Debates of June 6th, 2022

Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Public Safety

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to be one of the members of Parliament who, along with four Senators, are working on the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency. This committee is one of very few that requires all its members and staff to take an oath of secrecy in order to allow them to work with sensitive information and secret documents.

After a couple of meetings, the media started reporting that the Liberal government will nor reveal what information led it to use the Emergencies Act to end the protests this winter, citing cabinet confidentiality in its response to legal challenges. After discussing this issue during the committee meetings, it became obvious that the Liberal members of the committee were not prepared to permit the release of any government documents either.

My Conservative colleague, the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, moved a motion that asked to throw light on the security assessments and legal opinions the government relied on when deciding to invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history. Members think that sounds reasonable, right? A committee that has to get to the bottom of the decision chain and find out why the Emergencies Act was invoked and how its powers were used has the right to review all the documents that the government possesses. This is how a democracy works. Unfortunately, not in this country under the rule of the Prime Minister. Most of the witnesses who appeared before our committee did not want to answer our relevant and reasonable questions. They hid behind lawyer-client privilege and cabinet confidentiality.

When I brought this issue to the House of Commons chamber and asked the Minister of Emergency Preparedness what the Prime Minister was hiding this time from Canadians, he repeated the same mantra, “there is certain information, such as lawyer-client privilege, which is respected and well established in the law in this country.” Who is the client here?

My constituents email and call my office daily. They share their concerns related to the study of the declaration of emergency committee. The Prime Minister, who promised to run the government open by default, must respect the public will and produce the documents that led him to believe that our police forces were not able to handle the situation without the invocation of the act. The PM and his government have been weakened by the changing narratives.

To date, the RCMP commissioner, OPP commissioner, and the interim and former Ottawa police chiefs have confirmed that they have never asked the government to invoke the act. The mayor of Gatineau also confirmed that neither she nor the Gatineau police requested the use of the act. These statements directly contradict the statements made by the government, which continues to justify the use of overreaching powers.

Ultimately, the question to put to the government is as follows: Now that we have a study that will prove how misinformed the public was by the government when the Prime Minister decided to use the act for his political benefit, what is the government hiding?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the government is hiding nothing. In fact, what we see are Conservatives who have opposed the use of the Emergencies Act and every mechanism they can create in their minds. They want to try to put a Conservative spin on it and say the Emergencies Act was not necessary.

There is no convincing them otherwise. They were biased going into committee. They already know what their own conclusions would be, and that is what they will advocate for. It does not matter what the public inquiry or special committee come up with. I sat in on one of the committees. It is pure politics. We are seeing political gamesmanship from the Conservatives.

They do not understand the harm to our economy, whether it was at the Ontario international border crossing or Manitoba's border crossing. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars every day. They do not care. They want to play political games on this issue. They knew their position prior to going to committee.

Yes, there is a special joint committee because there is an open government. We are following the law that was put into place. What I can say from first-hand experience is that, the day after it was put into place, I saw members of police forces providing information to those who were protesting.

We saw a relatively peaceful end because of the legislation. The threat was still there. The member does not take into consideration the harm that was being caused in downtown Ottawa. The invocation of the Emergencies Act had a very positive outcome. That is completely discarded by the Conservatives.

As opposed to being so lopsided and determined to try to say this was wrong, if they opened their collective mind, I suspect we would see more productivity at the special joint committee, which I have had the opportunity to be a part of for one evening. I witnessed the behaviour from the Conservatives at that particular meeting.

The Prime Minister, just like all members of the Liberal caucus, wants to see and is anxious to see the reports that come forward. We understand how important it was to be there to protect our economy and to protect the jobs. The Province of Ontario declared an emergency. The City of Ottawa declared an emergency. The Conservative Party does not care.

The Province of Manitoba, three days prior, did send a letter pleading for assistance. Yes, they did not state something specific, but was begging for Ottawa to get engaged and do something because of the tens of millions of dollars being lost at the Emerson border.

We take the issue seriously. We have from the very beginning, and we will continue to as we review the process of its implementation.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Madam Speaker, listening to my friend, his comments are completely off topic, which is par for the course for him. To take a page from the Liberal government that it ought not to take any lessons from the Conservative members who challenge the Liberal government on a daily basis in question period, perhaps he should listen to his own rhetoric. The bottom line is, if he has nothing to hide, why are Liberals consistently doing things to conceal documents that are relevant to this particular study?

Let us look at the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Let us look at the WE scandal or the Winnipeg labs scandal, where they actually had to sue the Speaker of the House. This is the pattern of the government. It is not about accountability. We want to get to the truth. Canadians want to get to the truth.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth. We have actually put in a mechanism that would enable the Conservatives to see what they want in regard to the Winnipeg lab. The mechanism is there. It is the very same mechanism that Stephen Harper brought in. However, giving them what they want is not good enough, because the Conservative Party wants to create scandals where there are no scandals. It is an attitude that the Conservative Party has adopted. Even when we give the Conservatives the things they want, it is not good enough.

I am suggesting that members should start putting Canadians ahead of the partisan politics they have been playing with respect to these very important issues. If they did that, I believe they would get better support, quite frankly.

Foreign Affairs

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am rising today to follow up on the question I asked last week in regard to Ukraine and the increase in sex trafficking of women and girls. I pointed out that during the war and conflict, women and youth are often at increased risk of exploitation.

The U.S. “2021 Trafficking in Persons Report” notes that Ukraine has been a long-time source country for human trafficking victims. It states:

[T]he conflict in eastern Ukraine and Russia's occupation of Crimea have displaced more than 1.4 million people, and this population is especially vulnerable to human trafficking throughout the country....Traffickers reportedly kidnap women and girls from conflict-affected areas for sex and labor trafficking in Ukraine and Russia. Traffickers target internally displaced persons and subject some Ukrainians to forced labor on territory not under government control, often via kidnapping, torture, and extortion.

This report was from one year ago, before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Now that millions of women and youth have fled Ukraine, we know that human traffickers have been targeting them.

I asked the minister what specific steps the government was taking to ensure that Ukrainian women and youth seeking refuge in Canada are not being trafficked or exploited. I appreciate that the Minister of Foreign Affairs agrees with the gravity of the situation, but I was disappointed that the only step she could commit to was raising it further with her G7 counterparts.

Canada is welcoming Ukrainian refugees to Canada. For sure there are traffickers looking to take advantage of this. We know that traffickers have already been trying to recruit women and girls from the refugee camps along the borders of Ukraine.

Further, once in Canada, unaccompanied minors are especially vulnerable to sex trafficking, so as Canada opens its arms to these women and youth seeking shelter, how is it ensuring they are not being lured or forced into sex trafficking? In Poland they receive flyers. Do Ukrainian refugees to Canada receive any sort of information warning them about sex trafficking or exploitation in prostitution when they arrive? Is it in their own language? Where do they go if they know they need help?

Canada's national human trafficking hotline is 1-833-900-1010. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is available in Ukrainian. I am appalled that there does not seem to be any process in place to flag potential cases of sex trafficking.

My other great concern when it comes to fighting sex trafficking is that the government ignores one of the most important parts, which is the demand, the sex buyer. Sex trafficking exists only because there is a demand from sex buyers. With the significant number of displaced Ukrainian women and girls, the demand from sex buyers for them has increased. For example, Ireland's largest escort website offers sex buyers the opportunity to live out their “war-inspired fantasies” with Ukrainian women and reports a 250% increase in interest for Ukrainian women.

Valiant Richey, the OSCE special representative and coordinator for combatting trafficking in human beings, warned, “In some countries the spike [in online searches for buying sex from Ukrainian women] was as much as 600 per cent...there was an immediate interest in exploiting them.” An example he gave is from a recent operation in Sweden, where of 38 sex buyers who were arrested, 30 were attempting to access Ukrainian women specifically.

However, unlike in Sweden, the Liberal government refuses to tackle the demand from sex buyers. As a result, sex trafficking and gender-based violence increases. Therefore, I ask the government what steps it is taking to ensure that Ukrainian women and girls seeking refuge in Canada are protected from exploitation and sex trafficking.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Madam Speaker, I sincerely want to thank the member for Peace River—Westlock for raising this issue, not only in question period recently, but regularly and in an ongoing way. I think he is making a profound difference by raising the issue with gravity and with sincerity, and also by bringing to light the horrendous situation faced by women and girls and others who face the risk of trafficking every day.

Together we deplore Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the vulnerabilities that it has created, with millions of people displaced internally and millions of people who have fled the country and sought refuge in countries all around Europe, with a small number of them coming to Canada. The member is right in his assertion that these people, and women and children particularly, are extremely vulnerable to sex traffickers and other traffickers who would take advantage of their plight.

Should more be done? Yes, but let me talk about a few of the things that we are doing.

We have been in discussions with our G7 partners and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to coordinate actions. In Europe, we have been engaged in exactly the kind of work he was talking about, working at placing protective measures at border crossings, distributing information pamphlets, establishing hotlines and continuing to find ways to decrease the risk for trafficking in persons.

We are, however, concerned that the longer the Russian invasion continues, the more vulnerable refugees will become to exploitation and abuse as they possibly take riskier housing options or transportation routes. We believe that we need to constantly have gender-responsive, victim-centred, trauma-informed and age-appropriate measures and techniques, including protective services, to combat this evil.

To this end, the Government of Canada is supporting initiatives that are aimed at preventing human trafficking at the borders, as well as working with the Government of Ukraine and local NGOs to provide such important information.

As an aside, I was in Chicago on the weekend. I was in a restroom in a restaurant that had a large sign on the mirror, reminding people that if they sensed someone was being trafficked or if they themselves were being forced or exploited in any way, they should call that line. I want more of that in Canada. I think the member has been raising the importance of this issue, and I think the government could continue to do more.

Today I was reading a report from the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence, Pramila Patten, who just today was speaking on the crisis in Europe, which is turning into a human trafficking crisis and, I would say, a nightmare. She called for a coordinated, coherent system of working with other countries, and just as the minister said in question period in response, she said that we need to do more. That needs to happen in Canada. It is happening in Canada as we continue to support hotlines and as we continue to support the human trafficking hotline, which is a national confidential service and which does in fact have interpretation in Ukrainian for anyone who needs it.

These are the kinds of things that we want to do, but we need to heighten the awareness around the world. Every Canadian needs to be vigilant. Everyone who is helping a Ukrainian refugee or visitor come to this country needs to be aware they are vulnerable, and we need to take our place.

Again, I want to thank the member for raising the issue.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, the government often talks a good game, but getting it done is always a bit more of a challenge.

When it comes to fighting sex trafficking and forced prostitution, the Liberals have a strong anti-feminist policy of supporting sex buyers and decriminalizing them.

Sweden is an example of actual feminist policy on sex trafficking. For years, their feminist-led government has effectively reduced sex trafficking and exploitation by tackling the demand for sexual services. France has now joined with Sweden to encourage other countries to adopt this approach, which puts women’s equity first by targeting the purchasers of sex and not the sellers.

My question to the minister and the parliamentary secretary is this: Do they support Sweden and France’s approach to sex trafficking that puts women’s equality first, or will they continue to stand with the men who buy sex and exploit women?

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

Madam Speaker, I was so complimentary to the member in my response, so I expected something back in return and I do not want to take a right turn. I actually want to keep the issue on Ukraine. I do not want to get into all the other issues he has raised, because I do not think that is what we are about today. What we are about today is ensuring that women and children—and men and boys—who may be victims of trafficking find protection.

Canada has a program. The member is well aware of it. It is the national strategy to combat human trafficking. We continue to work with a program of NGOs and partners in Canada and around the world to ensure that we continue to do this.

A broader discussion on sex workers, the sex industry and the sex trade is absolutely necessary, but I do not want to mix apples and oranges at this time. These are different issues, although they may be related. I think it is very important that we tackle the issue of millions of vulnerable Ukrainians who need safety and need our protection, and we will be there.

I look forward to working with the hon. member in that regard.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted.

Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:07 p.m.)