David Anderson

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things is that we are here. We are having the debate and discussion, and we are having it within the established timeline. We are trying to do a good job of setting up the guidelines and the safeguards on this issue.

The reality is that the acceptance of assisted suicide and euthanasia is not universal across the country. It was not something that was decided by the elected members of the House, those who are here to represent the people. It was decided by the Supreme Court of Canada. It made the decision that we had a charter right to this in Canada, so we needed to move forward with this legislation.

However, the Parliament of Canada needs to take some time to do this carefully to ensure we do it correctly for people.

There is a number of other things I had to say. One of them would have been about the slippery slope that countries find themselves on when they move into this area. We need to have a discussion about that as well. I do not hear members talking about this.

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my point was exactly that. It is the court that has brought us to this point, and the timeline is the court's timeline.

As one of my colleagues pointed out a little earlier, that deadline prohibits us from dealing with these issues as fully as we probably should. We have not had any discussion about the implications of the Supreme Court decision. We have never sat down and had those discussions.

The government has come forward, under pressure, with legislation that many people feel is inadequate. One of the areas I find very troubling is the lack of conscience protection, and I mentioned that a little earlier.

Many people in the disabled community are very concerned about the fact that there is no vulnerability protection. They do not want to see a development of peer pressure in society where people feel somehow obligated to participate in this activity.

There is a number of issues around this. The timeline we are on is not helping us to discuss and resolve those issues among Canadians.

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, it is good to be here today to speak to Bill C-14. One of the principles we have in the House is that legislation is best built on a very solid foundation, and this bill does not have that.

What the Supreme Court ruled years ago on the Rodriguez case was very clear. However, just over a year ago, as with so many other decisions and so many other directions, the Supreme Court reversed itself. If it had really good underlying reasons for doing that, it would have been fine, but the justification for it was very interesting. It was a mistake in perception as set forward by the Supreme Court. The justices called it a changing matrix of social and legal facts which brought them to their conclusion. I and others are concerned that this makes our laws, including the interpretation of charter rights, dependent upon the opinions of a very small group of people. I will talk a bit more about the matrix of social and legal facts in a few minutes.

From my perspective, this is not an improvement. Many of my colleagues on both sides of the House have shared their concerns about Bill C-14, with some supporting it and others opposing it. However, a number of things are missing in the bill, and we need to have further discussion about. I heard a few comments earlier about the timeline, how pressured it was, how we needed to get this done and that this basically was prohibiting us from taking the time needed to discuss these things a bit further and with a bit more depth.

There is no clear definition of what irremediable means. The bill talks about that being the requirement for someone to qualify for physician-assisted dying.

I am concerned about the expansion of this process to nurse practitioners, so it would not just include physicians. People have asked why medical personnel are even involved with this. They have asked whether there is not some other place this can be done so people do not have to be concerned that when they go into the hospital for medical care, rather than receiving a positive side of medical care, they receive a very negative side of it.

There is a criminal exemption for those who perform euthanasia, but there is no protection for those who do not want to participate. A number of people are very concerned about what is called conscience rights and the lack of protection for that in the legislation.

There is a lack of clarity around psychological conditions and how that may come into play with this issue. One of the things that really concerns a lot of people is the lack of a vulnerability assessment, taking the time to find out if people are being pressured or whether there is some vulnerability that is bringing them to the point where they have made a decision that may be wrong for them.

Some people have called for a prior judicial review. There is no mention of that in the legislation.

Also, there is a lack of clarity on data collection. This has been an issue in a number of areas. Will we see good data collection? Will someone keep a good set of records on what goes on with this process?

We often have heard the concern that there is no clear commitment to palliative care. We just heard a member from the government talk about this. The Liberals made this commitment during the election campaign. They felt it was within their jurisdiction to promise $3 billion toward palliative care, but now, in the House, we hear them talk about how other jurisdictions are responsible for this. It sounds as if the Liberals are trying to avoid their responsibilities for this.

I would like to go back to the Supreme Court decision. It turned back the former position. It reversed it and it left us with an open field when it came to the issue of assisted suicide or assisted dying. The only thing the Supreme Court said in its ruling on Carter was that the person needed to consent and that the person needed to have a grievous and irremediable medical condition causing enduring and intolerable suffering. If we look at that, we see it leaves that whole area very open.

As I said earlier, good legislation should have a good foundation. I do not believe this does because of the Supreme Court decision. The foundation is the Carter decision and it hardly qualifies as a stable base on which to create good legislation.

I do not suppose we will get this done today, but we will come back at another stage on this bill. However. I would like to take a few minutes to talk a bit about the Supreme Court's recent decision in Carter v. Canada. It obviously is a very controversial decision and touches on a sensitive issue for many Canadians because there are very deeply held beliefs on both sides of this issue.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that the prohibition on assisted suicide was in general a valid exercise of federal criminal law. It also decided that the law went too far and it did not apply in cases where a competent adult with a grievous medical condition could consent to the termination of his or her life. I believe this decision is disturbing for a number of reasons.

The first is that the court ignored parliamentary consensus. In its decision, it claimed that the reversal from its earlier position in Rodriguez v. B.C. was necessary because of a different matrix of legislative and social facts. Yet, the purported differing matrix ignores the clear and unchanged parliamentary consensus opposing assisted suicide.

Between 1991 and 2012, nine private members' bills were introduced in the House of Commons, all seeking to amend the Criminal Code to decriminalize assisted suicide or euthanasia. Six were voted on and all of them failed to pass. When considering the matrix of legislative facts, the court gave weight to legislative developments in Belgium, Switzerland, Oregon, Washington, and the Netherlands, but it completely ignored the legislative record of Canada's Parliament.

Second, the court found no societal consensus in Canada on this issue. In her decision at the trial level of Carter v. Canada in the Supreme Court of B.C., Justice Smith wrote, “As to physician-assisted death, weighing all of the evidence, I do not find that there is a clear societal consensus either way”. Clearly whatever the change in that matrix of legal and social facts entails, it did not include a clear consensus from the people of Canada”.

This lack of consensus remains unchanged in the 22 years since the Rodriguez case in which the court stated, “No consensus can be found in favour of the decriminalization of assisted suicide. To the extent that there is a consensus, it is that human life must be respected”.

Clearly, the court found no consensus among western countries. While insisting again this matrix of legislative and social facts had changed since the last Supreme Court ruling on the issue, it acknowledged that physician-assisted dying remained a criminal offence in most western countries. Regardless, it chose to align itself with the minority of jurisdictions that allowed it.

I believe the court misinterpreted Parliament's objective in prohibiting assisted suicide. In its ruling, it put significant weight on the parliamentary objective of two sections, section 241(b) and 14 of the Criminal Code, which prohibit assisted suicide. The court asserted that these sections were put in place only to fulfill the state interest in protecting the vulnerable. However, in the earlier court case with Rodriguez, the court had said the objective of this section was not simply “protecting the vulnerable”, but also “preserving life”.

It had written, “In this case, it is not disputed that in general s.241(b) is valid and desirable legislation which fulfils the government's objectives of preserving life and protecting the vulnerable”. This position was reaffirmed several times.

By insisting that in Carter the purpose of section 241 was only to protect the vulnerable, the Supreme Court was able to conclude that this prohibition put people outside this class and that there were people who did not need to be protected by it. The court's conclusion was that the current law was over broad and grossly disproportionate to its objectives. That allowed it to say that Parliament needed to establish safeguards to ensure that those who truly wanted to be euthanized would be able to do that.

That interpretation tramples on the intention of Parliament to preserve life. Had it considered the full purpose of these sections of the Criminal Code rather than just that one objective of protecting the vulnerable, I think the outcome would have been very different.

I would make one final point before my time runs out. The court really leaves the definition of irremediable open to patient interpretation. The court decided that irremediable did not require the patient to undertake treatments that were not acceptable to them. In other words, although treatment may be available, the condition still qualifies as irremediable if the treatment is not acceptable to the patient.

I wanted to express my concerns. However, I think we will come back to some of the things the Supreme Court touched on as well in terms of the right to die being conflated with the right to life and some of the other issues.

[Parliamentary Forum on Religious Freedom, May 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, today leading scholars, faith leaders, diplomats, and members of the public will come to Parliament Hill for the fifth annual Parliamentary Forum on Religious Freedom.

The four previous forums touched on specific issues regarding the right to freedom of thought and belief. Each was thought provoking and challenged participants to recommit to new and different ways to this fundamental human right.

This year promises to be no different. This year's forum is entitled, “Religious Freedom or Secularism? A World Safe for Diversity: Living with our Deepest Differences”. We will explore whether an increasingly secular world can, or will, continue to support the notion that all people should be free to decide what they believe, should be able to daily practise their belief, and should be able to change their belief if they choose. This year, leading apologist, author, and social critic, Dr. Os Guinness, will deliver the keynote address. He brings decades of expertise and wisdom to this ongoing debate.

Canada sees these freedoms as essential. However, the way forward is not always clear. That makes tonight's discussion all the more important.

[Business of Supply, March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. We look around the world and we see that some of the best freedoms come out of religious expression and religious belief. Some of the worst repression comes out of religious belief and faith.

The place we find ourselves is that we believe those three articles of article 18 are critical; that is that people should have the freedom to believe. They have the freedom to believe as they chose, they have the right to practise that belief as long as it is not violating someone else's space and their rights, and they have the right to change that belief. If people can exist with that, I think we will see that those types of repressive attitudes are not capable of being carried forward in the society.

Basically, if we have religious repression, it typically breeds instability in a country. It breeds further extremism, and we can look around the world and see that. It generates refugee flows, and we see that is a massive issue right now around the world. It threatens other fundamental rights, including things like freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly.

Out of that freedom of belief comes a lot of the other freedoms, but we need to understand that religion could be used as much as anything else to repress people as well.

[Business of Supply, March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, first, we do not continue the same work with a different mandate, clearly.

I take objection to the way he tried to characterize what I said. I did not say that all repression and persecution around the world was solely of a religious nature. What I said was that 75% of the global population lived in countries where they were restricted in terms of their freedom of religion or belief.

The examples he has mentioned are examples of places where people are not free to believe as they choose. Therefore, the government feels that it has the right to interfere with that freedom of belief. Whether people actually believe it and have a religious faith or people have chosen not to, if we do not have the freedom to believe and to choose those beliefs, we do not have any other freedoms.

[Business of Supply, March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here today. I wish the message we are hearing from the members of the government was different than it is. I hear them talk about the need to broaden the scope and to focus on all rights rather than one specifically, focusing on pluralism, international organizations, and civil societies. All of that is fine, but it has very little to do with the specific issue of religious freedom.

I heard one of my colleagues on the other side talk about how she wanted freedom for everything. The reality is that the religious freedom issue works very well when it is dealt with specifically. A few minutes ago, my colleague pointed out that most of the conflict we are seeing around the world right now is of a religious nature, and we need to consider that when we are talking generally about conflict in this world.

The Office of Religious Freedom was established in 2013, as a division of Foreign Affairs. It was fulfilment of a promise that we made in the campaign in 2011. It had a very small budget of $5 million. From looking around, I think that $5 million has probably been used as well as any $5 million from this government.

The mandate was straightforward. In a presentation given by the ambassador at the foreign affairs committee, he talked about it having a mandate to defend religious communities and monitor religious freedom, promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canada's foreign policy, and advance policies and programs that support religious freedom and promote pluralism. It is unfortunate to see the government opposite basically turning its back on those things by blending them into a whole bunch of other things. I believe the effectiveness of the office will be hampered by the fact that government does not want to deal with this as a specific issue.

It was not established as a generic rights organization for a reason. It would have been completely ineffective. It would not have had the focus that it had, and it would have been of little use to anyone. It was set up as non-partisan, and to work co-operatively with faith communities, NGOs, and other countries. That is what has happened.

Obviously, the choice of ambassador was a good one. Ambassador Bennett has become internationally respected for what he has done. He was wise enough to appoint an advisory committee covering faith groups and non-faith groups. He found a great variety of people there, and did a good job of putting that together. As one of my colleagues pointed out earlier today, that included those who believe they have the right not to believe in any specific faith at all. The ambassador was wise enough to include them in his advisory committee as well.

Once the office got rolling, there were a number of projects that were brought forward. I was excited when I looked through the list of things that the office contributed to over the last few years, including some very practical things. This is not an organization that has been operating in the sky; it has been operating right at ground level, trying to make a difference.

There were a lot of smaller projects, and I think the government will regret the day when it shuts down this office and shuts down the projects. It has had the opportunity to do things, such as training the media in other countries about hate speech and how they might deal with it in their countries. We have done work on monitoring religious freedom in various countries. Obviously, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom does its annual monitor about religious freedom around the world. However, we have been able to help local communities monitor religious freedom and how it has been achieved in their communities.

There has been a documentation of violations as well, so that people are held accountable for what they are doing. The office has provided leadership courses for people in their communities to come together. One of the places was in Nigeria. We brought together interreligious communities so they could sit and talk to each other, to try to create peace in areas where organizations such as Boko Haram were trying to disrupt communities and destroy social fabric. One of the things we tried to do was promote dialogue and peace between the communities there.

Sharing best practices was another important aspect of the work of the office. Certainly things like children's educational materials does not seem like much, but there was money put into ensuring that textbooks and those kinds of things were not promoting religious hatred. It worked with countries to ensure that their educational materials were solid as well.

Awareness activities, research and academic studies, facilitating seminars and leadership, legal support, and supporting legislation, are all very practical things that the office provided. I have not heard anything today from members on the other side as to how they will continue to provide that on that micro level, right down at the community level, saying to people and to smaller countries that we will work together.

We need to ask if this is a relevant issue right now. I will give the House a present example.

The Liberal government is going to be absent on an important issue and that issue is what is happening in Nepal right now. Nepal is putting together a new constitution and some legislation is going to come forward around religious belief. We should be there helping Nepal. It appears as if there is now some manipulation going on now. Both of these documents are going to be pre-designed and they are going to end up suppressing minority believers. That does not need to happen. They are talking about prohibiting things such as conversion. One of the main aspects of article 18 of the United Nations human rights declaration is that people should be free to choose their belief. They talk about prohibiting apostolization. They talk about impacting the opportunity of people to speak freely about what they believe in, then moving to protect some religious communities while restricting others.

Not all of the people in Nepal have the opportunity to fully understand or discuss what these values and issues mean. We could be providing them with some help and assistance. This is just one example of where we could help.

Nepal signed on to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Included in their articles are the notions that people have the right to be free to believe, the right to be free to practice their belief, and the right to change their beliefs. These things happen at a practical level, and our government should be there. The Liberal government, in its rush to broaden its scope and focus on everything, is not going to be there on these specific issues where people in some of these countries are going to need help.

There is one other thing that the ambassador has headed up, and that is an international contact group on freedom of religion. This is a critical and important group and it is going to be lost when the government shuts down the Office of Religious Freedom. This group was spearheaded by Ambassador Bennett, who chaired the inaugural meeting. The group is called the International Contact Group for Freedom of Religion or Belief. It has brought together government representatives from over 20 countries in a multilateral diverse effort to collaborate together to address the challenges that are caused by international religious persecution. My colleague who spoke just before noted that most of the tensions and pressures that are coming out of religious belief, this international contact group is an excellent way at the administrative and government level for people to talk about these issues.

The ambassador was central to the launch of that group. It included all kinds of members from places like Cameroon, Chile, Morocco, Canada, the European nations. It is an important initiative and I fear it is going to be lost by the way the Liberal government is going. Even the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and others have praised this initiative. They saw it as important. They wanted their countries to participate in it. It is a critical tool to underline the freedom of religion or belief.

We are going to lose a lot if the Liberal government decides to shut down the Office of Religious Freedom. The government has a choice. It could renew the office's mandate with enthusiasm, as I said earlier today, so it can continue to maintain the momentum it has already created, or I fear the government is going to dilute it probably by defunding it, gutting it behind the scenes, or making it some some sort of generic rights organization so this right will be lost in the midst of a lot of other things.

The reason this has been successful is because it has been very specific. It has a narrow focus and that has allowed the ambassador and the office to create the kind of initiatives they have.

The government does not seem to understand this, and that is unfortunate. Persecution because of religious belief is targeted and specific. It needs to be dealt with in those ways. One example, the right to convert, whether people have the right to change their beliefs or not, cannot be dealt with by some generic human rights approach. It has to be dealt with specifically. We must give people the freedom to believe what they choose and then the right to change that.

The Pew Foundation has said that three-quarters of the people on this earth live with the fear of religious pressure and that violations are perpetrated by state and non-state actors and sometimes in conjunction with each other.

A lot of people in this world need the protection that was provided by countries paying attention to this issue. It is unfortunate that Canada has taken such a large step back on defending religious freedom. Certainly, we want to continue to protect them and we will do what we can on this side of the House to ensure that happens.

[Foreign Affairs, March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Office of Religious Freedom was given a specific mandate and it has been successful in carrying that out. It has been recognized internationally for its work and its leadership.

The current government has a choice. The Liberals can dilute the mandate and destroy the international work of the office, or they can enthusiastically support it and ensure its continued success.

This small office has had a huge impact around the globe. Will the government commit to continuing the present mandate of the Office of Religious Freedom?

[International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, 56 years ago today, a peaceful protest in apartheid South Africa ended in violence when 69 people were brutally killed for simply demanding the right to move about freely in their own country. Six years later, the UN declared March 21 the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Fifty years ago, the international community loudly proclaimed that such racial violence and discrimination was inexcusable.

Today that same message needs to be heard around the world. While many people now live free of discrimination based on the colour of their skin or their background, we should remember that many challenges remain.

For world leaders who have not completely rejected these ideologies, we hope that this day serves as an incentive to do better, to acknowledge their wrongdoing, reverse their approach, and reconcile their differences with those who have been wronged.

On this day of unity, we urge the Government of Canada to continue promoting Canada's compassion and tolerance globally so that all people have the opportunity to live freely.

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, there is an increased risk in at least two places.

The first is the increased risk it poses for our troops. Yesterday my colleague asked the minister if he was prepared to take full responsibility for removing the protection that our troops needed.

The other place that the increased risk shows up is on our territory, in our country. Clearly, ISIS has called for attacks against Canada. It wants to operate here. Thankfully, to this point, we have been able to hold it back, and we expect that to continue. My question for the government is this. If it does not believe that threats like these require some sort of military participation and a strong military response, when would it fight?