Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise at this point and further challenge the government on its lack of emphasis on international human rights.
I am following up on a question that I asked in March, where I, or we, called on the government to renew the important work then being done by Canada's office of religious freedom. Of course, we know now that the government most likely did not have any plan at the time, but certainly was not prepared to renew the work of the office.
In the intervening time, the office expired in March. We spent a month and half with absolutely no plan. The government was not prepared to even extend the work of the office of religious freedom for the interim period of time until it came up with what it is notionally identifying as a replacement structure.
There was not a plan. There was not a willingness to do anything in the interim. I think that left a real problem for many of the stakeholders who are involved in this area, as well as our international partners.
Now we finally know what the government's much-promoted, at least by it, new replacement strategy is. It has come up with what it is calling an office of human rights, freedom, and inclusion, what we have dubbed an office of everything. If we look at the words of the minister and others, this office promises to do absolutely everything in this context.
In a conversation the minister had with the National Post, he talked about it being involved in promoting the rights of indigenous peoples around the world, certainly something that is important, as well as dealing with the Canadian mining industry, and dealing with how indigenous rights internationally might interact with it. Again, it is an important area, to be sure.
The minister talked as well about this office dealing with freedom of religion in the context of the subdivision of inclusion within the office. However, then he said that inclusion was not only freedom of religion; it could be sexual inclusion. I am not entirely sure what that means, but we will just move on.
It could be political exclusion, pluralism, rights of women, rights of refugees, and in the midst of aiming at dealing with almost every problem, it is not at all clear what this office will do. As we learn more, it is particularly concerning that this office is not really an independent office at all, certainly not in the sense that we once had with the office of religious freedom. This is not an independent office with an ambassador. It is in fact aligned within foreign affairs and is headed up by a director. If the government took this area seriously, it would at least appoint an ambassador to be responsible for this important area.
I will just mention as well that there is no mention in the budget of this work, of course again suggesting that the government is flying by the seat of its pants on this, but also making us wonder where the money for this is going to come from. If this comes from internal reallocation from other existing human rights activities, we are clearly no better off.
If the government was serious about international human rights, it could have maintained the existing office of religious freedom and certainly built on that existing model to explore creating other small, focused offices to deal with some of the other very worthy areas that are mentioned. I certainly think there is some value in looking at the area of international rights of indigenous peoples, but the government does not do that area or religious freedom or anything else justice by lumping it together in this ostensibly mandateless soupy office of everything.
I want to ask the government this question again. Is it willing to do the responsible thing, use the model that worked, and renew the office of religious freedom?