Hélène Laverdière

[Committees of the House, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development did indeed hear some very moving testimony from people who have experienced very difficult situations and personal and human tragedies.

People working in foreign affairs often tend to become a little colder and try to distance themselves from discussions. I personally remember these testimonies as really quite moving. I think that what most of the people were asking for was that the government recognize that terrible things had happened to them. The NDP agreed, but the Conservatives wanted to go a little further in their recommendations. The NDP thought that the witnesses' recommendation was legitimate and entirely valid. In the end, we tabled a supplementary report basically on that. It was rather interesting and rather ironic to see that the government itself supported the NDP's position rather than that of the Conservatives on the committee.

I am coming back to these people. I am sure that many of them must be frustrated that their questions and issues are being used for purely partisan purposes to avoid a debate in the House on a point of contempt of Parliament.

I am a relatively new MP, but I hope that even after 10 years on the job, if I am given that privilege, I will still be outraged by such wrongdoing.

[Committees of the House, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question and her very relevant comments. In her question, she used the key word “respect”. The way everything was handled in this matter smacks of utter disrespect. Indeed, the approach used to avoid debate in the House on another major issue is disrespectful to the work of the committee. It is disrespectful to the parliamentary process.

As my colleague said, it is another way to prevent debate and to prevent people from talking about the issue and giving their feedback. During this same week, the members of the committee voted against hearing the testimony of the Chief Electoral Officer, which I think is absolutely incredible. This shows disrespect for the committee and the House.

This lack of respect for the House was shown just as we were discussing a matter of contempt of Parliament. Our democracy is being disrespected all too often and regularly, unfortunately. I would add that this is disrespectful to Canadians. When I went back to my riding, I met with people affected by the issue. They are directly affected by the issue. They find that using this file for purely partisan purposes is disrespectful to the situation, those affected and the witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development and touched us with their testimony.

[Committees of the House, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to speak to this subject. It was discussed during the first part of our debate. We are actually talking about two subjects here.

Let us recall what happened. This debate began because the Conservative side wanted to avoid a debate about one of its members who was in prima facie contempt of Parliament. Contempt of Parliament is no small thing; it is serious. The Speaker found that the member was indeed in contempt of Parliament.

We were here in the House. I will repeat the expression I used at the time: I was, quite simply, outraged. We were discussing a matter of major importance to our democracy when the motion was presented without notice to prevent us from discussing the incident of contempt of Parliament. That was the tactic they used. That is totally unacceptable and in violation of our democracy. It also shows a profound lack of respect for an extremely important issue. Using that kind of tactic is politics with a little p, one so small that it is impossible to see and all we are left with is “olitics”. I hope that I will never find myself getting used to those kinds of tactics and that I will never learn to tolerate them.

That being said, if we have to talk about the report, I would like to point out that the New Democratic Party submitted a supplement to the report. Since our supplement is very short, I will take this opportunity to read it.

New Democrats wish to thank the witnesses for their important and often highly personal testimony, which shed significant light on the experiences of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. This historical experience is one that must be better known by all Canadians. It is also an occasion to recognize and condemn the injustices and anti-Semitism experienced by many Jewish refugees, and to recommit to the protection of refugees everywhere. New Democrats are in support of Recommendation 1, which calls on the Government of Canada to officially recognize the experience of Jewish refugees who were displaced from states in the Middle East and North Africa after 1948.

The NDP put out that supplementary report at the time. A little while ago we received the government's response to the committee's report. It was very interesting to see that the government essentially endorses the NDP's position, even though the Conservatives on the committee took a different position. In its response, the government endorsed the NDP's position. The government said the following with respect to the first recommendation:

The Government of Canada agrees with this recommendation. Fair and equal acknowledgement of all refugee populations arising out of the Arab-Israeli conflict requires the recognition of Jewish refugees. The Government shares the Committee’s belief that such recognition does not diminish or compete with the situation of Palestinian refugees.

The government expressed some hesitations about the second recommendation, which went a bit further. It was somewhat cautious, as were we. The government said:

The Government of Canada understands the positive intent underlying this recommendation but at this time, Canada has offered its support to the peace process as presently structured.

That is key. Despite what the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister are currently doing, Canada cannot and should not act alone on such issues.

We need to work with the others. This is not the time to try to change the framework for negotiations that was agreed upon. Everyone wants peace in the Middle East, but to achieve peace, we will have to pursue diplomatic avenues. We have to accept that it will be a long, hard and sometimes tiresome diplomatic road, and that we will have to do the ground work and keep working over the long term.

Canada used to have a lot to contribute to this work, since it chaired the committee on refugee issues. Unfortunately, we can no longer play such a positive role because we have lost our reputation. That is too bad, since we will still have to examine issues related to peace negotiations and Palestinian refugees in the future. This is an essential part of finding a solution to sustainable peace for everyone in this troubled part of the world.

[Foreign Affairs, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that was a rather short answer.

In 2010, the House unanimously adopted an important motion on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. However, last year, the minister missed the two ministerial meetings on the non-proliferation and disarmament initiative. Given the existing issues and challenges, we must show just how committed we are.

Is the Minister of Foreign Affairs committed to attending the seventh ministerial meeting in Hiroshima next month?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, March 24th, 2014]

With regard to government spending in the riding of Laurier—Sainte-Marie: what was the total amount of funding for each fiscal year from 2010 to 2013 to the present, broken down by (i) department or agency, (ii) initiative, (iii) amount?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, March 24th, 2014]

With regard to grants and contributions approvals at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD): (a) for each minister, what is the grants and contributions approval process; (b) for each minister, as of December 11, 2013, how many grants or contributions applications have been approved by senior bureaucrats and await final approval from the minister; (c) for each minister, which programs currently have projects, grants or contributions awaiting approval by the minister; (d) for each grant or contribution currently awaiting approval from its respective minister, (i) under which program is this grant or contribution considered, (ii) on what date was the application, if relevant, received by the department, (iii) on what date was the application approved by the relevant DFATD staff, (iv) on what date was the application sent to the minister’s office, (v) on what date, if relevant, will each grant or contribution be approved; (e) what is the notification process for successful grant and contribution applications; and (f) in the last fiscal year, what was the average approval time period between receipt of a project or grant or contribution application and final decision?

[Petitions, March 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition pointing out that more than 2 million Syrians have fled Syria and another 4 million have been internally displaced within the country.

The petitioners point out this is the worst humanitarian crisis the world has seen in years and that the neighbouring countries cannot carry this burden alone. The petitioners are therefore calling on the Canadian government to significantly increase the number of Syrian refugees it sponsors, propose various measures to do so and ensure that no Syrians are returned to Syria under any circumstances.

[Committees of the House, March 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am deeply troubled and shocked to see that the Conservatives are using as serious an issue as Jewish refugees for purely partisan purposes.

No one is fooled, and that is the worst part. This is not because the Conservatives want to debate a report that was tabled last fall and discussed in committee nearly a year ago. They want to avoid the debate about one of their own, who may be in contempt of Parliament. That is all they want. They are manipulating a very serious issue.

The government loves to muzzle scientists and civil society. I meet with many representatives from community groups who are afraid. What does it say when people are afraid of their government? It is terrible. The Conservatives want to muzzle the public service and do not want to listen to Canadians. They refuse to travel throughout the country to hear what Canadians have to say about their electoral reform proposal. In addition, it is quite clear that they do not want Parliament to function properly and they do not want to hold debates—they use gag orders, extensions and cheap political stunts like the one we are seeing here today. I cannot think of any other way to say it. They try to stifle all debate. They are not being transparent.

My democracy is suffering, but I will continue to fight for it. I know that all of my NDP colleagues will continue to fight for our country's democracy.

In light of that, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Chambly—Borduas:

That the debate be now adjourned.

[Supreme Court Act, February 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is a huge privilege to co-sponsor the bill introduced by my colleague and, I would even say, my friend, the member for Acadie—Bathurst, and to speak to it today.

This bill would require that all Supreme Court justices be bilingual, which goes to the very heart of our democracy. Equal access to justice for all is a fundamental aspect of democracy. To ensure that everyone, without exception, has equal access to justice, justices of the Supreme Court—the highest court in this country and the court of last resort—must be able to hear arguments and read documents associated with a case or the evidence without the help of interpreters or translators.

Let us be clear. I have the utmost admiration for interpreters. Listening to something and interpreting it has to be one of the hardest jobs in the world. I have a particular fondness for translators, since I used to work in translation.

That said, even a translator would say that translation is the art of fudging. It is not an exact science. I have some real examples. Michel Doucet, a law professor at the Université de Moncton and an expert in language rights, argued a case before the Supreme Court. A few weeks later, by chance, he heard the arguments he had made in French being played in English on CPAC. Here is what he had to say about it:

The translation did not allow me to understand my own words. I wonder how justices can fully understand the matter at hand when they have to go through translation in which significant aspects of a submission are missing. When you win 9:0, there is no problem, but when you lose 5 to 4, you automatically wonder whether you should not have argued in English.

It is essentially a matter of principle. Canada's laws are not written in one language and then translated into the other. They are drafted at the same time in both official languages, and neither version takes precedence over the other. I think it is important for Supreme Court justices to be able to hear francophones in their own language, to read the law in that language and also to understand the tradition of civil law in Quebec.

We in the NDP are not the only ones saying so. The Commissioner of Official Languages, Graham Fraser, has said several times that he believes that Supreme Court judges should be bilingual. When he released his 2012-13 report, he stated:

There have also been a few outcomes during my tenure that I would characterize as conspicuous failures. For example, the government failed to see the importance of having bilingual Supreme Court judges. I have given my support to Bill C-232, which sought to amend the Supreme Court of Canada Act, as I firmly believe that any litigant appearing before the Supreme Court should have the right to be heard and understood by all the judges in either official language without the aid of an interpreter.

The Barreau du Québec has also repeatedly reiterated its support for the bill on bilingual judges:

Bilingualism...should be among a Supreme Court judge's required skills in order to ensure equal access to justice, and the Barreau du Québec’s position in this regard is categorical.

I mentioned Bill C-232 and said that the Barreau du Québec has repeatedly reiterated its support for the bill on bilingual Supreme Court judges because this is not the first time this subject has been discussed.

Indeed, in 2008, my hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst introduced a similar bill, Bill C-232, which I mentioned a few moments ago, also calling for a bilingualism requirement for Supreme Court judges. This has been quite a battle. I did not have the honour of representing Laurier—Sainte-Marie at the time, when the Conservatives had a minority government. Finally, in 2010, despite the obstruction and opposition of Conservative members, including those from Quebec or ridings with large francophone populations, the bill passed. However, when it was sent to the Senate, the senators quashed it. I would like to make a very important point in passing in that regard.

Every time I hear that story or a similar one, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart when democratically elected members vote in favour of a bill, then the Senate, whose members are appointed rather than democratically elected, has the gall to defeat the bill on purely partisan grounds, even though it deals with an issue as crucial as access to justice for all. This is fundamentally wrong and should not be allowed. It is yet another reason to abolish the Senate. The Senate is supposed to represent the regions, but how well did it represent Quebec and other regions where there are many francophones when it made that decision?

Finally, I would like to point out that this bill espouses the same logic as the bill on bilingualism for officers of Parliament put forward by my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent. I must say, in fact, that I take some pride in being a member of the only party that goes beyond empty rhetoric and takes concrete steps to better protect and promote our country's official languages.

Promoting and protecting official languages goes beyond the appointment of Supreme Court judges. If we send the message that people do not have to be bilingual to hold a senior position in the federal system, that being unilingual is perfectly all right, how does that encourage young Canadians to learn the other official language? Such a message would discourage, rather than encourage them.

What fate awaits that bill now, I do not know. The comments I have heard from the other side of the House have me very concerned. There have been other attempts to push for the bilingualism of Supreme Court judges. As my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst pointed out, if it does not work this time, we will make it work in 2015 when we form the government.

[Foreign Affairs, February 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, former president Yanukovych has fled the country. There are reports of Russian troops occupying airports in Crimea. Ukraine has said that a coast guard base in Sevastopol has been surrounded by Russian marines.

Can the minister update the House on the situation and tell us what the government has communicated to the Russian government regarding this very troubling situation?