Debates of June 9th, 2016

Opposition Motion—ISIS

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned in her speech the stopping of the flow of arms and radicalization efforts. This can only be done through collaboration with the international community and neighbouring Middle Eastern countries.

Stopping the flow of radicalization can only be done through the growth of economic prosperity. There are no jobs there, and so the youth are evidently joining radicalized groups, because there is no economic prosperity.

The previous government did not degrade ISIS and did not bring stability to the region. Our government has committed to training local troops on the ground to take the fight directly to ISIS.

I would ask, as did my colleague for Laval—Les Îles, who is supplying ISIS with funding and arms? This is the question that we need to ask, because this is how we can degrade ISIS. If we can stop the flow of arms and resources, we can degrade ISIS.

Does my colleague not agree that this is the way to degrade ISIS?

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the intent of my hon. colleague's question. However, in that is where I see our problematic issues, where we would have to build consensus once we called this genocide. I believe that each sovereign state as an actor is going to voluntarily, in the international community, bring strength to whatever action we have. Therefore, I do not accept the premise that economic stability trumps human rights.

There are things we have to do in tandem, but it is not acceptable to be participating in trade when we know there are flagrant human rights violations. We have talked about this with regard to trading with Saudi Arabia. We have talked about this with regard to countries having diplomatic relations and dialogues with countries that do have human rights. Actually a very prominent country with which everyone is very anxious to trade apparently has warned us publicly not to be talking to it about human rights if we want to trade with it. It was on the front page of a national paper.

Something that the opposition party has brought forward with this motion is the idea that we should call this genocide and have some integrity. That means as—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Vancouver East.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very thoughtful comments. The member referenced taking various legal avenues. With respect to the atrocities that have taken place, would the member agree that Canada should be asking the UN Security Council to mandate international independent investigations into these atrocities? More specifically, should Canada be taking certain actions—for example, to provide immediate financing to help with the investigation and the gathering of the evidence—so we can get some of these matters dealt with in an effective manner, we hope, through the judicial system?

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that thoughtful question because that is very important. If we are going to use a word like genocide, then we are going to have to put some actions behind those words. That is what I was alluding to earlier in my speech. Our expertise is going to be required on that international stage with regard to the role that the International Criminal Court will have to play in the future if we are calling this genocide.

For us to embrace that, we will have to embrace the whole responsibility that goes with it. That means that, yes, we will have to put our money where our mouth is, and we will have to support an investigation. We are going to have to support a fulsome investigation that also brings forward a long-term plan for rebuilding. There are so many ripple effects of this that are going to require so much of us. For us to call it a genocide is one step.

I am hoping that will be the momentum that we can use to move forward with very real and comprehensive responses that include the important role of the United Nations. Otherwise, our role is actually as impotent as the member earlier said the United Nations is.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Intergovernmental Affairs)]

Mr. Speaker, there was a reference to what Canadians might do if they looked back over 50 years. If they looked back over 52 years, what they might see is the Hon. Irwin Cotler, one of the clearest and most distinct voices on human rights on the international stage, one of the people who put the duty of care provision into the United Nations.

It was he who first raised in this House the issue of the Syrian refugee crisis, and his motion to accept refugees was actually defeated by the previous government. I might also add that the opposition tried to slow down the arrival of refugees, tried to stop the arrival of refugees, and has fought the refugee process every inch of the way, including the most unusual practice of removing medical care for refugees in a move that the Supreme Court deemed cruel and unusual punishment. When it comes to the process of getting Syrians into this country, there is one party that opened the doors and there is another party that tried to keep those doors as closed as it possibly could. Now to lecture us on humanitarian values is, my God, unbelievable to listen to.

My question for the member opposite is this. It is not just a question of calling things a name and hoping that they stop. Prevention of these sorts of atrocities is even more important than anything else we can do as a government. Would the member opposite please talk about and reflect upon the preventive strategies that international development might play in stopping the atrocities? We do not care what we call them; they would simply not exist anymore.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, peace building and democratic development are extremely important, and we do know that with the previous government there were vast funding cuts to those areas.

I am new to this, and I am kind of naive. I am not a seasoned politician here. I know some of the members feel the same way, with the idea that we are going to weigh words so significantly and then, when push comes to shove, just not really have that momentum to move forward. No matter what we have done in the past, there is a lot of immediate action we can take.

We do have to have a holistic approach. We have talked about stemming the funding that goes to organizations such as ISIL. We have talked about stemming not just the flow of funds but the flow of arms and fighters.

It all boils down to money. With an informed citizenry, these peace-building and democratic programs cannot be underestimated. This is where the real work is. It does not pack a punch like the emotional response when we are watching a very poignant and disturbing video on the screen, when we see some type of military strike. It feels good, and I get that. However, I want to say that we cannot confuse revenge with justice, with real preventive measures.

There is room and distinction for these actions. That is why I was saying earlier that if we were to all say, yes, let us call it genocide, that is not really what the issue is here. It is how we move forward, and how we all get our heads around what comes next. We really have to form consensus.

It is very frustrating for somebody new like me to see how people who are so esteemed, who achieved their honourable seats here in this House, cannot form consensus on an issue as fundamental as this, because of pride.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan, National Defence; the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, Wine Industry; and the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, Justice.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn.

It has been an interesting afternoon for me as listened to the debate. I was fascinated to hear my NDP colleague just say that for all intents and purposes, ISIS has committed genocide, but we just cannot bring ourselves to call it that. What concerned me even more was the position the Liberals have taken this afternoon. We heard the member for Spadina—Fort York give a number of very extreme comments about us. I guess he does not understand that we had the largest numbers of immigrants to our country ever when we were in government, so I am not sure what he was trying to imply.

One of the things that really concerned me this afternoon was the Liberals' interest in actually trying to use John Kerry's statement to justify their position. I just want to take a couple of minutes before I get into my speech to talk about his statement.

He is very clear in the statement. He talks about his purpose being to assert that in his judgment Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups. He goes on to talk about Daesh executing Christians solely because of their faith, saying it has massacred hundreds of Shia Turkmen and Shabaks at Tal Afar and Mosul just because of who they were. We know that, in areas under its control, it has made a systematic effort to destroy the cultural heritage of ancient communities. He talks later about one element of genocide as being the intent to destroy an ethnic or religious group in whole or in part. That is actually the definition the Minister of Foreign Affairs quoted in the House about an hour ago. It is interesting that John Kerry has that in his statement. He talks about knowing that Daesh has given its victims a choice between abandoning their faith or being killed. Clearly, he is talking about that being genocide.

Then, toward the end, he talks about being neither judge nor prosecutor, which is the quote the Liberals like. However, that is in the context of the fact that we know this is genocide, and now we need to go find the perpetrators and convict them of that. I wish the Liberals would quit misusing that quote this afternoon. People who are paying attention to this know they have no credibility when they do that.

Let us talk a little about how we got here. ISIS developed out of al Qaeda in the late 1990s. It showed up in areas around Iraq. In 2011, the group started to kind of push into Syria when the conflict there began to expand. It was led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at the time. In 2013, it broke away or was kicked out of al-Qaeda and was renamed ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh, as people refer to it.

It is a Sunni jihadist group that wanted to wage war in the area. The interesting thing is that, from some of the figures we see, between 27,000 and 31,000 people from a number of countries have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS. I heard one of my colleagues a little earlier talking about the challenge with finding jobs for young people, but for some bizarre reason, people have come from other countries to join this group.

It capitalized on a number of things, particularly a deteriorating security situation in Iraq, where the Iraqi government was reluctant to acknowledge it was losing control in the country and did not act on the revolt soon enough. The government had been put in place and it was supposed to be inclusive. It was supposed to bring the other minority groups in, so both Sunnis and Shiites could work together. Rather than do that, it isolated the Sunni communities. Certainly, political disenfranchisement followed from that, which allowed ISIS to begin to recruit easily.

It was a bit of a surprise to most of the world to see how ISIS seemed to come out of nowhere in 2014, but certainly it had been working for years. It was severely underestimated at that time. Therefore, its expansion was not met with the appropriate use of power at the time to stop it before it really moved ahead. The provisional authority in Iraq was not particularly helpful because its sentiments and the provisions it had taken had actually basically brought the population to a point that it was not supporting the government.

Throughout the last few years, ISIS has had significant financial resources, generated through taxation in local areas, illicit oil sales, and lots of ransom, extortion, and smuggling.

We heard a little earlier about some of the consequences of what ISIS has done. I want to try to put a human face on this. There are a couple of groups that have been specifically targeted by ISIS, and I think we need to talk about that when we are talking about genocide. One of the main conditions for genocide is that groups are targeted specifically. Certainly, we can say that about the Yazidis and about the Assyrian Christians.

In 2014, there was a very rapid expansion of ISIL. In August 2014, it started pushing into the Sinjar district in Nineveh province. This is the Yazidis' homeland. It is their sacred ground. It is the place they have been for many years.

However, in August 2014, as ISIS pushed in there, the massacres and the pressure on the Yazidi people took place.

Early in August, 5,000 Yazidi men were killed and 4,000 were missing. As the conflict arose, women were captured, children were taken, people were killed, raped, and abducted, and about 40,000 to 50,000 Yazidis were trapped on Sinjar mountain. They probably all would have been slaughtered, as my colleague pointed out earlier, just because they were Yazidis if there had not been international intervention. A U.S.-initiated coalition began air strikes in early August. With the help of the air strikes and Kurdish officials in the area, a corridor was cleared and 35,000 out of 50,000 Yazidis actually fled through that corridor and were able to get out of there. Unfortunately, they had to leave their homeland, but that corridor prevented them from being wiped out. There would have been wholesale slaughter had they been left there. However, for those people who were left, life was hell.

Our minister said earlier that the definition of genocide is an intention to kill a group just because it is a group.

I think we have to conclude that the treatment of the young men who were captured, the boys who were then indoctrinated into the ISIL ideology, the young girls who were taken as wives, sold and taken as wives by someone else, raped multiple times, the women who were taken and sold in the slave markets that were set up, was because they were targeted specifically for being part of this group. Certainly, the hatred for this group is why they were targeted by ISIS. That, to me, qualifies as a major reason why this would be called “genocide”.

The land of the Assyrian Christians, who were the first people in the world as a nation to convert to Christianity, was partitioned after World War I and Assyrian Christians have been spread out among three or four nations for the last 100 years. Certainly the Nineveh plains region is their home. Again, they were driven out of their homes. They were driven out of their towns, and approximately 500,000 refugees had to flee. In June 2014, when Mosul fell, Christian houses were ID'd.

Again, we start to hear some of the reasons why we could call this a genocide. People were identified because of who they were, because of the group they belonged to. All 45 Christian churches in Mosul have been destroyed. They were targeted specifically because they were Christian.

There were beheadings. There were rapes. Interestingly enough, there were crucifixions. If people would not convert, they were crucified.

In 2003, there were one million Christians in Iraq. Today, there are around 150,000 Christians left. That seems to me that people are being targeted for who they are.

This is not a distant issue for either the Yazidi people or the Assyrian Christian community. No family has been left untouched. Some people, and I have met some of them, have had a dozen or more family members killed or kidnapped because of this conflict. This is not a distant thing for them. It is very much an issue of the heart.

We can debate today about crimes against humanity, but when we know people in those communities, it is always much closer than that. I think that, today, it is shameful for the government to say it is not for us to decide. Instead, we hear the minister talking about writing a letter. That is going to be their response.

They know that when individual ethnic communities are targeted for annihilation, that is the definition of genocide. The government is failing to protect these people. Trying to be all things to all people, as it has done again in its new office of everything, ensures that no one gets anything of substance.

Genocide involves targeting specific groups. The Liberals' refusal to even acknowledge that there are such categories that deserve protection means that the Canadian government will be of little use to anyone in the future when we see these kinds of conflicts. It is a sad situation and the consequence of a government that knows nothing about moral equivalence.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague how he can reconcile what he has just said with our $1.6-billion comprehensive commitment to fighting ISIL together with 60 countries in the ISIL coalition.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I thought the member might know better than to ask that question.

The contribution that we are making right now is unfortunately far inferior to the one we were making in the previous government. The Liberals have pulled our jets off. We know that they are not providing air support. They are telling us that they are not involved in combat. We know that they have thrown troops onto the front lines without the protection they need from our air forces. It is unfortunate that they say one thing out of one side of their mouth and do something else.

We just had a discussion over the last few days about jets and how the Liberals are fooling around with our CF-18s. Even though we should be using them in the Middle East, they have pulled them back. They refuse to use the equipment that we have. Then they come in trying to create what they call a “capability gap” in order to try to convince Canadians that they need to buy something else because they made an election promise. Therefore, I do not think we will take any lectures from them about the money or the commitment that they have made to our military.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

When I look at the motion, I see various points. I think that the House agrees with most of the points, and that it recognizes that ISIS is responsible for crimes against humanity aimed at groups such as Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims, as well as other religious and ethnic minorities.

That is indeed the case, and it is recognized that they are using rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war and enslaving women and girls. I think there is no debating that matter. It is indisputable that Daesh is targeting gays and lesbians who have been tortured and murdered. Moreover, there is no question that the House strongly condemns these atrocities.

Now we are talking about the last point in the motion, which states that these crimes constitute genocide. If we take the declaration of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, we see that genocides are acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. I think that for most people, this meets the definition.

Therefore, can we not go along with this motion by giving the government direction to act in accordance with the perspective of the United Nations for recognizing this crime as a genocide and to take action accordingly in the United Nations?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time I have heard the New Democrats say that they thoroughly agree with the motion but then put a qualification on it, which is that the government needs to act in some other fashion. Therefore, I would encourage them to support it. Part of supporting that can be in their messaging to encourage the government to do something more as well. If they want to turn to the United Nations as a later solution to some of the issues with respect to this, it is fine for them to do that. However, the reality is that they say that they agree with this. We are talking about crimes against humanity. We are talking about rape and sexual violence. We are talking about targeting gays and lesbians. We are calling upon the House to strongly condemn these atrocities. I do not think it should be a question for anyone in the House that the government should be able to do that.

The reality is that our allies, the United Kingdom, the EU, the U.S. State Department, and the House of Representatives in the United States, have all called this genocide. It is not out of the realm of reason and good decision-making for the House to make that same clear statement.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend from Cypress Hills—Grasslands for his speech today and for his advocacy for minorities in this place over his time here.

What concerns me greatly about this debate particularly are some of the flippant comments coming from the government about having a debate on a moral issue, on a decision that this Parliament weigh-in on horrendous crimes of genocide taking place on the other side of the world. The fact is that the government, and even the NDP, seem paralyzed on making a call that is morally clear. What this Parliament does by no means precludes us from being a multilateral nation working with the International Criminal Court. However, our very basic premise is for this Parliament to speak out when there are crimes and horrendous crimes against humanity taking place. We are sent here as representatives of our communities and as the conscience of the nation to speak up, not to outsource our morality to a tribunal of lawyers. We can participate there as well but it is up to us.

Can the member comment on the duty this Parliament has to speak up when crimes such as this are being committed?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with my colleague. I think it is a very important point that we make because what we are seeing is this notion of moral relativism, and moral equivalence seems to be permeating the government's position so that it cannot take a stand on anything. We understand what has happened here. Entire communities have been destroyed, men and boys have been slaughtered, and women have been taken, raped, and sold, specifically because they are part of a group of people from a particular area. That qualifies as the definition of “genocide”, even to the Minister of Foreign Affairs who earlier said it is an intention to kill a group, because it is this group. Certainly, that fits with this definition.

The government opposite needs to make a moral decision to support this and do the right thing.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am once again rising in the House to debate this topic. I do not know how many times I have spoken on this subject, both when I was in government and now.

During the time of the Conservative government when ISIL came onto the scene, we joined the coalition because of the horrendous crimes that started happening. Throughout the debates we had on the extension of the mission and other things, it became extremely clear that we were dealing with a type of group we had absolutely never dealt with before. It was very cruel. Everybody here, even members on the government side, have said very clearly what this group has done.

We have how reached the point where the question is not about engagement in the fight against ISIL. That we have done. The Conservatives have an absolutely different approach than the current government. We took a very strong approach, including air strikes. The Liberal government is taking a different approach in fighting ISIL, which we do not think is a very robust fight.

The point is that we brought in the ICC. We were concerned that the people committing these horrendous crimes against humanity across the world would go unpunished, so we brought in the ICC. The Rwanda genocide tribunal was in my hometown of Arusha, where I went to see the people who committed these crimes being brought to justice.

The same situation is arising now. Crimes have been committed and everybody is talking about it. As a matter of fact, everybody is talking about preserving the evidence. The evidence already exists. People are dying. Why are we preserving the evidence? We need to recognize what exactly is happening in this region by this group, which is the most violent non-state group ever.

The horrific crimes we have seen shock everybody's conscience. It absolutely shocks everybody. Therefore, it is right for us to stand up and say exactly what it is. It is genocide. Genocide is being committed in that part of the world. To say the UN should do it or a bunch of lawyers should do it is like saying, and I do not know if these are the appropriate words, but coming from Africa, it reminds me of an ostrich putting its head in the sand and not recognizing what is happening in reality.

What difference does it make? The Minister of Foreign Affairs tends to get angry and says it is partisan. He is admitting to me that he has been partisan all this time, even when he was on the other side. What difference does it make? It is not partisan. Conservatives are trying to bring attention to an issue that we think is absolutely necessary. We want to put it in the spotlight and say exactly what is happening. We cannot close our eyes.

If I recall correctly, it was a Liberal government that brought the right to intervene to the United Nations. Where did this right to intervene come from? The right to intervene came about so that genocides and massacres would not occur and states would have the right to intervene if the government did not. In this case, the governments of Syria and Iraq both did not have the capacity, so we intervened as part of the coalition.

Does it change the fact that this group has committed genocide? Does it change the fact that this group has committed horrendous crimes? Does it change the fact that this group needs to be brought to justice in front of a tribunal? We had the Rwanda tribunal, the Nuremberg trials. We can do it now. We can say it is genocide.

Today we are debating something that Canadians do not understand. They ask why we are debating this when ISIL is committing crimes. We are talking about genocide and whether lawyers should decide if genocide is occurring or not. Yes, it is genocide. They are crimes against humanity. We need to bring them out into the open. Genocide is a strong word. I agree. We need a strong word to describe what this group is doing.

The group ISIL is committing horrendous crimes, so what is wrong in saying that this group does commit crimes? Telling them it is genocide does not change one fact. It is exactly what this group is doing. It has taken the Armenian genocide and other genocides to be recognized, and now after 100 years, countries across the world are recognizing the meaning of genocide. What is the point after 100 years in recognizing this? We want to do it now so that we can start the process of setting up a tribunal under the United Nations and bringing these people to justice.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs said that he would have supported if we had put in our motion to do something about it or to work with the United Nations to set up a tribunal. If they agree to the motion and they are the government, they should start the process. The Liberals should go to the United Nations. The opposition cannot, but they can. They can set up the tribunal right now and encourage the world to set up tribunals. We are debating what a British parliamentarian said, or John Kerry said. Let us move along and get these people who have committed this horrendous tragedy so that they do not get away. Many of them are trying to run away so they will not be charged under crimes against humanity.

Nonsense. We have laws in Canada to stop them from going there, but things have not changed. The fact of the matter is that the Liberals want to close their eyes and not do anything. This is genocide. We have to go there and bring these people who are committing crimes to justice.

Roméo Dallaire is very clear when he speaks about genocide in Rwanda. There was killing in Rwanda, and at the time no one did anything. I myself have been to Burundi and have talked to a child soldier. When I looked at a child soldier, he was a 13-year-old boy who had already killed 20 people by that time, and there was no emotion there. This was a child soldier.

I am not talking about child soldiers, but about those people who are responsible and should be brought to justice. Right now, we are at war. Many of them have been eliminated through strikes, which is good, because we have to stop this group. At the same time, we should start the legal process to recognize what is taking place there. We should not wait for another 50 or 100 years from now for other parliamentarians to get up in the House and say, let us have unanimous consent to say that what happened in Syria and Iraq was genocide. Let us do it now.

This is the opportunity to do it, and then I think we should pick up on what the Minister of Foreign Affairs said. His government can start doing it by going to the United Nations and saying let us set up a tribunal now. We do not have to wait until they are defeated. Set it up now, and they can be brought in front of a tribunal. That is what ICC has done.

There have been talks in Africa where the African leaders are upset with the ICC, but the fact is that we need to bring people who are committing crimes to justice. Genocide or not genocide, it does not matter. It is there, so let us set it up. Let the message be clear to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Liberal government, to go to the United Nations and start setting up a tribunal to bring them to justice. Whatever we want to say, it is genocide.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member has a lot of experience. Why is his side of the House focused on the jets and that term when we have gone well beyond the jets? Our partners were only too willing to replace those and add more when they saw our commitment to military training, military intelligence, humanitarian aid, active diplomacy at the local level, and the stabilizing we are doing on the ground in Syria, in Iraq.

Second, we are already under way with the United Nations, so we are moving along. Why does the member opposite think we are somehow not being proactive?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government sent in a robust miliary force to fight ISIL and one of the most effective ways to fight it was the air strikes. When we were in government our trainers were over there. We still strongly believe that the air strikes were the most effective way of weakening ISIL.

That member stated that somebody else has gone in to fill the gap, which is another thing that we are really worried about. Why would somebody else go in? It is our responsibility to fight ISIL. Why do we have to wait for another country to send in its aircraft when our aircraft were very effective?

Could the member give me one reason why the government pulled out of the air strike? Why were the strikes not effective? She wants to say it was because the minister said the committee looked at it. We also have a robust democracy. I can say quite clearly that what she thinks is a clear engagement, from our point of view is not.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech.

On a subject as important as this one, we could agree that this type of international political action is very important. In this case, it would be more unifying if the motion included a proposal to take the matter to the United Nations Security Council. Since this was not done, I sincerely believe that no effort has been made to bring people together and achieve easy consensus on this subject.

Why not build bridges and ensure that everyone is working toward the same end?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP is good at putting amendments forward to any motion that comes here. I do not know why that party could not put forward an amendment to this motion and say it would approve the motion. I am very sure that all members would agree to it. If the member felt there was a shortage of that and he could not support the motion because of that amendment then he should have asked for an amendment like he has done in the past.

We all need to work together. The fact of the matter is we need to move forward. Let us call this genocide. Let the government go back to the United Nations and let us bring those people who are committing crime to justice.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak as the chair of the Parliamentary Friends of the Kurds group here on Parliament Hill.

I want to give a name to the groups that the motion speaks to, the Yazidis, Assyrian Chaldean Christians, the Sabian Mandaean, the Shabak, the Turkmens, and the Kakai, who have been targeted by ISIS in Daesh.

Could the member tell me what message the government is sending to these groups, to the Yazidis of the village of Kocho, who were mass murdered? What message is the government sending when it refuses to call this for what it is, genocide?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for working with Kurds in his riding and for being a part of the parliamentary association. Many of them are also my friends.

It is terrible. We need to send the strongest possible message not only to these groups but to the ones who are committing the crimes. Calling it what it is, genocide, would fulfill two things. It would send a message to those who are committing the crimes and to those who have been suffering as a result of the crimes. It is important we do that.

The NDP should have brought in an amendment. Everything would have passed.

The strongest message needs to be sent and the strongest message is that ISIS committed genocide and it is going to pay for it.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before we go to resuming debate and the hon. member for Willowdale, I will let the hon. member know that there are only about five minutes remaining in the time for the debate on the business of supply motion for today. I will give him the usual signal before I need to interrupt him at 5:15.

The hon. member for Willowdale.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise to speak regarding the opposition motion before us today. I stand before this House to voice my strong opposition to this ill-considered and premature motion on the topic of genocide.

Allow me to begin by reminding members of this House that the march of human rights and dignity across the globe has been one of the great, albeit unfinished, success stories in the past seven decades. Central to the progress has been the entrenchment of genocide as a key principle within international humanitarian law.

Indeed, the Canadian government has always proudly advanced the cause of global human rights and human security. From sanctions against the South African apartheid regime, to the courageous actions of Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire in Rwanda, to international leadership on issues such as anti-personnel land mines, our great country has always championed the protection of vulnerable populations across the globe.

Canada and the Liberal Party have always been at the vanguard of the rights revolution, whether protecting and enshrining individual rights here at home or promoting and safeguarding human rights and security abroad.

Apart from actions of successive Canadian governments, great Canadians in modern times have made championing human rights synonymous with Canadian values. The first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bears the imprint of Professor John Humphrey. Former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, to cite another example, is universally recognized as one of the international community's foremost experts on human rights. Of course, one need also mention other individuals, such as Mr. Philippe Kirsch, who was the first president of the International Criminal Court, and, even today, one of Canada's foremost legal scholars, Ms. Jennifer Welsh, serves as the UN Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on issues of genocide and human rights.

Despite the seminal contributions of our country and many great Canadians on the development of international law, I fear that the motion proposed by the Conservative Party today is utterly bereft of a principled approach towards international law and strays from the approach of our closest allies.

The basis for which I oppose the Conservative motion is fourfold. One, genocide is a precise legal definition, and that precision is lacking in today's motion. Two, Canada cannot simply go it alone in regard to pronouncing acts of genocide and must instead act in concert with its allies and international institutions. Three, the gravity of the situation at hand behooves us to act in a sophisticated, deliberate, and meaningful manner. Four, it would greatly undermine our new-found credibility to act as effective and responsible players on the international scene should we adopt the Conservative motion.

Allow me to begin with my first objection, which is the definition of genocide.

While the term genocide conjures up chilling images, we must not forget that the term carries a precise legal definition. Precision is required because of the term's incorporation by reference in various statutes, whether it is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or, of course, the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

However, any reference to international laws and precedents surrounding genocide are curiously absent from the motion put forward today by the Conservatives. The motion operates irrespective of well-established legal structures, and therefore does little to bring justice to the victims of Daesh's brutality. This is a matter best handled by independent and international jurists, not partisan politicians.

Other legal requirements that the Conservative motion glosses over are, for example, that the 1948 convention is arguably predicated on the notion that only states may commit the crime of genocide. Of course, that is something that the motion does not address.

Another legal requirement that is glossed over by the Conservative motion is that the genocide convention clearly states that collective action is required in response to genocide. The 1948 treaty, after all, was signed by 148 nations and expressly behooved the signatories to work collectively for greater certainty, as the preamble stated, “in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge, international co-operation is required”.

On the second, the basis for my objection is that we must act in concert with our allies in international institutions. Genocide is by definition a matter of international law, and our government has rightly decided that such determinations regarding the nature of Daesh's abuses are best achieved acting in lockstep with our allies and co-operating through international organizations and mechanisms.

We know that the previous government proudly flouted its desire to not just go along in order to get along, and that it diminished the United Nations as spending too much time on itself. This aversion to multilateralsim led Canada to lose its bid to win a seat at the UN Security Council for nearly a decade.

Finally, the gravity of the situation behooves us to act in a sophisticated and deliberate manner, which is precisely what our Minister of Foreign Affairs outlined in his letter to the United Nations.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It being 5:15 p.m., pursuant to an order made earlier today, all questions necessary to dispose of the opposition motion are deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until Tuesday, June 14, at the expiry of the time provided for oral questions.