Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to recognize that today is the fourth anniversary of the attack on Parliament Hill and the loss of Corporal Nathan Cirillo. Today, we pay tribute to both Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who served their country with dedication and honour. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends today.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on the motion by the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. We can all support the sentiments expressed by Nadia Murad, the Yazidi human rights activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nadia Murad's powerful words remind us of the horrors unleashed by Daesh on the population it held captive. They remind us of the cruelty and brutality meted out by the group's violent depraved adherence. They remind us of the terrible suffering endured in particular by the Yazidi minority, and especially Yazidi women and girls. They remind us how important it is to do everything in our power to bring those responsible to justice and to prevent groups like Daesh from coming into existence in the first place.
At the height of its self-professed caliphate, tens of thousands of people from all over the world joined Daesh. They came from neighbouring Middle Eastern countries. However, they also came from places around the world, including Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada. All of these countries, Canada included, are dealing with the reality that some of these people eventually may come back.
At the time we took office, about 60 Canadian terrorist travellers had returned to our country. Over the last three years, that number, which includes people who joined Daesh as well as other terrorist groups elsewhere, has remained relatively stable. However, since the global coalition against Daesh, of which Canada is a proud member, helped bring about the group's decisive defeat late last year, we and our allies have been aware that some of these people may be on the move.
According to the 2017 public report on the terrorist threat to Canada, about 190 Canadians have travelled overseas to join terrorist groups and remain abroad. Roughly half of them are in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Some, perhaps many of them, are dead. Among those who survived, some are detained or are in hiding. They may be unable or unwilling to leave. A few may be attempting to move to Africa, Asia or Europe, and perhaps back to Canada. We are fortunate that we are only dealing with relatively small numbers compared to many of our allies. However, we have no illusions. These individuals were part of an organization that did horrific things. Many of them may have a good deal of blood on their hands and serious security risks are involved.
The good news is that Canada's security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies are well trained and well prepared to address the threat and keep us safe. Canadians can be assured that our national security and intelligence agencies are carefully monitoring these individuals and actively assessing the threat that each one poses. When our agencies learn that an individual is planning a return, a coordinated whole-of-government approach is initiated. This ensures that measures to mitigate any potential threat can be taken even before that individual sets foot in Canada.
If at all possible, arrest and prosecute are the favoured courses of action. It is a criminal offence to leave or attempt to leave Canada to commit terrorism offences. Canadian law enforcement actively pursues investigations and lays criminal charges when the evidence is there. In the last couple of years, the RCMP has been able to charge four people with terrorism-related offences after their return to Canada. Two have been convicted and two remain before the courts.
There were no such charges under the previous government. In fact, until last year, all terrorism charges in Canada had either been laid in absentia or against people whose terrorist activity took place on Canadian soil. Of course, binding evidence related to actions taken in a war zone on the other side of the world is very difficult work.
Therefore, while the RCMP and its law enforcement partners pursue that evidence, other counterterrorism tools are brought to bear. These tools include investigations, surveillance and monitoring, intelligence-gathering and lawful information-sharing, the no-fly list, revocation of passports, legally-authorized threat-reduction measures and terrorism peace bondings. Taken together, these measures help keep Canadians safe and they happen while police and prosecutors do everything they can to collect evidence and bring terrorists to justice in courts of law.
At the same time, it is important to note that terrorist travellers are only one of the serious threats that Canada faces. In general, our country is peaceful and safe, but we cannot meet the threat of domestic terrorism with complacency.
Unfortunately, there have been attempts on Canadian soil by people who were radicalized here. Some were inspired by the ideologies of groups like Daesh and al-Qaeda, while others by white supremacists. I am referring to the shooting at the mosque in Sainte-Foy, and attacks in Edmonton, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and even here, in our Parliament.
CSIS, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and all other security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies work tirelessly to know as much as we possibly can about every threat to our security. On a regular basis, they expertly assess and reassess all available data to make sure that we stay up to date as threats evolve. Our security and intelligence agencies also work in close co-operation with our allies. Those allies include NATO, our Five Eyes and G7 partners, the European Union, Interpol and others. That co-operation is crucial, given the global nature of terrorist threats today.
The Government of Canada is constantly working to strengthen its ability to manage terrorist threats. The federal terrorism response plan, for example, facilitates a coordinated and integrated response to a terrorism incident or threat.
The government is also modernizing and enhancing Canada's security and intelligence laws through Bill C-59. Among many other measures, this proposed new legislation would ensure that CSIS had the proper tools and authorities to investigate threats, including extremist travellers. For example, within well-defined legal parameters, and subject to strengthened oversight, Bill C-59 would give CSIS the ability to analyze travel-related data sets to investigate the movements and behaviours of extremist travellers. This is an important tool that our security professionals would be able to use within the clear constitutional and legal framework created by Bill C-59 to protect Canadians and Canadian interests around the world.
Just as Canada's federal terrorism response plan recognizes that responding to threats and events requires close collaboration with many players, so too do our prevention efforts. It is in that spirit that we launched the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence last year. The centre coordinates, bolsters and helps fund innovative programs and research in countering all kinds of radicalization to violence and supports local organizations on the front lines of early prevention efforts. This approach is guided by the fact that early intervention to prevent radicalization to violence can and does work.
A key part of our support for prevention efforts is the community resilience fund. This fund provides financial assistance to organizations undertaking programming and research to address radicalization to violence in Canada. It also mobilizes what we know about successful programming in Canada and around the world and shares these lessons among front-line practitioners across the country.
To date, over $16 million has been invested in community resilience funding for research and intervention projects. For the next fiscal year and beyond, the fund will have $7 million available each year for existing and new projects.
All of this represents concrete, thoughtful and responsible action to combat and prevent terrorism. Our government is being vigilant without being alarmist. We are confident, but we are not complacent. Unfortunately, part of the opposition motion we are debating today could be interpreted as an attempt to use this sober topic to score political points rather than as a serious effort to grapple with the genuine issues we are facing.
We should be able to disagree without resorting to rhetoric and hyperbole. I disagreed vehemently, for example, with the deep cuts the Harper government made, in its final term, to our national security agencies: $530 million cut from the RCMP; $390 million cut from Canada Border Services Agency; $69 million cut from CSIS; $49 million cut from the Communications Security Establishment; and $171 million cut from the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. It was over $1 billion in all.
I also disagreed with the Harper government's indifference towards prevention and counter-radicalization. According to former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski, “the previous...government had an abysmal record when it came to countering violent extremism and early detection.”
I disagree with the Conservatives' repeated refusal to strengthen accountability mechanisms for our national security agents, as we have done now with the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, created last year, and as we are doing with legislation currently before the other place. Accountability is about protecting our rights and freedoms, but it is also about making sure that our agencies operate effectively to keep us safe.
I disagreed with the way the Harper Conservatives drafted a national security bill with provisions so vague and so open-ended as to make them virtually unusable by our security agencies. That is a mistake we are correcting with Bill C-59, which will give our agencies the legal clarity they need to do their jobs.
I disagreed passionately with the Conservatives' elimination of health care for refugee claimants. It is under this very program, which we have now reinstated, that Yazidi women and girls in Canada are receiving counselling and mental health care, and health care in general, to help them deal with the unimaginable trauma they experienced at the hands of Daesh. I will remind hon. members that under our government, 1,400 women and families, 85% of them Yazidi, have come to Canada after surviving Daesh. Three Yazidi refugees were accepted by the Harper government.
In spite of all of this, I would never accuse the Conservatives of being soft on terrorism. That should be beneath us in this place. In the fight against terrorism, while we may disagree about methodology, every one in this chamber is on the same side.
In that spirit, we intend to join the opposition in support of today's motion. We do not agree with every word of it, mainly the parts the Conservatives wrote, but we wholeheartedly endorse every syllable of the quote from Nadia Murad. We are all heartbroken by what happened to Nadia and many others like her. We all want the perpetrators to face justice and for girls and boys in Canada, Syria and everywhere else to live in a world shaped by love and peace.