Madam Speaker, last Thursday I rose in the House during question period and I asked a question which focused on the substance and on the seriousness of implementing key recommendations from the United Nations periodic peer review which was conducted last week in Geneva. This review included recommendations from some of our very close friends and allies, including the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.
Criticisms from the peer review included: Canada's failure to address violence against aboriginal women; the failure to uphold CEDAW obligations; the lack of effective remedies for particular rights violations, such as those in the area of economic and social rights of the most vulnerable; Canada's failure to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, especially in light of an opposition motion supporting its full implementation; and the fact that Canada has no strategy to eliminate poverty and homelessness, just to name a few.
My question focused on a number of these serious criticisms and asked about the government's plan to address them. In his answer, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development did not address the substance of my question and provided the House with information and quoted a reputable international rights lawyer from Winnipeg, David Matas, I think out of context.
In an email Mr. Matas sent to me on Friday, the day following the question, he points out that the minister “plays on an ambiguity. He takes something I said, about Canada's presentation, out of context. I was talking about form not substance. The drift of his answer suggests I was talking about substance and not form”.
In his comments, Mr. Matas continues in saying that the best one can say of the minister is that “he uttered a non sequitur, reacting to a question about how bad Canada is in substance by answering that Canada is in good form. It is illogical to respond to a charge of weaknesses in the Canadian human rights record by saying that Canada has presented a good report on those weaknesses...it looks to me that he has fallen into verbal game playing, undercutting at home what Canada is doing abroad. In Geneva, Canada is taking the UPR seriously, setting an example in the hope that other countries will also take the UPR seriously. This effort is undermined when Canada at home does not also take the UPR seriously but instead plays the kind of verbal games in which the minister has indulged”.
The government has still failed to adequately respond and give the House and indeed Canadians the answer they were looking for. Will the government finally stand and address the seriousness of this matter and let us know how it will address these recommendations, or will it continue to ignore the recommendations from international bodies and continue to embarrass Canada on the world stage?