Madam Speaker, I am back tonight to continue to call for action from the federal government in the face of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, one that has been documented and affirmed by experts, including the University Network for Human Rights, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and the UN special committee.
A few weeks ago, in question period, I spoke of an IDF missile strike that had burned Palestinians alive at a hospital tent camp. In the time since, Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. More aid workers have been killed, and as a result, aid organizations like World Central Kitchen have had to pause their operations in Gaza altogether, while 1.1 million in Gaza face catastrophic hunger. UN officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. Nearly 70% of the over 44,000 killed are women and children.
In the face of all of this, the world must not sit idly by. Canada must not sit idly by. Yet today, we remain complicit, and the calls to act continue to echo across the country. Just this morning, a hundred Jewish Canadians occupied the Confederation Building on Parliament Hill, demanding the Government of Canada end its complicity in this genocide.
Here are the words of one of the organizers, Niall Ricardo: “Our politicians cannot be complacent in these marble hallways while Israel continues to burn Palestinians alive in their tents”. Niall is right.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mohammed Awad, coordinator of the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations, recently said at committee, “The Palestinian people have been failed several times, more and more by the international community and, unfortunately, by Canada as well.”
There is much the Government of Canada could do today if it were serious about ending its complicity in this genocide. At the bare minimum, it could start by enacting a true two-way arms embargo on Israel and cancelling all active military export permits to the country. Second, Canada could, today, recognize the state of Palestine, which should be self-evident if Canada believes in, and it says it does by its foreign policy, a two-state solution. How can we possibly believe in a two-state solution if Canada does not affirm that one of the two states even exists? This, at a time when experts have shared at committee in recent months that it is an obviously critical step for peace and preservation in the region.
Canada can and should call for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.
The government could fix the temporary resident visa program for Palestinian Canadian family members looking to get out of Gaza, following the recent Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East report showing this program was intended to fail. We could follow through on our Geneva Convention obligations, including preventing genocide. We could sanction extremist cabinet ministers who have said, for example, that starving civilians in Gaza might be justified, or that perpetrators of settler violence are heroes.
Years from now, no doubt, politicians will come together to memorialize the genocide in Gaza, but more important than those words of memoriam in future years is action right now.
Tonight I ask the parliamentary secretary, again, when will the government's actions align with its words when it says, “Never again”?