Dan Harris

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

You've just repeated yourself in 10 seconds.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I could not help but hear the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration pass the comment about being classy. This is the minister who said it is not Canadians' responsibility to deal with children who are sick if they do not have refugee status. I think, and most Canadians think, that we should be taking care of all children in this country regardless of their background, regardless of where they come from, regardless of their status, because they are children. That is classy. That minister is not classy.

In response to my colleague's comments about not wanting to leave things behind, this is why I am so proud of the Canadians who have served in uniform, because they do not want to do harm. They want to help and make a more peaceful world. They want to make a safe world so that their children and the children from all countries of the world can grow up in peace and prosperity and live in dignity and not have to suffer the fear that would come about from the continued use of these munitions.

Again, I want to implore the government to think about what these munitions do and why Conservatives want to put in this clause that would allow the continued use of these munitions.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member says they do not condone the use of the weapons, but at the same time they expressly put in a loophole to allow Canadians on detached service to serve alongside folks who are using them. That is not just the United States. That would be any country that is not a signatory to this bill that we entered into joint operations with. We never know which partners we are going to have in the future on specific missions.

The amendment that was passed specifically stopped Canadians from being able to use it as part of detached service, but it did not prohibit all the rest, that would allow Canadian soldiers to serve alongside, that would allow Canadian soldiers to participate in the transportation and be part of a group that had these munitions and that might be using them.

I, for one, would not want any of our Canadian Armed Forces soldiers to have that kind of guilt on their conscience, to have been part of the use of these kinds of heinous weapons that, as I quoted, would actually be maiming and killing people 20 years later.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

They like to agree with each other, Mr. Speaker, but they do not ask Canadians what they think about this legislation. If they did, Canadians would tell them as they are saying on Twitter and elsewhere tonight, that they do not believe that clause 11 is necessary, that they believe that Canada should be a world leader when it comes to ending cluster munitions like we were with the landmine treaty. That is the kind of leadership Canadians expect from our country. They do not like imposing loopholes that would allow these reprehensible, heinous weapons to continue to be used.

One of our major partners, the United States, has a quarter of the world's stockpile of these munitions. Does that mean we stop working with that country? Absolutely not. It means that Canada should take a stand and say we are not going to work alongside these munitions, that we do not condone the use of these munitions in theatres of operation where Canadians are going to be, not only for our own protection but for the protection of the civilians who are going to be there 20 years down the road, the children not even born yet but who will be maimed or killed by the unexploded munitions.

I would like to give members a reference. The lawn of Parliament Hill is not even the size of several soccer fields. If just one of these munitions went off in this area it would contaminate the area. People would not be able to live or work in peace in the area for many years to come.

I look forward to questions from the government.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

That is right, Mr. Speaker. It is not defendable, so the Conservatives are not even going to try to defend it. They are just going to sit here and make snide remarks. They are not going to get up and explain to Canadians why the bill contains that clause 11. Before members of the government decide to get up and actually ask a question or make a comment, they might want to take a bit of time to explain why clause 11 is there and why Canadians should be working alongside member states that are using these weapons.

The quote that I started my speech with talks about how 20 years later these munitions are still going off and maiming people. They are still killing civilians and children. Why the government would defend a loophole that would allow that to continue is beyond me. It is certainly not a Canadian value.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

The Conservatives have not been defending their position, Mr. Speaker. They have been attacking ours. If they had any courage in the House, then at least one of them, maybe a minister or a backbencher, would get up and give a speech and tell us why we should not ratify this convention, why we should be making changes.

Why are we leaving loopholes in the bill that would allow Canadians to stand alongside others who are using them, that would allow Canadians to call in cluster bomb attacks if they are on detached service with other countries?

Why will no members of the government get up to defend their position?

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, before I start into my speech, I would like to recount a first-hand account on the use of cluster munitions.

I used cluster bombs on Iraqi forces in 1991. To this day, they are still killing the people we went to liberate. I have personal experience with these weapons. Fighting alongside Canada’s troops, I used cluster munitions in 1991 against Iraqi forces during the liberation of Kuwait. The target was a set of slit trenches. I released the two CBU-87s bombs, each containing hundreds of smaller “submunitions,” from a steep dive. I can still see the two huge doughnut-shaped “footprints” of the submunition explosions forming, slightly overlapping. With a series of flashes, the area around the target disappeared into dust and smoke, hiding the trenches and the last of the explosions from view. The blast area was equivalent to several soccer fields. I remember thinking it must have been hell on Earth to have been in the trench. All four of us in the formation were struck by the effect. Afterwards, someone wrote two words in the “remarks” column in the sheet authorizing the mission: “Nasty weapon.” But we didn’t know how nasty. We knew that some of the submunitions would not detonate, and that that would make it difficult for the enemy to operate in that area. But I had no idea that there would be nearly 200 casualties suffered by Kuwaitis — the people we were fighting to liberate — over the next 15 years. Or that two decades later, despite massive clearance efforts, unexploded submunitions would still be found. Or that by far the greatest proportion of recorded cluster munition casualties are civilian, many of them children.

That really sums up why we need to be passing this treaty and why we need to be ratifying it.

Also, Canada has a leading role to play in this. Sadly, the government is missing the opportunity by including things like clause 11 and working in the loopholes in the original convention that would allow for laggards to continue to operate and use these munitions and for Canada to stand idly by.

As we have heard from other speakers this evening, New Democrats fully supported the creation of the treaty to ban cluster munitions. That treaty or convention has been signed by 113 countries and has been ratified by 84. Supposedly, this bill is meant to represent Canada's ratification of the convention, but this bill undermines that convention. With this bill the government is trying to introduce a major loophole that will make Canada's commitment to ending the use of cluster munitions superficial at best.

The problem is that Canada succeeded in negotiating into the final text of the convention an article that explicitly allows for continued military interoperability with non-party states. Then, in developing this legislation, the government added clause 11, which establishes an extremely broad list of exemptions. This clause permitted Canadian soldiers to use, acquire, possess, and transport cluster munitions whenever they are acting in conjunction with another country that is not a member of the convention and, worse still, to request the use of cluster munitions by other countries.

The International Committee of the Red Cross commented about this particular part of the legislation saying that section 11:

...could permit activities that undermine the object and purpose of the convention and ultimately contribute to the continued use of cluster munitions rather than bringing about their elimination.

The NDP members fought hard at committee to make changes to this clause and other sections of the bill, but were only successful in getting the Conservatives to formerly prohibit the use of cluster munitions by Canadian soldiers. However, we will take every little win on this kind of legislation that would limit the contact that our soldiers might come into with respect to cluster munitions and other weapons that we find reprehensible and heinous to use.

Like so many times before, the government has been unwilling to listen to many opposition amendments simply because the ideas did not come from it. This is a government that refused to correct grammar in another bill because it came from the opposition, forcing the change to be made at the Senate and then brought back here, wasting all of our valuable time and energy.

Of course other loopholes remain. Without amendments to rectify these loopholes, Canada's commitment to ending the use of cluster munitions would be superficial at best. In fact, it may even damage the convention as a whole by establishing an international precedent for opting out and exemption. The legislation to implement the convention on cluster munitions is widely recognized as the weakest and worst in the world, so we are not leading, we are trailing behind other countries in this area.

As a couple of my colleagues have mentioned, Earl Turcotte, a former senior coordinator from mine action at DFAIT, said about Bill C-6:

...the proposed Canadian legislation is the worst of any country that has ratified or acceded to the convention, to date.

It fails to fulfill Canada's obligations under international humanitarian law; it fails to protect vulnerable civilians in war-ravaged countries around the world; it betrays the trust of sister states who negotiated this treaty in good faith, and it fails Canadians who expect far better from our nation.

I wonder if maybe that quote is why no member of the government is willing to get up and defend this legislation. Then we would have the opportunity to ask them questions about what he said about how this legislation would not meet our obligations under international and humanitarian law and that it would fail to protect civilians in war-torn countries.

All night long it has been New Democrats getting up and the Conservatives making snide remarks and talking about our ideals and making fun of pacifism and peacekeeping, which was a Canadian invention. The incredulous comments just continue without abating. The Conservatives are not willing to get up and defend this legislation. It is really an impressive thing when a government is not willing to stand up and defend its own decisions.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 11th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, in response to questions about whether the Conservatives' latest bill is unconstitutional, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration decided that the best thing to do was to evade the question and instead launch a personal attack on the lawyer challenging the bill.

Then, last night on CBC, the minister was asked what he thought about revoking the citizenship of Canadian-born citizens. How did he respond? He said that the host should stop frightening people. It is like the minister now understands that actually reading his bill will make people fear it. The minister does not have a leg to stand on when it comes to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Canadian Bar Association has said that this bill imposes “exile as an additional form of punishment”.

After countless bills overturned, a Supreme Court pick rejected, and the government's unilateral Senate position stopped, Canadians deserve better than a bungling immigration minister misleading Canadians and ramming through unconstitutional bills. In 2015, by voting NDP, they will get it.

[Questions on the Order Paper, June 10th, 2014]

With regard to ex gratia payments by the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, based on Order in Council 2012-0861 issued in June 2013 which provides the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) with the authority to approve ex gratia payments of up to $250,000 in his adjudication of grievances: what is the number of instances where the CDS used that authority, broken down by (i) total number, (ii) rank of grievor, (iii) type of grievance, (iv) amount paid?

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will not deny a little glee in what I am about to say next, which is that I reject the premise of the question.

If we look at the trade agreements that Canada is signing, the devil is always in the details. It is not about doing less trade with countries that we are already trading with without free trade deals. The member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek laid it out flat. What we have to do is make sure that improvements to human rights and less corruption in government are part of the trade deals we are negotiating. That is how we make them fair trade deals: that they respect labour rights so that people can go home at the end of a workday, that they respect freedom of the press so that journalists do not fear for their lives when they report the truth, that it is not just about the almighty dollar and the amount of money that will go into a few pockets that will increase the inequality that exists in these countries.

Honduras is already listed as the most unequal country in the world. Therefore, why would the government not put measures into place when signing trade agreements so that the poor would become less poor and people could have a better quality of life? That is what should go into trade agreements.