Borys Wrzesnewskyj

[Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, when the hon. member referenced Bill C-11, which passed the House with the support of all parties and all members of Parliament, he referenced it in an interesting way. We worked collectively on that bill and we passed a bill that we all thought was pretty good. Were we 100% happy? No one was absolutely happy but we thought it was good.

All of sudden, this bill gets dropped on us out of the blue that seems to go back on that sort of consensual collective way that we were able to arrive at results. The result of dropping a bill without any consultation with other parties are issues that were raised.

My goodness, have we ever allowed for the incarceration of children for one year in detention centres in Canada? What are we thinking of doing here? How can we separate families for five years? The people who are determined to be refugees, we will not allow them to travel back to their country to bring to Canada the rest of their families who also are in harm's way as refugees in camps, perhaps. Even though they have been determined as refugees, we will not allow them landed status, so they cannot bring over their families.

We will have sometimes husbands, wives and children of determined refugees in harm's way. Could the hon. member tell us if Canada has ever treated some of the most vulnerable on the planet in that manner?

[Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the legislation is so broadly drafted that it does not differentiate between those who would smuggle humans for humanitarian reasons and those who would do it for profit.

Also, it does not differentiate between those who smuggle people and land them in Canada and the individuals smuggled are determined to have been genuine refugees and those who are strictly economic migrants.

Would the member not agree that there should be a different approach for these various categories of people, and would the government be amenable to see amendments to the legislation that would differentiate between those who are involved with human smuggling of genuine refugees and those who are strictly just economic migrants?

[Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety referenced two vessels, the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. I would like to take him back in time and reference two other ships that arrived in Canadian waters.

Back in 1939 the SS St. Louis arrived in Canadian waters with 937 European Jews on board. Unfortunately, that ship was turned away. Those unfortunate Jews were returned to Europe, and in the subsequent years virtually all of them lost their lives in the Holocaust.

There was a similar incident in 1914 with the SSKomagata Maru. There was 354 people on board. They were turned back. Many of them lost their lives when they returned to India.

I ask the parliamentary secretary, under this legislation, what sort of sanctions would the ship's captain and owners of the SS St. Louis have faced?

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, these are important issues, tax haven status and that it is a hub for drug dealers, but I would like to set those aside. In fact, Canada is not a boy scout when it comes to drug dealers. Some people would make the claim that in British Columbia the biggest agriculture crop is cannabis.

I would like to raise the issue of human rights, which is of greater importance. Free traders in Canada for a couple of decades have suggested that we do a Central American free trade area, CAFTA. Thankfully, we have not done that, because a number of the regimes there are tremendous abusers of human and democratic rights.

In the last decade, Panama has made tremendous progress in that particular area and, approaching in a piecemeal fashion where we encourage countries that have shown progress on human democratic rights, perhaps that provides an example to other regimes in the area recently. In the past few years, Guatemala obviously has--

[Petitions, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am honoured to present a petition that supports my private member's bill, Bill C-380.

Those who engage in the propagation of violence based on race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation can be charged under the hate crimes provision of the Criminal Code. However, those who would post hateful and menacing messages against women on blogs and websites or glorify the mass murderer responsible for the École Polytechnique massacre, cannot be charged under Canadian hate laws.

If a religious or ethnic group had been the victims of École Polytechnique, the glorification of this mass killing would be criminal. Because the target group were females, it is not.

Therefore, the petitioners support Bill C-380, as it addresses this situation by adding sex, the legal term for gender, to the list of identifiable groups.

[Justice, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, two years ago a promising grade 12 student and constituent, Boris Cikovic, was gunned down by teen thugs trying to rob him. His accused killer is out on bail enjoying life and allegedly refusing to assist police in identifying his accomplices.

It is impossible to imagine the despair and sorrow felt by Boris' parents, Vesna and Davorin. As Vesna explained to the Toronto Sun:

I have no chance to see him growing up to [become] a beautiful man. Justice is not going to give me grandchildren....

And the other guy, he is out, he is free on bail.

In memory of Boris and in the hopes of stopping this from happening in the future, I introduced Bill C-537 to toughen bail conditions and adding offences involving firearms to those that may only be tried by a superior court.

By passing this bill, those accused of a firearm offence would have to demonstrate to the court why they should not be detained in custody before trial.

As Boris' mother, Vesna, says:

[S]omething has to be changed. My son's life shouldn't be in vain

[Canadian Heritage, October 20th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, next year marks 120 years since the first wave of Ukrainian pioneers to Canada. They transformed the bush of the Northwest Territories into the golden wheat fields of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Ten years ago, a state-of-the-art Ukrainian Canadian archives and museum was announced in Edmonton. Individual Canadians, Ukrainian Canadian organizations, the City of Edmonton and Premier Stelmach have all committed generous funding.

There is just one missing partner in the final push to get this done, the federal Conservative government. Why the stonewalling and delays?

[Human Rights, October 20th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, on September 23 the Prime Minister met Ukrainian President Yanukovych under whom democratic and human rights transgressions are regularly occurring: intimidation of media, restrictions to freedom of assembly, tampering with election rules, secret police even pressuring university rectors to spy on students.

Sadly, the Prime Minister did not make clear that Canada stands united with Ukrainians who demonstrated their will to be a free democratic state during the Orange Revolution. Will he do so on October 25 while meeting with the president in Kyiv?

[Russia, October 1st, 2010]

Madam Speaker, in late August I introduced the leader of the democratic opposition and former deputy prime minister of Russia, Mr. Boris Nemtsov, at the Black Ribbon Day Conference at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre, hosted by the Central and Eastern European Council of Canada.

The following day Mr. Nemtsov and more than 100 democracy activists were arrested. Some were imprisoned using Soviet-style laws for participating in unsanctioned meetings.

Prime Minister Putin openly threatened the activists and established a new tenet of Putinism, stating, “You will be beaten on your skull with a truncheon. And that's that”.

Commenting on the west's silence, Russia's leading broadcast journalist, the exiled Evgeny Kiselev, lamented that the west “has traded the Russian democratic opposition for oil and gas”.

The Russian people are fighting for their constitutional rights of free assembly and of free media.

Will the Conservative government publicly and unequivocally condemn Mr. Putin's slide toward authoritarianism and his campaign of arrests of human and democratic rights activists in Russia?

[Petitions, September 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am pleased to present a petition signed in support of private member's bill, Bill C-544, as did my colleague from Beaches—East York.

The petitioners support the bill to amend the Health of Animals Act and the Meat Inspection Act to prohibit the importation and exportation of horses for slaughter for human consumption, as well as horse meat products for human consumption.

The petitioners are concerned that horses that are kept for sport and companionship and not for human consumption are often administered drugs that are prohibited substances and are not administered to other animals destined for human consumption.