Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has made significant changes to the language used by DFAIT, changes that echo adjustments the Conservatives made to the Status of Women when they had the audacity to remove equality from that mandate.
Changes include the removal of “humanitarian” from each reference to “international humanitarian law”. The minister also replaced the term “gender equality” with “equality of men and women”, and switched focus from justice for victims of sexual violence to prevention of sexual violence.
According to Embassy magazine, these “language changes...water down many of the very international human rights obligations Canada once fought to have adopted in conventions at the United Nations”.
The minister has made it clear that this reflects policy changes in some cases and claims it is “just semantics” in others.
The language changes at DFAIT, like the ones made at Status of Women Canada, are an attempt to control the message for partisan reasons.
These changes impact human rights and are an embarrassment to Canada on the international stage.