Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to take part in this important discussion. I hope that all hon. members are familiar with the tragic situation facing the Yazidi people and Christians in Iraq and Syria.
A genocide is taking place. Representatives of the Yazidi community are here in Parliament. They are asking us to give their people the chance to live in freedom and to continue their way of life. We must respond to the specific and unique situation facing the Yazidis and Christians.
We understand that the situation in Iraq and Syria is very difficult for all communities, but it is clear that the Yazidis and the Christians are in a unique situation. The general violence is having a tremendous impact, but the impact of this genocide is on a whole other scale.
What is a refugee? It is a fairly simple question, but it would seem from what we have heard at certain points from the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship that he does not actually know what a refugee is, according to the formal definition.
If the minister goes to the website for the UN High Commission for Refugees, he will find the following definition under the heading, “What is a refugee”:
A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
The definition comes from the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees, to which Canada is a signatory.
Under Article I it states:
For the purposes of the present Convention, the term “refugee” shall apply to any person who....owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.
This convention was updated by a 1967 protocol, to which Canada is also a party, which removed certain temporal and geographic restrictions. However, other than that update, the original convention remains in force, and we remain a signatory. Therefore, for the benefit of the minister and the government, that definition of a refugee is clearly set out in international law to which Canada has assented. The minister should know that definition and should apply it, as he has a moral and legal obligation to do so.
As I stated, the core of that definition is that a person has a fear of persecution on the basis of certain identifiable characteristics, yet the minister has told the House that his government does not even identify or track whether refugee applicants qualify as members of these particular identifiable groups, which might expose them to particular persecution.
On October 5, he said this in the House:
Mr. Speaker, we do not know how many Yazidi refugees have come to Canada, because when refugees come to Canada, we do not ask them their ethnicity or their religion. We do not discriminate by religion or ethnicity.
While it appears that the parliamentary secretary said something slightly different today, that is what the minister told the House during question period on October 5. I can only conclude from his statement that the minister is either unaware of or unwilling to apply the UN definition of a refugee. As mentioned, this definition specifically entails an assessment of whether or not that person seeking refugee status faces discrimination in their country of origin on the basis of religion, ethnicity, or some other characteristic. We cannot have a serious refugee system without asking if someone fears persecution in their home country, and if so, on what basis. Even beyond the specific question of Yazidis, this exposes an apparent, very serious problem in the way the minister is doing refugee assessment.
The minister said in his comments that Canada should not discriminate by asking questions about religion or ethnicity. However, as a point of basic principle, the minister seems not to understand the difference between ordinary discrimination and ameliorative discrimination, by which I mean the process of providing compensatory advantages for historically disadvantaged minorities who need protection.
Ameliorative discrimination is explicitly protected in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in two separate sections. Most centrally, on equality rights, subsection 15(2) reads:
Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
The clear distinction is made in our law between traditional discrimination aimed at keeping disadvantaged groups down on the one hand, and ameliorative discrimination aimed at raising the relative position of disadvantaged groups on the other hand. This distinction is clearly understood in our domestic human rights jurisprudence, as well as in international law and practice with respect to refugees.
Beyond the definitions and the question of our legal obligation, there is an obvious practical reason why the definition of refugees identifies those who legitimately fear discrimination on the basis of personal characteristics. It is because Canadians expect that when we set out to help people, we work to help those who need the help the most: the vulnerable.
There are many places around the world where people face death, imprisonment, rape, and other forms of abuse because of those identifiable characteristics. Syria and Iraq are obviously very challenging places for anyone right now, but there are groups and individuals who are being singled out for abuse and who are the targets of genocide.
The UN convention on refugees calls on us to respond to them in a particular way, as refugees. However, the Liberals' approach up until now has been to take pride in their ignorance, to stick their head in the sand and to say that they do not track that. They do so without understanding the basis of every legitimate refugee claim, which according to the UN definition is a well-founded fear of persecution, and without understanding that taking those who fit the UN definition of a refugee and are genuinely most vulnerable requires us to notice and ask about these identifiable characteristics. Of course, our system of intake should be asking about the basis on which people have a fear of persecution in order to assess the credibility of their claim and their relative vulnerability. Again, if the government cares about refugees, it should learn the legal definition of a refugee and apply it.
In the past, some have implied that applying the UN definition of a refugee means that we might not end up taking people from certain groups. They have implied that it might mean not taking Muslims, but that is absolutely not the case and that insinuation in some cases shows a real profound misunderstanding of the human rights challenges that exist.
Of course, a Shia Muslim from Saudi Arabia would have a well-founded fear of discrimination on the basis of religion, but a Shia Muslim in Iran would not. A Sunni Muslim from Crimea or East Turkestan would likely have a well-founded fear of discrimination on the basis of religion, but a Sunni Muslim from Egypt would not. An Orthodox Christian from Iraq would have a well-founded fear of discrimination on the basis of religion, but an Orthodox Christian from Russia probably would not. A devout Buddhist from China would have a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of religion, but a Buddhist from Sri Lanka would not. Moreover, a Hindu in Sri Lanka might have a well-founded fear of discrimination on the basis of religion, but a Hindu from India would not. I could go on and on.
The point is that it is about vulnerability. The UN definition is not fundamentally about a religious test. It is about a system of ameliorative discrimination, the counter discrimination that exists in the real world. That requires an adjudication of the situation on the ground of the characteristics of the applicant and the credibility of the claim of discrimination on that basis. Again, we have to ask the question.
Through our motion today we are calling on the government to take notice of and to respond to the particular discrimination faced by Yazidis, Syrian Christians, and other minorities who have been marked out for slaughter by Daesh and their fellow travellers. We should be ensuring that we are taking the victims of genocide, escaped sex slaves, and those who truly need our help the most.
I note from some of the comments by members on the government side that we are seeing more agreement today, and I am optimistic about where that may lead us. I will tell the government that we can only take a nonpartisan tone insofar as the government is doing the right thing. It is far too late at this stage, but I am hopeful that we will see the government make a shift on this. The government has to understand and appreciate these basic principles of refugee determination. It is legitimate to ask the questions and critically important that we take those who are the most vulnerable.
If members of the government remain unconvinced, let me restate the argument in somewhat different terms. What we are saying today in the motion is that Yazidi lives matter. The government's response is in some way akin to saying all lives matter, and, of course, it is true that all lives matter, but it is not the correct response to the specific assertion in this context that Yazidi lives matter. The reason that we need to say that Yazidi lives matter is that it is their lives that are particularly threatened in this context.
I think members would accept in principle that if we have a problem with religious or racial discrimination, it is no virtue to put our head in the sand and pretend that we do not notice a difference, on the basis of being colour-blind or blind to religious or ethnic differences. In cases where systematic discrimination exists, taking the time to notice these problems and recognizing the need for ameliorative measures is critical.
No one disputes in principle that all lives matter, but we do need to attend to those whose lives have not been recognized or respected. That is why we need a refugee approach that notices and responds to difference. It should not be that hard for the government to start noticing and tracking these things. When the officials were specifically asked about this in the technical briefing at the end of last year, they responded that they do not have data fields for it. I say respectfully to the minister and to the government that it is time to fix the data fields, because people are dying.
