Debates of March 30th, 2015

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present two petitions.

The first petition is from residents of the west coast, from my own riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands, as well as from Ontario who are calling on the government to institute a permanent ban to protect the west coast from tankers carrying a mixture of bitumen and diluents along the B.C. coast.

Public Safety

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition has over 1,800 signatures from Vancouver, Victoria, Burnaby, and within Saanich—Gulf Islands.

The petitioners call on the House to reject all aspects of the so-called anti-terror bill, Bill C-51, which violates the constitution of this country and which will be ineffective in prosecuting and preventing terrorism. The petitioners call upon the House to reject the bill in whole.

Foreign Affairs

[Réjean Genest, NDP, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition from my constituents. They are calling on the government to request that Saudi Arabia free Raif Badawi and that it drop all charges against him.

Child Care

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present a petition in support of affordable child care in Canada. The signatories to this petition note that after nearly a decade of Conservative government, child care costs in this country are soaring and nearly a million kids across this country with working parents have no regulated child care space. They further note that quality child care and early learning offer children a head start in life while easing poverty.

The petitioners call upon the House to work with provinces and territories to implement the NDP's plan for affordable child care across Canada.

Agriculture

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I bring forward a petition signed by many constituents who call upon Canada to adopt international aid policies that support small family farmers, especially women, and recognize their vital role in the struggle against hunger and poverty. Further, the petitioners ask that Canadian policies and programs be developed in consultation with small family farmers and that they protect their rights, particularly in the global south, to preserve, use and freely exchange seeds.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Motion that debate be not further adjourned

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the consideration of Government Business No. 17, I move:

That debate be not further adjourned.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will now be a 30-minute question period. I would ask members to keep their questions to around one minute and government responses to a similar length of time.

The hon. opposition House leader.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day in the House. This is the 92nd time the government has imposed time allocation or closure on important legislation. In comparison, the previous government in Canadian history did it less than a third as often as this government has. It has almost 100 times imposed time allocation and closure.

This comes after one day of debate on this important issue. As the leader of the official opposition said last week, there is no more serious question than to decide to send our women and men in uniform into a situation where they could well be giving their lives. Yet the government, after one day, is saying, “Enough debate, we just want to ram this thing through”.

There is a reason for this. It is quite simple. With Bill C-51, the more debate there has been, even at the committee level, the less Canadians have liked Bill C-51. We have seen a majority of Canadians now go to a majority of Canadians opposed to Bill C-51.

There is no doubt, on this particular motion, that as the debate has been furthered, Canadians have become clearer about what the government has tried to pull over the Canadian public, the whoppers that have been told, and the fact that our humanitarian aid is scant compared to the nearly $1 billion the government wants to put into bombs.

Is that not really why this is happening today? The government does not want the debate, because it is afraid of the facts this debate will expose.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of National Defence and Minister for Multiculturalism]

In point of fact, Mr. Speaker, since the member has referenced public opinion, I would note that in several public domain, empirical public opinion surveys, some two-thirds of Canadians expressed accord for an extension of our mission against the genocidal terrorist organization, the so-called Islamic State. In the most recent Ipsos-Reid survey, some 56% of people who intend to vote for the New Democratic Party, so the vast majority of supporters of his own party, disagree with his ideological and rigid position on this.

I would note that contrary to what the member suggested, this is not legislation. This is a motion the government has tabled to seek a sense of the House. That is done, frankly, ex gratia. There is no constitutional or statutory requirement for the government to table a motion of this nature. In fact, this is a relatively new practice in this place.

I would point out that the previous government committed thousands of Canadian ground troops to a very difficult battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan without even seeking a sense of this place. However, there have already been in the debate on this discretionary motion 21 speakers for the NDP and altogether well over 50 speakers, and it will be 15 hours of debate. That compares to the seven hours of debate that occurred on a similar motion at the Westminster Parliament a few months ago. This is in addition to the dozens of hours of debate and speeches that occurred, on essentially the same mission, last October.

This is an extraordinary new precedent this government is setting to consult this place. However, the consultation, of course, has to have some parameters. It is not an invitation for the House leader for the NDP to stall the government legislative mandate, which of course we have an obligation to implement, further to the last election.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have had numerous opportunities to talk about the issue of time allocation. I will put that on the back burner for now and focus on the issue at hand. More and more, whether it is the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's Office, the Minister of National Defence, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the government has been sending very confusing messages to Canadians on this issue of Canada's role.

There has been a lack of transparency and openness. To use an example, one could talk about the issue of combat roles. There is a conflict between what the Prime Minister said at one time and what is actually happening today.

Maybe I will ask the Minister of National Defence if he could provide some clarification. The other day he talked about precision guided missiles and said that only Canada and the U.S. actually have that capability, only to find out later from a general that it is not the case. It took a general to come out and defend the minister and the comments he was espousing all over media outlets.

Can the minister explain what he was telling Canadians and why the general had to actually correct what the minister was telling Canadians?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, none of that is true. I would point out that there is probably a reason why the member for Winnipeg North does not want to discuss the matter before us, which is the motion to limit debate, because his party has already limited debate. His party has put up I believe two or three speakers. I think last week on Thursday the Liberals missed several of their designated speaking slots.

That is the party that committed Canadian ground troops to what turned out to be a decade-long and costly war in terms of treasure, talent and the sacrifice of our troops in Afghanistan without ever having come to this place. We have already had more debate just on the renewal of Operation Impact than we have had in 10 years in this place under the previous government on the operation against the Taliban.

With respect to precision-guided munitions, what I reported to the public last week was precisely verbatim of what I had been briefed by the military, which has been confirmed by the Chief of the Defence Staff, contrary to inaccurate media reports. The Chief of the Defence Staff said:

The weapons that will be employed [by the RCAF] will be amongst the most advanced precision-guided munitions in the world. The[y]...are equipped with laser and GPS guidance systems, giving Canada the ability to strike targets in all types of weather. Currently, only the United States uses these advanced precision-guided munitions in Syria.

Our highly trained pilots can use these advanced precision-guided munitions to strike targets either deliberately, or dynamically....This is a significant capability which, currently, only the US employs in Syria.

That is what I was briefed by the Chief of the Defence Staff.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not surprised that I am let down, but I am not surprised that the government wants to limit debate when the Prime Minister stands in the House of Commons and makes jokes about whether Canada is in breach of international law, while we are possibly putting people in harm's way. Later that day the Conservatives had to tweet that they were going to send a letter to the United Nations because they had not even bothered to do that.

We hear from the government about our allies and the allied coalition, yet it is a fiction. This is not a UN mandate nor a NATO mandate. There is no western country other than the United States involved. According to those who are looking at the situation in Syria, they say that Bashar al-Assad is the head of the snake and ISIS is its tail. They said that in Kobani, our allies, the PPK, were considered as fanatical as ISIS, that on our so-called allies that Canada had in Syria right now, which are doing the bombing and fighting in Syria, Joe Biden had admitted that all those allies the minister had been cozying up to were actually fighting a proxy Sunni-Shia war in Syria.

Therefore, with the misinformation and the misrepresentation that we have heard from the government and the minister in particular, I am not surprised they would not want to debate this. Who are the allies on the ground who will ensure that we prevent further damage to a nation that is already seriously damaged and whether we are in any way following international law because the Conservatives did not bother to get a mandate?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, only in the distorted world view of the NDP could striking targets of a genocidal terrorist organization that has declared hostility toward Canada and indeed civilization, such as the Islamic State, be considered doing damage to Syria.

The member contends that this motion is limiting debate. In point of fact, the actual consultation of the House through the motion before us is relatively unprecedented. This is a new practice introduced by this government. There was no constitutional, statutory or even conventional obligation for the government in exercising the royal prerogative in the deployment of Canadian troops to consult with the House of Commons. Therefore, every hour of debate that we have in this place, including the 15 hours on this motion, is extraordinary. It is an extraordinary opening to the democratically-represented voices of the people in the House.

I would point out that I was here for I think 13 of the 14 hours of debate on Thursday and the New Democrats were not really interested in the substance of the debate. They all read the same canned speeches. It is simply a parliamentary tactic to delay all of the government's business, to delay the people's business.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to touch on a couple of points.

We talked about the mission changing and evolving. In my view, people are making it, and I will ask the minister to comment on this, more complicated than it needs to be.

There are only two changes happening to the mission. First, it is going to be extended for 12 months because the job is not over until the job is over, and the enemy has a vote what goes on. Second, airplanes, instead of operating within Iraq, are going to be operating over Syria. The border between the countries has effectively been erased by ISIS in any event. The actual changes to the mission are not all that complicated and substantive.

The other point is that people are saying it is really a combat mission. The ground mission is in a dangerous place. We have done missions in dangerous places around the world for many years. They were called peacekeeping missions. They were missions in dangerous places. They were missions where Canadian peacekeepers died because they were shot by people who did not like the fact that we were there. By definition, of the verbiage in the media and the opposition, that would suggest that every one of our peacekeeping missions was in fact a combat mission.

There are words here that are being used inappropriately. What is the actual change of the mission, and is it really not all that different other than we will be airborne over one more place?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Edmonton Centre for his service in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He speaks on these matters with source credibility.

His comments are absolutely accurate. We already had a very extensive debate in this place, with dozens of speakers, last October. This is another discretionary motion for a discretionary debate that the government has given the House an opportunity to have, which is essentially over the same mission. He is quite right.

In fact, we are not adding any additional assets or personnel to the mission. We continue to deploy 69 special operations forces for an advise and assist mission in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, and some 600 RCAF personnel situated out of Kuwait who are manning 6 CF-18, 2 Auroras and 1 Polaris aircraft.

It is the same character of the mission. We will simply be hitting ISIL targets in what it regards as its state, which is in an area of Syria where it has de facto sovereignty. We are doing so in full compliance with international law.

This is just an extra opportunity for debate in this place, as we do want to hear the opinions of members. I do not think my friends in the New Democratic Party really believe there should be unlimited canned speeches on what is essentially a relatively minor change to the terms that were discussed here last October.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is rather amusing to see the minister using smoke and mirrors to try to cover up his real agenda.

The government is an expert at that sort of thing. For four years, it has been imposing its will both in the House and in committee by systematically rejecting thousands of amendments put forward by the various opposition parties and refusing to listen to very reasonable and rational speeches about its proposals. Now, the government is claiming that the issue was thoroughly debated.

When did the minister take the time to listen to what was said in this House about this debate alone? When did all of the members of cabinet take into account the opinions of a broad segment of the population that we, the legitimate representatives of that population, have been sharing with them?

The minister may be trying to put one over on members and Canadians, but the truth is that he is trying to once again shut down debate and ignore the opinions of a broad segment of the Canadian population. When will he listen?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am listening. I was here in the House on Thursday as well, debating this motion for 13 or 14 hours. Today, I plan to be here as long as possible, likely all day, in order to listen, answer questions and clarify the government's policy.

This is not a bill. This is a discretionary motion that the government is under no obligation to move. However, we developed a new approach whereby we consult the members of the House, because we believe that is important when it comes to major deployments of the Canadian Forces overseas.

The hon. member says that the government is not taking the opinion of some Canadians seriously, but it is the NDP that is opposing the majority opinion of its own supporters. According to the polls, the majority of those who voted for the NDP support a continuation of our fight against this genocidal organization that is trying to rid the world of cultural, ethnic and sexual minorities. These are crimes against humanity. It is sad that the NDP believes that Canada should do nothing to deal with this threat.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to listen to the minister talk about extending this mission in Syria, one would think that we should be thanking him. He is saying that he has done us a favour by moving this motion.

Let us not forget that we still live in a democracy here and that it is important that such an essential and crucial matter be debated in the House and for more than a day, of course. Extending this mission will add more chaos to a chaotic situation. This new mandate has no legal legitimacy, especially since the UN has issued no mandate for this mission.

Can the minister explain to us why the Conservatives are yet again imposing a unilateral decision that was never fully discussed in the House?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we are going to spend not one, but two days discussing it. Add to that the two days spent in October, and we will spend four days on it. By comparison, the British Parliament, a minority parliament, debated a similar motion for only seven hours.

Yes, ours is a parliamentary democracy. However, according to our Constitution, the government is not required to consult Parliament about this. It is a royal prerogative, a discretionary decision under our Constitution. Every hour of debate and every speech is extraordinary and made possible by our government and our desire to include all voices, even dissenting voices.

The sovereign government of Iraq wrote to the UN asking that other countries help defend its citizens against the terrorist and genocidal attacks of the Daesh. Accordingly, we are providing a military response to this request, together with 24 other countries. Under Article 51 of the UN charter, this is the alliance's concept of collective self-defence.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, could the minister speak about what he feels is Canada's moral obligation to act? He has talked about the brutality of ISIS. We know it has specifically targeted religious minorities. The Yazidis have been specifically attacked as a group.

I know the minister has spoken to diaspora groups across the country. Could he relay to the House the things he has heard from diaspora groups about our need to help?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very good question, in part because Canada is proud to have received over 20,000 Iraqi refugees in the past few years, in what has been the largest refugee resettlement program to this country since that of the Vietnamese boat people in 1979 and 1980.

Because I was the Minister of Immigration who launched this Iraqi refugee program, I have come to know the Iraqi Canadian community quite intimately. I can tell the member that in my consultations with the breadth of that community, the Assyrian Canadians, Chaldean Canadians, Canadians of Kurdish origin, Yazidi Canadians, Mandaean Canadians, Canadian Iraqi, Shia and Sunni, with all of whom I have consulted and all of their organizations who have spoken on this, 100% have indicated their support for the Canadian participation in the allied military operation against the genocidal terrorist organization which is seeking to wipe their people off the face of the earth.

There used to be a time when the left in this country believed in concepts such as the responsibility to protect, that responsible and proportionate action was sometimes necessary to prevent genocide. It is regrettable to see that the blinkered ideology of the NDP no longer accepts that notion.

However, fortunately, according to the recent Ipsos Reid poll, 56% of supporters of the New Democratic Party still believe in the concept of the responsibility to protect and in action to prevent genocide. The vast majority of Canadians and New Democrats agree with the overwhelming majority of Canadians of Iraqi origin.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very ironic that the minister is using the argument of responsibility to protect. They are trying to convince us that bombing Syria or Iraq is our responsibility to protect. I think it is the first time he has used this argument, and it does not make sense.

I would like to talk about the example that he uses of the attack and murder of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Conservatives try to use that as proof that Canada is under attack by Daesh, and I have even heard “under siege by Daesh”. The truth is that it is actually the contrary. The reason that the killer of Patrice Vincent committed that act is because he was not able to make any connection to Iraq or Syria and he was frustrated. He had been trying for months to make a connection through the members of the local mosque to Syria and Iraq. He was not able to do that. He was frustrated. He decided to kill an innocent officer in the Canadian army. That is proof that he was not connected to Daesh. Why do the Conservatives now want to limit debate and forbid members from explaining to Canadians the reason that this killing occurred?