Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here today. I wish the message we are hearing from the members of the government was different than it is. I hear them talk about the need to broaden the scope and to focus on all rights rather than one specifically, focusing on pluralism, international organizations, and civil societies. All of that is fine, but it has very little to do with the specific issue of religious freedom.
I heard one of my colleagues on the other side talk about how she wanted freedom for everything. The reality is that the religious freedom issue works very well when it is dealt with specifically. A few minutes ago, my colleague pointed out that most of the conflict we are seeing around the world right now is of a religious nature, and we need to consider that when we are talking generally about conflict in this world.
The Office of Religious Freedom was established in 2013, as a division of Foreign Affairs. It was fulfilment of a promise that we made in the campaign in 2011. It had a very small budget of $5 million. From looking around, I think that $5 million has probably been used as well as any $5 million from this government.
The mandate was straightforward. In a presentation given by the ambassador at the foreign affairs committee, he talked about it having a mandate to defend religious communities and monitor religious freedom, promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canada's foreign policy, and advance policies and programs that support religious freedom and promote pluralism. It is unfortunate to see the government opposite basically turning its back on those things by blending them into a whole bunch of other things. I believe the effectiveness of the office will be hampered by the fact that government does not want to deal with this as a specific issue.
It was not established as a generic rights organization for a reason. It would have been completely ineffective. It would not have had the focus that it had, and it would have been of little use to anyone. It was set up as non-partisan, and to work co-operatively with faith communities, NGOs, and other countries. That is what has happened.
Obviously, the choice of ambassador was a good one. Ambassador Bennett has become internationally respected for what he has done. He was wise enough to appoint an advisory committee covering faith groups and non-faith groups. He found a great variety of people there, and did a good job of putting that together. As one of my colleagues pointed out earlier today, that included those who believe they have the right not to believe in any specific faith at all. The ambassador was wise enough to include them in his advisory committee as well.
Once the office got rolling, there were a number of projects that were brought forward. I was excited when I looked through the list of things that the office contributed to over the last few years, including some very practical things. This is not an organization that has been operating in the sky; it has been operating right at ground level, trying to make a difference.
There were a lot of smaller projects, and I think the government will regret the day when it shuts down this office and shuts down the projects. It has had the opportunity to do things, such as training the media in other countries about hate speech and how they might deal with it in their countries. We have done work on monitoring religious freedom in various countries. Obviously, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom does its annual monitor about religious freedom around the world. However, we have been able to help local communities monitor religious freedom and how it has been achieved in their communities.
There has been a documentation of violations as well, so that people are held accountable for what they are doing. The office has provided leadership courses for people in their communities to come together. One of the places was in Nigeria. We brought together interreligious communities so they could sit and talk to each other, to try to create peace in areas where organizations such as Boko Haram were trying to disrupt communities and destroy social fabric. One of the things we tried to do was promote dialogue and peace between the communities there.
Sharing best practices was another important aspect of the work of the office. Certainly things like children's educational materials does not seem like much, but there was money put into ensuring that textbooks and those kinds of things were not promoting religious hatred. It worked with countries to ensure that their educational materials were solid as well.
Awareness activities, research and academic studies, facilitating seminars and leadership, legal support, and supporting legislation, are all very practical things that the office provided. I have not heard anything today from members on the other side as to how they will continue to provide that on that micro level, right down at the community level, saying to people and to smaller countries that we will work together.
We need to ask if this is a relevant issue right now. I will give the House a present example.
The Liberal government is going to be absent on an important issue and that issue is what is happening in Nepal right now. Nepal is putting together a new constitution and some legislation is going to come forward around religious belief. We should be there helping Nepal. It appears as if there is now some manipulation going on now. Both of these documents are going to be pre-designed and they are going to end up suppressing minority believers. That does not need to happen. They are talking about prohibiting things such as conversion. One of the main aspects of article 18 of the United Nations human rights declaration is that people should be free to choose their belief. They talk about prohibiting apostolization. They talk about impacting the opportunity of people to speak freely about what they believe in, then moving to protect some religious communities while restricting others.
Not all of the people in Nepal have the opportunity to fully understand or discuss what these values and issues mean. We could be providing them with some help and assistance. This is just one example of where we could help.
Nepal signed on to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Included in their articles are the notions that people have the right to be free to believe, the right to be free to practice their belief, and the right to change their beliefs. These things happen at a practical level, and our government should be there. The Liberal government, in its rush to broaden its scope and focus on everything, is not going to be there on these specific issues where people in some of these countries are going to need help.
There is one other thing that the ambassador has headed up, and that is an international contact group on freedom of religion. This is a critical and important group and it is going to be lost when the government shuts down the Office of Religious Freedom. This group was spearheaded by Ambassador Bennett, who chaired the inaugural meeting. The group is called the International Contact Group for Freedom of Religion or Belief. It has brought together government representatives from over 20 countries in a multilateral diverse effort to collaborate together to address the challenges that are caused by international religious persecution. My colleague who spoke just before noted that most of the tensions and pressures that are coming out of religious belief, this international contact group is an excellent way at the administrative and government level for people to talk about these issues.
The ambassador was central to the launch of that group. It included all kinds of members from places like Cameroon, Chile, Morocco, Canada, the European nations. It is an important initiative and I fear it is going to be lost by the way the Liberal government is going. Even the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and others have praised this initiative. They saw it as important. They wanted their countries to participate in it. It is a critical tool to underline the freedom of religion or belief.
We are going to lose a lot if the Liberal government decides to shut down the Office of Religious Freedom. The government has a choice. It could renew the office's mandate with enthusiasm, as I said earlier today, so it can continue to maintain the momentum it has already created, or I fear the government is going to dilute it probably by defunding it, gutting it behind the scenes, or making it some some sort of generic rights organization so this right will be lost in the midst of a lot of other things.
The reason this has been successful is because it has been very specific. It has a narrow focus and that has allowed the ambassador and the office to create the kind of initiatives they have.
The government does not seem to understand this, and that is unfortunate. Persecution because of religious belief is targeted and specific. It needs to be dealt with in those ways. One example, the right to convert, whether people have the right to change their beliefs or not, cannot be dealt with by some generic human rights approach. It has to be dealt with specifically. We must give people the freedom to believe what they choose and then the right to change that.
The Pew Foundation has said that three-quarters of the people on this earth live with the fear of religious pressure and that violations are perpetrated by state and non-state actors and sometimes in conjunction with each other.
A lot of people in this world need the protection that was provided by countries paying attention to this issue. It is unfortunate that Canada has taken such a large step back on defending religious freedom. Certainly, we want to continue to protect them and we will do what we can on this side of the House to ensure that happens.