Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and contribute to what I think is a very important debate. It is an honour for me to follow my colleague, our foreign affairs critic, someone who is doing a great job standing up for international human rights and for a principled and hard-headed approach to foreign affairs.
I want to congratulate the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie for bringing this motion forward. As my colleague said, we will not be supporting it, but it has been a pleasure working with her on these issues, and I appreciate the knowledge and commitment she brings to them.
I think, in general, we see from both Conservatives and New Democrats in the opposition a different attitude toward the importance of international human rights than we see, unfortunately, at least from the front bench, in the policies on the government side.
I am going to make five distinct points.
The first point I would like to make is about the procedural grounds on which I, and we as the official opposition, cannot support this motion. As I mentioned during questions and comments, I, and my colleagues who were at the foreign affairs committee the day this motion was proposed, supported the creation of a subcommittee to study the issue of the arms trade. This would have been a very effective way of ensuring scrutiny of this issue and of integrating a discussion on arms control within the broader discussion of foreign affairs.
We have, of course, another subcommittee, a subcommittee on international human rights. The value of that subcommittee is that it feeds information through the foreign affairs committee to the House.
The use of subcommittees does not create the additional strain on House resources that a separate committee would create. It also ensures set-aside and cordoned-off time. The reason a subcommittee was not created is that its creation was opposed by all the Liberal members on that committee. It was something that we and the New Democrats agreed on at the time.
There are a range of different options for moving forward in a way that achieves some of the same objectives as this motion. It might even be worth contemplating a joint foreign affairs and defence subcommittee.
With regard to the study on this, the parliamentary secretary made it sound as if there were a current or imminent study by the foreign affairs committee on the issue of arms control. To my knowledge, that is just not the case. I believe that the committee is currently reviewing reports and is very soon to undertake studies of other very important matters, but it does not have an imminent plan to move forward on a study related to this issue.
I think we know who needs to be doing this job and where this job can be done. I do not think the creation of a stand-alone committee is necessary. However, the real impediment to the objectives the member in the NDP has talked about is the approach government members have taken on that committee. That is why, on some important procedural grounds, we cannot support the motion, although, as my colleague from Thornhill pointed out, there are many things, in substance, that are important to affirm.
The second point I want to make is that a strong and effective arms control regime is important, and it is particularly important to us here in the official opposition. My colleague laid out, very ably, aspects of the arms control regime we have in place and that we are committed to. They include, for example, the Export and Import Permits Act and the Automatic Firearms Country Control List. They include, of course, in the context of the LAV deal with Saudi Arabia, which we have discussed already and which I think will probably come up frequently throughout the day, the end-use permits to actually control and restrict the end use of those vehicles. There are mechanisms in place for responding if there are abuses, and we would expect the government to take those obligations very seriously.
My colleagues have been right to point out the important number of Canadian jobs associated with this deal. At the same time, we in the official opposition understand that who we are and the values we believe in have to come first. That is reflected in the approach we took: seeking opportunities for Canadian commerce but insisting, as a primary principle, on the protection of human rights.
The third point I want to underline today is that we must defend human rights, regardless of the cost. We have to be clear about our values. We have to talk about our values, and we have to recognize that in some cases, standing up for our values might involve sacrifices, whether commercial or otherwise. Who we are as a country, the values and principles that define us and reflect international norms that are rooted in ideas about human rights and universal human dignity, exists prior to purely material or economic considerations. In many cases, in fact, we can and do have both, but we have to be clear about human rights.
I think it is worth saying to the government, because there is not an acknowledgement in the way the Liberals talk about foreign policy, that there is such a thing as a moral absolute.
About a year ago, I listened to a speech given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the University of Ottawa where he talked about moving away from a purely principle-based ethic in foreign policy to one that he called responsible conviction. Really, it was a way of saying, as I understood it, that we should not be holding fast to these ideas of moral absolutes, that we should be evaluating our response in a sort of highly contextualized and situational way.
I think, conversely, that there is actually a need for moral clarity in a murky world, for a government that is clear about our values and is clear that there are certain fundamental principles of human rights on which we will not compromise. Whether it is in our dealings with Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Iran, or any number of other actors, if there is no such thing as an absolute when it comes to human rights, I would suggest that we cannot talk about a genuine commitment to human rights at all.
We, on this side of the House, believe in the need for Canada to speak with moral clarity, despite the murkiness of the world around us. That means calling out those who are egregious violators of human rights, and it also means being willing to talk about human rights with our allies.
The fourth point I want to make today in the context of this motion is specifically about Saudi Arabia and the Saudi system, because I know that it is an important part of what colours this discussion. I view the Saudi state as, in many ways, a contradictory entity, and therefore it requires what we might even call a contradictory response. In other words, we need to respond to the aspects of the Saudi state that we find objectionable, and we need to work with the aspect of the Saudi state that we can and should. That does not mean compromising our clarity about our values; it means recognizing the need to deal with different parts of the same state in different ways.
Of course, we know that Saudi Arabia is in some ways a conservative monarchy and that some of its international education programs play a role, perhaps indirectly, in fomenting extremism. This is a country with a terrible domestic human rights record, with an ideology that is very much, internally as it is expressed, at odds with our values. Yet it is a country that has historically had a more pro-western foreign policy, a country we have been able to collaborate with in certain respects that are important to the protection of our interests as they relate to our values.
My colleague spoke very well, for instance, about the need to contain Iran and the fact that although, again, Saudi Arabia's approach to Israel is nothing that could be misconstrued as pro-Israel, there is agreement about the concern Iran poses in terms of stability for the region. There is a shared concern, in fact, about the Iranian nuclear deal.
These are interesting things to observe in how we relate to the Saudis. Above all, it must be said that the Saudi state needs to survive, because if, under the present circumstances, there were to be a Syrian-style revolution in Iran, the consequences in terms of human rights as well as international peace and security would be absolutely devastating.
I will speak very briefly to my fifth point. On the strategic balance of power in the Middle East, it is necessary that we have an effective alternative to Iranian influence. We know about the major concerns with growing Iranian influence. To the extent that the partnership we have with Saudi Arabia allows us to combat Iranian influence, it is important for both human rights and international peace and security.
