Foreign Affairs Committee on April 15th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Fonseca, thank you very much.

Mr. Diotte.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I agree with my colleague Mr. Chong. I love the fact that we could be looking at exposing a lot of human rights abuses and so forth. We know the world is full of that. In some ways it's way too broad. I don't know where you would even start, because I think there are probably human rights violations in almost every nation in the world if you started drilling down. It is far too broad.

It's very subjective when you talk about right-wing extremists. I'll give you an example. I was just looking at the Toronto Star today. This columnist opined the following:

In truth, the vast majority of mainstream media leans to the right. That includes the Globe and Mail, National Post and other Postmedia newspapers, the Toronto Sun and other Sun papers across Canada, CTV, Global TV and a slew of radio talk shows.

In this person's opinion, all mainstream media appears to be right-wing. I think you would get a pretty good argument from most Conservatives that this is not true.

I agree with Mr. Chong that we should take out the “right-wing” reference and talk about “ideologically motivated”, perhaps, and make it as broad a study as possible.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Diotte, thank you very much.

Mr. Genuis.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll have to comment on the main motion when we get back to it, because procedurally this is a recommendation for a study. Generally speaking, these are conversations that happen at the subcommittee on agenda and procedure, which is an effort to work out specific parameters around what kinds of studies we want to do and prioritize different agenda items. I think obviously there is a lot of value to the things that could be studied in terms of the issues that Dr. Fry referred to. She referred to a very broad spectrum of issues, and I do think the call for some degree of focus is important.

To speak to the amendment in particular, I think we see an authoritarian trend around the world. My view is that a great deal of that is enabled by the more aggressive posture of the Chinese government to the world. It is trying to push authoritarian norms that are contrary to democratic norms, and that authoritarian trend puts on “right-wing” clothing or “left-wing” clothing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Genuis, I'm getting a flag from the tech department. Is it possible to just lift your microphone a bit, please? That should probably help us to resume interpretation.

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

Thank you. My apologies for that. I had to transition to be a bit closer to the House, because I have a speech in a moment.

We see that this authoritarian trend puts on right-wing clothing, it puts on left-wing clothing and it puts on centrist clothing in certain countries. It justifies itself very often in terms of ethnic nationalism, but drawing from all different parts of a conventional right/left economic and political spectrum.

I think we know this. I think we see the authoritarianism of the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, China and Belarus. We see the human rights abuses perpetrated by the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It seems like an odd enterprise to try to classify as “right-wing” or “left-wing”, according to our own understanding of those terms, the authoritarian trends and human rights abuses that are taking place in some of these countries.

I think Mr. Chong has made that point well. He has alluded to best practices recommended by CSIS. In response to that, Mr. Fonseca said that, well, we hear the media use the term “right-wing extremism”. I don't know if that's really true. There may be some media that use this terminology, but there may be other media that use different terminology. Even if what he said is correct, I think we should be more motivated by the best practices coming from CSIS to correctly classify the kinds of extremism we're talking about.

At the end of the day, based on what has been said so far, I don't have a sense of what in particular, in three meetings, we would study, with a limited possibility of witnesses we would hear from, of course, in just three meetings, or what the scope would be. I think you could identify a few specific ideological movements. You could identify a few specific countries or a few specific organizations that you might want to study in the time prescribed, but this is a big catch-all, with an ideological buzzer attached to it that doesn't fit.

I would suggest that, first of all, we adopt the amendment, and then we take a bit of a step back. We have a full agenda for the next few meetings. We can have discussions at the subcommittee on agenda and procedure and say that there's some merit to the ideas here. Let's figure out if we want to look specifically at violent movements that identify with national socialism. Do we want to look at two or three particular countries that are moving in an authoritarian direction? Do we want to look at one particular group of victims mentioned in the motion? Do we want to look particularly at persecution against LGBTQ+ people? Do we want to identify some category of violence or state—

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

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

I think that would be a more productive way of focusing our—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

One second, Mr. Genuis.

Dr. Fry, you have a point of order.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

I'm sorry. We're discussing the amendment. I appreciate Mr. Genuis's points about the motion as a whole, but can we stick to the amendment right now, please? Then we can go ahead to the motion as a whole.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Dr. Fry.

Yes, in the interests of time, colleagues, just to remind you, we have a hard stop at 5:30.

Mr. Genuis, if you could just redirect your comments as precisely as possible to the amendment, that would be helpful.

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

Sure. Thank you.

I'll just make one more comment on the amendment, then, and I'll wrap up on that.

I think the goal of this should be that we be united as a committee in identifying language we can use that isolates extremists and that condemns extremism. Generally speaking, I think we stay away from terminology like “Islamic extremism”—or at least I very much try to stay away from it—because the implication of that use of language for people from the Muslim community, they have told me, is that they see it as potentially making implications about or casting aspersions on all those who are Muslim. That's why I think that even the media, but certainly parliamentarians, try to be precise in their language to avoid the implication of associations with broader groups.

Although not all of the same issues apply, I think a similar principle applies, in that when we are calling it “extremism”, we shouldn't associate that extremism with another political philosophy or faith tradition or anything else. We should try to identify and isolate the extremism itself as being the thing we're condemning, not the group whose name those extremists may be trying to use. I think that should be taken into consideration by members as well, and I hope this amendment will pass.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was fine with the initial version of the motion. That said, I rather think that we must try to avoid elements that could divide us, as is the case with these two terms. I think that anything that attacks the rights of women or the rights of LGBTQ+ communities constitutes extremism. I completely agree with the motion as initially worded, but I am quite ready to accept it being amended to focus on extremism only.

Mr. Genuis is absolutely right to point out that there are suspicions of women being forcibly sterilized in the People's Republic of China. I don't think that is a country we could refer to as far-right. He also pointed out very appropriately the fact that Islamist extremism, which attacks women and the rights of gays, lesbians and so on, is also extremism. I think that any attack on the rights of women or of the LGBTQ+ community constitutes extremism.

I would tend to rather agree with Mr. Chong's amendment, namely that we should stick to the term “extremism” only. That would avoid politicizing our motion and dividing us. Its effect would be to make our motion unifying and make us all recognize ourselves in it.

Ultimately, the objective is to look into any extremism that could attack the rights of women and of LGBTQ+ communities. I must say that I am in favour of Mr. Chong's motion, even though I think it was very appropriate to vote in favour of the initial motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bergeron.

We have about three minutes remaining. We have a hard stop tonight because of resource constraints. What I propose to do is preserve the speaking order, just like we did last time. We'll adjourn at 5:30, and we will resume the discussion at the very next opportunity in committee business.

Dr. Fry, you have the floor.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually agree with Mr. Chong's amendment. I think if you want to do a good job on a study, you want to walk away from being too subjective or using too many adjectives to describe what your ideology is about.

I think the word “extremism”.... When you look at Belarus, Russia, China, Venezuela and at non-governmental organizations like Antifa, etc., we have left-wing extremists and we have right-wing extremists. I have heard the argument CSIS made. It's a good argument, so let's take away this florid language and just talk about extremism in whatever form it takes.

As a mover of the motion, I'm happy to support Michael's amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Dr. Fry, thank you very much.

We are now down to about a minute. I will give the floor to Ms. Saks.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate Dr. Fry's support of the potential amendment. However, I think it's really important to clarify that how we got here with putting this motion on the floor in the first place, and the temperature and the rise...and the particular rise in extremism that we're seeing, as Mr. Fonseca mentioned, south of the border. There's a lot of good work to be done, but we need to be clear on the lenses we're looking at in identifying and naming each of these categories of extremism. It's very easy to do this broad lens, but there are definitive categories that are in mainstream news outlets and also academic conversations and studies on whether it's religious extremism, xenophobia and so on and so forth. I don't want us to start to make the umbrella so wide we lose the purpose of why we're honing in on this at this time.

I'm mindful that we are at the 5:30 mark. We need to explore this a little bit so that when we put the lens of extremism we're not making it too broad for the purpose of the study that we want to do in three sessions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Ms. Saks, with apologies, let me interrupt you there. We are at 5:30 p.m. Tonight we have a hard constraint because of House of Commons resources.

I propose that we do exactly what we did last time. On Mr. Chong's amendment, I have Ms. Saks, Mr. Oliphant and Mr. Fonseca as being in line, as well as Dr. Fry. I propose that we preserve that order and reopen our discussion at the very next committee session on Dr. Fry's motion. We will go in that order, with colleagues being invited to add themselves to the list as we continue the discussion.

If that's agreeable to the committee, we will capture it that way.

We stand adjourned until our next session next week.

Thank you so much, colleagues. Be safe.