Bill C-281

International Human Rights Act

An Act to amend the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law), the Broadcasting Act and the Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act

This enactment amends the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act to impose certain requirements on the Minister of Foreign Affairs in relation to international human rights. It also amends the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) to require the Minister of Foreign Affairs to respond to a report submitted by a parliamentary committee that recommends that sanctions be imposed under that Act against a foreign national.
In addition, this enactment amends the Broadcasting Act to prohibit the issue or renewal of a licence in relation to a broadcasting undertaking that is vulnerable to being significantly influenced by a foreign national or entity that has committed acts or omissions that theSenate or the House of Commons has recognized as genocide or that is subject to sanctions under the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) or under the Special Economic Measures Act .
Finally, it amends the Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act to prohibit a person from investing in an entity that has contravened certain provisions of the Act.

Human Rights

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

Mr. Speaker, the next petition is also in support of a private member's bill, Bill C-281, which is currently before the foreign affairs committee.

Petitioners note the importance of Canada's standing up for the rights of ethnic, religious and other minority groups targeted by human rights violations around the world, and they see this bill as an important step and an important tool in that fight for greater Canadian engagement in international human rights. They want to see the House act quickly to adopt Bill C-281, the international human rights act.

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

Madam Speaker, the second petition is in support of my colleague from Northumberland—Peterborough South's Bill C-281, the international human rights act.

Petitioners note the importance of Canada's defending human rights and adjusting legislation to ensure the government is accountable to Parliament in the ongoing fight for justice and human rights. Petitioners call on the House to quickly adopt Bill C-281, the international human rights act.

Foreign Affairs and International Development

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

Madam Speaker, if the member wants to take it in a partisan direction, as he clearly does, I will just say that for this Prime Minister, who clearly loves photo ops, this would be a case where a meeting and a photo would actually be quite meaningful. I would encourage the Prime Minister to take that opportunity, which is one that, as far as I know, he has not taken at any point during his premiership.

However, there are other steps the Prime Minister should take. He should endorse the middle-way approach. He should vote in favour of this motion. The government should bring forward legislation on reciprocal access to Tibet, modelled after bipartisan initiatives along these lines in the United States. The government should take action to protect victims of forced labour that we are seeing targeted at Uighurs, but I believe there is also forced labour that happens in Tibet. The government should make clear statements with respect to religious freedom in Tibet.

The government should adopt a similar framework to that contemplated by a new bill in the United States that would affirm Tibet's history and Tibetans' identity as a distinct people. The government should take real action on forced labour, again modelled after the bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States. The government should adopt Bill C-281, the international human rights act. It should use the Magnitsky act to target officials who are involved in gross human rights violations in Tibet.

There are many concrete actions the Government of Canada can and should take. I have no doubt that, regardless of them, we will hear members like this one stand up and say “Oh, the government is great.” I guess that is his job. However, constructively, there are specific actions the government could be taking around Magnitsky sanctions, around reciprocal access and around religious freedom that the government has not taken and should take as soon as possible.

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

Madam Speaker, the hon. member could have done a bit more research regarding the record of the previous government when it came supporting Tibet. Many important steps were taken in regard to engagement with and support for Tibet. One of them was the former prime minister hosting and meeting with the Dalai Lama. In a constructive spirit, if the current Prime Minister of Canada would be prepared to take that step, I think that would certainly send a positive message.

The Government of Canada should be clear and vocal in its support for the middle way. I am hopeful that this motion we put forward on a number of occasions will pass now and that the House will clearly pronounce that these are important steps forward. There are many other steps the government needs to take. I suggest applying Magnitsky sanctions to officials involved in the violation of human rights in Tibet and supporting Bill C-281, which is the international human rights act.

Criminal Code

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

Madam Speaker, this bill would create a mechanism by which those involved with forced organ harvesting and trafficking would be inadmissible to Canada.

In terms of broader sanctions, Magnitsky-style sanctions, it is important that we also pass Bill C-281, which would create a mechanism through which a parliamentary committee could recommend people for Magnitsky sanctions. That would help us move forward to ensure that more people involved in these kinds of human rights violations are put on the sanctions list.

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

,

seconded by the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard, moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

He said: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking today to Bill S-223, the next, and hopefully the last, in a long line of bills that have been proposed here and in the other place to begin the fight against the horrific practice of forced organ harvesting and trafficking.

I want to thank the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard for seconding the bill and recognize the incredible work done by Senator Ataullahjan as well, who proposed the bill. I have the honour of carrying that work on in this place.

The bill would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. Bill S-223 would also create a mechanism by which a person could be deemed inadmissible to Canada for involvement in forced organ harvesting and trafficking. The bill recognizes the basic moral principle that killing people or exploiting them for their organs is wrong everywhere and should be stopped everywhere.

Efforts to combat this practice have been ongoing in Canada's Parliament for close to 15 years, and the time that has elapsed underlines the sad reality of how long it takes to pass good private members' bills, even when everyone agrees. However, Bill S-223 has now made it further than any of its predecessors. Having passed the Senate and now been reported back from committee without amendments, the bill only needs to complete this third reading stage and receive royal assent before becoming law. Thanks to the member for Bow River trading with me today and the member for Simcoe North trading the second hour slot on Wednesday, the bill will complete debate this week and should pass its final vote in time for Christmas.

In the past I have always given uncharacteristically short speeches on the bill, trying to engineer an early collapse to debate to move the bill along more quickly. However, given that we now have the security of a second hour for debate lined up and a tight time line to move forward in any event, I will use the opportunity to now, for the first time, to lay out my views on this subject in the level of detail that the full time allows.

The bill responds to one particularly egregious human rights violation, but it would also take an important step toward the embracing of a vital principle of human rights more broadly; that is, the idea of the universality of human rights and of the responsibility of nations to prudentially use the means at their disposal to protect fundamental human rights, not only within their own nations but for every human being in every corner of the globe.

Bill S-223 would apply criminal prohibitions against organ harvesting and trafficking beyond Canada's borders. It recognizes that organ harvesting and trafficking is not just wrong in Canada as a result of particularly Canadian values or a particularly Canadian social contract. Rather, it recognizes that organ harvesting and trafficking is wrong because it denies the universal principle of inherent human dignity and value, a principle that should be understood and applied universally. In this sense, the bill seeks to continue the process of innovation around the principle of national sovereignty that began in 1948 with the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today, I would like to make the case for the importance of embracing this continuing process of innovation, though with appropriate balance and with necessary parameters.

The principle of national sovereignty comes most sharply from Peace of Westphalia, which ended 30 years of war in the Holy Roman Empire in 1648. National sovereignty emerged as a necessary practical compromise from the new reality created by the Protestant Reformation. Prior to the Reformation, western Europe had a kind of moral and religious unity, with the Pope as spiritual leader and the Emperor as a temporal ruler whose practical jurisdiction varied from place to place, but who expressed a kind civilizational unity of the western Christian world.

The Reformation ended that unity and led to generations of wars, with most of the Catholic powers struggling to restore that civilizational unity and with the Protestant powers, with the periodic help of France, seeking to break the power of the Pope and Emperor and create a reality in which nation states could be their own authority in most areas. The Peace of Westphalia, more from exhaustion than decisive victory, marked the end of this period of religious wars and the beginning of the period of nation states.

Notably, this was not the beginning of some great flowering of individual freedom, liberty and human rights. The division of Europe into blocs meant that Catholics were persecuted in Protestant nations just as Protestants were persecuted in Catholic nations, and later as Catholics were brutally persecuted in anti-religious revolutionary France. Westphalia was not about saying that individuals could believe and do what they liked; it was “cuius regio, eius religio”, the religion of the ruler shall be the religion of the state. Under these circumstances, religious persecution continued for hundreds of years, and nations, though less inclined to fight wars over religion, fought wars that reflected the aspirations of rulers, no longer checked or mediated by super-national structures that reflected civilizational unity.

The 18th and 19th centuries saw the rise of new universalist movements. The French Revolution and later Marxism were great threats to existing structures and ideas of national sovereignty, because they made universal claims about the kinds of power structures that should exist, instead of accepting the Westphalian idea that it was up to the local political authorities to decide how a place would be governed.

These movements were obviously different, but a common thread can be discerned in the thinking of political universalists of both the pre-Reformation and the Revolutionary type. They believed that, insofar as there is such a thing as truth, insofar as there is such a thing as human nature and insofar as there is a resulting right and wrong way for a people to be governed, efforts should be made to apply these principles universally. There is intuitive logic to the idea that truth and justice for human beings in one place should be the same as truth and justice for human beings in another place.

There are more modern arguments made for the rejection of this kind of moral universalism that propose the general subjectivity of truth. I will comment more on these arguments later. For the time being, we should note that the emergence of national sovereignty as a principle in European politics did not arise from the rejection of absolute truth in religious and political matters. Rather, it arose from the practical recognition that such universals could not be practically enforced through warfare, at least not at any acceptable cost. The idea of national sovereignty was seen as a necessary political compromise to preserve some measure of peace and security.

It is hard to say how well national sovereignty actually worked at achieving its objectives. One can never test counterfactuals, but we can never know what would have happened in Europe if this piece of political technology had not been invented. Certainly, Europeans kept fighting wars of various kinds after 1648, but the return of the broadest and most devastating European wars tended to align with the emergence of new universalist ideologies.

Following the last of these total European wars, nations came together to try to shape a new kind of settlement. This included the formation of the United Nations in 1945 and also the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exactly 300 hundred years after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia.

Many of history's human rights declarations, especially prior to 1948, were calls to arms or efforts to justify a violent revolution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was radical insofar as it asserted the universality of various fundamental human rights, but it was also conservative in the sense that it was the project of nation states, within a framework that still recognized nationality with sovereignty, it did not legally bind the state signatories to actually uphold the rights therein, and, of course, it did not contain a call to armed enforcement by the people.

This provided a somewhat contradictory foundation, and international human rights law has continued to evolve and grow since 1948 on that foundation that recognizes both national sovereignty and universal human rights as being of great importance.

Notwithstanding the evident tension between these concepts, international diplomacy and law today recognizes that we cannot and ought not dispense with either. An absence of recognition of national sovereignty would lead to perpetual conflict between nations representing irreconcilable philosophical systems. This was the background prior to the Peace of Westphalia and a reality intermittently renewed by the rise of universalist revolutionary and totalitarian movements.

However, the absence of any limits on national sovereignty aimed at protecting universal human rights would create a reality in which we would look the other way when nations would commit the most dastardly crimes toward their own people. Any moral person who believes in justice and universal human dignity must, at a certain point, refuse to consent to allowing certain evils to be committed in the name of national sovereignty. Even if the only consideration is national sovereignty, history shows us clearly that nations that show capricious disregard for the rights of their own people quickly become a menace to their neighbours.

Recognizing the necessary tension between national sovereignty and international human rights, the approach of many nations has sadly been to talk the talk of international human rights, but not to put in practice meaningful mechanisms to enforce such rights.

The clearest example of this approach is the approach taken to the crime of genocide. Canada is a party to an international convention that seeks to define and make illegal the crime of genocide, regardless of assertions of national sovereignty. I strongly support this idea in principle and in practice. Slaughtering a group of people in an attempt to eradicate them is a horrific denial of universal human dignity of the person, and we should do what we can to prevent it. However, unfortunately, while assenting to the idea in principle that genocide should be an international crime, the Government of Canada has been reluctant to actually recognize any acts of genocide while they are progress. It claims that its obligation to act in response to genocide is triggered by a determination by some undefined competent international authority, even if such authorities are easily manipulated by the state committing genocide.

Additionally, this line from the government is fundamentally out of step with our actual legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. Our obligations, as a signatory to the convention, are to uphold that convention, which includes our responsibility to protect victims of genocide, regardless of national sovereignty and regardless of determinations by UN bodies. This is the legal obligation that we have assumed.

I also acknowledge the reality that it is not prudential to send in our troops in every case where genocide is happening. However, rather than burying our heads in the sand and denying the existence of genocide, the government could seek to clearly define the nature and also the limitations of how we would operationalize a responsibility to protect.

In my view, we need to develop real tools for practically integrating a commitment to universal human rights with a commitment to some form of national sovereignty. If an individual is involved in a violation of international human rights and if the nation state in which the person lives elects not to punish them or even condones their actions, national sovereignty limits our ability to punish this criminal. However, without resorting to means that are imprudent and likely to lead to even greater violence, we should still seek ways to punish those involved in human rights violations beyond our borders and thus deter criminals from committing these crimes.

Enter Bill S-223, a little bill with a big idea. It is the idea that we should use the means reasonably at our disposal to punish violations of fundamental human rights that happen beyond our borders. We could do this by punishing Canadians who are complicit in these acts of violence and by shunning foreigners who are involved in such violence. In light of the emergent reality of global connectivity, these kinds of limited tools are still meaningful and begin the process of deterring crime that happens beyond our borders.

It is a good thing that, if we agree it is always and everywhere wrong to do such and such a thing to a human being, we try to come up with some mechanism of accountability for these crimes that is prudent and that does not return us to the kind of world that existed between the Protestant Reformation and the Peace of Westphalia.

This idea of actively applying international human rights principles extraterritorially is about us doing what we can under the circumstances to advance justice. A commitment to this principle is why I have worked hard on this bill and also why I strongly support similar legislative mechanisms, such as the increasing use of Magnitsky sanctions, the adoption of Bill C-281, which is the international human rights act, and the adoption of Bill S-211. I support these legislative efforts to promote justice beyond our borders, because my children here in Canada are no more or less human than Uighur children, Rohingya children, the young nephew of my assistant who faces a hard winter in Ukraine or Kian Pirfalak, a nine-year-old boy who was murdered by police while attending a pro-freedom protest in Iran.

In conclusion, I want to return to a question I raised earlier: the case for universal moral claims in a world made up of diverse cultures and political traditions.

Every society since the dawn of time has tried to regulate itself with doctrines of something like morality. It is impossible for people to live together in a community if they do not regulate their interactions in some way. Furthermore, it is in our nature as beings to try to live rationally, to try to explain the decisions we make with reference to some good or goods.

However, while there has never been a society without some kind moral doctrines, and while those moral doctrines have sought to protect the lives and security of certain individuals, most societies have excluded certain groups or individuals from that protection. They have sought to protect an in-group without protecting an outgroup, seeking to narrow the definition of what it is to be human and perhaps allowing the exploitation of the outgroup for some advantage.

The core of my political philosophy is a simple commitment to universal humanism. It is the idea that we should not think in terms of in-group and outgroup when making decisions about fundamental human rights. If we are to speak authentically about human rights, then these are rights for all humans, regardless of age, environment, citizenship, skin colour or any other factor. Throughout history and still today, there are many who seek to limit the human family for their own convenience, but I believe that a person is a person.

Naturally there are certain kinds of rights that do flow from exchange. A worker has a right to wages. That is a right particular to the worker. A citizen has certain rights that accord with the obligations they have taken on to the nation in which they live. However, when we speak of human rights, these are rights that do not exist because of exchange. Rather, they are rights that flow from the universal nature of the human person.

Ideas of rights and justice are philosophical propositions that cannot be proven scientifically. All doctrines of human rights have their roots in something like faith: in the embrace of propositions that are not scientifically verifiable. However, the idea of universal human rights flowing from a universal humanness can be supported by observing how it accords with the universal aspirations of all people.

Today, as we speak, the people of China and the people of Iran are taking to the streets bravely demanding change. As we speak, incredibly, both of these totalitarian governments are at least feigning in the direction of concession. Also, the people of Ukraine have resisted and continue to heroically resist Putin's invasion, even as more and more Russians bravely express their own discontent.

I am proudly here today endorsing this universal movement for freedom and justice, to say that a person is a person no matter where they live and to say that we can and should prudentially work to affirm and give greater meaning to the idea of universal human rights.

Government Business No. 22—Extension of Sitting Hours and Conduct of Extended Proceedings

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Madam Speaker, I completely agree that I have made mistakes; I am not without sin. I try to talk directly about those things. However, I would disagree with something very important the member opposite said. I have yet to meet a man or woman who stops making errors in sin. Is he that person in front of me? I do not think that is what he is saying, but I do think the fundamental lesson is whether we learn from that. It is not whether we make a mistake. It is whether we atone for that mistake, whether we are truthful about that mistake and whether we move forward.

Nothing exists other than the moment we are in right now and the conversation that I am having. I do not believe that I am coming across with grievance. If the member wants me to be more specific, let me talk to Bill C-281. The member for Northumberland—Peterborough South, who was just speaking, talked about his son, the type of world he wanted to have and why he was supporting the bill. I do not deny that those are his motivations. I do not deny that is what he is trying to do.

The member opposite can vociferously disagree with my approach, but surely he cannot disagree that, like him, I am a person of character trying to make a difference in the world and in this country. I know how hard it is to get elected. I know how difficult it is to be an MP. When we do not talk with compassion to one another, then people do not treat us with compassion. If they do not think we are hon. members, they will not listen to what we have to say.

Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the sponsor of this motion and everybody who is joining us for this debate. I know there are many people present in the precinct and following along online.

I have the honour of being the co-chair, along with my friend, the mover of this motion, of the parliamentary friendship group for Uighurs. That is one of many reasons that I am proud to speak in support of Motion No. 62 and express the support of the Conservative Party for this motion. I expect that when it comes to a vote, we will be able to speak united and with one voice.

I think there is a critically important role for the official opposition, which is to support the government in the areas we agree with and challenge the government when there are gaps in the response.

This issue is deeply personal for me. It is not hard to tell that I am not of Uighur background myself, but my grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. She was a Jewish child who grew up in Germany and hid out, and many of her family members were killed. I was raised with an awareness of the grievous injustice that had been visited upon her extended family. She was in a position, as a vulnerable child and a member of a persecuted minority, where she was not able to speak out about her own situation, but she survived the war because people who had a voice and had an opportunity to speak had the courage to speak out against what was happening, the injustices that were happening.

I have a big portrait on the wall in my office of Blessed Clemens von Galen, who was the bishop of the Munster area of Germany where she was. He was a bold, fearless critic of the Nazis, someone who had a position of privilege within that society and used his position to speak out against injustice.

A couple of years ago, my sister and I took a trip to Berlin. We were looking at the sites of deportation. What strikes Canadians when they go to Europe is how much closer everything is together. We are used to wide open spaces. We saw the streets through which Jews were brought to a train station and where they were being sent away, and what struck me was the apartment buildings that are close by where people, everyday Germans, would have been living. They would have been able to look down and see their former neighbours and people from their community being pushed and herded away to their deaths.

When I was there with my sister, we talked about this, and I wondered what these people were thinking, the ones who could see what was going on. Perhaps they had a mix of perspectives and knew it was wrong but were afraid in some way of the consequences of speaking out for truth and justice. What were they thinking? Why did they not do more?

At the end of the Second World War, we made a promise to my grandmother's generation of “never again”. Never again would we allow people to be slaughtered because of their ethnic or religious background. We would do everything possible to make genocide a crime and stop it everywhere. However, in the seven years I have spent as a member of Parliament, we have recognized and responded to not one but multiple cases of ongoing genocide. It is clear that we have failed to deliver on the promise we made to my grandmother's generation.

I think about those apartment buildings and the people who could see the injustice happening in front of them. Today, we have satellite imagery. We do not need to be in apartment buildings directly above what is happening. We can see the photographs. We can look at the numbers and see the precipitous drop in birth rates as a result of forced abortion, forced sterilization and systemic sexual violence targeting the Uighur community.

I owe it to my grandmother and to those like her to use the voice I have now to speak out against contemporary injustices, recognize the failure to live up to that promise of “never again” and do all we can to respond.

The first step should be a recognition of the crime of genocide, because in the history of jurisprudence following the Second World War, we tried to establish this crime of genocide and establish a responsibility to protect. Individual nations that are a party to the genocide convention have an obligation. It is not just an obligation where there is conclusive proof of genocide, but an obligation when there is evidence that genocide may be occurring.

Those obligations exist for individual states who are parties to that convention. Those obligations do not depend on whether some international body determines it to be a genocide. Those obligations are for individual states who are signatories to the genocide convention. Canada is a signatory, so Canada has obligations. We have a responsibility to act to protect when we see a genocide happening or when there is evidence to suggest that there may be a genocide happening.

This testimony was clearly given by former justice minister Irwin Cotler at the Subcommittee on International Human Rights when we studied this question. He made clear in his testimony that not one but all five of the possible conditions of the genocide convention have likely been transgressed in the case of Uighurs. The evidence was clear then, and the evidence is more clear now than it was then. When this Parliament first voted on the question of genocide recognition, it was before some of the new information that has come out since and various other tribunals that have made all the more clear the situation we are in.

The problem is that, since nations have recognized that they have an obligation to respond to genocide and that they have an obligation to protect in the case of genocide, those same nations have become reluctant to acknowledge that a genocide is taking place, because when they acknowledge that a genocide is happening, then they are legally obliged to act. However, whether or not they are willing to admit that they know, they do know because the evidence is clear. To paraphrase William Wilberforce, we may choose to look away, but in the face of the evidence, we may never again say that we did not know.

The evidence has been there, yet again this week we had a motion before the House on genocide recognition. Everyone who voted, voted in favour of genocide recognition, but the cabinet still abstained. This is extremely important because, if the government had voted in favour of that motion, it would be recognizing the legal obligations it has under the genocide convention, but it still failed to do that. I salute members of all parties who have been prepared to take that step nonetheless, but it would be that much more impactful if the cabinet, if the Government of Canada, was prepared to take that step.

The House of Commons, by the way, has led in the world. We were the first democratic legislature in the world to recognize the Uighur genocide, and many other legislatures followed. Ironically, while our legislature has led, the government has not yet taken that step.

Nonetheless, there are still so many more things that we can do and we need to do. Now we are seeing myriad private member's motions and bills coming from various parties that respond to the recognition that at least individual members have, if not the government, that a genocide is taking place. We have Motion No. 62, which seeks to advance targeted immigration measures to support Uighurs. We have various pieces of legislation, such as Bill S-211 and Bill S-204, that seek to address forced labour. We have proposals, such Bill C-281, which would strengthen our sanctions regime and allow parliamentary committees to nominate individuals for sanction.

We see this flurry of activity now from members of Parliament and senators using the power that we have as parliamentarians to respond to this recognition of genocide, but the ultimate power rests in the hands of the government. It is the government that has to act, even in the case of the motion before us, which is a non-binding motion that makes a recommendation to the government. It is an important tool to encourage the government to act.

Of course, the government did not have to wait for Motion No. 62, and it does not need to wait for it now. The motion contains a timeline that is fairly generous to the government, fair enough, but I would challenge the government to take up its responsibility. Individual members of Parliament are doing what we can to be a voice for the voiceless to recognize the reality, and the government must as well.

I believe that every single member of this cabinet who has looked at the evidence knows that a genocide is happening and knows that they have an obligation. It will be to their eternal shame if they do not act on that knowledge as soon as possible.

Citizenship and Immigration

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

Mr. Speaker, it has been a pleasure to work with the member's colleague from the Bloc on many of these issues. His colleague proposed the amendment. He talked about this in relation to an Olympic boycott, which was, I think, one potential way of the international community sending a strong signal. Unfortunately, that signal was not sent early enough with sufficient magnitude to achieve the result that his colleague and other members of this House were advocating for.

There are many different things we can do legislatively to push for justice for Uighurs. I really appreciated the speech given by another one of the Bloc member's colleagues on Bill C-281, which is an important international human rights piece of legislation. We have Bill S-211 and Bill S-223 as well, which are both before the foreign affairs committee and are unfortunately waiting to move forward. There are also the immigration measures, the concurrence motion and the motion to be debated later this week. There are many different things we can do.

I wonder if the member would like to comment on the breadth of areas where Canada's Parliament could take action and on the fact that we can make a difference through the steps we take here in Canada's Parliament, even to impact injustices that are half a world away.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, presented to the House on Friday, April 29, be concurred in.

I appreciate the opportunity to open debate, a debate that I understand will be, by unanimous consent, continuing this evening, on the sixth report, which deals with the ongoing injustices facing Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims and the work that we need to do as a House in response to it.

I am grateful for the work of the immigration committee. This is a unanimous report that highlights many important issues, and I want to start the debate by reading points from the report into the record and then discussing them.

The report states:

In light of the fact that Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China face an ongoing genocide, and in light of the fact that those in third countries are at continuing risk of detention and deportation back to China, where they face serious risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and other atrocities, the committee calls on the government to:

a) extend existing special immigration measures to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, including the expansion of biometrics collection capabilities in third countries and the issuance of Temporary Resident Permits and single journey travel documents to those without a passport;

b) allow displaced Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in third countries, who face risk of detention and deportation back to China, to seek refuge in Canada;

c) waive the UNHCR refugee determination;

d) and the government provide a comprehensive response by letter to the committee within 30 days.

This motion follows an important step taken by the House about a year and a half ago when the House voted to recognize the Uighur genocide. It was a unanimous vote of all who voted in this place. As members will recall, cabinet abstained and still has not declared its position, but the vote that will take place on this motion, because it is a vote to agree with this report, will provide cabinet and the government with another opportunity to declare their position with respect to the Uighur genocide.

I reflect as well on the fact that much of this conversation was started in the House with the recognition of the genocide motion, but there has been much more discussion in the international community and evidence that has come out since. Just recently, there was the report of Michelle Bachelet. There were significant efforts to influence that report and there were significant limitations with respect to the work she was able to do, but, nonetheless, very damning conclusions came out of that report.

Various analyses have shown forced sterilization, systemic sexual violence targeting Uighur women, people being taken away and put in concentration camps, clear violations of the UN definition as it pertains to genocide and states that are party to that have an obligation to recognize and respond in those cases. This report recognizes and reaffirms that.

The focus of this report is on other measures that the House and the government need to take in response to these events. I want to focus on the ones in this report, as well as other additional measures that can and should be taken.

Following that recognition, even while the government has still not declared its position, other members of Parliament have been trying to put forward constructive initiatives that respond to the question of what Canada can do to advance the issue of justice and human rights for Uighurs. There have been a number of different areas where proposals have been put forward in the House.

This report speaks on additional immigration measures that have been put forward, and I know that later this week we will be having the first hour of debate on Motion No. 62. I should have made note of my colleague's constituency name before, but my colleague from somewhere in Montreal is proposing that and we will be debating that for the first hour on Wednesday. We are seeing a number of different initiatives on the immigration front.

We recognize the reality that Uighurs in China obviously often struggle to get to safety, but, increasingly, the efforts of the Government of China to have influence beyond its borders are creating greater and greater challenges, escalating pressures on refugees who have fled, maybe thought they were in a safe place and are now facing intimidation and persecution that is being pushed on the countries where they are resident as a result of pressure from the Government of China.

As it relates to third countries, it is worth mentioning the case of Huseyin Celil, who is a Canadian citizen detained in China. This was a case where he did not travel to China. Mr. Celil was in Uzbekistan, but was taken from Uzbekistan and sent back to China, where he has been detained for over a decade and a half. Underlining that is the fact that we need to recognize how CCP pressure on third countries can lead to people being sent back and facing human rights violations in the process.

Canada can be a place of safety for these folks in the Uighur diaspora who have left China but who are still facing the risks of potential persecution and repatriation in the countries where they are.

That is why Canada should be looking at strengthening special immigration measures. Our view on this side of the House is that we need to recognize the important role played by private sponsoring organizations and a strategy for responding to persecution and supporting victims of human rights abuses should involve collaboration between governments and private sponsoring entities.

We need to recognize that there may not be resources within those private sponsoring entities to cover all of the needs that exist, and there could be vehicles for joint sponsorship. There could even be cases, perhaps, where the government provides the funding but organizations on the ground here in Canada play a specific role in welcoming newcomers.

All of the data suggests that those who are privately sponsored have a greater level of success once they are here in Canada, so we should look for opportunities in the process to engage private sponsors, such as mosques, churches, synagogues, faith groups, community groups and civil society, to help people acclimatize to coming to Canada. We recognize that this is not just a question of state policy, but the process of welcoming refugees is a collective effort that all Canadians can be involved in. I think, in many cases, people from different backgrounds and different experiences want to be involved, and they certainly get a lot out of it.

I want, as well, to discuss some of the other measures that we need to be taking about, coming out of where we were a year and a half ago.

I have sponsored a private member's bill in this place that comes from the other place, from Senator Ataullahjan. Bill S-223 is a bill that would combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. The bill would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. This is a private member's bill that would have Canada doing what it can to combat this horrific practice of forced organ harvesting and trafficking.

I do want to note that, unfortunately, the progress of Bill S-223 has been stalled. It has been sitting before the foreign affairs committee for months and months. We have not been able to get it adopted and sent back to the House. In fact, I was not originally scheduled to be here in the House right now. I was scheduled to be testifying before the foreign affairs committee, but at the last minute, the meeting scheduled to conduct hearings on Bill S-223 was cancelled by the Chair. That has further delayed the process of bringing this bill forward.

The bill to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking is pertinent now because we are hearing more about Uighurs being victims of this practice, but it is something that has been going on for decades. In particular, the Falun Gong community has highlighted the abuse of forced organ harvesting and trafficking and how it impacts their community.

It has actually been 15 years that parliamentarians have been working on a bill to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. Borys Wrzesnewskyj was first to bring one forward. Irwin Cotler also had a bill.

Since I was elected in 2015, I have been working on this with Senator Ataullahjan through the last three Parliaments. This bill has passed the Senate three times, twice in its current form. It has passed the House once in its current form. It has been studied multiple times by Senate committees and by a House committee, so I think it is time that we finally get it done, if we are able to end the logjam around it at the foreign affairs committee. It should not be about any one individual. This is a bill that will save lives if it is passed. I hope we are able to get it done.

A lot of work, as well, has been done on this issue of forced labour. There are significant concerns about how Uighurs are victims of forced labour and, in general, how Canada's laws to combat forced labour are totally inadequate. There is much more work that needs to be done. Another bill before the foreign affairs committee, also with an unclear timeline around it, is Bill S-211, a bill from a colleague on the government side. It has broad support in the House, and Conservatives supported fast-tracking it at second reading, but it is, again, not moving forward at the moment.

We need to move forward with these bills that are currently before the foreign affairs committee. Bill S-223 and Bill S-211 are two excellent bills. One is on organ harvesting, and the other is aimed at addressing an issue of forced labour.

Bill S-211 would create a reporting mechanism. It is an important step forward, but the other thing we need to do is recognize that in the Uighur region, for example, there is a very significant, very large issue of forced labour. I support measures, such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States, a bipartisan piece of legislation, that would recognize the particular issues in that region, and perhaps in other regions, where there are really significant and coordinated state-pushed efforts to have forced labour. We need to specifically designate those regions.

We need to look at, for instance, Bill S-204, a bill put forward by Senator Housakos that is not in the House yet. It is still in the other place. That bill would impose a ban on the import of any goods coming out of Xinjiang or East Turkistan, the region where Uighurs are in the majority. The goal of this is to recognize the reality that so much of what is produced and exported in that region is tainted by slave labour. We need to have an approach that recognizes the particular risks in this region and targets that region as well. That is another issue that we need to move on legislatively and there may be other measures we can consider that involve the designation of specific regions. This would target the specific regions in the world where we know there is a very high level of forced labour and a high risk that goods coming out of there will have involve slave labour.

There are many mainstream brands that people will be familiar with, that they may use products from, that import products from that part of the world. It is very concerning. The government announced a new policy on combatting these imports, but, in fact, there was only one shipment that was ever stopped and it was subsequently released. Therefore, we are clearly lacking in this area, and there is much more work that needs to be done.

In terms of some of the legislative proposals that are coming forward, I want to also recognize Bill C-281, a bill that had its first hour of debate recently and has its second hour of debate coming up soon. It is from my colleague in Northumberland—Peterborough South.

Bill C-281 is the international human rights act. It contains a number of measures that would push forward Canada's response on international human rights, including requiring the minister of foreign affairs to table an annual report regarding the government's work on international human rights, include listing, as part of that report, prisoners of conscience, which is of particular concern.

It would also create a mechanism by which individuals could be nominated for sanctions under the Magnitsky act and a parliamentary committee could pass a motion suggesting that someone be sanctioned under the Magnitsky act. If that motion were to pass, the minister would be obliged to provide some kind of a response. This parliamentary trigger mechanism for Magnitsky sanctions has been adopted in other countries. It is very important because a Magnitsky sanctions tool, though a powerful tool, still leaves the discretion entirely in the hands of the government.

There have been many countries around the world where there are serious human rights abuses, and the government has actually failed to sanction anybody from that country. There has been very limited use of Magnitsky sanctions in response to the Uighur genocide. That is why I support this proposal from my colleague to have a parliamentary trigger mechanism, so that a parliamentary committee could, if not compel the government to sanction someone, at least compel the government to provide some kind of a response with respect to why they are or are not considering moving forward with a sanction.

These are some of the measures that we have moved on, from the act of recognition by Parliament a year and a half ago to now, trying to propose concrete, constructive measures that would see Canada play a greater and greater role in combatting this ongoing injustice. We have talked, of course, about the immigration measures that are called for in this report as well as immigration measures that have been put forward in other initiatives that we have seen. We have talked about the issues of forced organ harvesting and trafficking and the legislation that has been put forward on that.

We have talked about different kinds of trade measures, such as those contained in Bill S-211 from Senator Miville-Dechêne, as well as Bill S-204 from Senator Housakos. Bill S-211, which is the general reporting mechanism requiring companies to be involved in reporting on these issues, also has the designation of particular regions of concern and the issues that come out of those. Then there are the other measures in the International Human Rights Act from my colleague, in Bill C-281.

As such, we have seen many different legislative initiatives. I guess one thing to acknowledge that they all have in common is that they are all private members' initiatives, so we are seeing a flurry of activity from individual members, many from our side, many from the Senate and some from other parties as well. However, we have not really seen any government legislation that is aimed at closing the gap, and I think members understand the processes of this House and the long and arduous journey every private member's bill has to make. I have seen it myself in the work I have done on the organ harvesting and trafficking issue. I work on a piece of legislation, and every time it is actually voted on it is unanimous, yet there are so many steps it has to go through, little amendments here and there, that it ends up not getting done.

We are in the third Parliament in which I have worked on this bill, and it has been attempted in two previous Parliaments as well, so there is this long journey private members' bills have to go on, and the risks are the same for other good private members' bills that are responding to urgent and present human rights concerns. That is why the government should take a look at some of these initiatives and maybe consider putting forward proposals that advance them through government legislation.

There is so much more that needs to be done on this issue of forced labour, like even getting it out of government procurement, never mind addressing the import of products of forced labour that come into the private sector. We are relying on private members' legislation to do that job, and we should support these private members' bills, but the government should be willing to lead on this and provide really comprehensive solutions.

One of the areas the government can particularly lead in combatting the injustice facing Uighurs is in working more closely with our allies on combatting the importation of products made from forced labour. There is obviously a lot of tracing and data work that is required in terms of blocking out products made from forced labour from coming into Canada, and this is why we can benefit from sharing information with our allies. If we have consistent laws and are sharing information around forced labour, then we can be more effective working in collaboration.

In fact, we have already started down this road by recognizing as part of our trade deal with the United States and Mexico an obligation around combatting forced labour, but Canada needs to now live up to that obligation. We can share information. We can adjust our policies to really strengthen the work that is required to prevent products from forced labour from coming into this country.

In conclusion, I want to recognize the incredible work that has been done by the Uighur community in particular, but more broadly by other communities, like the Muslim community in general and many other communities that are coming alongside as allies in support of justice and human rights, who have been advocating on these various points related to the injustices the Uighurs have faced.

The information has very clearly been exposed, despite the best efforts of certain actors to suppress it. It is now widely known: the existence of a campaign to put people in concentration camps, forced sterilization and systemic sexual violence. The subcommittee on international human rights two years ago heard brutal testimony from survivors about what had happened, and I reflected at the time on this quote from William Wilberforce, who said, “[Y]ou may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.”

Members of Parliament answered that call; the subcommittee on international human rights was unanimous and the House was unanimous, but the cabinet has still been silent and unclear, so this motion would provide the cabinet with an opportunity to vote again on the question, since this motion would reaffirm a recognition of the genocide.

It would also go further. We are not waiting for the cabinet; we are pushing forward with measures that are required in terms of pushing for additional immigration measures, and I have talked about the need to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking, the need to bring in new trade measures and the important additional measures in Bill C-281.

I hope members will support this concurrence and the other measures that are urgently required to stand with our Uighur brothers and sisters, who face so much injustice in China as well as threats even after they have fled.

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

Madam Speaker, I should ask the member, given the presence of my colleague from Northumberland—Peterborough South, about Bill C-281, which is a private member's bill that my colleague put forward to strengthen the Magnitsky act by creating a mechanism by which a parliamentary committee can effectively nominate someone to be sanctioned under the act and require the government to respond. The existence of a parliamentary trigger, which exists in other countries, in a way forces the government to be more engaged in responding to what parliamentarians are proposing with respect to sanctions.

Does the member think the excellent proposals from my colleague in Bill C-281, which would create a greater role for parliamentarians in putting forward individuals for sanctioning, would strengthen our democracy and our sanctions regime?