Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Mount Royal.
People are watching this debate in the gallery and around the world. They are looking to us to give one clear message to Egypt, and that is the international community will not tolerate this anymore and that the Government of Canada will act not tomorrow, not 10 days from now, not next year or after the next massacre but immediately.
There has been massacre after massacre, whether it be the killing of the people in Nag Hammadi when they were coming out of a church, or the blowing up of the church on Christmas Eve last year, or when the army in armoured vehicles ran people over, people who were demonstrating, looking for justice, human rights and religious freedom. Yet Egypt has told the world it really does not care what other countries are saying time after time, be it under the old regime or the current one.
The international community has to tell Egypt that enough is enough and it will not tolerate it anymore. There are places that we can do it. There is the auspices of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the Hague, all kinds of international courses that we could take and Canada must be at the forefront.
We passed a motion. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was the person who actually strengthened the motion even more. That was almost two weeks ago. Yet to this very day, nothing has been done. To this very day, the Prime Minister has not picked up the phone to call Ban Ki-moon or to tell the United Nations that Canada is not pleased. We have not sent a message with our ambassador asking for an emergency debate. We have not sent a message to the UNHCR asking for an emergency debate. We are scared to do it maybe because we have no clout at the United Nations or we are scared of the UN.
A good friend of mine, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said the government does not want to do that because we know who controls the United Nations. Whether it works or not, it is up to us. If it does not work, then we will have to find other avenues to address it. The United Nations right now is the avenue where this should be addressed.
The government has a moral duty to the Coptic Christian community of Canada to act. It has a moral duty to take steps. At the end of the night, when all is said and done, I will have probably not even heard if something concrete to this day has been done. We cannot wait any longer. We cannot afford for one more single person to be killed, be it Copt or non-Copt, be it in Egypt or anywhere else. The perpetrators who use extreme violence, beat people, run people over, bomb people or machine gun them down must be held accountable. They must pay the full weight of the law. There is no country in the world that will give guns to their citizens to shoot people. Everybody says that cannot be done.
Everybody says that they have religious freedom. Even in the constitution of Egypt, article 1 says that there is religious freedom. Article 2 says it is all Sharia law and that takes precedence. If people want to build a church in Egypt, they have to get permission. If they want to renovate a church, they have to get permission. If someone wants to be a member of parliament in Egypt, God help that person. There are only two who are Copts. If someone wants to run for office, God help that individual. If a person says he or she believes in Jesus Christ and the other person does not believe in the same thing, the one who said it will get beaten up.
I would leave this message for my hon. colleagues across the way. Members and the government cannot afford to wait one more day. Measures have to be taken. Tomorrow morning the Prime Minister has to send a clear message with our United Nations ambassador to call an urgent meeting on this matter, to talk about it and ensure that the Egyptians, as well as the others perpetrating these acts on citizens, know that we will not tolerate it anymore.