Madam Speaker, no person can be unmoved by today's deliberations concerning Communist China's ongoing and brutally coordinated campaign of genocide against the minority Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims inside its borders. We have heard details of family separation, arrests and show trials, mass detention, campaigns of gang rape, forced injections, widespread slave labour, concentration camps and mass murders. All of this has been done under China's state police. Credible estimates place the number of Uighurs in concentration camps at over one million. The world has not witnessed anything like it since the mid- to late 20th century.
We say “never again” at solemn occasions when reflecting on past evils. We say it because it is important. It is also meaningful. However, saying “never again” is also relatively easy. This vote in our Parliament to declare an important country to be guilty of genocide will not be easy, because the vote will have consequences in rallying or even discouraging others and, of course, on Canada's federal government. If successful, Parliament's vote will inform the public, our constituents, of China's odious actions. It could propel other legislatures and other democracies to make similar declarations. It might even offer some comfort to those being persecuted that a parliament hears them. It could finally compel Canada's federal government to face facts and act in the name of our shared Canadian values.
Should the Liberal government ignore the evidence and vote against the motion on these crimes, it will provide sanctuary to the Chinese Communist Party. A vote against this motion is not an expression of neutrality, nuance or high-mindedness. Rather, a no vote is a highly visible shrug to Uighurs and a haven for the tactics of the Chinese Communist Party. I therefore implore members of the House to take a stand for the persecuted and against this genocide and back up statements of “never again” with a vote of affirmation to this motion in Parliament.
I dread that the Liberal government will remain silent, mostly because the alternative is hard. Voting yes would require subsequent government action in opposition to China's atrocities. Let us take a look. The government's position is to call for an independent investigation by sending observers to Xinjiang to determine what is happening, but the foreign minister and the Prime Minister know Beijing will never agree to this. It is an empty statement.
I am also distressed that the right path will be sidestepped for the easy path, because the Liberal government has been both weak and cowardly elsewhere in its dealings with the People's Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party is so determined to control Uighurs that it is spending billions of dollars on facial recognition devices, electronic spying and coercive DNA collection to track their every move. Uighurs live under a totalitarian system that controls them down to their DNA.
China's Huawei has been complicit in developing this technology. Canada's security services have warned the federal government about the risks and dangers that Huawei poses to Canada and our freedom. If the Liberal government will not ban it as our allies have done, a government unwilling to ban Huawei is not likely to hold the People's Republic of China to account today.
It is not just high-tech surveillance. Uighurs are also forced into labour camps to produce products for export to the world. Uighurs are electrocuted to meet production quotas. These crimes against the Uighurs are inhumane, as international NGOs and labour groups around the world have reported and demonstrated.
In July of last year, I highlighted this mistreatment of Uighurs in labour camps. I called on the global affairs minister to launch an independent investigation into forced labour camps operating in China's northwest province. I also called for Canada's United Nations ambassador to work to reverse Beijing's appointment to a seat on the consultative group of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Sadly, the government did not act, even though it was widely reported that the Chinese Communist Party was using forced Uighur labour in Xinjiang factories and selling these made-in-China goods and materials to global brands around the world.
When the government finally responded, it was in January, and it was by the outgoing global affairs minister on the very day he was moved to another ministry. Ottawa feebly acted by announcing its intention to support tougher restrictions on products being exported from Xinjiang, but the apparent tough talk lasted less than 30 minutes before a new minister was in charge.
Even the talk by the outgoing minister was thin gruel. Unlike other international allies, which are taking tougher action to root out forced labour in commercial supply chains, the Trudeau government will not impose financial penalties on companies that do not comply.
The Trudeau government has spent the past six years extolling and overstating the importance of China—