Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mégantic—L'Érable this evening, and I am looking forward to what he has to say later.
So often freedom and immigration actually go together. I am reminded of the tragedy in Quebec City the other night. We want to express our sympathies to the families and friends who have been impacted and to the victims of that recent shooting. Too often these events take place around the world.
I want to recognize one other person. Last summer, there was a group of us internationally who were able to go to Myanmar to discuss the Rohingya Muslim issue with the folks there. One of the gentlemen we met was U Ko Ni, a prominent Muslim lawyer who had spent a number of years as a legal advisor to Aung San Suu Kyi and who had worked with the National League for Democracy. The other day he returned to the Yangon airport and came out of the airport and was assassinated. We can only assume he was assassinated for the work he has been doing. We should also recognize one of the taxi drivers who attempted to challenge the shooter and was killed as well.
We recognize that these events take place around the world, and every one of them breaks our hearts.
Tonight I would like to talk about a critical issue, and that is not of what other governments are doing but what our own government has been doing. That needs to be our first and foremost interest in this country.
The Liberal response to the U.S. travel ban has been basically self-congratulatory. It was pretty much underwhelming.
I want to talk about some of the issues around immigration that the Liberals have failed to address properly over the last year and a bit. There are a number of these issues. They include things like the successful integration of Syrian refugees and properly responding to Canadians and their desire to privately sponsor refugees. Mexican visas and Mexican visa removal is another one of those issues. Certainly one of the most prominent ones would be the failure of the current government to prioritize the Yazidi genocide victims.
We are all familiar with the story of the Yazidis and the fact that in August 2014, ISIS swept through the Sinjar area and the Yazidis were surrounded. In early August, tens of thousands fled. Thousands of men were killed. We discovered mass graves after that time. Women were abducted. There were many forced conversions. It took until 2016 for the world to begin to recognize that this actually had been a genocide and needed to be treated that way.
The government, unfortunately, over the last year, has resisted multiple attempts to call this a genocide and basically had to be shamed to the point where the Liberals would finally recognize it for what it was. The reason that is important is that out of that came multiple initiatives from this side of the House to try to encourage the Liberals to take a look at the Yazidis and how they might bring them here. One of the failures of the Liberals' policy has been that they have refused to consider any type of religious affiliation in their decisions as to which refugees to bring here. There are arguments for doing that, but the reality is that when they did that, they were not able to find the real victims, the ones who were the most persecuted minorities, because as they began looking through the United Nations camps, those folks were not there. They were too scared to go there. They were not able to go there, so as the government began to bring in refugees, it missed a very important component, which was dealing with the most persecuted minorities that existed.
There was a unanimous motion in the House, which we are all familiar with, that the government would begin to bring here Yazidi women and girls who had been victimized. It is unfortunate that we have come back to this session and still have to ask the Liberals if they can tell us if they have done this. In the last couple of days, in question period, the only answer has been a resounding silence and the refusal of the new minister to answer that question.
How many Yazidi women have been cleared to come to Canada? We cannot get an answer. While the world is distracted and looking at some of these other issues, we have some people who have been brutally treated who are trying to come to this country, and the current government does not seem capable of responding. It is unfortunate that we have had to listen to the minister evade the answer as to how many of these women and girls have been allowed to come here. It is time for the government to take responsibility on this issue.
There is another issue that has been near and dear to my heart. Over the last few years, I have been involved with religious freedom issues around the world. I have been able to work with people from many different countries and all kinds of faith groups in trying to reinforce the three articles and Article 18 of the United Nations charter.
In our election campaign in 2011, we made a decision to set up the office of religious freedom. It took us until about 2013 to get it established. It was amazing the work ambassador Andrew Bennett was able to do through that small office. He was only given a budget of about $5 million per year. The office had a staff of five to seven people. Its mandate was to protect and advocate on behalf of religious minorities that were under threat and to oppose religious hatred and intolerance. Its mandate also included the promotion of the Canadian values of pluralism and tolerance abroad.
I find it ironic that we are sitting here tonight talking about those very issues, yet the office of religious freedom no longer exists. It got by on a $5 million budget with about five to seven employees, and it had incredible influence around the world.
I became involved with a group of parliamentarians who were working on religious freedom. Everywhere I went, I heard about the impression the office of religious freedom was making on governments in other countries. We would go to Europe and people would ask if there was something they could do to model that structure, because they saw how it was working. There were projects in places like Pakistan on educating and checking out school material and trying to make sure there was no hate material in the school material. The office was involved in a number of projects, and it made a huge difference in people's lives.
They worked in some of the most difficult areas of the world. I talked about Pakistan. Officials were in Ukraine, where they were trying to keep religious authorities from being a source of tension in the conflict there. They worked in Indonesia as well. The office was seen as a major positive contribution to Canada's reputation around the world. These projects addressed a growing demand around the world.
Since I became involved in this in 2010, it is interesting to see how this issue has exploded. It is not an issue that we do not think about anymore. Most of the time it seems that political issues around the world are tied to faith issues that are operating around them.
That office was set up at a good time and it was in a good place to do good work. That office was aligned with the government's larger priorities at the time. It gave Canada great influence in communities around the world. For such a small project, it had tremendous influence, and it was working directly with other governments.
The international contact working group was set up in 2015. Ambassador Bennett was the chair of that. It brought together 20 countries that were interested in dealing with issues of religious freedom. It also tried to deal with the kinds of issues we are talking about here and with finding a place for people to respect others' rights, a place where people could critically analyze other people's beliefs without being afraid of how they would be treated.
One of the things the group also did was work in parallel with the organization I have been involved with. It has probably the world's worst acronym. It is called the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief. It has now had members join from dozens of countries that want to make this into a major issue.
I was disappointed when the government decided to cancel that initiative. It put another smaller office in place called the Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion. It is located in a little corner of Global Affairs. To this point, nobody knows what it has done. The government tripled its budget, and 35 people work for it, but it has had no impact. It is an opaque organization. It has been frustrating. It is also frustrating that my time is almost gone.
In this situation, the battle against religious persecution was diminished by the decision of the government opposite, and it is too late for it to reconsider. It certainly took Canada out of a position of major influence on these issues of religious freedom and immigration and those issues around the world.
