Debates of April 19th, 2023

Citizenship and Immigration

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It being 3:21 p.m., pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion to concur in the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration concerning the extension of time to consider Bill S-245.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #296

Committees of the House

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed from April 18 consideration of the motion that Bill C-239, An Act to amend An Act to authorize the making of certain fiscal payments to provinces, and to authorize the entry into tax collection agreements with provinces, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-239, under Private Members' Business.

(The House division on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #297

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I declare the motion defeated.

I wish to inform the House that, because of the deferred recorded divisions, Government Orders will be extended by 25 minutes.

Message from the Senate

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I have the honour to inform the House that messages have been received from the Senate informing the House that the Senate has passed the following bills to which the concurrence of the House is desired: Bill S-205, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to another act (interim release and domestic violence recognizance orders); Bill S-210, an act to restrict young persons’ online access to sexually explicit material; and Bill S-246, an act respecting Lebanese heritage month.

Government Response to Petitions

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to four petitions.

These returns will be tabled in an electronic format.

Interparliamentary Delegations

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1) I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association respecting its participation at the 65th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from August 20 to August 26, 2022.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was just informed today by my clerk at PROC that I have to ask for concurrence in order for the reports for the extension of these four provinces to go through. I have not asked my colleagues in the other parties for concurrence as yet.

I will do my due diligence before coming back to the House, but I do hope to see the extensions requested once the process is followed.

Hazaras

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am tabling a petition on behalf of my constituents. In the past 130 years, the Hazara ethnic group has faced an ongoing genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan. I have tabled petitions about this before on my constituents' behalf. They are also raising the fact that the Taliban regime is responsible for the ongoing massacre of Hazaras in Afghanistan. Gunmen have been directly involved in executions of Hazaras, forcing them to leave their homeland.

They are again calling on the Government of Canada to recognize the ongoing genocide and the persecution of Hazaras, as well as to prioritize Hazaras as part of the government's own target of 40,000 Afghans by the end of the year.

Falun Gong

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I once again rise to table a petition regarding the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The petitioners wish to bring to the attention of the House the fact that the Chinese government has waged a nationwide persecution campaign against Falun Gong practitioners. This has resulted in arrests, with many being imprisoned for up to 20 years. The petitioners add that this includes torture and abuse. They also indicate the conclusion of investigators that tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners, who are prisoners of conscience, have been put to death. Moreover, the prisoners have had their organs involuntarily seized for sale at high prices.

The petitioners call on this Parliament to pass a resolution to establish measures to stop the Chinese Communist regime's crime of systematically murdering Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. They also call on Parliament to amend Canadian legislation to combat forced organ harvesting and publicly call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

Electoral Representation

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

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to present petitions on a theme that many of my constituents raise frequently, and that is the need for electoral reform. These petitioners are particularly looking for this Parliament and the government to establish a national citizens' assembly on electoral reform, requiring that the citizens' assembly complete its work within 12 months. The government should then adopt the recommended changes to our electoral system to end the perverse first-past-the-post voting system before the next federal election.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present petition e-4350, a petition to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. On February 6, 2023, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake was recorded in Turkey and Northern Syria. Over 50,000 are dead and hundreds of thousands injured or left without shelter in freezing conditions.

The 742 citizens and residents of Canada who have signed the petition call upon the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to establish a public policy to facilitate and expedite the granting of permanent resident status to children who were left homeless and who lost at least one parent because of the earthquake. It should also be granted to their accompanying surviving parent or another adult on whom they depend to meet their economic, emotional and social needs. They also call for a public policy to facilitate and expedite the sponsorship under the family class by Canadian citizens or permanent residents of any of their Syrian relatives who identify themselves as being directly affected by the earthquake.

Human Rights

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a few petitions that I will table relatively quickly.

The first petition is in support of Bill C-257, which is an excellent private member's bill put forward by me. It seeks to prohibit discrimination on the basis of political activity or belief by adding reference to political belief or activity to the Canadian Human Rights Act. One effect of this is that people could bring human rights complaints against social media companies if they were facing political discrimination by those companies.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

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

Mr. Speaker, the second petition deals with immigration from Hong Kong. In particular, a desire has been expressed to still allow those who have been convicted of political offences as part of political persecution in Hong Kong to come to Canada. However, petitioners note that, in practice, the exemptions given only apply in cases of convictions under the national security law. In many cases, there has been persecution of Hong Kong democracy activists through other means than the national security law.

Therefore, petitioners call on the Government of Canada to recognize the politicization of the judiciary in Hong Kong and to affirm its commitment to render all national security law charges and convictions irrelevant and invalid in the context of considering Canadian immigration. It also calls on the government to create a mechanism by which Hong Kong people with pro-democracy movement-related convictions may provide an explanation for such convictions. Based on the explanation, the government can then grant exemptions.

Finally, they call for the government to work with other allies to ensure that Hong Kong people are not barred from coming to Canada on the basis of criminal record-related provisions if they were convicted based on political purposes and are not otherwise criminals.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, the third petition I am tabling highlights the ongoing detention of Huseyin Celil and asks the government to take a number of steps to secure the release of Mr. Celil. These steps include demanding the recognition of his citizenship, formally highlighting the priority of his release, appointing a special envoy to secure his release and seeking the assistance of the Biden administration.

Military Chaplaincy

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

Mr. Speaker, next I am tabling a petition that raises significant concerns about recommendations in the Minister of National Defence's advisory panel on systemic racism and discrimination, which produced its final report last year. There are concerns that these recommendations, in fact, are paradoxically discriminatory in that they call for the exclusion of religious clergy from many mainstream denominations on the basis of the government apparently having objections to aspects of their doctrine.

Medical Assistance in Dying

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

Mr. Speaker, the final petition I am tabling is from those who are strongly opposed to the legalization of child killing in Canada in the name of so-called medical assistance in dying. Petitioners are strongly opposed to proposals to legalize the killing of children by the medical system, and they call on the government to block any attempt to allow the killing of children in Canada.

Seniors

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

Mr. Speaker, it is timely that I am tabling this petition today on behalf of British pensioners who have had their pensions basically frozen through the indexation on pensions by the government of the United Kingdom. These are pensioners who have retired in Canada.

It is timely because the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners is here having its first-ever frozen pension day on the Hill. Its members are calling on Canada to take action. We know these pensioners are losing tens of thousands of dollars over the course of their retirement.

With the current inflation crisis, many seniors are having trouble making ends meet. Canada is second only to Australia in its number of U.K. pensioners, with around 144,000 United Kingdom retirees. The indexation of the pensions is entirely dependent on specific agreements between countries, and Canada does not have an indexing agreement or a social security agreement with the U.K.

British pensioners living in places such as the U.S., Jamaica and the European Union receive a full U.K. state pension, which is updated annually. These countries have reciprocal social security agreements with the U.K. Even U.K. citizens who continued to pay into their pensions while living outside of the U.K. and who are now living in Canada do not have an indexed pension.

Pensions are deferred wages, and they must be able to support the people who rely on them. For some seniors, the lost income can mean retiring in poverty. The Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners has estimated that frozen British pensions cost the Canadian economy close to a billion dollars annually.

Therefore, they are calling on the Government of Canada and the House of Commons to negotiate an end to the cost of living index freeze by the government of the United Kingdom for recipients of the British state pension who live in Canada.

Housing

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to table a petition on behalf of over 1,200 people who recognize that, first and foremost, homes should be places for people to live and not commodities for institutional investors to trade.

They know that the commodification of housing, including the rapid rise of institutional investors like real estate investment trusts and their holdings, has substantially contributed to the unaffordability of housing and has worsened the housing crisis that we are in. They recognize that REITs comprise some of Canada's largest corporate landlords, which have long received special tax treatment from the federal government. They also note that REITs have grown from owning no rental suites at all in 1996 to nearly 200,000 in 2021.

As a result, along with other items, the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to remove the tax exemption for real estate investment trusts and use the revenue that would be generated in doing so to invest in quality, affordable and dignified non-profit and co-operative housing.

Medical Assistance in Dying

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present petitions signed by Canadians from across the country. They are concerned about the comments from Louis Roy of the Quebec college of physicians. He recommended euthanasia for babies coming into the world with severe deformities or serious syndromes to occur from birth to one year of age.

This proposed legalization of the killing of infants has deeply disturbed many Canadians, and they want to make sure that this place understands that infanticide is always wrong. Therefore, they are calling on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to bring this forward.

Human Rights

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

Mr. Speaker, the next petition I have to present is from Canadians from across the country who want to have the right to be protected from discrimination.

Canadians can and do face discrimination, and it is fundamental that Canada has the right to be politically active, which is in the best interest of Canadian democracy.

They want to ensure that public debate and the exchange of differing ideas continues, and they are asking for Bill C-257 to add protection against political discrimination to the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Therefore, the undersigned are calling for the support of this bill to defend the rights of all Canadians to peacefully express their political opinions.

Rights of the Unborn

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

Mr. Speaker, the final petition I have to present today comes from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the increased risk of violence against women when they are pregnant. Currently, the injury or death of preborn children as victims of crime is not considered an aggravating circumstance in sentencing as proposed in the Criminal Code of Canada.

Canada has no abortion law. This legal void is so extreme that we do not even recognize preborn children as victims of crime. Justice requires that an attacker who abuses a pregnant woman and her preborn children be sentenced accordingly. The sentence should match the crime.

Therefore, the people who have signed the petition are calling on the House of Commons to legislate the abuse of a pregnant woman and the infliction of harm on her preborn child as an aggravating circumstance for sentencing proposed in the Criminal Code.