Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laurier—Sainte-Marie for sharing her time with me.
I am glad to speak after her because I would like to elaborate on several points she mentioned. We can debate Canada's institutional tools and how public funds are used to achieve diplomatic objectives abroad even if there is some disagreement about how to achieve those objectives and what our offices and institutions should look like. Nevertheless, we recognize the tremendous importance of religious freedom.
This debate reminds me of something one of my professors at McGill University often used to say: human rights apply horizontally, not vertically. In other words, no single right is more important than another. Human rights exist side by side. Some countries are grappling with extremely complex situations that result in certain rights clashing with other rights. Here in Canada and in countries with strong democracies, we recognize that different rights can create more nuanced situations. In those cases, the Supreme Court of Canada sometimes has to adjudicate.
We have judicial, political and legislative institutions here to tackle those problems, but in countries where conflict exists and countries that do not have democratic institutions, the situation can become even more complex.
That is one of the main reasons why we need to have a strategy as well as an office that deals with all human rights, not just rights related to freedom of religion. At the risk of repeating myself, as my colleague did and we will continue to do, the right to freedom of religion is extremely important.
Let us come back to the situations in various countries. It is important to look at the long-term solutions that Canada can provide through our diplomatic action and the work done by the Department of Foreign Affairs. It is not about focusing on human rights alone, but looking at every situation. For example, we could say that this also applies to the fight against ISIL. It is not about photo-ops and sound bites. It is about long-term solutions in order to set up real democratic institutions in these countries and ensure that they are capable of enforcing these rights.
Since the beginning of the debate, Conservative members have named several countries where there is terrorism or violence. Not so long ago, I head a member talking about Boko Haram. Even though there is an office to protect religious freedom, what long-term solutions can we envision other than a comprehensive solution for protecting all rights, real democratic reform in those countries, and the implementation of real democratic and judicial institutions? That is the key. That is what Canada should be working on.
Let me get back to why we oppose the motion. As the old saying goes, we should not put all of our eggs in one basket, but that is what happened here. The Department of Foreign Affairs and our diplomats should not be functioning on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. They should try to resolve the conflicts that lead to persecution in those countries by putting forward a long-term democratic solution. That is part of the solution.
It really bothers me that today's motion was moved by the government. My colleague from Mount Royal asked one of our Conservative colleagues why the motion was not worded differently.
This is yet another us-against-them motion, a divisive motion that says, “[T]hese were our policies when we were the Conservative government; take it or leave it” instead of trying to work together to find a real solution that will really tackle these terrible situations in which people are persecuted. That is not something we can tolerate. That kind of violence is unacceptable and appalling.
That is why this motion is so hard to swallow. Rather than look for constructive solutions by adopting a more comprehensive outlook, they are pushing a “my way or the highway” agenda. Unfortunately, that is how things were handled for the past 10 years almost. That is the approach today's Conservative motion argues for.
That mentality and that idea are troubling considering that there were already groups in place doing the work. There has been a lot of talk about Rights and Democracy. Members of the House would be surprised at how much Canadians cared about that organization. When the Conservatives announced the cuts that led to the closure of Rights and Democracy, people were furious and very disappointed. I should not even say that they were furious. They were disappointed because that group had been doing the work for a very long time. Rights and Democracy had built relationships and had known for a long time what the best practices were. That was the case in my riding and I think it was also the case in the ridings of many of my colleagues. Some of them even mentioned it in this debate.
I heard one of my Conservative colleagues, a former minister at that, say that public servants had advised them against getting involved in some files that they should have gotten involved in. The Conservatives used that as an argument to say that the Office of Religious Freedom was a good thing because it allowed the government to intervene in files that public servants did not want it to get involved in. That shows exactly what the problem was with the Conservative approach. When the Conservatives found that something was not working or that an approach needed to be changed, their solution was to do away with it completely and start fresh with something completely ideological in their own image.
That is why we take issue with this Office. It is not because we oppose protecting freedom of religion but, on the contrary, because we had the tools in place to solve and address these problems. Instead, we should have perhaps taken a modified approach taking into account the international reality that changes from one minute to the next and that can be very complex. We should have worked instead within the existing framework and with groups that already had the expertise and a mandate supported by the people, as was mentioned by those who contacted our offices to protest these cuts and, consequently, this closure. We can see the problem there too.
Without repeating what my colleague from Laurier—Sainte-Marie said, this is even more problematic when we consider it together with the problems associated with the Conservatives' approach to other rights. We need only think of the number of countries in the world that have passed homophobic or racist laws that attack other minorities besides religious minorities in their countries. The government seemed to be more reluctant in those cases. My colleague mentioned the example of Raif Badawi. That is another fine example. That is an example of a type of freedom that was violated when a blogger was subjected to the situation he is suffering through now simply for blogging. The government was very reluctant to intervene in that case and even refused to do so. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, we see that instead of being considered and applied horizontally, rights were applied vertically, and that is unfortunate.
We oppose this motion, not because we oppose protecting freedom of religion, but because we recognize that there are many minorities in the world and that many rights are unfortunately violated every day. In Canada, we have the know-how, the resources, and, more importantly, the human resources. Think of the people who work at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. They will be in a position to do this work if we, as parliamentarians, give them a mission or mandate to work on ensuring all these rights are upheld. However, we will have to focus on finding an institutional solution by establishing legal and democratic systems in these countries. This will enable these countries to uphold human rights and to continue to protect these rights once we discontinue our involvement abroad.