Madam Speaker, at this stage in the proceedings, the motions that I will be referring to relate to those in Group No. 1, Motions No. 2, 5 and 8 in particular.
In effect, what I will be doing is speaking to a set of motions that relate to one particular part of the bill at this stage in the proceedings, which is among those being addressed. That is the part with respect to justice for victims of terror and amending the State Immunity Act.
I also want to add my voice to the words of my colleague, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, in paying tribute to Maureen Basnicki. As a victim of terror, she has been advocating for this type of legislation for years, as has the Canadian Coalition Against Terror. I want to acknowledge their advocacy all these years, and pay tribute to them.
If we look at this piece of legislation, we will see, although it may not appear as such, that this is really transformative legislation. This legislation is historic, which is not a word I use lightly.
If one looks at our laws, particularly in the matter of giving civil remedies to victims of terror against the terrorist perpetrators, which do not exist, the reason they do not exist is that we have a State Immunity Act that immunizes the perpetrators of terror from any civil suit. This is the first time that we will be amending the State Immunity Act to give victims of terror a civil remedy against their terrorist perpetrators. That is why I supported this legislation. I support it in principle. That is why I am moving the amendments. They are not in opposition to the legislation. They are intended to help improve the legislation, to give victims a more effective voice against their terrorist perpetrators, and in fact, to hold the terrorists more expressly accountable for their terrorist acts.
That is the first point as to why this legislation is so transformative. For the first time, we will be amending the State Immunity Act to give victims a voice to hold terrorists accountable.
Second, we will be correcting a historical anomaly in our legislation. As it now stands, there is a commercial exception in the State Immunity Act. By a commercial exception I mean that if a Canadian victim has suffered damages by reason of a breach of contract, he or she will have a civil remedy, but if he or she is a victim of terror, he or she will not have a civil remedy.
We have a situation where our legislation gives an implied preference with respect to actions taken for breaches of contract as against actions taken by victims of terror.
This brings me to the third particular transformative dimension. This is the first time that we will be preferring victims of terror against their terrorist perpetrators, who up to now have been immunized by our law for their acts of terror against Canadians.
I have been framing this as a transformative piece of legislation for the reasons mentioned, and also the reasons I moved the amendments in this regard.
One of the things I find ironic and disconcerting is that such a piece of transformative legislation was bundled together with eight other pieces of legislation. I would have thought that the government would have wished to highlight such a transformative piece of legislation. I would have thought that a government that purports to always be wishing to give a voice to victims, and in this instance to victims of terror, would have wished to frame this as a centrepiece of its criminal justice approach, rather than bundle it together with eight other bills.
I would have thought that the government would have wished to have us consider this both in the House when the legislation was first tabled, and then in committee with all the attention, deliberation and discussion that it warranted for being such a transformative and historical piece of legislation. Accordingly, I supported this legislation. I even had a private member's bill which sought to give victims of terror a civil remedy. Therefore, I was pleased when the government introduced its legislation to do exactly that.
I found it ironic that my purported amendments would have been summarily rejected, since they were put forward for the purpose of improving the legislation that the government had introduced to give victims a voice. The representations made by the government when I put forward those amendments were that it was a filibuster. We had already had an abbreviated debate in the House on the tabling of all nine bills, and then we had an abbreviated debate at committee. I moved those amendments as quickly as possible in the abbreviated time that was provided, only to be told that we were filibustering and to be asked why we were considering this legislation again in this House.
It needs to be stated for the record that this is the first time this legislation is being considered in this House. It was never considered in this House. The government attempted to abbreviate discussion on this legislation, on the grounds that it had been discussed here before, which is not the case. Therefore, it warrants the fullest possible discussion.
I will limit myself now to the specific amendments that I put forward in order to improve the legislation.
The first was to give effective civil remedies to victims of terror against the perpetrators of terror. As this legislation now stands, it still would immunize state perpetrators of terror from any acts, injury or damages caused by their acts of terror, let alone the wrongful deaths that ensued. I find it surprising, and it is another anomaly, that this legislation would give victims a civil remedy against the agents or proxies of the state engaged in state terrorism, but not against the state itself. The situation of Libya and the Lockerbie bombing would have been okay under this legislation, if we could have found an agent or proxy of Libya that carried out the act, some terrorist organization acting on Libya's behalf. However, the victims could not have directly sued Libya because Libya would be immunized under this legislation. Similarly, we could not take an action now against Iran for any state act of terror but only against any of its agents or proxies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as listed as terrorist entities under Canadian law. I put forward this motion again in order to give victims an effective voice against a terrorist state.
The second is that it would not allow for an action to be taken against a non-listed terrorist entity in our law which is functionally associated with a listed entity. We should allow for that because terrorists can change names and we would not be able to sue.
The third is to give an effective remedy for purposes of execution of judgments by the plaintiff victims. We do not have the kind of effective remedies in that regard that we need.
Finally, giving the government the power to list the governments that seem to be terrorist states in this regard would be an arbitrary exercise of discretion that we should not give to states. Even the government's own witnesses said, “Don't go there. Don't give that arbitrary power of listing terrorists to the government”.