Borys Wrzesnewskyj

[Foreign Affairs, June 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.

Do we want a radical fundamentalist takeover in Somalia? Does the Prime Minister need to see images on our front pages of human carnage and children with distended bellies to act? In February, Canadian parliamentarians sent an appeal to the Prime Minister to call an international donors conference for Somalia to organize a rapid reconstruction team.

After four months of repeated requests and Conservative inaction, what does the Prime Minister have to say to the anguished hundreds of thousands of Somali Canadians?

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we are not buying those glass beads. With the slash and burn of Kelowna, the Conservatives showed their true faces.

The member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin blamed natives, who died of exposure when dumped outside of city boundaries. Now the member for Prince Albert shows what Conservatives take for sarcastic humour with his “Marxist paradise” and “you can't scalp me, I haven't much hair” comments. It is time the Saskatchewan neo-cons learned that our first nations are deserving of respect, not derision.

When will the Prime Minister instruct his Saskatchewan Conservatives to stop acting like Harperians?

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, after trying to dismiss the Kelowna accord as a fiction during the public accounts committee meeting yesterday, the member for Prince Albert insinuated that the first nations' quality of life was not an issue of resources or in his words “money”. First nations' problems were that they were living in some sort of “Marxist paradise”.

Will the Prime Minister, whose office is called “The Kremlin” by his own members, send the member to the gulag to join his fellow spewer of degrading comments toward our first nations, the member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin?

[George Hull Centre, May 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, more than six million, or one in five Canadians, is affected by mental illness. It is even more devastating when the person affected is a child.

The George Hull Centre for Children and Families in my riding of Etobicoke Centre has earned a distinguished reputation for its exemplary spectrum of children's mental health services and support systems for their families for the past 20 years.

Affiliated with the University of Toronto, the centre's multidisciplinary team has attracted advanced practitioners from around the world. This caring facility would not function without the dedicated volunteer board of directors, chaired by Brigid Murphy, and the excellent work done by executive director, Elizabeth Ridgley.

On behalf of the House of Commons, I commend the George Hull Centre for Children and Families for its caring and compassionate work with some of our most vulnerable young Canadians, those fighting and winning the battle with mental illness.

[Education Benefits Act, May 8th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-264, an Act respecting education benefits for spouses and children of certain deceased federal enforcement officers.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to introduce a private member's bill entitled an act respecting educational benefits for spouses and children of certain deceased law enforcement officers. This initiative was originally the vision of a former member of the House, Janko Peric, of Cambridge, Ontario. Mr. Peric introduced a similar bill during his tenure. I hope we will see him back in the House to continue his fight for public safety initiatives.

The bill would provide for educational benefits of a financial nature to the surviving spouse and children of federal enforcement officers who die from injuries received or illnesses contracted in the discharge of their duties. The bill mirrors legislation that currently exists in the province of Ontario.

In light of last year's tragic deaths of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, I would hope that colleagues from all sides of the House will lend their support to this worthy initiative. We owe it to the families of those who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving and protecting us.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Citizenship and Immigration, May 8th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, last week it was the use of law enforcement officers to grab kids in schools as ransom for parents. Today it is trying to force the same children to choose at deportation hearings who gets to stay, father or mother, tearing families apart.

The government said that children would not be used as pawns. Who is authorizing this? Will the minister do the right thing and issue a ministerial permit in the Lizano-Sossa case?

[Somalia, May 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, a famine's death march does not wait. Over the past months, the 100,000 strong Somali Canadian community has been in anguish. In southern Somalia, surface water has disappeared, boreholes have dried up and over 80% of livestock has died.

The UN reports that only 20% of an emergency $426 million appeal has been raised and that eight million people are in immediate danger. This is a human catastrophe. Mr. Bondevik, the UN special humanitarian envoy for the region, called this a “silent tsunami”.

A letter signed by a number of members of Parliament appealing to the Prime Minister for emergency action has gone unanswered for nine weeks. Now we have a budget with no funds to prevent this slow and silent death by famine.

Canadians are world renowned for their generosity of spirit. Let us act now, not when we are compelled to action by photographs of children with distended bellies on the front pages of our newspapers. The famine's death march has arrived at Somalia's gates.

[Criminal Code, May 4th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-254, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda).

Mr. Speaker, I want to table, for a second time, my private member's bill, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding hate propaganda.

The purpose of the bill is to expand the definition of an identifiable group under the hate propaganda provisions of the Criminal Code to include any section of the public distinguished by its gender. The way our current law is written, it is prohibited to propagate hate against an individual because of colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. However, it is not against the law to propagate hate against individuals because of their gender.

By enacting this change to the Criminal Code, Parliament can begin to address the serious issue of promoting hatred and violence against women or men. This is an amendment that should have been made long ago. It is my sincere hope that my colleagues on all sides of the House will support this worthy and overdue initiative.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, we do not like to see a UN peace making force, but should such a force not be sent, will the government commit to at least minimally continue with the enabling military resources we have provided to the African Union AMIS mission to date?

Having provided those resources for a transitional period and knowing and having learned the lessons of what was not going right and what we could improve on, will the government continue to provide the resources? Going forward, what would it do differently in providing those resources to ensure that the African Union peace making force was more effective?

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Yes, Mr. Chair, I believe that we should have another plan in place in case the United Nations does not step forward expeditiously.

We have shown, notwithstanding the denigration of the African Union AMIS forces that we have heard from the opposite side during the debate, that with the limited resources they had they did not fully stop the killing, but it went from 10,000 a month to perhaps 1,000 a month.

It is a terrible situation, but we would love to see for the long term the African Union method used throughout Africa's zone of conflict.