Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the mover for this motion and also thank his colleague for the legislation he put forward.
I am going to start my comments by quoting an article that was written a couple of years ago by Eve Ensler. Her article, which was in Glamour magazine, sent shock waves through the world. It started off with, “I have just returned from hell”. Those words were conveying her return from the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where we see horrific violence. What she had just seen was something no one should ever see, but for sure no one should ever experience.
She had been to the Panzi Hospital. She had seen girls as young as eight years old who had been gang-raped. She had seen the effects of gender war on a civilian population. What she had seen is something that is still ongoing.
Hundreds of thousands of women and girls, children, have been subjugated into something that is not just deplorable, but something that has been contemplated. What we are talking about is rape as a weapon of war. Indeed, it is rape as a strategy in war.
I say this because it relates directly to the responsibility of our corporations to make sure that when they conduct themselves in countries abroad, they follow every single humanitarian, labour and environmental standard that they follow here.
Right now, the machines that we all use on a daily basis, that we keep our calendars on and send emails from, these BlackBerrys, contain a mineral called coltan. A majority of the coltan that is used in our BlackBerrys comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Right now, the money that is being earned by some companies is directly connected to the war that is going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indeed, if we recall years ago the whole issue of blood diamonds, we are now having to deal with the issue of blood coltan.
Right now, over 80% of the mineral coltan that keeps our PlayStations going, that keeps our computers going, that keeps our BlackBerrys functioning, comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the exact place where we see rape being used as a weapon of war and the exact place where unscrupulous mining techniques are being used to actually fund and keep the oxygen going for the conflict, where we have three to four proxy armies absolutely devastating not only the geography but the humanity of the area, and that is the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
This is not just about a nice piece of legislation that we should all pass. This is about our commitment to human rights. I have to say, it is not good enough to say nice things about corporate social responsibility. Indeed, we must act when it comes to corporate social responsibility, and the only way to do that is what is contemplated both in this motion and in the bill that was presented. We must have not just guidelines but absolute certainty in how companies behave abroad.
Further to that, members might not be understanding of the issue, perhaps, but what has been proposed by the government is guidelines, instead of absolute, strict adherence to protocol abroad. Also, it says we would have a counsellor instead of an ombudsperson to make sure that these practices overseas are actually adhered to.
If we in this country are going to stand on the world stage and say we are doing everything we can to end gender violence, to end rape as a weapon of war, to stop the ongoing absolute war against women in the Congo, then we must actually adopt this motion. We should adopt legislation like Bill C-300, and we must make sure that everything we can do is being done to end gender violence, to end the war on women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I would like to take a minute to give some historical perspective on this. My predecessor, Ed Broadbent, started this file when he asked that the government of the day conduct a study to have business and civil society work together to come up with recommendations about how companies should do their business abroad. It was carried on by Alexa McDonough. It is now in the House by a motion and by a bill by my colleagues in the Liberal Party.
This has been an ongoing project. It took the government two years to respond to a report that was done in concert, where we had civil society and business working together and what they came up with was that Canadian companies would adhere to the same laws and provisions that they adhere to here in Canada and that we would have an ombudsperson to make sure that would happen. My constituents would say that is a reasonable proposition. That is the proposition we have in front of us in the House.
The proposition that the government has put forward, after two years of having it in front of it, says we should have guidelines, which may or may not be followed, and a counsellor. It is not strong enough. If we are serious about Canadian companies, who by far have the largest footprint in mining and extractive industries of any other country in the world, we must adhere 100% to the laws that we have here in Canada. That means that no money goes to those who commit genocide. No money goes to proxy armies. No money goes to people who are using it to abuse the people who are supposedly benefiting from the presence of a company there.
Members should take the time to read the history of what is going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo right now. There is a direct connection between what is going on there and what is happening with the investments of multinational corporations. These are things that Canadians are waking up to. Over five million people have been killed in the D.R.C. since the late 1990s. Most people are not aware of that. As I said, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, and many of those are children. Many of those are women who have been raped multiple times. Why? It is a tactic that is used by militias, not only to use violence against women, but a strategy to clear out villages so that they can get to the economic bounty that is fueling this conflict.
In sum, if we in the House, as members of Parliament, are serious about having an effect on femicide, as some people are calling it, on what is going on in the D.R.C., if we read the words written by Eve Ensler a couple of years ago that she has just returned from hell and then try to do something about that hell on earth, we must pass this motion. We must pass Bill C-300.