Debates of Feb. 18th, 2021

Opposition Motion—Religious Minorities in China

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty to inform hon. members that an amendment to an opposition motion may be moved only with the consent of the sponsor of the motion. Therefore, I ask the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills if he consents to this amendment being moved.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Madam Speaker, I consent.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The amendment is in order.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean. I believe that he obtained the consent of the member for Wellington—Halton Hills for his amendment and that we are working in a non-partisan manner precisely because of his efforts and leadership in this matter. I sincerely thank him. It is an honour for me to work with him.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a pleasure to work with the member for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

I also want to thank her, as well as her colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith, for signing that letter. We can prove to this House that we are capable of working together, across party lines, on international human rights issues.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to let the member comment further on his amendment.

There is a long and shameful history of despots and dictators using the Olympic Games as propaganda to the rest of the world and as a domestic policy distraction to oppressed peoples. He mentioned the 1936 Olympics, the Olympics of shame. Sadly, that is not the only time a despotic regime used the Olympics for this purpose. As we saw shortly after the Sochi Olympics, the site of those games was a staging ground for the expansion and invasion launched from Russia.

I ask the member to comment on his amendment and the importance of not letting the Olympics be used as propaganda by dictatorships.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I think this is a situation that will occur more and more often. The International Olympic Committee has an obvious problem when it comes to choosing where to hold the Olympic Games. We know that it is becoming increasingly expensive to host the Olympics and that the countries that want to host them are often those led by a tyrannical government looking to boost its image. These countries use the Olympics as an opportunity to glorify their own regime and to show their own people that they are strong and powerful.

That is a problem we need to consider. I believe that the amendment we are proposing today is a strong gesture. I think that, if the House votes in favour of the amendment and the motion, we will be better off and we will become leaders on the world stage. I am convinced that this will snowball in many of the world's free parliaments.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, let me paraphrase the late Pierre Mondy and the brilliant Alexandre Astier who believed that a great leader, a hero, always fights for the dignity of the weak. With that sentiment in mind, I would like my colleague to comment on Canada's actions, or lack of action, in response to the genocide of the Uighurs.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will try to reply quickly and to the best of my ability, and I will do so with the following quotation: “A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman, of the next generation”.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Speaker, it is very troubling to speak about the Conservative opposition day motion. It is a very serious matter.

The motion calls on the House to recognize that a genocide is being carried out by the People's Republic of China against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims and it calls on the government to adopt this position.

We are in a legislative forum in the House of Commons, but it is also a political forum, and all actions are under that umbrella in this chamber. It would be easy therefore to treat this as a political motion, to see it as an attempt by the Conservatives to demonstrate that the government is not strong enough on China or on human rights internationally, and members may well seek to do that in this debate.

It is evident that this is part of the Conservatives' challenge to the Liberals as the governing party, but it is far too serious a matter to treat as a political event. It is a matter of fundamental human rights and the obligations of countries like Canada to call out the actions of states whose actions and practices of widespread and systematic abuses of human rights are of such enormity that they require international opprobrium and action. This is a matter on which we need to work together to seek to bring about an end to these practices and to deter other nations that may follow the lead of China if they are ignored and allowed to be carried on with impunity.

It has been said that the term “genocide” is a loaded word and therefore we should not use it. The Prime Minister has used that expression himself in the House. Yes, it is a loaded word, loaded with the freight of horrors of the past, a word that was not coined until 1944 to describe the implementation of Nazi policies in occupied Europe and mass killings of the past. Other words were not strong enough for the actions of the Nazis: the mass murders and executions carried out against the Jews, the Roma and other peoples as well as homosexuals, persons with disabilities, mental illness, political enemies or anyone who did not meet their standards. These horrors have cast a long shadow to this day in the minds and memories of mankind. These atrocities were deserving of a new name and it came to be called genocide.

The term was later incorporated in the United Nations genocide convention established in 1948, which was more broadly defined as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These acts included the killing of members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of that group to another group. That was the convention definition. They are broad and any one of them would meet the definition.

In Canada, the term “cultural genocide” has been used by no less an authority than the former chief justice of Canada, the Hon. Beverley McLachlin, in a 2015 speech in reference to the policies and practices of assimilation of indigenous people adopted by Sir John A. Macdonald's government in the early years of Confederation and continued as part of our colonial history. She called cultural genocide the language of the 21st century, replacing what was then called assimilation.

The same phrase, “cultural genocide”, was used by former prime minister Paul Martin a few years before that in reference to the residential school system in testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, saying he needed to call it what it was. Indeed, the report of the National Inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls used the term “genocide” to describe its findings, a term that was accepted by the Prime Minister.

When we are dealing with the actions of the Government of China with respect to the Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims, we must look to the material that was presented to the Subcommittee on International Human Rights that heard testimony this summer from many groups and individuals.

The committee heard from Amnesty International, for example, that China's unrelenting repression of the Uighur people went back decades and that other governments, including Canada, failed to make it clear to China that this was unacceptable and that it had to stop. It talked about authorities in Xinjiang being engaged in a massive campaign of intrusive surveillance, arbitrary detention, torture, political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation targeting the regions of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim people since 2017. More than one million people were being held in what they called “transformation through education” or “vocational training centres”, which are actually detention camps. We saw visual evidence this on CBC in 2019, evidence of the surveillance and detention camps. We have undeniable evidence of mass internment, arbitrary punishment and torture, the true scope and nature of which is not yet fully known.

We need to recognize that the mass detention, forced labour, surveillance and population control measures, which have been described by other speakers today, being directed against the Uighurs and Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang fits the definition of genocide. If we are dealing with mass detention and population control through various measures such as sterilization and abortion, mass internment and labour camps, those measures must be called out by Canada, by Parliament and by the government. We have to recognize that we have an obligation to call out these practices as crimes against humanity and seek international action.

Further investigations are required as is international action by the government and other governments, but we need to see that there is no impunity for that type of behaviour, that it is called out. Other nations have an interest in what is happening in China for the sake of the future of humanity. If these actions go unnoticed, unnamed, unchecked or not acted upon, we endanger not only the people who are affected by this today in China, who are concerned and fear the continuation of further actions of this nature, but people in other parts of the world.

China cannot be allowed to operate with impunity in the world. Otherwise it could engender other nations following suit. This is an example of how a nation can treat the people it wishes to assimilate or take actions against, by indicating that these practices are acceptable and may be repeated. By not acting, we endanger the future of mankind. We see the future of humanity potentially being changed if this kind of action is allowed to continue in China and is followed by other nations that feel they can do the same thing with impunity. Action must be taken.

It is incumbent upon us to follow and support this motion because it calls out the practices of China for what they are, which are included in the definition of genocide under the convention against genocide. Action needs to be taken. Hopefully, the government, by adopting the motion, will also encourage other nations to do the same and continue to put pressure on China to end those practices and ensure they are not continued either in China or elsewhere. It is requires some example by this Parliament, first, and the government to hopefully encourage other nations to follow suit.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last month, the Government of Canada announced measures with respect to the importation of goods from Xinjiang in response to human rights concerns over violations that are taking place in that region. Does the member believe there is a better way to put in place these trade sanctions on that region of China?

For example, does he believe it would be better to put a blanket ban on all imports from Xinjiang because of the evidence of mass forced labour and instead require companies to seek an exemption to that ban if they want to import products from that area, an important area to the world in particular because it produces more than 20% of all the world's cotton?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is a situation where the government has chosen perhaps not the best way of doing this. The member's suggestion is one worthy of consideration.

I attended a briefing from the government on its policies and I was very concerned about the onus that was put on importers to have a very high degree of surveillance and diligence as opposed to the government playing a role in identifying either those particular products that needed to be embargoed and banned or, as the member points out, the region itself or companies themselves which were engaged in using forced labour. There needs to be a better method than we have now. A blanket ban on all imports may not be the right tool, but we need better measures than we have right now.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments, but it is important to recognize that tangible actions have been taking place as the government recognizes and has a better understanding of what is happening in China. We have been working very closely with our international partners. When we look at the Five Eyes countries, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, there is a great deal of concern as we try to move forward on the issue.

Is the member concerned at all that we might be undermining in any fashion the potential? The motion is that Canada, in essence, say that China is committing genocide and that Canada is not going to participate possibly in the Olympics or, at the very least, see the Olympics change its venue? Does the member believe that maybe we could have had this go to a standing committee to have the discussion before we got to this type of a vote?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, yes, Canada has expressed concern, and there is no doubt that we have concerns, but we need to do more than that and recognize it for what it is. Perhaps we could have done this a week or two weeks from now after the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development had dealt with the report of the subcommittee, but we are aware of the essence of it.

It is an important to call it what it is. Yes, we should seriously seek a change of venue of the place for the Olympics as a part of this motion.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what is very concerning right now in the situation with China is that we see the horrific human rights abuses faced by the Uighurs. We see the attack on democratic rights in Hong Kong. We see the arbitrary detention of Canadians who are being held hostage in order to intimidate Canada. However, I do not see a coherent strategy at the international level of how we actually hold China to account.

I listened very closely to my hon. colleague as he laid out some of the issues and the problems, whether it is trade sanctions or the Olympics. Being the 21st century, how can Canada as a middle power play a stronger role of holding the Chinese regime accountable for the abuses that are taking place under its jurisdiction?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is a very good one. Canada is only one country and obviously not the biggest country in the world, but we have a strong commitment to human rights and international human rights. I think we have a role to play in helping to start these things with other countries, and we have. I give credit to the government for the statement made earlier this week regarding the arbitrary detention declaration. It has the potential ultimately to become a new norm, which it is already in some form, or a new thrust on that point. That is one way Canada played a role. Even though it did not mention China, the clear intention was to get international support for the problem we have of the serious, totally uncalled for and outrageous detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in China for more than two years. That is something that has to change.

We have a role to play in developing more international recognition. To start with, naming it a genocide tells other countries and the people of China how seriously this is being taken by Canada and should be by other nations.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for St. John's East for his well thought out speech and for presenting in such a convincing manner that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party against the Uighur minority do in fact fit the definition of genocide. He also showed in a very convincing manner that other nations must act.

My question to the member is this. How beneficial would it be for Canada's reputation, in the community of nations, if this motion from the opposition party were to pass and get the support of the Prime Minister and his party?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I think it would be beneficial. Obviously, we know the United States has taken a position, through the administration, of recognizing that what is happening meets the definition of genocide, but it requires further action by other nations. There has to be action by the United Nations. We support the investigation being proposed through the United Nations. That should take place, but we also need to have support from other nations in calling it what it clearly is, and putting it in that category. That gives rise to the continuation of that investigation and the expectation that China should respond to that, so the government's support for this would be extremely beneficial.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with the member. Does he think this could be one of those watershed moments, where the Prime Minister has an obligation to step up? For example, I am thinking about when the MS St. Louis was turned back by William Lyon Mackenzie King, whose government was famous for the statement, “None is too many.” Does he think, if the Prime Minister does not take a stand, that this could be a situation where a future prime minister would be apologizing for his actions?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the prediction of what might happen in the future is not within my powers, so the member is asking a hypothetical question about how history might look back on this day. I do not know whether it meets the test the member puts forward, but I think it is a serious question regarding a position that has a significant moral implication for Canada as a country: to call this what it is and describe it as it is. We do not know the full scope and extent of this, but we know the actions meet the definition. That is a starting point for a full recognition by the community of nations that this has to be taken seriously. We hope the Prime Minister and his government support this motion and take that step.

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

Mr. Speaker, doing what is right is rarely easy but it is often simple. Today, we are calling on the House of Commons to do a simple but hard thing: to recognize the reality that the Government of China is committing genocide. In this speech, I will seek to make the case for that reality, for greater certainty and for the benefit of those who have not heard the evidence before. I do so knowing that among scholars and experts, as well as among members here who have reviewed the facts, there is no serious basis for disputing them.

What makes the 1936 Olympics different from the 2022 Olympics is that in 1936, we did not know about the Nazi concentration camps. We had not seen the piles of children's shoes, the mounds of human hair or the bodies of victims being bulldozed. In 1936 we did not know, but today we do.

My sister and I went to Berlin a couple of years ago to discover, up close, the stories of members of our own extended family who were sent to concentration camps. We visited a site of deportation and we visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the outskirts of the city. What struck me, visiting those places, was that these were not in isolated locations. The deportation site we saw was surrounded by tall apartment buildings. Even the concentration camp had three- and four-storey buildings at a reasonable proximity, such that everyday people could have come to an understanding of at least some of the horrors that were taking place there simply by looking out their windows.

I thought about the people in those buildings who were neighbours to such horrors. What were they thinking? What action did they take or not take as they saw their neighbours, friends and fellow human beings taken away and massacred? I say to my colleagues today that they are the people in those apartment buildings.

All of us can see a genocide taking place in China, as we speak. Thanks to satellite imagery, we too can look down and watch people being loaded up and taken away. Thanks to survivor testimony, we now know about systemic rape and torture in these concentration camps. Thanks to published or leaked Chinese government documents, we can see an abrupt turn and plunge in birth rates following the commencement of a policy of forced abortion, forced sterilization and forced insertion of IUDs.

Anyone who says that there is not enough evidence is simply too cowardly to look through the window of their computer screen. Some here have drawn the curtains so they do not have to see the march of desperate humanity outside their windows, but for them there is still no excuse.

Imagine having been a member of Parliament in the 1980s who opposed taking action against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Imagine having opposed sporting boycotts targeting that regime, saying that athletes should not be political pawns. Imagine having claimed that there was not enough evidence of violations of human rights, or that we should wait for our allies, and then imagine someone having to explain that decision to their grandchildren 40 years later in terms of why they failed to do the right thing. I say, for every member of the House, that in the decades to come we will have to explain our votes to our children and grandchildren. They will likely not be satisfied if we tell them that we had not familiarized ourselves with the issue or we were just following our party whip.

So that there shall be no excuse, let me lay out again the clear case for the simple motion whereby Parliament would make an official declaration of genocide.

Canada is a party to the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which provides a clear legal definition of genocide and outlines our obligations in terms of response. As a definition, the convention says:

...genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

As my colleagues have mentioned, only one of the criteria needs to be established to necessitate a determination of genocide. The Government of China's treatment of Uighurs likely involves all five of the above, but in particular, the evidence that the government's actions respond to criteria c and d, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”; and, “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, is now completely irrefutable.

In the summer, the all-party Subcommittee on International Human Rights heard two full days of testimony from experts and survivors. Upon hearing the information, all members of all parties who had heard the evidence unanimously agreed to recognize that the actions of the Government of China constitute genocide.

Leading researcher Adrian Zenz told the committee the following:

Starting in 2018, a growing number of female internment camp survivors testified that they were given injections that coincided with changes in or cessation of their menstrual cycles. Others reported that they were forcibly fitted with intrauterine contraceptive devices...or subjected to sterilization surgeries.

Also in 2018, official natural population growth rates in Xinjiang plummeted. In Kashgar and Hotan, two Uighur heartland regions, combined natural population growth rates fell by 84% between 2015 and 2018.... For 2020, one minority prefecture set a natural population growth target of near zero....

New evidence shows that drastic declines in population growth are not merely linked with the campaign of mass internment but also related to a systematic state policy to prevent births in minority regions....

Further down, he continues with:

A stunning 80% of all newly placed IUDs in China...were fitted in Xinjiang, even though the region only makes up 1.8% of the country's population. By 2019, Xinjiang planned to subvert over 80% of women of child-bearing age in the southern four minority prefectures to birth control measures with “long-term effectiveness”. This refers to either IUDs or sterilizations.

The subcommittee heard that this campaign of sexual and reproductive violence including placing non-Uighur men to live in the homes of Uighur women after their husbands had been taken away. This community is subject to systemic sexual violence, which includes the rape of women inside and outside of concentration camps.

The subcommittee heard from many survivors, including Ms. Sayragul Sauytbay. She told us:

In the concentration camps, the Chinese Communist Party guards rape the women and girls they want. It's daily....

In one of the examples I remember, I was giving a lesson at a class on the Chinese language when they brought back a young lady. When she entered the class, she couldn't even sit on the chair. She just fell down on the floor. They started calling everyone by number. Every girl has a special number. They don't call them by their names; they call them by their numbers. When they called that girl by her number, she said, “I'm not a girl anymore, because they raped me.”

She further continues that one day,

[The guards] brought 200 prisoners to the hall, and they picked out one young girl, about 20 years old, and they forced her to accept the guilt for something that she never had done. She was crying and she was saying that she was guilty even though she was not guilty. She accepted it in front of the 200 prisoners. Then the Chinese guards—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order. I would ask the hon. member to stop there momentarily. I see the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills on his feet.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is with great hesitation that I interrupt another member's speech, but I was wondering if the member planned on speaking for the full 20 minutes or just for 10 minutes.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I was wondering that myself. I have stopped the clock here momentarily. We are getting to the end of the first 10-minute segment and we would be starting into a 10-minute question and comment period here fairly soon if we did not get some indication from the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. I would ask him what his intentions are in that regard.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time.