Garnett Genuis

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the question is something I specifically addressed in my remarks. What should the government have done? It should have prioritized human rights in Burma—I answered direct questions on this—engaged military and civilian leadership earlier, and addressed the issue in the UN speech.

What the government should do going forward is review every aspect of its relationship with Burma, especially the aid dimension, but also other dimensions of that relationship; forcefully raise this issue publicly and privately with military and civilian leadership; prioritize this issue in international fora; and reimpose sanctions on all those responsible. That is what the government can and should do, and it would make a difference.

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

moved:

That the House do now adjourn.

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Midnapore.

I speak from time to time in the House about my children. It is important for us to think about our own children and families when we think about the experience of families previous human rights abuses. People are people and children are children, wherever they are, whatever their colour, and whatever their faith.

The Subcommittee on International Human Rights had hearings about the situation facing the Rohingya community last week, and I want to read from that testimony. The subcommittee heard the following:

“...on August 27th. Around 10 a.m. Myanmar army soldiers arrived in Maung Nu Village....Some residents fled immediately, but a large number gathered at what is essentially the largest home in the village. It's a two-storey home owned by a prominent Rohingya family. The residents in this village thought perhaps they would be safe in this home. Each room of the house, which is relatively large, filled up with huddled masses of residents. According to survivors, women and girls were downstairs, and men and boys were upstairs.

“The Myanmar army surrounded this home, entered the home, corralled women and young girls to the house next door. One eye witness watched as soldiers dragged the men and boys out of the house including children as young as 12 years old. Some of the soldiers tied their hands behind their backs, and they tore veils off of women, and tied them over the eyes of the men and boys, and proceeded to violently interrogate them.

“Soldiers started beating the men and boys, screaming at them, and threatening them. After period of time the detainees were made to lay face down on the ground, and Myanmar army soldiers started executing them. Soldiers shot them and in some cases used knives to inflect fatal wounds to necks. One woman with whom we spent a period of time with witnessed soldiers shoot dead her father-in-law who was a local...her brother-in-law, and his two sons who were aged 16 and 18.

“The killing in this particular village on that particular day lasted for a period of about two hours. The victims ranged in age from 90 years old to 12 years old. Myanmar army soldiers in some cases wrapped bodies in tarps and dumped them in a military vehicle, and drove toward the local battalion referred to locally as the Pale Taung battalion. It's Battalion 564 of the Myanmar army.”

The same testimony and various other reports contain many more stories of atrocities and massacres. I struggled today, as I prepared for this, with which elements of the testimony to share and ultimately decided to stay away from the most graphic. However, I would encourage members to review the work of the subcommittee and the many media and independent reports out there, in particular, the testimony from last week.

We have here a clear textbook case of ethnic cleansing, of genocide against the Rohingya people in Burma. We are in the midst of a present escalation. The Conservatives have been raising this issue repeatedly in the House for the last year and a half, and we have asked the government to do more. In our view, the government did not start early enough and can do better now.

In the context of these events, it is important for us to work together as much as possible, but also to continually challenge the government to do more to protect the vulnerable. I will speak more about what I see the Canadian role being later on.

I have shared one of many stories of massacres, but here is the situation in broad strokes.

The Government of Burma has, for decades, pursued a policy of denying the reality and legitimacy of the Rohingya claim to citizenship. The Rohingya people are, in reality, indigenous to western Burma. Their presence can be tracked back over a millennium. However, the government seeks to deny that reality and define them as “other”. Their right to be citizens was first denied them in 1982, and the Government of Burma since then has taken successive steps to deny their citizenship, push them out, and/or kill them. The goal is quite apparent: to rid the region of its indigenous Rohingya people.

There was once a great deal of hope for Burma after the military rule gave way to a power-sharing structure between the military and the elected government. There is still hope for Burma, but it will be a longer road than many people thought. The elected government has not shown an interest in improving the situation of the Rohingya community. In fact, the situation has obviously worsened.

Canadians will know well the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Burma and an honorary Canadian citizen. She bravely resisted military rule and fought for democracy, but now, bizarrely, is providing cover for the same military as it continues to delegitimize the Rohingya people, kill them, destroy their villages, and force them from their homes.

That Aung San Suu Kyi is providing cover is an important point. It speaks to her responsibility and need to do more, but it also speaks to the need to be specifically holding the military leadership and commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing responsible.

Despite calls to do so much earlier, the government failed to raise these issues with Aung San Suu Kyi until quite recently, but still has not, at least as far as we know or have been told, done anything to apply direct pressure to the military. There has been a dramatic escalation in the campaign of violence in recent weeks. The situation has now entered a critical phase.

Many of my relatives were victims of what Hitler called the “Final Solution”. Although we cannot know the twisted logic of those responsible for this ongoing genocide, it seems that they may be pursuing their version of what they would think of as the final solution in this case, that they want to drive out or kill those Rohingya who have hung on until now.

In response to incidents of genocide, it seems to me that the world follows a familiar pattern: ignore it while it starts, start to notice it when it happens, and then wring hands after it is over, while promising to never let it happen again. This seems to repeat itself over and over again.

After the fact hand-wringing may have a useful function but it is often somewhat disingenuous. Many of the same world leaders involved in that after the fact hand-wringing then go on to pay limited attention to subsequent atrocities.

For those of us who might look back and ask why people did not do more in the context of the Rwandan genocide, in the context of the Holocaust, we have an opportunity now to ask ourselves why we are not doing more. Our children and grandchildren will ask us the same question.

Let us make “never again” meaningful. Let us act with the same urgency we would as if these Rohingya children were our children. They are no less human.

It is of course well and good to say that we should act. However, addressing situations like this require us to do more than express solidarity, but to act in a specific, effective, and sustained way.

Let me identify a number of things I think the government should have done and has not done unfortunately, but then, more important, identify some things the government should do going forward.

First, the government should have prioritized human rights in Burma and, in that context, answered direct questions that were posed to it on this in the House much earlier. The government should have engaged with military and civilian leadership, including Aung San Suu Kyi but also Min Aung Hlaing much earlier. The Prime Minister should have raised this issue during his speech to the UN General Assembly last week.

We cannot change the past. We feel that time has been lost already. However, going forward, the government must do the following.

First, the government must review every aspect of our present relationship with Burma. Burma is a major recipient of Canadian development assistance, for example. We must review that, yes, to get resources to vulnerable people, but we should review any government-to-government aid, and it seems there is a substantial amount of bilateral aid going to Burma.

We should forcefully raise this issue publicly and privately with military and civilian leaders, and do it in a sustained way.

We need to prioritize this issue in multilateral fora. It should be Canada's voice in all multilateral fora, asking what is being done about the situation in Burma.

We cannot change the past with respect to the Prime Minister's UN speech, but going forward, we should, and we must, prioritize discussion of this issue in multilateral fora. We must put pressure on our allies to end any elements of military co-operation with Burma, and to ramp up that pressure in every way possible. We should be imposing sanctions on all those individuals who are responsible.

We can do this. The Government of Canada can make a concrete difference in this situation if it ramps up the emphasis, if it ramps up the pressure and it prioritizes the issue fundamentally, and if it takes those specific concrete steps that I have mentioned.

I want to respond to some of the criticism I have received on this issue. It has not been much, but the Government of Burma has tried to muddy the water somewhat by suggesting it is responding to stereotypes. It has frankly sought to play on negative stereotypes about Muslims to delegitimize the legitimate demand for fundamental human rights.

Let us be clear. These are significant crimes being undertaken by the Burmese military against civilians. Nothing ever justifies that, even if this were the middle of a war or some kind of active guerilla campaign.

The reality is, though, that this is a completely asymmetrical situation of a Burmese government that for a very long time has seen no kind of violent response from any elements of Rohingya society and has still consistently sought to delegitimize the Rohingya people's presence, to deny the reality of their long-standing presence in that area.

For those who play on these stereotypes, it is unconscionable because the facts in this case are clear. We need to take action. We need to hold the Burmese government accountable.

The world is watching. Canada can take action here. The situation must change and we have to do our part.

[Venezuela, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to this important motion by my colleague from Thornhill and for the first time on a foreign policy issue in my capacity as the deputy shadow cabinet minister for foreign affairs for our caucus. I look forward to working with our leader, and the member for Durham, as well as members of all parties on the important challenges facing Canada in a rapidly changing world. As I often say when I speak to students in my riding, our role in the opposition is not always to oppose the government. Rather, it is to support it when we think it is right, and to oppose it when we think it is wrong. On questions of foreign policy in particular, we will always seek to be constructive, while still being forceful and emphatic when we feel that its direction is at odds with Canadian values or Canada's interests.

In my speech today, I would like to cover some of the ground again on the situation in Venezuela. However, I will first articulate some of the underlying principles of our Conservative foreign policy that animate this motion and inform our particular recommendations in this case.

As Conservatives, when it comes to foreign policy our core conviction is that our approach to the world must start with a clear definition of our values and objectives, and that those values and objectives should reflect principled conviction. We reject the vagaries of post-modern relativism, the idea that morality or human rights may differ from nation to nation or from culture to culture. We hold that human beings are human beings wherever they live, and that human rights, which arise from nature as opposed to custom or state diktat, are the same, regardless of the willingness of state or cultural institutions to defend them. It is important to say that we reject extreme Wilsonian idealism, which suggests that the world can be easily remade perfect. We understand the importance of pursuing human rights advancements as a process, of pursuing realistic and pragmatic improvements over time, but we also reject the idea that the violation of human rights and human dignity is ever acceptable, whether justified by ideology, culture, or political expediency.

In this sense, our political tradition is both idealistic and pragmatic. It is the inheritor of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and of Thomas More's Utopia, the first of which invites us to eschew extreme revolutionary change that would present risk to the good of society, and the second of which invites us to imagine different possible realities that are far outside our present experience. We can hold fast to absolute principle while also believing that the only way to build a better world is to take modest and pragmatic steps. Still we must never allow ourselves to deny our principles or to step backward further into the mists of injustice.

We also believe in multilateralism and engagement, the multilateral engagement that is rooted in our values and our desire to work with partners to advance our convictions on human rights and human dignity.

Our view is distinct from that of this government, a government that believes we can ignore human rights abuses or even praise human rights abusers if it achieves some instrumental good. Most often the good the government seeks is the approval of other nation states and the election of Canada to the United Nations Security Council. As abrasive as it may sound, it is hard to deny that fact. We have seen the government champion closer relations with Russia and Iran, even talking about aerospace opportunities in Iran. It has ignored repeated calls from the opposition to prioritize a response to the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingya in Burma. It applauds the legacy of Fidel Castro. It has praised China's political model. In the case of Cuba and China, it has parroted those regimes' myths. The former foreign affairs minister praised Cuba's allegedly low crime rate, and the Prime Minister has praised China's alleged commitment to efficiencies and environmental improvements.

A more honest reckoning would observe that those political structures are characterized by outrageously harsh punishments even for non-violent crimes, and yet still very serious corruption in both cases. Praising other states is likely about currying favour and getting on the UN Security Council, although perhaps in some cases it may unfortunately represent a genuine romanticizing of these regimes.

The government's response to our criticisms of their relativistic and one-track UN Security Council focused foreign policy is to sometimes accuse us of being isolationist. It is actually quite alarming that the government would speak in this way, that somehow it believes that anyone who rejects their “go along to get along” approach is an isolationist.

Ours is a doctrine of principled engagement and selective multilateralism. We will work with any nation in a way that, and the extent to which that engagement, advances our values and our interests. However, we will not engage in a way that is contrary to our values and our interests. As I said, our core conviction when it comes to foreign policy is that our approach to the world must start with a clear definition of our own values and objectives, and that those values and objectives should reflect principled conviction. Those are the principles and convictions that animate our commitment in this particular case to the advancement of justice and human rights in Venezuela.

Venezuela has a particular significance for me, because my mother was born there. My grandfather was working as an engineer in the Venezuelan energy sector before returning to Canada, the country of his birth. It is important, I think, because Venezuela is a resource-rich country, full of potential. It was the sort of place where, at one time, Canadians like my grandfather might go to seek good employment and opportunity. It is hard to imagine that happening today, as a country of such potential continues to see that potential squandered by a cruel, hard-left, anti-democratic government.

Before his death in 2013, the revolutionary government of Hugo Chavez oversaw a dramatic economic decline and dramatic growth in corruption and crime. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, has continued his failed socialist policies. The public response to declining conditions has led the Maduro regime to institute repressive new measures and the population has responded with intensified demands for freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, recognizing that these things are also the basis of prosperity and well-being. People are courageously demanding free and fair elections. They are going to prison and even giving their lives in their fight to finally take their country back.

The Chavez and Maduro regimes were built on a revolutionary principle, one that believes that any evil can be justified as a means to advancing toward an idealized socialist utopia. This is a starkly different concept of utopia than the one advanced by Thomas More. More invited us to imagine a better possible future, but understood that getting there required us to always act with goodness and justice in the present. Socialism, on the other hand, in the name of utopia, is used to justify any present action, however unjust or evil.

I call on all members to firmly renounce any residual romanticism they may hold about these revolutionary socialist ideologies. It is a curious feature of our politics that some, even on the centre left, romanticize tyrants of the far left. The government has now sanctioned officials within the Venezuelan government, and for this we give it credit, but Venezuela is going down a path well trodden by China and Cuba. The Prime Minister said this about the late Cuban leader:

Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation.

About China, he stated he has “a level of admiration...for China”, and went on to say:

...their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime, and say, ‘we need to go greenest, fastest—we need to invest in solar.’ I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, and I find quite interesting.

This is a strange quote because it was not Stephen Harper fantasizing about dictatorial socialism. It was the Prime Minister, in this case, before he was the prime minister, expressing his explicit admiration for this kind of revolutionary socialism that we see in Cuba and Venezuela. The government is appropriately sanctioning Venezuela, but it is particularly rich in light of the Prime Minister's own admiration for extreme far-left revolutionary regimes. Our foreign policy must be rooted in consistent principle, principle that applies in all cases in order to be clear and credible.

The situation in Venezuela, along with the crisis in Burma, North Korea, and Syria, did not merit mention by the Prime Minister in his address to the United Nations last week. It was a significant missed opportunity for him to be on that world stage and fail to address any of these significant challenges with dramatic human rights implications. It was a missed opportunity to advance Canadian values and interests.

We know where we stand on this side of the House, firm in our commitment to universal human rights, democracy, the rule of law, universal human dignity, justice for all, and the prosperity and human flourishing that flows from a dedication to these principles. We believe that our foreign policy should reject revolutionary idealism and all-ends-justify-the-means thinking and, instead, champion fixed and unchanging principles, champion Canadian values and interests.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the balance between legislation and regulation is an interesting question, particularly in terms of what should be prescribed and what should be included. Obviously, it is not practical for every aspect of government decision-making to be contained in legislation. There are particular questions around the scope of regulations. There are well-established limitations on what can fit into the category of regulation.

However, the member's point, and one I strongly agree with, is that the government needs to be prepared to answer questions about what it is doing vis-à-vis regulations, what its plans are, and what elements of regulation would be required to achieve a desired outcome.

I had the great pleasure of serving on the scrutiny of regulations committee for a couple of years, and I would recommend it to the member if he is interested. Admittedly, it was frustrating on that committee trying to deal with what were sometimes very old files and to get information from the government about concerns the committee had with respect to things that were happening with regulations.

The regulatory oversight rule is very important for Parliament. Even though it is up to government to create regulations, we have an important role with respect to oversight, and it is important for the government to honour that role and work with the House and committees when it comes to responding to and dealing with regulations.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we support the bill and see it through to committee. The committee will provide an opportunity to hear witness testimony with respect to some of the particular issues that have been brought forward. In general, and certainly at this stage, supporting the principle of the bill is good, then that further discussion will happen at that point.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot recall ever having proposed a trade deal with North Korea. I do not know what we would trade, frankly, but maybe they would be willing to give up their nuclear weapons. The NDP certainly would not want those coming here. I am kidding of course.

I do not endorse trade with just any country. There are obviously cases where there would be potential concerns. However, we are talking about the Canada-U.S. relationship, and I do not think trade with the United States is comparable to trade with North Korea. In terms of creating opportunities for a more open border, the bill is in Canada's interest and reflective of Canadian values.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow my friend from Winnipeg North, who was eager to tell us that there have been many accomplishments in the context of the Canada-U.S. relationship, accomplishments such as meetings. Perhaps that illustrates the more foundational problem in terms of the direction we see things going. On this side of the House, we do not consider holding a meeting an accomplishment.

I thought, perhaps, the parliamentary secretary would mention the famous state dinner that members of the Prime Minister's family were able to attend. The natural resources minister was not, but there were still many people at this state dinner.

On this side of the House, we are concerned about a clear erosion of the Canada-U.S. relationship and the fact that this critical relationship for our interests, for our success, is being undermined through significant missteps by the government. It is not new to the presidency of Donald Trump. We have seen a very poor, very ineffective strategy with respect to this relationship under both President Obama and President Trump. I think we can see a number of clear examples of that.

It is important, in the context of that relationship, that we not prioritize, ahead of results, the images, the meetings, and the state dinners. They are not the priority. For the people in my constituency, who are working hard, who are looking for better opportunities for themselves and their families, their principal interest is not the photos that are taken, the meetings that are held, or the food that is eaten at the dinners. Their principal interest is what kinds of accomplishments, what specific agreements and initiatives, are going to happen between Canada and the U.S. on issues such as softwood lumber, which is not as important in my riding but is in other places, and issues such as pipelines and the trade in natural resources, which are very important in my riding.

It is results in those areas that matter in terms of the Canada-U.S. relationship. It is not the socks, the photos, and the images. As my colleague from Durham aptly said in question period yesterday, it is time for the Prime Minister to pull up his fancy socks and start trying to get results.

I want to highlight the fact, again, that the erosion of this relationship between Canada and the U.S. began not under President Trump but under President Obama because of the approach pursued by the government of this Prime Minister.

We had President Obama speak in the House of Commons, and the Prime Minister, in his introduction, referred to a “bromance” and “dudeplomacy”. I had never heard of dudeplomacy before. It sounds like a pretty gendered term, actually. I had never heard of dudeplomacy, but I have heard of diplomacy. What does not seem to have happened is actual diplomacy in terms of the traditional trying to advance ideas that advance Canada's interests. For example, it was relatively shortly after this Prime Minister took office that the American administration at that time said no to Keystone XL. We had virtually no substantial public response from the Prime Minister or the government at the time.

Fortunately, that decision has since been reversed, but as a result of changes in American politics. It had nothing to do with any activity happening on this side of the border with respect to Keystone XL. As my colleague said, immediately there was a desire to take credit for it, but the reality is that it was going to happen if there was a change in the party and the president. That was going to happen.

The government was not at all involved in promoting Keystone XL or in raising those issues, especially after it was rejected by someone with whom, supposedly, there was a bromance and dudeplomacy going on. There was a failure of results with respect to actually getting the market access we needed under that administration.

It is interesting to follow this, because there was a lot of discussion internationally about the Paris accord. Here in Canada, the government immediately wanted to tell us that to meet the Paris accord, we had to impose this massive new tax. Actually, a lot of the analysis shows that this new tax is about raising revenue. It is not going to substantially have an impact with respect to the way it is being set up and what the government has said its objectives are.

An overwhelming majority of the countries in the world are part of the Paris accord, but it is a minority of those countries that actually think that a carbon tax is the way to meet the requirements. We would think from the what the government says that a carbon tax was required by the Paris accord, but that is not the case at all. In fact, most countries that are part of the Paris accord think that the way to meet our Paris accord obligations does not involve a carbon tax, a massive new tax on Canadians.

What is interesting in the context of that relationship is that there was much discussion about the Canada–U.S. relationship vis-à-vis the environment. Canada imposed a carbon tax, and yet the American administration did not bring in a carbon tax. The Hillary Clinton campaign did not propose a carbon tax, and I do not think Donald Trump has much interest in a carbon tax either. The point is that no American administration was moving in this direction regardless, and yet Canada took a step that put us at a significant competitive disadvantage. A possible fruit of that alleged dudeplomacy would have been to push for the Americans to align what they were doing with us, but that was never going to happen. The Prime Minister was happy to accept pats on the back for his carbon tax action, while in fact there was no serious effort to do the same south of the border.

The other issue, of course, is the government's plan to legalize marijuana. There has not been any thinking through at all about what the implications would be for Canadians travelling south of the border after legalization happens, assuming the government goes through with it. We never know. The government has turned tail on so many of its promises. It is not a done deal. However, assuming the Liberals go through with that, it would create some real issues for Canadians who may choose to use legal marijuana and then want to travel to the United States. There is a possibility of their being asked about that and barred access under that. That is, again, not something that the government seems to have paid any attention to in the context of substantive discussions or negotiations.

There are all these different issues, where what Canadians expect vis-à-vis the Canada–U.S. relationship is for a government to fight for Canadian values, to fight for Canadian interests, and not to prioritize the image dimension. That is what we on this side of the House believe our approach to foreign policy should be. We believe it should be prioritizing fighting for Canadian values and Canadian interests, not prioritizing the international image or personal reputation of particular members of the government. That is important. We have a government that is fumbling this relationship. At the same time, the Liberals are desperate to look as if they are doing something.

We have a bill before us that, actually, we on this side of the House see as a pretty good bill. It would effectively streamline processes at the border. It would deal with smuggling in a reasonably effective way. I think it would reduce costs. It would make the border more efficient. It continues, importantly, with momentum that was clearly started under the Conservative government. Prime minister Stephen Harper put a big emphasis on trying to make the border more effective, and it was not because he thought he could have great photo ops at the border as a result. It was because he understood that having an efficient, effective border would help to create jobs and opportunities for Canadians, it would help to ensure the necessary market access, and it would help also to create opportunities and advantages for Canadian consumers. Therefore, we prioritized making the border more efficient and effective.

In cases where we see the government continuing forward with momentum that was started under the previous Conservative government or even, in general, in cases where we think the government is doing things that are good, we will be happy to support them, to speak for them, and to vote in favour of that legislation. However, the context is important because overall on so many important areas and fronts we have the government bungling this relationship.

I have talked about how, very clearly, under the current Prime Minister, there was an erosion of that relationship that had already started during the tenure of president Obama. Of course, it has continued in the present environment and it has continued especially as we look at what is happening in NAFTA negotiations. It is very important that we reflect on these negotiations and that the government approach them in the right way. We have to be realistic in the context of those negotiations and the proposals we have put forward, and we have to seek to advance Canadian values and Canadian interests.

I had the opportunity to be in the United States during the time of the last American election. I was actually in Cleveland, which is kind of an epicentre of activity. I was there as part of a trip with a number of my parliamentary colleagues, including the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We observed an interesting phenomenon in terms of what was happening there, which was that messages about trade and the loss of manufacturing were really resonating in certain particular states in the United States, and a lot of those messages came back to certain perceptions about the impact of trade deals. There was a perception, I think an incorrect perception, that some of these trade deals had contributed negatively to the economy of these areas. The electoral success of Donald Trump was significantly informed by his ability to get out his message with respect to trade in those key electoral markets.

We have to recognize, then, that it was what was in the administration's mind when it talked about renegotiating NAFTA. I do not think that when Donald Trump talked about renegotiating NAFTA, his principal objectives were adding sections on gender and indigenous rights. Maybe I was reading different coverage of that election from what others read, but the message about renegotiation was very clear in terms of the objectives.

It does not mean that we should have the same objectives. In fact, it is important that we counter misinformation about the alleged negative impacts of trade, but it is also important that we go to the negotiating table with a realistic sense of what we can achieve and with a goal to do what we can realistically to protect Canadian jobs and interests. The government, in articulating its negotiating objectives, has put itself in a position of very clearly talking past the administration and, in some cases, has put forward proposals that do not even relate to federal jurisdiction. For example, it has talked about what have been dubbed right-to-work laws at the state level in the United States.

We have a federal system in Canada, so the government should understand how a federal system works, that the federal government cannot, in the context of these types of negotiations, demand that states get rid of state-level labour laws. That is not within federal jurisdiction. For the government to suggest that somehow these negotiations should hinge on changes to state-level laws is a fundamental misunderstanding of how federalism works, and it is a strange proposal to come from another country with a federal system that has strong subnational governments.

In general, whether it is labour laws or specific legal protections on indigenous or gender issues, these are the kinds of things that would be the subject of significant substantial national debate in the United States. It is hard to imagine that Canada demanding them as part of NAFTA talks is going to be the spur that makes them happen. In reality, the specific reason the Americans were going into NAFTA renegotiations was to address this perception about economic interests. What we need to do to be effective in those negotiations is highlight how trade deals have been beneficial to the economy of North America as a whole; we have benefited from trade, but so has the United States benefited from trade.

It is not a zero-sum game. I have used this analogy before. Some people talk about trade as if it is winning or losing, and that is just so outside of what we know to be true about economic interactions. It is like saying, if I go to a restaurant to order a meal, one of us is winning and one of us is losing. Am I winning and the restaurant losing, or is the restaurant winning and I am losing? That is obviously ridiculous. We are both winning. We are winning by mutually beneficial exchange: I am getting a meal and the restaurant is getting business. The same is true of trade. People choose to engage in trade because they have an opportunity that has opened up for them for mutually beneficial exchange.

The Prime Minister of Canada, as the leader of a trading nation, a nation that needs trade and has benefited so much from trade, should be championing the value of the open economy on the world stage.

He should be doing what many Conservative members are doing in opposition, which is standing up for Canada. He should be going to the United States to speak specifically about the economic benefits of trade. He should be trying to make the case, in those critical electoral markets like Ohio or Michigan, about the benefits that have accrued to those areas as a result of mutually beneficial trade, as a result of the freedom to exchange goods and services between Canada and the U.S.

We know those benefits exist. The case can be made there, and yet the Prime Minister only talks about trade in the context of wanting to redefine and talk about progressive trade agreements. In large part, he is taking what Canada has done for a long time. The Conservative government signed many trade deals, and in every case we were dealing with, as was realistic and practical in the context, provisions in the agreements and side agreements that dealt with issues like labour rights and other rights.

The trans-Pacific partnership was negotiated by the Obama administration. We still have yet to hear from the Liberal government its position on that or on some kind of successor deal that does not include the United States. The government should at some point take a position with respect to the trans-Pacific partnership, or at least the idea of a trans-Pacific trading bloc, whether or not that includes the United States. These deals have for a long time included these elements.

It is clear that the Prime Minister wants to find a way to rebrand NAFTA, which was a Conservative-negotiated deal under prime minister Brian Mulroney, and somehow put his stamp on it. It may well be in the end that we get some big unenforceable language in there about some of the issues that the Prime Minister has talked about, but there is just no realistic scenario in which, as part of trade negotiations, the United States would agree to making dramatic changes to its rights frameworks, especially insofar as those changes might impact federalism, just in response to a Canadian demand.

Not only is this relationship eroding under the Liberals, but their approach to these discussions seems to portray a fundamental misunderstanding of the United States, even the constitutional sharing of powers as exists in the United States, and also some of the key political motivations and dynamics that they should be responding to as they are supposedly seeking to advance Canada's national interests.

The problem is that we do not see the advancing of that interest in many different ways. We see the eroding of a voice for Canada's interests and in general of Canada's voice on the world stage. The emphasis instead is on image, photo ops, state dinners, and so on, not on achieving results.

We on this side of the House are in favour of legislation that would make the border more effective. Bill C-21 would improve the efficiency of the border. It is a good piece of legislation that builds on momentum put in place under the Conservatives. It would cut down on costs, it would make the border more efficient, it would address smuggling, and there are a number of different areas where we see concrete improvements coming through the bill.

However, we are concerned about the overall picture when it comes to Canada-U.S. relations. More broadly, when we speak of the government's foreign and trade policy we see a seeming lack of interest in standing up for Canadian interests and Canadian values.

Our objective on the world stage should not be to, above all else, get a seat on the UN Security Council, to cozy up to whomever and do whatever it takes to get there. Our goal should be to ask how we can concretely make life better for Canadians through more trade, more effective borders, and the kinds of opportunities that come with that.

How can we make life better for people across this country in concrete, tangible, and measurable ways? How can we reflect people's values, people's moral convictions in the kinds of causes and principles that Canada stands up for on the world stage? Canada's interests and values should be our priorities, not the image side.

While we do support this bill, we call on the government to do better when it comes to the Canada-U.S. relationship, and to do better when it comes to foreign policy in general, to reflect those priorities that Canadians are telling us they want us to focus on.

[Customs Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad my friend had an opportunity to speak to the bill. I wanted to ask about the Canada-U.S. relationship, which is obviously touched on by the bill. Does the government think it has achieved anything in its two years in power in the context of that relationship?

[Human Rights, September 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his sentiments. In light of the urgency of the situation, it is important that we as the opposition challenge the government around specific issues of response where we think more can be done.

Respectfully, the parliamentary secretary said that no other leader had done what Canada had done. Actually, many leaders have contacted and engaged with Aung San Suu Kyi, and many did not wait as long as our Prime Minister did.

The other disappointment was the fact that there was no mention in the Prime Minister's UN speech about the Rohingyas. Many other world leaders did mention the situation of ongoing ethnic cleansing. Our Prime Minister did not. Perhaps the format does not allow for answers to these, but I hope we will hear answers at some point from the government on what the office responsible for this is actually doing, the Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion, and the extent to which it is willing to engage directly, not just Aung San Suu Kyi but the military leadership that is directly involved in this issue.

[Human Rights, September 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am here again to raise the issue of the ethnic cleansing facing the Rohingya community in Burma. This is an issue that I understand we will now be discussing at greater length tomorrow in the context of an emergency debate. I am grateful for that opportunity. However, this is something that I will raise every opportunity I have, regardless, because I think it is that urgent.

In all of our minds, very clearly, we can see that it is ethnic cleansing. This was a process by which citizenship of Rohingya people in Burma was denied, and progressively more and more pressure was put on them in every possible way. This is nothing new, even though it may be a situation that is new to many Canadians, since it is only now really getting the media coverage and attention that it deserves. This is something that has been going on for a very long time, something that we have been raising in question period and in other ways for a very long time.

We have asked the government to do more in response. We are at a critical phase right now, in that the Burmese military has launched this terrible new assault, which seems to be their effort to complete a process of ethnic cleansing that has been going on for a long time. This terrible policy is something that requires our urgent response.

I want to quote, as I did earlier, Amnesty International's crisis response director, who said:

The evidence is irrefutable--the Myanmar security forces are setting northern Rakhine State ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar. Make no mistake: this is ethnic cleansing.

During the summer, I went to Berlin and I visited a concentration camp for the first time. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, so any time I see instances of ethnic cleansing around the world, it hits close to home for me personally. I think what strikes a lot of people when we see those sites of historic atrocities is that they are often inside urban centres or close to urban centres, and people could have seen and did see many of these atrocities happening. They could see from tall buildings, perhaps, at least into the edge of concentration camps. They could see people being marched to trains for deportation.

We look at those scenes and we wonder why people who could see these things did not do more to respond to them. Today modern technology, news media, and the Internet play the same role that tall buildings in close urban centres played historically, in that again we have terrible atrocities and ethnic cleansing happening, and we can see that it is happening. Too often, I think, governments in the west fail to respond adequately.

I want to ask some specific questions to the government on this issue.

First of all, I asked this earlier in question period and did not get an answer. I want to ask the question again. What is the Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion doing? It is tasked with addressing these issues in some form. Has that office been at all engaged with this situation?

Second, has the government engaged directly with the military leadership? We know that after having repeated calls from the opposition, finally the government called Aung San Suu Kyi, but we also need the government to engage with the military leadership in Burma, especially commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, and raise these issues specifically and with a strong emphasis.

I also want to ask why we could not have responded faster and earlier. As well, is the government committed to a sustained response? Since this issue may not remain in the media for long, is the government committed to a sustained response?