David Anderson

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about the importance of allowing observers into the situation. I would like him to comment on the importance of documenting the human rights violations, why it is important that we have the capacity to do that, and how that may change things a little later and impact the resolution of this conflict.

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is not good enough for the Prime Minister to be silent publicly on an issue that is so critically important around the world. When we speak out, that demonstrates the leadership we need to see and we need to have.

We talked a bit earlier about funding going to the Myanmar government. Some of the member's own colleagues, perhaps even the minister, talked about the necessity of ensuring that money was accounted for, but perhaps not going directly to the government because we did not know where it would ne spent. Perhaps it should be given to NGOs that right now have an incredible humanitarian need for food and medical assistance in those camps that are on the border rather than given to the Myanmar government until we are absolutely certain of how it will use that money. Clearly, the $44 million went somewhere and we do not seem to have any accountability for where it is. If the government has a good idea and can explain that, we would certainly be glad to hear it.

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, these international fora are an incredibly important part of where we need to be addressing these issues. I mentioned the United Nations last week. We missed an opportunity. I would not like to see that same issue missed at the IPU.

I had a chance to go to Myanmar a year ago last August. It was obvious from being there that really no one was interested in solving this problem. It appeared that the government was not all that concerned with solving it. We met with some of the national politicians from Rakhine State, and they were definitely not interested in taking the Rohingyas' side on this thing. Therefore, it is going to take strong international leadership to convince the Myanmar government.

We need to mention as well that 25% of the seats in that parliament, and I have been in the parliament and watched, are given to the military. There is an entire section with nothing but military uniforms. There is a section for the opposition and then a section for the government. There needs to be pressure applied not only on those people who have been elected democratically but also on the military, to create some situation where they will do better than they are doing right now.

We had people saying at committee the other day that this was a genocide. It fits the conditions for genocide. We asked if they were trying to push them out. That was exactly what it looked like. They could get them on the other side of the river, they could mine that side of the river but they could not come back. From the Myanmar government's perspective, that takes care of this issue. We need to do better and we need to let the international community know that this is not acceptable.

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Shepard.

We heard in debate tonight about how well we are all getting along here, and I do not want to change the tone too much, but we need to talk about the fact that the government has been naive right from the beginning. When Stéphane Dion went to Myanmar in 2016, he gave it $44 million, and we were told that was intended to go toward building democratic institutions. If the government at the time had been paying attention to what was going on in Myanmar, it would have known there were already serious problems there. The election had been held a little earlier and there was no indication from the election that any of the parties were going to take seriously this issue around the Rohingya.

I understand it is a long-lasting issue, which I will go into in a few minutes, but the reality is that the government that was elected in Burma was not taking this issue seriously. The Canadian government said it was going to give it $44 million, and there has been little accountability for that money. If I go on the website international.gc.ca tonight, under “Canadian international assistance in Myanmar”, it is still the government's position that Myanmar is moving toward an inclusive parliamentary democracy and negotiating ceasefires after decades-long civil wars. I guess we can understand that it has not kept its websites up, but it should, because this is an important issue and one that the government has misfired on right from the beginning.

The second place the government made a mistake was last week when the Prime Minister was in New York. He had an opportunity to show some international leadership and chose to talk about, as much as possible, whatever dirty laundry he could find from our country rather than taking leadership on international issues. This would have been an excellent issue for him to have shown some leadership and statesmanship on.

We have talked tonight about members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights who have been talking about this issue off and on for the last year. They worked very well together on the issue, but government leadership needs to start paying attention to these kinds of issues. The Prime Minister had the chance to do that and did not take it. It seems that, until it hits the editorial page in Canada, the government pays little attention to it. Because of that, it has little influence. It does not have the capacity to influence in the way it should.

We know a little about the Rohingya issue. It has been going on for a long time. It is a group of people who, within the last several hundred years, have moved into the area on the border of Bangladesh and what used to be called Burma but is now called Myanmar. They can be shown to have a heritage that goes back for several hundred years in that area. In 2015, their population in Myanmar was about one million people. There has been a long and drawn-out persecution of them. It started many years ago, but there were military crackdowns in 1998, which chased a whole pile of the Rohingya people out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. When they came back in 1981, when they started moving back into the area that they had occupied and lived in for so long, the government turned on them and brought in a series of citizenship laws that basically removed their citizenship. There was another round of persecution in 1991 and 1992, then renewed pressure in 2012, and then what we have seen in the recent past.

I would like to back up and talk a little about the problem, which is centred on these 1982 citizenship laws. Basically, in the past, the Rohingya had been citizens of the country, and the government just made the decision that it was going to remove their positions as citizens. It came in with a law that said that citizens need to be part of a recognized national race, and the Rohingya were not a national recognized race, so right off the bat they did not have an opportunity to reaffirm their citizenships.

The law also said that they had to be able to demonstrate that their families had settled there before 1823, which was when the British came. The records and other things made it very difficult for people to establish the fact that they were citizens. They were basically left stateless in 1982 by those changes. There has been pressure over the years on the government to try to get it to change that position so that these people would be considered citizens again, but that has not been successful. The government disqualified them and made it impossible for the Rohingya to qualify as citizens.

Those who were citizens were impacted in 2015 around the election, and I will talk a bit about that later because I know personally someone who was impacted by that. In 2015, there were some other changes made as well, called the race and religion protection laws. Four laws were brought in, and each actually directly impacted the Rohingya minority that exists in Myanmar. There was a monogamy law that ruled out polygamy, which is practised in certain areas of that country.

It had a religious conversion law and an interfaith law. People who wanted to change their faith needed to get approval. They needed to go through interviews and wait between 90 to 180 days before they were allowed to convert, and in many cases they were not allowed.

The third law restricted the marriage of Buddhist women to non-Buddhist men, so it put restrictions on them.

The fourth law was a population control law, which was targeted at minority areas where couples were only allowed to have one child every 36 months.

These, piled on top of the citizenship laws, left the Rohingya without representation and without any political strength.

Further restrictions were placed on things like employment, education, freedom of movement, and religious freedom as well.

These violate the basic rights of people in so many ways.

I want to tell the House about a specific case from 2015. I had the chance to be part of an international group of parliamentarians, which was formed around the issue of religious freedom. We were in Oslo in the fall of 2014, and signed on to a charter called IPPFoRB. A gentleman named Shwe Maung, was from Myanmar, was there. He was a member of parliament for Burma. He signed on to this charter. The network now has 150 to 200 members from around the world. He is a full citizen. In 2010, he had citizenship. When they came to vote in 2015, the electoral commission decided his parents had not been citizens and he was not a citizen either, so they removed his citizenship.

There were 500,000 Rohingya in the same situation who were struck from the electoral rolls. These people voted in one election. Leading up to the next election, the electoral commission of the central government made a determination that they were not citizens anymore. Mr. Maung went from representing his country as a member of Parliament to finding himself completely stateless. He is in the United States now, with an arrest warrant out for him. This is the kind of pressure the Rohingya have been under in Myanmar.

On August 23, Kofi Annan came out with his report. On August 25, a small group, a strange group of people, with perhaps some Rohingya in it, attacked a number of government and police officials. A number of people were killed. This caused a retaliation from the military and the start of all we see now.

I want to talk a bit about the fact that the government's response by the 28th was to begin laying mines. We have a news release from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which specifically mentions mines being placed. On the afternoon of August 28, an army truck arrived on the Myanmar side of the border. Three crates were unloaded, which contained anti-personnel mines were removed. They were placed in the ground between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. It talks about the areas where they were placed. It talks about subsequent to the daytime operation, the Myanmar army brought in trucks at night to continue laying mines. This could be seen under the lights. This has all been confirmed by Bangladeshi authorities as well. This has taken place against basically every international protocol that exists in the world.

We need to find some solutions, quickly.

First, the Rohingya people need immediate help. We were told at subcommittee just a few days ago that people were being kept in compounds. They have eaten all the food. They have eaten trees and branches. There is nothing for them to eat. They need immediate assistance and help from outside or they will starve to death. Starvation is imminent. Earlier tonight we heard about the rapes and the killings. We need to insist that the military stop its campaign.

We also need to be clear and do a solid investigation into which foreign powers are funding and radicalizing these individuals. Where is this small group of people, which, by the way, is killing Rohingya Muslims as well, getting its backing in order to cause the disruption?

We need to insist that the four race and religion protection laws are replaced and those 1982 citizenship laws are revoked.

The government needs to take its place as a leader. It needs to quit the show and start supplying the goal. Up until now that has not been the case. Canadians need value for the $50 million that have been spent there. The government needs to be accountable. It needs to step in and show the leadership the Rohingya and the Myanmar people need in order to move forward.

[Petitions, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from the folks around the Lafleche and Gravelbourg area in my riding. They request the House of Commons to specifically identify hospice palliative care as a defined medical service covered under the Canada Health Act, so provincial and territorial governments can then provide accessible and available hospice palliative care to all residents in their jurisdictions.

[Taxation, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, Quintin, a young farmer in my riding wrote:

As I sit here in my combine working tonight I had to stop to email you to voice my concern with these proposals as well. I am hoping to take over this farm from my parents in the next couple of years but know that these proposed changes will only add to an already heavily risky venture and create even less margin for error.

Under these changes, if his parents sell to him they will pay far more tax than if they sell to a stranger.

Why is the Finance Minister ripping apart Quintin's dream while protecting the family income of the Prime Minister and his own family fortune? How in the world is that fair?

[Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act, June 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there is a litany of potential disaster on our natural resource development across the way. The Liberals are changing the assessment processes, bringing uncertainty to both natural resource development and environmental protection, putting political opinion and spin ahead of science, mocking first nations by refusing to respect transparency laws that are already in place, and playing games with people's lives through a carbon tax.

Does the member think the divisiveness being caused by the government is going to be more or less than the divisions caused by the Prime Minister's father?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Return, June 16th, 2017]

With regard to carbon emissions, for each minister, including the Prime Minister: what have been each minister’s carbon emissions, calculated as tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted, from November 5, 2015, to February 28, 2017, broken down by (i) transportation via land vehicles to and from locations required in accordance with that minister’s portfolio, (ii) transportation via land vehicles to and from the minister’s constituency, (iii) transportation via air to and from locations required in accordance with that minister’s portfolio, (iv) transportation via air to and from the minister’s constituency, (v) electricity used in the minister’s Ministry offices, (vi) electricity used in the minister’s Parliament Hill offices, (vii) electricity used in the minister’s constituency offices, (viii) natural gas or other fossil fuels used in the minister’s Ministry office, (ix) natural gas or other fossil fuels used in the minister’s Parliament Hill office, (x) natural gas or other fossil fuels used in the minister’s constituency offices, (xi) the minister’s food consumption, (xii) other carbon-emitting activities?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Return, June 16th, 2017]

With regard to the Prime Minister’s trip to Medicine Hat, Alberta, from October 13 to 15, 2016: (a) what public business did the Prime Minister conduct on this trip, separate from his business as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada; (b) how many employees of the public service, including employees of the Office of the Prime Minister, traveled with the Prime Minister or were involved in this travel; (c) how many employees of the Privy Council Office (PCO) traveled with the Prime Minister or were involved in the Prime Minister’s travel; (d) what public business did PCO employees, including the technical employees, conduct for this travel; (e) was any of the work conducted by PCO employees partisan or to the benefit of the Liberal Party of Canada and the Liberal campaign in Medicine Hat and, if so, was the government reimbursed; (f) did any PCO employees provide any assistance, including technical set-up or assistance, related to the Liberal rally attended by the Prime Minister and, if so, (i) what assistance was provided, (ii) what are the details of any invoice submitted to the campaign resulting from such assistance; (g) was any government property used for partisan purposes during the Prime Minister’s trip and, if so, what amount was the government reimbursed by the Liberal Party of Canada or the Liberal campaign in Medicine Hat; (h) was the government reimbursed by the Liberal Party of Canada or the Liberal campaign in Medicine Hat for the Prime Minister’s travel to and from Medicine Hat and, if so, what was the amount of the reimbursement; (i) what personal business (according to the itineraries published on the Prime Minister’s website) did the Prime Minister conduct on October 15 and 16, 2016; and (j) what was the Prime Minister’s physical location on October 15 and 16, 2016?

(Return tabled)

[Transportation Modernization Act, June 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, was struck by the member opposite addressing the issue of the quality of the questions. He said he did not like the quality of them and did not like the content of them. I have read the bill, and there is a reason why these questions were asked the way they were. It is because there is a complete lack of detail in the bill.

When we talk about the air protection bill, the minister said that the government is going to set up some sort of regime, but the Liberals do not have any answers about what that might be. Also, we can see clearly that Transport Canada is going to benefit in huge ways from the bill, but very few producers and shippers are going to get any benefit.

The changes that we made impacted interswitching directly, it provided for minimum movement of grain product, and made sure that the system was working. The new changes the Liberals would make, such as the 1,200 kilometres, for the most part, cannot affect the areas they should because they have taken out a section of lower British Columbia that will not be applicable to that part of the bill. Therefore, we need to have debate on the bill. It is a complex bill that needs more explanation from the government side than it is certainly getting. I would like to see some more of that.

The minister talks about other issues coming into play. However, things like carbon pricing should be discussed on a bill that is a transportation bill. I pay a carbon price that is generated in British Columbia, because I ship grain. Therefore, for the minister to try to remove all of these other issues from the important parts of a transport bill, that is just making a mockery of what we are doing here. He needs to be able to sit down and listen to some of the criticism, and then come back in the fall and improve the bill.