bill. The courts were willing to approve those extensions and, in late summer, Liberals chose to prorogue Parliament. By proroguing Parliament, they made the choice to clear the decks of all of their legislation, start from the beginning and send us back to the drawing board. By doing that, they delayed the legislation further. For the Liberal government to claim that Conservatives are holding up the bill when what we are doing is our constitutionally mandated job, especially on an issue as important as life and death, it does not ring true.

Another example is that if the bill was so important for the government to get passed so quickly, why was it not the first justice bill it put forward? Bill C-3 was passed in a very expeditious manner with all parties' support in the House. It was passed, largely, with the support of committee and minimal amendments. Even in that expedited manner, that delayed the government's legislation by weeks. The Liberals are talking and complaining about how Conservatives are allegedly delaying the legislation, but it was their own choices that resulted in the delay of the legislation.

We are left today with the government complaining that the Conservatives are doing their job. We are doing our job by criticizing the Liberals' legislation. We are holding them to account. We are championing the rights of vulnerable people. We will never apologize for doing what our constituents have sent us here to do, which is to stand up for their deeply held beliefs, to stand up for their concerns and to stand up for vulnerable people.

Vulnerable Canadians made their desires known and their concerns known very loudly and clearly at the committee. I am pleased to see that the other place has had more time to hear from witnesses. I believe it has heard from over 80 witnesses, the vast majority of whom are opposed to the legislation. Frankly, in the House, we only had four committee meetings for this very important legislation, so I am pleased that the Senate is taking its responsibility seriously and thoroughly examining the bill and hearing from vulnerable people and others who are concerned about the legislation.

The members of these communities were afraid of Bill C-14. They were assured by the government that they would be protected and that there were protections for people with mental illnesses from accessing it. There were protections for children. There was the reasonably foreseeable death requirement, which was touted as a great protection for the disabled community. I can tell members that what they are saying is that they are terrified by what they see in this bill from the Liberal government.

I read today on CBC that the Minister of Justice appears to be in a showdown with disabled groups who are demanding a halt to the bill. The idea that the Minister of Justice, whose role is to uphold the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for Canadians, is fighting and ignoring the pleas of disabled and other vulnerable Canadians is just plain wrong.

Conservatives have been listening and we have been fighting for these vulnerable Canadians. It appears that nobody else is willing to fight for them. That is what we will do. We are fighting for these vulnerable Canadians. We are not being intransigent about this bill. Conservatives have a wide range of perspectives on this issue. We have put forward, as a party, some very common-sense amendments that do not undermine the legality of medical assistance in dying as a general practice but will do a lot to assuage the fears of vulnerable Canadians.

Some of these common-sense amendments proposed at committee included protecting patients from undue coercion. By coercion, people immediately draw up images of doctors in deeply immoral situations pushing medical assistance in dying on vulnerable people who are isolated from loved ones and family members. I am not trying to say that is happening. Frankly, I think what we have seen is that it is a lot more benign than that. It is not doctors aggressively pushing medical assistance in dying on people.

Someone may be in a situation where there is a power imbalance, and as a disabled person, other vulnerable person or a person who is older, they might not have family members or access to supports like social workers and psychologists. In this situation, they trust their doctors and that is a good thing because our doctors work very hard and they are very professional. However, if someone has that trust relationship with their doctor and the doctor comes and asks if they have considered medical assistance in dying, that could seem very benign for an average person. If I was in a situation like that and the doctor came to me, I would say no thanks, but we never know what someone else is going through and what challenges they are facing.

If they do not have someone to turn to, they can feel like the doctor is looking out for their best interests and the doctor is suggesting that they consider medical assistance in dying, so maybe the doctor is right and maybe that person should consider it. In this case, we recognize there is a power imbalance. At committee, we suggested putting forward some very strong protections to say that health care professionals should in no way be presenting medical assistance in dying as an option to patients. This is a basic protection.

This is something we talked about with the last bill. I was actually very disturbed, during debate at second reading, when a Liberal member stood up and talked about a couple they knew who had not ever considered medical assistance in dying. It was a very touching story. The member nonchalantly said that the doctor came in, passed them a brochure and asked if they had ever considered medical assistance in dying. The member, I think, thought that this was an innocuous and benign situation, but for me and for people in disabled and vulnerable communities, it was very scary that they could be put into this situation without adequate supports. They might feel like they were being coerced into a decision.

We also wanted to put in some stronger protections around a period of reflection. I think the period of reflection is key because, even in the government's own reports on medical assistance in dying, there were many cases in which people did not receive disability supports, and they received MAID while still not receiving disability supports. There were people waiting to get palliative care who had not received access to palliative care who also received medical assistance in dying.

It clearly illustrates that the government is not putting the resources in to help disabled Canadians, or to help Canadians who need palliative care. If we shorten the timeline or eliminate the timeline all together, we are really losing an opportunity for people to access these wonderful services that can make the end of life much more peaceful.

One of the sad things about debating this bill today is that I feel like I am being forced to defend the status quo, implemented in the last Parliament under Bill C-14. I was not a big fan of Bill C-14, and as legislation it has proved time and again to fail to protect vulnerable people. It certainly did not protect the prisoners who underwent medical assistance in dying.

This issue was raised by the Office of the Correctional Investigator, and it has deep moral and ethical problems. Prisoners really have no power. He raised a case in which a prisoner was coming close to the end of life and wanted to die peacefully in the community with access to palliative care. They were denied the opportunity to do so, and then chose MAID instead. I think the correctional investigator was very astute in bringing that up. In situations where somebody does not have a right to determine their own manner of death or the manner that leads up to their death, how can they be given a choice to access medical assistance in dying? That raises some big issues.

In numerous cases, people were largely not sick with anything. In one case in the Globe and Mail a number of years ago, an elderly couple in their nineties wanted to die together. According to the article, they were not suffering from any pre-existing conditions, except arthritis, but it was ruled that because they were so old their deaths were reasonably foreseeable. That is really troubling. Medical professionals have raised the point that a reasonably foreseeable death is not actually defined in any medical journal. There is no definition of “reasonably foreseeable.” It is so subjective. One thing that I would have liked to see with this legislation was for the government to come forward with an actual medical definition of “reasonably foreseeable.” Instead, it has chosen to eliminate this language altogether, which waters down the protections.

Bill C-14 did not save people who were suffering from mental illness from receiving medical assistance in dying. There was a case in Chilliwack where somebody who had a history of depression was able to access medical assistance in dying in an expedited manner. Their family was not informed until very late into the process and they were not able to intervene and explain that this person, while they did have a reasonably foreseeable condition, also suffered from depression and other challenges and that maybe, with a social worker or a psychologist, those things could have been worked out and medical assistance in dying could have been avoided.

It is clear to me that we are removing even the barest of protections. We are removing this adequate reflection period and making this legislation, which is already prone to abuses, even more open with this new legislation.

The government claims this new bill is safe because it is explicitly denying people who are suffering exclusively from a mental illness from receiving MAID. When the previous legislation was brought in, even though I was not a member of the House at the time, I sat in on a lot of meetings. It is interesting that, in committee appearances and at the joint special committee, Dr. Sonu Gaind from the Canadian Psychiatric Association was very hesitant to endorse medical assistance in dying for people suffering from mental illnesses, especially exclusively mental illnesses. Their testimony said that they do not treat any mental illness as if it is untreatable. There is always a treatment. Sometimes it is a very difficult treatment or an ongoing treatment, but society must never accept that there is not a way to treat mental illness. The alternative is that we stop helping people and that they seek medical assistance in dying.

It is tricky when the government talks about excluding MAID for people with exclusively mental illness, but we are seeing that too many people who might qualify for medical assistance in dying because they have a physical condition and a reasonably foreseeable death also have a mental illness.

Where doctors are involved, they are very well educated but they are not necessarily educated in all aspects of health. Not every doctor is a psychologist or qualified to make mental illness determinations. How do we know that somebody who might have a reasonably foreseeable death, and who might have a previous condition, is not depressed and seeking medical assistance in dying for the purpose of their mental illness?

Under this legislation, there is no protection for those people seeking medical assistance in dying. While the government may say they qualify because they have a grievous and irremediable condition, we need to have more protections to ensure that people with mental illnesses are not seeking medical assistance in dying in the heat of the moment. Maybe they have had an incident that has led them to want it, and given more time to reflect maybe they could be dissuaded from seeking it.

There are no mechanisms, as I said. I am not going to just criticize, I am going to put forward actual, concrete ways I think we could make this legislation better. Unfortunately, it does not seem the government is in the mood to accept too many amendments from the Conservative side, but I will go ahead and say them anyway. We should require social workers and psychologists to be involved with decisions where underlying mental health issues, or issues related to access to income supports or to poverty, might be identified.

I was very disturbed to read in Maclean's magazine that some people are seeking medical assistance in dying because they are living in poverty. That was never written in the legislation. That was never intended as a purpose for medical assistance in dying. By including these important medical professionals, we could make it much more difficult for people to get medical assistance in dying who might not make that decision if it was between them and a doctor.

That leads me to one of my final points. The government is removing some of the witness requirements. Under the previous legislation, an independent witness who was apart from the medical process was required to be involved. That would provide accountability to ensure that doctors and health care professionals were crossing all their t's and dotting all their i's to make sure that this was a completely kosher procedure. By removing the independent witness requirement, it is leaving the decision up to a doctor and the patient.

I am going to be opposing this legislation. I look forward to the other place coming back with some very strong amendments. I look forward to debating those amendments again, and getting the best possible legislation that will protect vulnerable people in this country.

École Polytechnique in Montreal

[Jenica Atwin, Green, Fredericton, NB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleagues for allowing me to speak today.

The first words I spoke in the House were on December 6, 2019, in remembrance of the massacre at École Polytechnique. Today I think of the victims and the families of those lost, and indeed I think about Canada and what this day means for us as a nation.

I reflected then, as I do now, on the frame of mind of the individual who carried out the heinous act, and what could have possibly motivated a person to tear down the pillars of a community and snuff out bright lights.

Then, and now, I will say it was anti-feminism and misogyny. Violence against women and 2SLGBTQiA+ peoples continues to steal from us as a society. We lose aunties, sisters, friends, teachers and students. These words we share are important, our remembrance is essential and our actions must be immediate.

Since last December, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the realities for women at risk, particularly marginalized women including trans women, girls, femme-identified and non-binary people, racialized women and women of colour, indigenous women and immigrant women.

We see article after article about record numbers of calls to women's shelters for those fleeing violence. We see survey after survey describing the increasing severity and frequency of the violence and torment women are facing in their own homes during lockdowns. We see the oozing growth of online vitriol and hatred.

In April, we saw another terrible massacre in Nova Scotia that began with intimate-partner violence. That day 22 people lost their lives, 13 of them women. I am also haunted by Chantel Moore's story. This young indigenous woman was shot in her home, alone, by municipal police in my home province in June, without an explanation.

Two weeks ago, the final report on the implementation of the Merlo Davidson settlement agreement shocked many of us, with revelations of systemic and horrific misogyny and violence within the ranks of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Hon. Michel Bastarache, independent assessor, describes Canada's national police force as having a toxic culture, and recommends nothing short of an independent external review to reform policing in Canada. We absolutely must undertake this work immediately.

When indigenous women disappear from their communities, their families cannot trust that their lives will be valued. As long as our policing institutions are fraught with misogyny and racism, police cannot possibly hold citizens accountable for their gender-based hate and violence.

Today we remember the women whose lives were taken on December 6, 1989, at École Polytechnique by a man who hated the women who dared to study. We must also remember Chantel Moore and those lost in Nova Scotia.

As each week passes we lose more. In 2018, there were nearly 100,000 victims of intimate-partner violence. Four out of every five were women. That year, 87 people were murdered by their intimate partners.

Amid this pandemic, we have come together in the name of health. The year 2020 has proved that when we are united with a common goal, and when we tackle a societal crisis with intensity, albeit desperation, we can move mountains. We know change is hard, but we have seen progress. Bill C-3 is a testament to moving the needle by legislating training on sexual assault for judges.

I challenge my colleagues in the House and I challenge Canadians. What will it take for us to come together and to recognize gender-based violence as the crisis it is? We need to move this mountain. May we always remember this day.