Debates of Sept. 26th, 2017

Situation in Myanmar

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his sincere interest in international development and humanitarian aid.

As members know, we held broad consultations with 15,000 people, primarily Canadians. These consultations were held in 65 countries and I met several of my counterparts from developing countries and also from other donor countries. I can say that Canada was asked to provide three things: leadership, a good policy, and, naturally, money, with which I absolutely agree.

There are different ways to provide leadership for the values that we protect such as human rights, the rights of women and girls, and sexual and reproductive health. I would even add climate change. We provide leadership in these three very important areas.

Second, we need to have a good policy, specifically a feminist policy. Our objective is to always focus on poverty reduction or elimination, based on the goals of sustainable development. The best way to achieve this is to use a feminist approach and to enhance the power of women and girls.

Third, we must give more money to international aid. In addition to official development assistance, this is one of the areas that I will pay more attention to. I agree that we could give more, but it is important to look for new partners, both Canadian and private sector partners and also partners from other countries that are not inclined to donate. Therefore, we must use Canada's contribution and leadership to do more and to attract more money.

At this time, official development assistance totals $140 billion. To attain the sustainable development goals, we must collect between $5 trillion and $7 trillion, with each trillion being 1,000 billion dollars. Yes, we need more official development assistance, but it is even more important that we use our leadership to identify new donors.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Flamborough—Glanbrook.

Many of my colleagues, of all political stripes, have risen here tonight to outline the extreme, dire humanitarian crisis the Rohingya people are facing in Myanmar. What is up for debate tonight is Canada's response.

What is disappointing to me is that many people in the House are aware of the situation, but we just missed a huge opportunity. That was the Prime Minister's speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week. As the minister just mentioned, the Prime Minister purports to have a feminist policy. He purports to stand up for human rights, yet when in front of the world, he failed to mention this crisis. The entire world was gathered in New York. This was the opportunity for Canada to raise this issue and to put forward a strong, coordinated response that many people in the world would look to from Canada to follow. That did not happen.

I want to congratulate my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park, for raising this issue in debate in the House tonight, and of course, the Speaker, for granting it.

The question really becomes where we go from here. First, I want to express my extreme disappointment that this did not come up in the Prime Minister's speech to the UNGA. I do not know why he bothered, to be honest. This is one of the most dire humanitarian crises facing the world, and he failed to mention it in his speech.

Second, a lot of people have raised the question of whether Canada should seek to revoke the citizenship bestowed on of one of Myanmar's senior political leaders by Canada.

I would hope that at the end of this debate today, we would agree on two things. First is that the Liberal government would take it upon itself to immediately encourage her, and not only her but the entire global community in echoing the sentiment, to allow observers, journalists, and aid workers into Rakhine State to adequately assess the situation. We are only hearing a smattering of what I think is the full picture of the atrocities that are happening there. Aid is not being delivered appropriately. We should impress upon the government of Myanmar that this is the absolute least it can do. We should also shame the government. If the government has such deeply held racist beliefs that it cannot be delivered to their fellow humans, then the entire world is ashamed of it. That would be ask number one that I hope we would agree on.

Second, a lot of the situation, but not all of it, is due to the fact that in 1982, there was a law passed in Myanmar that stripped the Rohingya people of their citizenship. This left them without the same protections and safety nets that those living in Myanmar with citizenship have access to. Allowing the Rohingya to have the same protection as others by giving them their deserved citizenship would signal to the international community that the Myanmar government is ready to end this persecution.

This discriminatory and unjust law passed in 1982 must be repealed immediately. This is something the Liberal government, through Justin Trudeau, should be asking the global community to put pressure on the Myanmar government to undertake.

These are two simple things I think there would be a lot of consensus on in the global community. These two actions I think would begin the path of providing needed assistance, understanding the true scope of the humanitarian crisis, and allowing the Rohingya people to become full participants in their society.

The Minister of International Development mentioned her feminist policy. I want to speak specifically to something I believe is an element of genocide, not just ethnic cleansing, in this particular case. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has rightfully called the acts against the Rohingya a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

There is something further I would like to highlight tonight. It is a policy of Myanmar that sheds light on the full persecution of the Rohingya Muslims in the state. It was noted in a 2014 report by an organization called Fortify Rights that since 2005, Myanmar has imposed a two-child policy on the Rohingya in two particular townships in northern Rakhine State. This policy has been described as a violation of human rights law. This policy, known as regional order 1/2005, is not only concerning because of its violation of human rights but because of the effect it has had on women and their reproductive health. Reports have shown that because of this policy, women have had to undergo illegal and unsafe abortions. These have led to health problems and even death, in some cases. Frankly, if Canada truly cares about protecting women's rights, and if the Prime Minister truly is a feminist, he will do something now to end this injustice.

Not only is this an injustice toward women and their rights, it is an element of genocide. When one removes the ability of a people, a specific ethnic or religious group, to have children to prevent them from propagating, that is an element of genocide. It is trying to end their race. To me, this is something the world and the Canadian government should be drawing attention to, given the severity of the impact it has had and will continue to have on the Rohingya people.

Many stakeholder groups in Canada have asked for specific declarations of action from the Canadian government, and I would like to echo them here, into the record, today. These organizations are calling on Canada to condemn the human rights abuses in northern Rakhine State and to call on State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi to provide access to Myanmar, including Rakhine State, for the Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission. This should have been mentioned by Canada in the statement to the UN General Assembly last week.

We should also continue to call upon both the State Counsellor and military commanders to protect all civilians and to grant the restoration of full humanitarian access to northern Rakhine State as an issue of urgency.

I want to re-emphasize the need for the repeal of the 1982 citizenship law so that these people can participate fully in their society and their economy with the same rights afforded to other people in their group.

In situations like this, I think North Americans are so blessed. Certainly there are elements of extreme poverty and things we need to overcome in Canada, but sometimes I think we really forget how bad it is.

I would like to read the testimony of someone in the region. This is why it is so important for us to act beyond pretty, vacant words, as we saw at the UN this week.

“I gave birth to my daughter 10 days ago, but she's starving and I've not eaten for four days. The day after she was born, I came to Bangladesh, along with my family. There are eight of us under one tarp now. The army cut people and raped women. It happened to my close relatives in our village. All women are fleeing to protect themselves from being raped. My husband also told me the army is not sparing pregnant women. The army is killing and slaughtering people everywhere so that our full family ran away carrying only our clothes, leaving all of our belongings behind. They are shooting people in groups, with women being threatened at gunpoint. I heard they are throwing bodies in the river. I saw a pile of dead bodies. In the daytime, we hid behind trees far from the house when we heard the army was coming and returned in the evening. The day after we left, we heard our house was also burned. My child was born only hours after getting on the boat.”

This testimony was provided to an aid agency in Canada that asked me not to use its name for fear of being associated with the testimony of this group and not having access there. That is how bad the situation is.

We cannot purport to stand for human rights in this country without acknowledging the atrocities there and demanding that the world act. I would also like to see the government, in the spirit of the UN Secretary-General's call for UN reform this week, go further, on a more macro level, and request that the United Nations' budget, of which only 2% goes toward protecting human rights, be allocated so that we have more direct funding through this very bureaucratic organization to help the people we are discussing. The UN should not be about cocktail parties. It should not be about hollow speeches to empty chambers. It should be standing up for what is right. That did not happen in New York last week. The government has an opportunity to rectify that this week through this debate. I echo my colleague's call for action on this very terrible and dire humanitarian crisis.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before going to questions and comments, I realize that this is an emergency debate, but I want to remind hon. members that the same rules apply to the House during an emergency debate as they do in regular sessions in the House. We cannot name members in the House, only their titles or ridings.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Fredericton.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, certainly we recognize the dire situation, ongoing in Myanmar, of the Rohingya. This government, this Prime Minister, and our Minister of Foreign Affairs have been clear that the responsibility for solving this issue and this crisis falls squarely upon the shoulders of Aung San Suu Kyi and the military leadership in Myanmar.

There were specific discussions, led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in her meetings with allies at the UN last week, including with the EU, Indonesia, Turkey, Germany, Bangladesh, Sweden, and Norway, as well as with Kofi Annan. We have asked for permission for our ambassador to have access to Rakhine State. Before that, we heard the Minister of International Development and La Francophonie deliver a comprehensive overview of the significant humanitarian aid Canada has stepped up to provide to Myanmar to help relieve this crisis. We have been clear in our focus on ensuring that the human rights of the Rohingya are upheld. Canada is there to act.

I would ask if the member opposite would acknowledge the role Canada has played, is playing, and will continue to play in this situation and in other crises the world faces.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is important for the government and the Prime Minister to perhaps be more vocal, more formal, and more structured in their requests in this matter. There is much conversation in the international media as well as in international human rights circles right now about what actually can be done in Myanmar, given the complexity of the situation. The reality is that when ethnic cleansing is occurring, and I think a case could be made for genocide, the words “never again” begin to ring hollow when we see months of unending discussions without action.

I would like to see the Prime Minister raise, in a formal international forum, a request to the global community as well as to the Government of Myanmar, again a formal request, to enter the state, both in an observer capacity and from a coordinated aid-delivery perspective.

Something more tangible that will perhaps lead to a solution over a longer period of time would be a repeal of the 1982 law that renders the Rohingya people stateless and without citizenship and unable to access the same services and laws that their countrymen have, simply because of their faith and their ethnicity. I also think the government needs to be stronger in its language about what is happening in the area with regard to ethnic cleansing and needs to acknowledge the atrocities committed under the two-child law, as I described earlier in my speech.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I just want to remind the hon. members as well that if they want to ask a question, they have to be in their seats. They cannot be in another's seat.

The hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have seen the member for Calgary Nose Hill rise repeatedly in this House on human rights issues. I certainly appreciate her work on the persecution of the Yazidis and on making sure that we in this House are well informed about the situation there.

We know that we have to work actively with like-minded states for a political solution. We know we have to do that collectively in this House too, across political lines, to bring forward a political solution to help end this terrible crisis in Myanmar.

The member outlined some of the ideas she has on how we can move forward, take action, and be influential in leading this charge. Maybe she could touch more on that. Would she be willing to, in the meantime, increase humanitarian aid to deal with this crisis? Would she also be willing to support accepting more Rohingya refugees, in light of the situation they are in and the immediate threats the people are facing in those refugee camps?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I did ask several human rights lawyers in New York last week what their suggested approach would be on resettlement as a tool to assist in this situation. Many expressed the sentiment that they are concerned that should the world focus on resettlement at this point in time, it would essentially be carrying out the ethnic cleansing, in a lot of ways, for the Myanmar government, because they would be removing people from a situation rather than reinstating their rights. It is a difficult situation.

Certainly Canada needs to look at how it brings internally displaced persons to Canada. There are calls within the broader Canadian community to have a specific standing committee in the House of Commons on internally displaced persons. That is something I would support in Parliament, given the number of cases like this we have seen escalate over the last 10 years.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Just to clarify, before we go to the next speaker, I believe I owe you an apology. According to Standing Order 17, you can be anywhere in the House. I just wanted to clarify that. I did not want to mislead the House.

The hon. member for Flamborough—Glanbrook.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I would like to thank my colleagues on the subcommittee for national human rights who have been seized with the issues in Burma, particularly the Rohingya, since 2012, as well as my colleague from Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, who was the former chair. He was actually the chair when we produced our first report in regard to Burma, or Myanmar.

For decades the military has ruled Burma and has sought to make the entire population ethnically, homogenously Burman, with Buddhism being the official state religion. Although there was room for optimism with the words that were coming out of Burma, some initial actions, along with favourable election results—in particular, the election of the honorary Canadian citizen Aung San Suu Kyi—there is sufficient evidence now that this may well be a well-orchestrated plan to get the western world on side, along with the accompanying dollars, without ever establishing an international standard of human rights or, for that matter, a real democracy.

I take exception to the government's response to our June 2016 report, entitled “Sentenced to a Slow Demise: The Plight of Myanmar's Rohingya Minority”. The notion that Burma has changed significantly is profoundly overly optimistic and flawed at best, and at worst it is purposely out of touch.

I will go farther. Without assigning blame to anyone specifically, I believe we were blinded by our optimism, our western hopes and dreams for the Burmese people, and did not see the very evident signs that the mechanisms were either put in place or kept in place to ensure that the ruling military class, along with its many supporters in the Rangoon Buddhist communities, would be the ones that profited from an image of a new democratization.

However, these benefits would never extend out to the broader population of the Kachin, the Chin, the Shan, the Wa, the Konkang, the Karen, the Karenni, the Kayan, or the Mon, all of which, it should be noted, have fought for their aspirations of autonomy within Burma and have a history of armed conflict against the Burmese state since 1948. Not so with the Rakhine and the Rohingya, with whom there is little history of armed conflict.

To my previous point, let us look at the evidence.

Many political prisoners still have no complete amnesty, as they were released under a statute that makes them susceptible to rearrest.

The military answers to no civilian authority, and the police continue to act much the same way, with unjustified detentions and with corruption running rampant.

The judiciary is still one of the most corrupt institutions in Burma and still gives jail sentences to citizens who show public dissent toward the government.

Extrajudicial killings, even for those close to the government, are also part of today's Burma. Human rights defenders are under constant threat in Burma. On January 29, 2017, Ko Ni, a Muslim lawyer known for his stance in favour of religious tolerance and a legal adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, was assassinated on his way out of Rangoon airport.

Most Burmese minorities are not allowed to form political parties, and in the case of the Rohingya, they cannot even independently run for office.

Racism is rampant, systemic, and institutional, with only ethnic Burmans enjoying a modicum of rights and freedoms, which exist primarily in the capital of Rangoon.

Little to no effort has been made to have a free and fairly represented parliament. Instead, the constitution still holds that 25% of seats must be set aside for the military, virtually assuring that remnants from the former repressive regime always hold ultimate power. Such a structure ensures that there never will be a civilian democratic government.

There has been no move to correct any history of persecution of minorities. No peace talks have taken place to assure a lasting, durable peace amongst any of the minorities I listed above. Since 1962, statutory and administrative measures have continually eroded the rights of, in particular, the Muslim population, and there has been no attempt to repeal the abhorrent legislation that has left the Rohingya as the largest stateless group of individuals on the globe, sanctioning them to a continual state of poverty, uncertainty, and persecution.

Not only has this persecution continued against Burmese minorities, but in the case of the Rohingya it has reached the stage of ethnic cleansing. Such credible organizations such as Fortify Rights has said that it sees evidence on the ground that would support that the crime of genocide is taking place.

They are being persecuted so severely through violence, torture, rape, and murder that hundreds of thousands have fled to nearby Bangladesh.

I will read testimony that was given just days ago to the subcommittee for human rights. I would like to warn my colleagues that this is very graphic testimony. This is the testimony of Ahmed Ramadan. Although Mr. Smith did give you some description of how bad it is there, I wanted to share with everyone testimony that was submitted to the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal that is ongoing right now in Malaysia on this situation in Myanmar. This is one of the testimonies that was submitted. It is very graphic, but I want to show how serious, how bad, how horrifying the situation really is. The witness interviewed states:

My sister had just given birth in her house when the Myanmar soldiers came into the village. We all ran away, but my sister couldn't. I returned and found the dead bodies of my sister and her baby. They had taken off her clothes and cut into her vagina. They had cut off her breasts and put the dead baby on her chest. The baby had been stomped to death. Its stomach had burst open and its intestines had come out. They had put the breasts next to each other on the pillow beside her. She was lying in her bed. They had stuck a rifle in her vagina.

Next I would like to read from a document from the UNHCR, quoting a statement by seven special rapporteurs in regard to Myanmar. It states:

“There have been credible allegations of serious human rights violations and abuses committed against the Rohingya, including extrajudicial killings, excessive use of force, torture and ill-treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, and forced displacement, as well as the burning and destruction of over 200 Rohingya villages and tens of thousands of homes,” the experts said.

“We understand that State Counsellor Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in her diplomatic briefing on 19 September had encouraged the international community to learn along with the Myanmar Government the possible reasons behind the current exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh,” the experts said, noting that about 430,000 people had reportedly crossed into Bangladesh in the past few weeks.

The experts stressed: “No one chooses, especially not in the hundreds of thousands, to leave their homes and ancestral land, no matter how poor the conditions, to flee to a strange land to live under plastic sheets and in dire circumstances except in life-threatening situations. Despite violence allegedly perpetrated by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the whole Rohingya population should not have to pay the price.”

By the way, I really think that is a sham of a piece of evidence.

Finally, I am going to skip down the report because of time. The rapporteurs say:

“UN member states need to go beyond statements and start taking concrete action to stop the military and security forces from accomplishing their so-called ‘unfinished business’ of getting rid of the Rohingya minority from Rakhine State,” the experts concluded.

I would like to finish with this: all I am asking is for the Government of Canada to do exactly what the rapporteurs are saying and take action. Stop this violence right now. We have the capability, we have the political capital we have invested in Myanmar, and we should take every action, including threatening to cut off money.

By the way, there was a statement made earlier than no government-to-government money was made. Forty-two million dollars was given to the Burmese government in order to build democratic institutions. That should stop, and we should make it clear. Even in regard to the humanitarian aid, right now we are not allowed to deliver it. We need to make sure that any money that we put toward humanitarian aid is allowed to be spent to support the Rohingya needs, not only in Myanmar but also in Bangladesh.

God bless Canada and God bless Burma.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to acknowledge the hon. member's commitment to this issue. I have the honour of sitting with him on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. He has been a strong advocate, not just for the last couple of years but well before, for the plight of the Rohingya. I want to acknowledge that during this emergency debate.

We had an opportunity to hear from a broad swath of people who have been impacted by the current policies in Myanmar and by the conditions in Rakhine State. We have seen the conditions continue to trend downward. Can the member provide us any sort of insight from maybe the international community and from a multilateral point of view about how we can begin to address making a real, sustained effort to impact the situation on the ground and provide real relief and cover for those most affected?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his kind words. It has been an honour to serve with him on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights and to work as partners to try to bring about real change.

I am grateful for the question, because the discussion needs to happen at the Security Council. I think that the United Nations forces are very amenable to this kind of service, to being there as a protective force. The military does not answer to the government of Burma. They really take their own direction.

As I mentioned before, racism is endemic in Burma. The only way to end that is to make sure that there is protection for minorities—not just the Rohingya, but the broader minorities, although the Rohingya are the ones who are severely persecuted right now—and to demand that the Burmese government get to the table and negotiate a lasting peace for all of these minorities.

For the Rohingya, we must make sure they repeal the legislation that leaves them stateless and begin the process of re-identifying them and giving them proper credentials so that they can participate as any democratic citizen would in a free state.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his speech and for his work on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights as well. I know that we did hear very disturbing and very graphic details with regard to this situation for the Rohingya. I do not want to just keep repeating these atrocities and make it a sensational issue. I want us to be moved by them so that we can move forward.

If my hon. colleague remembers when that very graphic testimony was taking place, the young man also talked to us about how important it was to have a safe zone and to let the humanitarian aid in. I wonder if the member would like to expand on that as being one of the concrete ways we can move forward tonight decisively.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her work on the subcommittee as well as for the question.

Obviously there are a number of options we have that would have to be negotiated by the United Nations. I mentioned a protective force. Certainly if we did not have the capability of deploying a force that big, then certainly it should be a force that would allow humanitarian aid to get through. That would be a gauntlet-style force to make sure the supply lines can get through with not only food but also medicines and proper facilities for people to live in. Right now that is not happening.

Many of these people, as we heard in previous testimony from another colleague, are not concerned about the Burmese military killing them; they are going to starve to death anyway.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Don Valley West.

I want to begin with the words of former senator and Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire:

The warning signs preceding genocide in this case are ever present. The Rohingya have often been referred to as “illegal Bengalis”, with many of Burma's Buddhists demanding that they 'go back to where they belong', be it in Bangladesh or elsewhere. Generally they are forbidden from owning land, from inter-marrying with Buddhists and from having more than two children.... the international community must take early preventive action now in order to reverse Burma’s current trend towards catastrophe and possibly genocide.

Mr. Dallaire wrote that on March 24, 2014. He rightly called for the restoration of full citizenship. He called for the immediate authorization and deployment of international police units to Rakhine and an education campaign to counter the racist propaganda.

I recently met with Ahmed Ullah, alongside a number of my colleagues. Mr. Ullah is a Rohingya refugee who was born in a refugee camp and came to Canada in 2009. In a recent interview, he noted that his mother receives calls from family members stating, “We might not see the next daylight or we may not survive the next hour.”

John Packer, a professor of law and human rights at the University of Ottawa, recently pointed to the unadulterated racism towards the Rohingya and wrote that now is the time to stand up on the side of human rights and fully inclusive democracies.

Just as others have noted, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the exodus a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

As Mr. Dallaire noted in his warning years ago, the state of Myanmar has persecuted the Rohingya for decades. It has denied their citizenship, history, and identity; placed restrictions on families, education, and mobility; and engaged in arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings, all with the cumulative intent of denying their participation in society, driving them out, and destroying them.

This decades' long campaign of cultural genocide has recently turned to genocide. Myanmar's military has raped and murdered Rohingya, burned villages of predominantly Rohingya ethnic minorities to the ground, and triggered a mass exodus. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, with over 400,000 refugees entering Bangladesh over the last few weeks alone. Two hundred ethnic Rohingya villages now stand empty.

As the chair of the Canada-Bangladesh Parliamentary Friendship Group, I extend my deep gratitude to Bangladesh for the assistance it has provided, especially in the face of the floods it has been experiencing, with two-thirds of the country underwater. Bangladesh has exhibited compassion. When we look at Canada's efforts to take in refugees in the last two years, taking in over 45,000 refugees last year and committed to taking in 40,000 this year, our effort pales in comparison to the efforts under way in accommodating Rohingya refugees on the Bangladesh border. Canada has contributed over $9 million in humanitarian aid to this cause, but we need to do more.

Before coming here tonight, I was cutting mushrooms. I was in my kitchen in my apartment with my wife and my 13-month old. My 13-month old walked up behind me and bit my leg. It hurt and I was not particularly happy at the time, but I have to say, in the context of this debate, in the context of all of the horrible news, it is also a reminder of how lucky I am to live in Canada.

Abdul Hamid, who is 12 years old, is one of thousands and thousands of stories. He saw his father shot in front of him. When his father did not die, the soldier slit his father's throat in front of him. He and his mother and four younger siblings then hid in the forest for days, and then walked for two days to reach the safety of Bangladesh.

I do not have the answers. Sanctions, aid, multilateral forces, I do not know. However, I cannot stress enough the importance of intervention in the name of human rights. The international community has a responsibility to protect ethnic minorities in the face of genocide and to assist the nation of Bangladesh in their efforts to help them.

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

Mr. Speaker, the situation we are debating tonight is unbelievably heart-wrenching, and I am searching for tangible, concrete things that we can recommend that the Government of Canada do, admitting and acknowledging that much is already being done.

One area that I want to focus on, and I ask the hon. member if he agrees, is the fact that the army in Myanmar has been using land mines in contravention of the Ottawa Treaty. Bangladesh is a party to the Ottawa Treaty and some years ago had an agreement with Myanmar to allow the removal of all land mines in the border lands between Bangladesh and Myanmar. In the last few weeks and months, the Myanmar military has been adding more land mines with the deliberate purpose of killing people as they flee.

Given Ottawa's leadership in developing the land mines treaty and the fact there is an existing agreement between the states of Myanmar and Bangladesh to remove land mines, would it not be a very useful thing for Canada to provide the funds and technical assistance for Bangladesh to remove the land mines in those border lands?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had not turned my mind to that solution, but it seems that it may well be an effective one.

I would note that in my discussions with human rights advocates and from listening to their advice, their principle concern is that human rights observers be allowed on the ground and permitted to document and investigate the atrocities. This in and of itself would put pressure on the military authorities to stop what they are doing. Again, I do not know how effective that would be, but that is the advice I received.

However, whether it is funding for humanitarian aid or pushing at the international level for the Security Council to take decisive action, certainly acting where we have expertise and a history of engaging, namely on land mines, makes perfect sense.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that I do not always agree with my colleague, but I know that he is very thoughtful.

I would ask the member for his thoughts on the broader question of how we respond to cases of ethnic cleaning and genocide. It seems to me that if we look at the last 100 years of this repeated pattern of events, we do not really pay enough attention to them while they are happening and wring our hands after the fact and think why we did not do more. Then the same events happen again.

How can we as an international community get into a pattern of always consistently responding in the moment? How can we really anticipate these problems, respond in the moment, and address them so that we do not go through this repeated after the fact hand-wringing? How can we change the way we behave as an international community? I would appreciate his thoughts on that.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for being a vocal advocate on this file in particular.

It is depressing in some ways to hear “never again”, again and again, which is why I started my comments with the words of Mr. Dallaire from more than three years ago. I would also note that if we go back to February 2017, there were reports of thousands of killings and the international community did not act in the face of that news.

As to the answer of how we would get the international community to take notice and act, I think when we look at the Security Council, its makeup, and its inability to take decisive action, we see that this is a real problem.

Romeo Dallaire has said about Rwanda that “If I had had one reinforced brigade—5,000 men—well trained and well equipped, I could have saved of thousands of lives”. Maybe it takes a small standing army of some sort, a multilateral force, to at least be deployed quickly and easily in situations such this on the ground. Certainly, just as in Rwanda, I do not think we would have seen the atrocities had a small deployment of police forces that Roméo Dallaire was calling for in 2014 been authorized and deployed at that time. I do not think we would see the atrocities we see today.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin tonight by thanking the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for requesting this emergency debate on this very serious situation affecting the Rohingya people in Myanmar. I want to let him know that I did have a letter drafted and written, ready to go to request this, and I have no resentment whatsoever. Rather, I have only respect for him and the fact that he was able to request this debate. I am glad this debate was put forth and that members from all parties have engaged in it with competence, compassion, and great concern.

This is Canada's Parliament. It is the House of the people, and in the House of the people we take time to debate matters of great concern, as well as urgent matters. Tonight we are developing a narrative on all sides of the House that is lifting up the concerns of Canadians about the atrocities being experienced by the Rohingya people in Myanmar.

The people of Don Valley West have spoken to me about this. Last weekend I met with several hundred of them in a park, where they were raising funds for the Rohingya people. They asked me to bring their concerns to the House of Commons. I am grateful that we have the opportunity to do that tonight. I need to say that I am outraged and that I am expressing the outrage of the people of Don Valley West at another situation in the world that needs to be stopped. We, as Canadians, need to call upon leaders in this country and around the world to engage in a new way of doing world politics.

Like all Canadians, I am very concerned about the persecution of the Rohingya.

According to reports emanating from the region, a campaign of ethnic cleansing is being carried out against the Rohingya. The Prime Minister has said that the responsibility for resolving this crisis falls squarely on the shoulders of Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's military leaders.

It is important to reiterate our condemnation of this situation and urge Aung San Suu Kyi to have security forces put an end to the violence and protect civilians.

We will continue to support the Rohingya people. The way they are being treated is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue.

The sentiments that the Prime Minister expressed on this issue are profound and important. In his letter to the State Counsellor, he called upon her to live out the expectations that Canada had when it offered her honorary citizenship. In a very strongly worded letter, he demanded that she absolutely condemn the violence taking place in her country and find ways to bring together the peoples of that country in peaceful, just, and long-lasting ways.

The Rohingya people are recognized by the United Nations as probably the most persecuted minority in the world. In recent months, 214 Rohingya villages in Myanmar have been torched to ashes. Human Rights Watch estimates that 50% of all those villages have been destroyed, according to satellite pictures taken by Amnesty International.

Since August 25, 400,000 refugees have fled Myanmar into Bangladesh, according to the UNHCR. More Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh in the space of four weeks than refugees from Africa fled by sea to Europe in 2016, and 80% of the 400,000 refugees arriving last month were women and children. Among the women, a United Nations' survey found that 52% had been raped. Bangladeshi officials have said that land mines have been planted on Myanmar's side of the border, posing a threat to every single Rohingya, who are facing terrorism and persecution and are trying to save their lives.

The Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, chaired by Kofi Annan, recommended in its final report:

...urgent and sustained action on a number of fronts to prevent violence, maintain peace, foster reconciliation and offer a sense of hope to the State’s hard-pressed population.

This important report, in addition to dozens of other reports by several international groups, has repeatedly condemned the actions of the Myanmar security forces. I am pleased that Burma Task Force Canada has taken time to educate us.

Many of us are new to this issue, newer than we should be. I know that the subcommittee on human rights has looked at this issue. I know that the foreign affairs committee has looked at it. I know that others have raised a concern. However, we have not done enough as a Parliament, and I say that our government has still not done enough.

I commend them for their strong condemnation of the actions of the military. I commend them for their strong exhortation to the state counsellor to live up to the expectations of our Canadian citizenship. I commend the Minister of International Development, who is offering aid both in Bangladesh and to those who may have to flee to other places. However, we can still do more.

The Canadians who live in Don Valley West have told me that they want the government to consider matching grants. They want every charitable dollar that is raised in Canada to be matched by the government. I hope we can raise that issue with the government tonight so it can consider that as well.

As we express our outrage, we recognize that we could spend a lot of time debating the language we use around this. I want to say to the House, and to the people of Canada, that I do not have time for debate on the issue. What we have to do is save lives, find a way to garner peace, and be humans in a place that has increasingly become inhumane. I would ask the House this. Did we not learn the lesson from the Armenian genocide to stand up and do everything we can to stop this atrocity? Are the scars of the Jewish Holocaust not profound enough for us to learn to stand with vulnerable people who are being raped, killed, or driven from their homes? As humanity, we have faced this again and again. However, we do not seem to learn the lessons. I have heard from all sides of the House that we need to find new solutions for international crises like this, as well as the domestic crises that are happening within countries' borders. We are not there yet. We need to act. We need to find ways to act multilaterally and bilaterally. We need to encourage Canadians to reach into their pockets to make sure we can provide humanitarian aid as we need to.

I am not totally new to this issue. When I was first serving as a member of Parliament a number of years ago, I had a young man come to see me about several development issues. His name was Raess Ahmed. Raess engaged with me in conversation as a smart, bright, young student at the University of Toronto. As the conversation ensued, I asked him where his family had come from before coming to Canada. He said it was a long story. I asked him to tell me the story. He told me of the Rohingya people. He told me the story of his family leaving their homeland, stateless, their citizenship having been revoked, of finding a home in Bangladesh and then making their way to Canada as refugees. He told me the story and it broke my heart. I recognized how little we know in Canada about the Rohingya people. It is estimated that there are only 400 people in Canada of Rohingya background. However, there are 35 million Canadians who need to stand with the Rohingya people. We are doing that tonight. As we gather in this place, we talk, we offer our words, we debate, we offer sentiments, and we offer our outrage. We now call upon the government to keep pressure on the State of Myanmar, on the military forces that are running that country, and on the multilateral partners who need to work together with us. We need to find a way to ensure this never happens again.

I am again thankful for the opportunity we have tonight to express Canadians' outrage, and to gather in this place with commitment, not only in this case but in every situation where human beings are at risk and where humanity is not living up to what we would call each other to.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see there is a lot of support for having the emergency debate and for putting pressure on the government to continue to move forward.

One of the challenges with generating a strong response to this in other countries is that there is sort of a window in which these things get attention in the media. That is the nature of news. They talk about an issue for a while, and then something else comes up. However, there is a whole run-up period to where we are now. The problem will likely continue in some form going forward for a substantial amount of time.

My question is this. We need to have sustained attention for this. The government should have had more engagement earlier on this issue. However, now we need to ensure that its engagement continues beyond just this window of time when people are paying a lot of attention to this issue. How can we maintain that pressure? How do we ensure that our government is continuing to engage in this over a long period of time? Yes, absolutely, it is in the immediate circumstances, but how can it maintain that pressure on not only the military but also the civilian government in a sustained way?

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question and again for his leadership in this debate. He asked the most important question. As we gather here today, we know that there are parts of the world that are hot spots all the time and our attention is driven elsewhere. I understand that Canadians are preoccupied with our economy, their own lives, their families. We are preoccupied as lawmakers, as legislators in this place, with our own concerns.

It is very interesting that George Bernard Shaw, in his play St. Joan, has a grand inquisitor asking if an innocent person must die in every generation for those who have so little imagination. The answer has to be no. The answer has to be that we take a step back and recognize that we need to see the signals. As former senator Roméo Dallaire has said, we need to see them and they are not that hard to see.

We have had a debate over the last two decades around the concept of responsibility to protect and the ability of the international community going into a situation and finding a way to bring about a change so that we do not have people die. We do not have an answer on this. This is going to take a concerted effort. I am so pleased that all the debate tonight has been non-partisan. If we can find a way to express ideas and find a new pathway toward a way that people will respect each other, I think it starts by respecting that we are different.

In Myanmar we see minorities that are not being respected. We have to respect the minorities that exist in every country and perhaps that is Canada's role, to say we live in this country with first nations, with indigenous peoples, with founding peoples, with newcomers, respecting the way they live and trying to find a way to do it. Then we have to find international bodies that can do it better than they have been doing it so far.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Don Valley West for, as always, his incredibly compelling words. I am very moved that, in this chamber this evening, it is very clear that, when all of us are here speaking for our constituents who are writing to us, phoning our offices, and asking what Canada can do, what Canada should do, we are all speaking unanimously that this is something on which we need to act.

The situation with the Rohingya people is an incredible tragedy, horror, and atrocity that is happening there. I have lived in countries that are living with the legacy of that kind of atrocity, and rebuilding is so much more difficult than trying to stop it from happening.

The hon. member mentioned that we need to do more. I know that our government and our Prime Minister have been very eloquent on this in condemning it. There are sanctions. We have put over $9 million into humanitarian aid, including for women, children, and pregnant women.

We need to come up with other solutions. Could the hon. member talk about what other kinds of things we could be doing?

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have to find a way of being present. Witnesses to peace, witnesses to atrocities on the ground in countries have to be regularized. It is not what we would call peacekeeping forces, but it is a force that has an ability to be witnesses to give us the truth and tell us. We count on international NGOs to do that. I commend Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, and other not-for-profits that are in the region. We have to find ways to support them, to fund them, to encourage them, and to respect them when they give reports.

I do not think we can do it from this distance, so we have to increase our diplomatic presence. We have to find ways to do multilateral military presence at times to make sure we have a peace to keep. We need to find a way to have Canada more present in those countries with our partners.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Shepard.

We heard in debate tonight about how well we are all getting along here, and I do not want to change the tone too much, but we need to talk about the fact that the government has been naive right from the beginning. When Stéphane Dion went to Myanmar in 2016, he gave it $44 million, and we were told that was intended to go toward building democratic institutions. If the government at the time had been paying attention to what was going on in Myanmar, it would have known there were already serious problems there. The election had been held a little earlier and there was no indication from the election that any of the parties were going to take seriously this issue around the Rohingya.

I understand it is a long-lasting issue, which I will go into in a few minutes, but the reality is that the government that was elected in Burma was not taking this issue seriously. The Canadian government said it was going to give it $44 million, and there has been little accountability for that money. If I go on the website international.gc.ca tonight, under “Canadian international assistance in Myanmar”, it is still the government's position that Myanmar is moving toward an inclusive parliamentary democracy and negotiating ceasefires after decades-long civil wars. I guess we can understand that it has not kept its websites up, but it should, because this is an important issue and one that the government has misfired on right from the beginning.

The second place the government made a mistake was last week when the Prime Minister was in New York. He had an opportunity to show some international leadership and chose to talk about, as much as possible, whatever dirty laundry he could find from our country rather than taking leadership on international issues. This would have been an excellent issue for him to have shown some leadership and statesmanship on.

We have talked tonight about members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights who have been talking about this issue off and on for the last year. They worked very well together on the issue, but government leadership needs to start paying attention to these kinds of issues. The Prime Minister had the chance to do that and did not take it. It seems that, until it hits the editorial page in Canada, the government pays little attention to it. Because of that, it has little influence. It does not have the capacity to influence in the way it should.

We know a little about the Rohingya issue. It has been going on for a long time. It is a group of people who, within the last several hundred years, have moved into the area on the border of Bangladesh and what used to be called Burma but is now called Myanmar. They can be shown to have a heritage that goes back for several hundred years in that area. In 2015, their population in Myanmar was about one million people. There has been a long and drawn-out persecution of them. It started many years ago, but there were military crackdowns in 1998, which chased a whole pile of the Rohingya people out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. When they came back in 1981, when they started moving back into the area that they had occupied and lived in for so long, the government turned on them and brought in a series of citizenship laws that basically removed their citizenship. There was another round of persecution in 1991 and 1992, then renewed pressure in 2012, and then what we have seen in the recent past.

I would like to back up and talk a little about the problem, which is centred on these 1982 citizenship laws. Basically, in the past, the Rohingya had been citizens of the country, and the government just made the decision that it was going to remove their positions as citizens. It came in with a law that said that citizens need to be part of a recognized national race, and the Rohingya were not a national recognized race, so right off the bat they did not have an opportunity to reaffirm their citizenships.

The law also said that they had to be able to demonstrate that their families had settled there before 1823, which was when the British came. The records and other things made it very difficult for people to establish the fact that they were citizens. They were basically left stateless in 1982 by those changes. There has been pressure over the years on the government to try to get it to change that position so that these people would be considered citizens again, but that has not been successful. The government disqualified them and made it impossible for the Rohingya to qualify as citizens.

Those who were citizens were impacted in 2015 around the election, and I will talk a bit about that later because I know personally someone who was impacted by that. In 2015, there were some other changes made as well, called the race and religion protection laws. Four laws were brought in, and each actually directly impacted the Rohingya minority that exists in Myanmar. There was a monogamy law that ruled out polygamy, which is practised in certain areas of that country.

It had a religious conversion law and an interfaith law. People who wanted to change their faith needed to get approval. They needed to go through interviews and wait between 90 to 180 days before they were allowed to convert, and in many cases they were not allowed.

The third law restricted the marriage of Buddhist women to non-Buddhist men, so it put restrictions on them.

The fourth law was a population control law, which was targeted at minority areas where couples were only allowed to have one child every 36 months.

These, piled on top of the citizenship laws, left the Rohingya without representation and without any political strength.

Further restrictions were placed on things like employment, education, freedom of movement, and religious freedom as well.

These violate the basic rights of people in so many ways.

I want to tell the House about a specific case from 2015. I had the chance to be part of an international group of parliamentarians, which was formed around the issue of religious freedom. We were in Oslo in the fall of 2014, and signed on to a charter called IPPFoRB. A gentleman named Shwe Maung, was from Myanmar, was there. He was a member of parliament for Burma. He signed on to this charter. The network now has 150 to 200 members from around the world. He is a full citizen. In 2010, he had citizenship. When they came to vote in 2015, the electoral commission decided his parents had not been citizens and he was not a citizen either, so they removed his citizenship.

There were 500,000 Rohingya in the same situation who were struck from the electoral rolls. These people voted in one election. Leading up to the next election, the electoral commission of the central government made a determination that they were not citizens anymore. Mr. Maung went from representing his country as a member of Parliament to finding himself completely stateless. He is in the United States now, with an arrest warrant out for him. This is the kind of pressure the Rohingya have been under in Myanmar.

On August 23, Kofi Annan came out with his report. On August 25, a small group, a strange group of people, with perhaps some Rohingya in it, attacked a number of government and police officials. A number of people were killed. This caused a retaliation from the military and the start of all we see now.

I want to talk a bit about the fact that the government's response by the 28th was to begin laying mines. We have a news release from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which specifically mentions mines being placed. On the afternoon of August 28, an army truck arrived on the Myanmar side of the border. Three crates were unloaded, which contained anti-personnel mines were removed. They were placed in the ground between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. It talks about the areas where they were placed. It talks about subsequent to the daytime operation, the Myanmar army brought in trucks at night to continue laying mines. This could be seen under the lights. This has all been confirmed by Bangladeshi authorities as well. This has taken place against basically every international protocol that exists in the world.

We need to find some solutions, quickly.

First, the Rohingya people need immediate help. We were told at subcommittee just a few days ago that people were being kept in compounds. They have eaten all the food. They have eaten trees and branches. There is nothing for them to eat. They need immediate assistance and help from outside or they will starve to death. Starvation is imminent. Earlier tonight we heard about the rapes and the killings. We need to insist that the military stop its campaign.

We also need to be clear and do a solid investigation into which foreign powers are funding and radicalizing these individuals. Where is this small group of people, which, by the way, is killing Rohingya Muslims as well, getting its backing in order to cause the disruption?

We need to insist that the four race and religion protection laws are replaced and those 1982 citizenship laws are revoked.

The government needs to take its place as a leader. It needs to quit the show and start supplying the goal. Up until now that has not been the case. Canadians need value for the $50 million that have been spent there. The government needs to be accountable. It needs to step in and show the leadership the Rohingya and the Myanmar people need in order to move forward.