Hélène Laverdière

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, in fact, I was rising to ask my colleague if he believes that we should immediately increase our humanitarian aid given the horrors he described. However, I will have the opportunity to speak a bit more about this in my short speech.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Hamilton Centre.

It is true that the situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar and those who have fled to Bangladesh is truly horrible. It is a situation that should concern all of us. We absolutely must discuss it. It is for that reason that I am truly pleased to have the opportunity provided to all of us this evening to speak to this issue. I know that several of my colleagues have taken this situation to heart and would also like to speak.

Since August, over 430,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar. People often forget to mention that this is on top of the 300,000 others who had already left. Out of a population of a little over one million people, that is an absolutely staggering proportion. It is as though 15 million Canadians fled somewhere else. They are fleeing situations of extreme violence. We have all seen the images on televison of villages burning and people setting fire to the roofs. Houses are sometimes burned with entire families still inside. People are fleeing this violence, knowing that it will be very difficult for them to ever return, since their villages have been completely destroyed. We have seen executions. We have seen so many things that are unfortunately all too common in these kinds of situations. Rape is used as a weapon of war. There have been reports of decapitations, which brings back terrible memories.

As my colleague mentioned a little earlier, there have been very credible reports from various sources stating that Myanmar's military forces are laying anti-personnel mines along the Bangladeshi border. As we know, Myanmar is not a party to the Ottawa treaty to ban landmines, although Bangladesh is. Initially, Myanmar refused to remove landmines within its borders or work towards that. Now, not only is it not removing them, it is laying new ones. We are familiar with the long-term damage this can cause.

We could go on at length describing the atrocities happening there, but I think what sums it up best is the fact that more and more people are talking about the ethnic cleansing occurring in Myanmar right now. It sends shivers up the spine. It is important to note that there are many children among those fleeing right now. These people are arriving in Bangladesh exhausted, starving, often sick, and almost always traumatized.

Poor Bangladesh does not have the means to take them in and has problems of its own. Bangladesh itself has a large population, and on top of that, this is typhoon season. The serious humanitarian situation triggered by the Myanmar government's actions combined with environmental and economic issues in that part of the world is a recipe for disaster. It is absolutely terrible. That is why talk is not enough; we need action.

Earlier, the minister talked about showing support, which is all well and good, but endless expressions of support are not enough. We have to take meaningful action, and I have some suggestions for the government in that regard.

As other members mentioned, this situation calls for diplomatic pressure. We have to work with our partners to achieve a number of objectives. The violence must stop. Landmines must no longer be deployed, and those that have been must be removed. The Myanmar government must let humanitarian groups and investigative teams in. We can talk all we want about crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing—some people have even spoken of genocide this evening—but to find out what really happened, evidence must be collected on the ground. We must pressure the authorities to let investigative teams in, and we must provide technical support to those teams.

We must also end immunity for the violence committed there. I was talking about investigating the crimes and horrors committed there, offering our expertise, and ensuring access to teams who conduct fact-finding missions, but we can also use things like satellite imagery to immediately start monitoring, as much as possible, what is happening on the ground. According to Amnesty International, there were still villages burning on September 22. That needs to be investigated.

We have to think about sanctions imposed with our partners against the military authorities of Myanmar. They might be modelled after the Magnitsky Act or take the form of a travel ban. There is also a need for humanitarian aid, not next week or two weeks from now, but immediately. Refugee camps are stretched to the limit. There are camps for displaced persons within Myanmar, but we can act and help the people in the camps in Bangladesh. UN authorities talk a lot about “the most urgent emergency in the world”. People are crammed together, some already sick and exhausted. There could be an outbreak of disease. We must act now.

We also have to think about the long term. As I was saying, there are many children among those fleeing the violence. We have to think about their education and their mental state, because some of them are traumatized. We have to consider the possibility that there will be no immediate return to Myanmar in the coming weeks, as the villages have been destroyed.

The United Nations will be quick to increase its requests. It has already asked for $77 million, but this is not the type of emergency where a one-time donation will do because this is an ongoing crisis. We must continue to donate, and with the growing number of refugees, we have to donate even more.

Lastly, we will have to consider the possibility of receiving Rohingya refugees. Earlier the parliamentary secretary was talking about building democracy and good governance. True, that is important for preventing similar situations from happening again in the future. To get there, however, funds need to be committed to international aid, and it saddens me that the Liberal government has reduced Canada's contribution to international development.

[Foreign Affairs, September 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, when called upon to comment on the referendum in Catalonia last week and again today, the Prime Minister refused to say anything about democratically elected Catalan leaders being arrested.

The Catalan situation and the Kurdish referendum once again bring the right to self-determination to the forefront on the world stage.

My question is simple: Does the Canadian government support the right of peoples to self-determination?

[Foreign Affairs, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals claim to have stepped up for peacekeeping, but there is no peacekeeping mission. They claim to have stepped up for international development, but there has been a substantial reduction in our foreign aid budget.

The Prime Minister is paying lip service to his commitment to peace at the UN today. According to media reports, at the conference on peacekeeping that we will host in November, Canada will call on other countries to commit more troops to peacekeeping without making any specific commitment ourselves. The hypocrisy is astounding.

When will Canada commit to a peacekeeping mission?

[Foreign Affairs, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister delivered a great speech on Liberal foreign policy before the UN today.

However, let us review this government's track record for the past two years: it boycotted the nuclear weapons ban treaty, refuses to commit to a peacekeeping mission, refuses to increase international development assistance, continues selling arms to Saudi Arabia, and I could go on.

Simply put, what happened to Canada's leadership on the world stage? Did I miss some concrete measure that was announced somewhere?

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question and for the expression he coined, which I am going to borrow.

I am going to reuse the expression “conscience laundering” like money laundering. Yes, it is a big problem, it is a big issue and it raises a lot of points, which I mentioned in my speech.

I pointed out the fact that regulations could be changed by any government at any time. Yes, something has happened in the United States, where we now have the Trump administration. In Canada, hopefully we will not get similar surprises, but administrations can change. However, at some point, we could get a government that is even more inclined to not fulfill our commitments to the arms trade treaty and further weaken the regulations. These things have to be put into law. That is one of the things we will ask for at committee.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Monitoring is certainly important, and I think it is something that needs to happen, collectively, on two levels. If I remember correctly, the United Nations has an office dedicated to tracking this type of file. Monitoring needs to happen collectively, through the United Nations, but it also needs to happen domestically. In Canada's case, half of the arms exports will not be tracked or reported in any way. There will be no assessment or ongoing monitoring, activities that I think are absolutely essential.

This brings me back to what we can do. The United Nations has a whole section dedicated to disarmament and to tracking these files. I was thinking that Canada could also create a committee that would meet regularly to monitor this extremely important issue.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, I get the impression that he was speaking with a bit of hyperbole and exaggeration.

First, I would like to point out that we have always said the workers and the equipment in London could also be used to supply the Canadian army, which is in dire need of such equipment. Taking care of these workers and their future is a top priority.

I wonder if my colleague is aware that Saudi Arabia executed many dissidents last year, or that serious allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity began to circulate this year, or that vehicles similar to the Canadian LAVs have been seen in Yemen and eastern Saudi Arabia, where political dissidents are being fiercely repressed. All this has been reported in the news in the past few months, and I would be happy to share the articles with my colleague.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, today marks the International Day of Peace. Canada often holds itself out as a peacemaker. However, if we truly want peace, we need to stop the proliferation of arms, particularly in areas troubled by unrest, in war-torn countries where human rights mean nothing.

However, Canada's recent track record in this respect is rather troubling. Many Canadians would be troubled to learn that in the last 10 years Canadian arms exports have nearly doubled. Moreover, Canada is the second most important arms exporter in the Middle East after the United States. Therefore, we are certainly heavily involved there.

Yes, Canada is now the second-biggest exporter of arms to the Middle East, after the United States. No one would certainly describe the Middle East as a calm, stable region.

Our arms used to be exported mainly to NATO countries. Now they often go to countries whose human rights records are questionable, to say the least. Saudi Arabia is the second-biggest buyer of Canadian arms and the second-biggest export destination for our weapons.

I am always troubled to see this kind of behaviour from a government that calls itself feminist, and I am not alone. Canadians do not support this.

The government has said that it has good measures in place to control its arms exports, and that it already has strong regulations. However, again, if we look at Saudi Arabia, the regulations state that we should not export arms to a country if there is reasonable doubt and risk that these arms will be used to commit human rights abuses. Although there is ample evidence for that being currently the case, the government is blind to it. Certainly, there is an investigation, but the Saudis have admitted that they want to repress people. The government is not only blind but seemingly deaf, on top of blind.

In August we learned that Canada watered down its own criteria for arms exports to countries with bad human rights records, and the government did this after pledging that Canada would accede to the Arms Trade Treaty, and after saying at that time that it would respect both the spirit and the letter of the treaty. Typically, the Liberals say that but do quite the opposite by watering down our criteria.

The best way to illustrate what I am talking about is to look at the number of export permit applications. Canada is exporting more and more to countries that do not respect human rights. How many of these export permit applications is Canada rejecting?

L'Actualité investigated and found that, of the 7,310 export permit applications submitted, only 10 were rejected. Ten. That says it all.

Most of our exports go to Saudi Arabia, which has been mentioned, China, Algeria, and other countries. That is why the government's decision to finally sign the Arms Trade Treaty gave people so much hope. This is something people have been calling for for years. We know that the Conservatives, for reasons that make no sense to most observers, steadfastly refused to sign the treaty. The NDP felt certain that the government would finally do something and that Canada would join the Arms Trade Treaty. Unfortunately, in typical Liberal fashion, the government has introduced a bill to implement the treaty. I know a lot of people were very anxious to see this bill.

This is another example of a typical Liberal bill. In other words, it is all talk and no action, nothing but a hollow shell.

First, the bill does not address at all the issue of our exports to the U.S., which is half of our exports. Therefore, all of these exports will continue to fall outside the scope of this law and outside the scope of the treaty. This in itself, to start with, is a breach of articles 1, 2, and 5 of the Arms Trade Treaty, so one of the first things we are doing is breaching three of the key articles of the treaty. It does matter beyond breaching the articles of the treaty. First, there is the matter of transparency. When we get the annual reports on arms exports—and I hope we will get them sooner and that they will be clearer, more transparent, and understandable—half of our exports remain unreported. Is that transparent? I am listening to my colleagues here, and they do not think it is.

Also, when we talk about meeting the letter and spirit of the ATT, it means that arms or armament parts can be exported from Canada to the U.S. and then exported elsewhere. President Obama put a ban on exporting arms from the U.S. to Nigeria because of human rights concerns. President Trump made a deal—the art of the deal—with Nigerian authorities and lifted this ban, and now the U.S. is exporting planes and armaments to Nigeria made of components coming from which country, do members think? They come from Canada. It would be important to cover our exports to Canada.

The government will probably say that it is too difficult to do, because half of our exports go to the United States, and yet other countries manage to do it, including Australia and even Great Britain, one of our NATO partners. They have systems in place to track exports to the U.S.

We cannot say that we will respect the spirit and the letter of the treaty, and then violate specific articles or disregard the spirit and the letter of the treaty because it is too difficult. It has to be one or the other. Canada either complies with the treaty or it does not. Obviously, the government has no intention of complying with it.

Another huge problem is that the bill does not say anything about the assessment criteria that will be used for exports. That is rather strange, for this kind of bill.

That is a huge problem.

One expert asked me, after looking at the bill, where the meat is. The meat will be in regulations. The concrete criteria to oversee arms exports will be put in those regulations, regulations that do not have to be debated in the House, that will not be discussed among representatives of Canadians across the country, regulations that can be changed at any time by the current government or any subsequent government. This is very weak.

This is just smoke and mirrors.

On top of all that, there is another problem. In the briefing documents we received from Global Affairs Canada, it says that the regulations will set out the criteria the minister will take into account before issuing export permits.

We already have criteria in place that the minister must take into account when evaluating export permits and as a result we are selling arms to Saudi Arabia. The Arms Trade Treaty makes no mention of the criteria that must be taken into account. It talks about obligations and specific and serious restrictions. It provides a clear limit. Such and such is prohibited, the other is allowed. However, in the departmental information it says “must take into account”.

Obviously, this will be clarified in the regulations, the very regulations that no one in the House can debate. What is more, those regulations will be drafted behind closed doors.

There is another problem. Actually, there are quite a few, so I have to choose which ones to mention. According to the information in the briefing note provided by Global Affairs Canada, the Department of National Defence will have its own system for implementing the legislation or the treaty. I do not get it. The left hand will do one thing and the right hand will do another.

How does that work?

Is there a chance that this creates some sort of loophole?

How will this work?

As far as I can tell, there is no plan here.

What the government is basically telling Canadians and the world is to just trust them. However, in matters of disarmament, I am sorry to say that I do not think the Liberal government can be trusted.

The NDP have tried to enhance transparency and oversight. We tried to create a committee that would, on an ongoing basis, study this issue of arms exports. This is something that Canadians care about. What did the Liberals say? It is no surprise that they said no.

When we asked the government to show the same kind of courage Canada has shown with regard to land mines and participate in the efforts of over 120 countries in the UN to work on nuclear disarmament, it said that maybe it would not work and that it was too difficult, as if it could not walk and chew gum at the same time.

Let us come back to Saudi Arabia. We are selling arms to a country that abuses human rights, despite our feminist foreign policy. The minister first told us that we could not do anything because it was a done deal. I happen to disagree with this, because a minister can suspend an export permit. We then learned that he signed the export permits after he and the Prime Minister had told us that it was a done deal. As I said, Canada should only export arms to a country if there is no reasonable risk that these arms will be used against civilians or to commit war crimes.

The Liberal government is not even respecting that. How can we trust the regulations it will put in someday once the bill passes, or how it is going to respect those regulations?

Again, with respect to Saudi Arabia, when I asked the government yesterday about the arms deal with Saudi Arabia, I was basically told that the government had asked the Saudis to respect human rights. While I am very pleased that the government did that, I am somewhat skeptical about the efficiency of the manoeuvre.

Nonetheless, we are going to support this bill because we have been asking for a bill on this issue for such a long time. We really want to see Canada truly accede to and abide by the Arms Trade Treaty.

I hope that the government will show good faith and agree to make amendments in committee. That is why we are going to vote in favour of this bill. However, this so-called implementation bill must be improved because right now it is not very effective. Canada and the entire world expect nothing less.

I said at the beginning of my speech that today is International Peace Day. We know that the illicit and irresponsible transfer of conventional weapons is a major cause of suffering in the world because it leads to all kinds of violence.

We want to put an end to that through the Arms Trade Treaty. We want to put and end to situations where companies based in Canada or third countries can sell weapons to South Sudan. We want to put an end to situations where Canada officially laments the tragedy in Yemen, which is currently experiencing a major humanitarian crisis, but continues to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, which leads the very coalition alleged to be committing war crimes in that country.

We need to clean up our arms export system, and unfortunately, this bill does not do that.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, in his speech, my colleague spoke at length about indigenous people's constitutional right to own firearms and hunt. I fully support that right, but I am a bit confused, because it seems as though we are talking about two different bills.

I have been following this issue for years and I have never seen anything in the Arms Trade Treaty that would have any impact whatsoever on the right of indigenous people or any other Canadians to hunt. I also do not see anything in the implementation bill that would affect that right.

Could my colleague please tell me exactly what section of the Arms Trade Treaty would affect this right?

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, we are delighted that Canada has decided to accede to the Arms Trade Treaty. However, I have talked to a number of experts about the government's bill to implement the treaty, and they all agree that it is a big disappointment. It is nothing but a hollow shell.

I would like to know if the government is open to amendments in committee to really give this bill some teeth so that it respects not only the spirit but also the letter of the treaty.