Irwin Cotler

[Justice, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the commutation of a death penalty.

Canadian law also prohibits the extradition of an American citizen back to a state in the United States that practises the death penalty. Why would we now refuse to intervene to protect a Canadian citizen sentenced to death in an American state, thereby effectively reinstating capital punishment for Canadians?

Are we going to, in fact, change our extradition law as well as change our policy on capital punishment?

[Justice, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it has been the long-standing policy of our country, reaffirmed by Foreign Affairs as recently as last Friday, that “there is no death penalty in Canada and the government of Canada does not support the death penalty” and that it will “seek clemency for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries”. Yet the government has now reversed this policy in not seeking clemency for Alberta-born Ronald Allen Smith, the only Canadian on death row in the United States.

Will the government reaffirm our long-standing policy restated last Friday and seek the commutation of a Canadian citizen?

[Sitting Resumed, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, regrettably violence against women continues to be pervasive in the country, and in particular, with respect to vulnerable women such as aboriginal women and visible minority women.

One would have hoped the government would have kept in place those instruments and provided support for those groups that were there to protect women against violence, that were there to protect vulnerable women's groups such as aboriginal women and visible minority women. Regrettably, here too the government has not only been silent, but it has dismantled those initiatives.

[Sitting Resumed, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in the matter of equality rights in general, and women's rights in particular, and in the matter of the rights of minorities, regrettably not only was the government silent in the promotion and protection of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and equality rights in its Speech from the Throne, or even by reference in its mini budget, but it dismantled the very instruments which have, by way of principle and precedent, promoted and protected equality and minority rights in general and women's rights in particular. The government dismantled the court challenges program.

In the course of my tenure as minister of justice and prior to that, I appeared together with LEAF, in matters to which reference was made, before the courts for the purpose of promoting and protecting women's rights. In those cases, the court would affirm, as a matter of principle and precedent, issues related to women's rights brought about by the support given by the court challenges program.

Regrettably the court brought about the dénouement of the Law Commission of Canada, which also facilitated the promotion and protection of equality rights. Regrettably it brought about the dénouement of the National Association of Women and the Law, which was a catalyst for the promotion and protection of not only women's rights in the country, but for the promotion of law reform in the matter of equality rights in general and women's rights in particular.

I mention these three instruments in particular because of the manner in which they underpin the whole struggle for women's rights along with the whole struggle for equality rights.

[Sitting Resumed, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the treaty monitoring committee made a series of recommendations of particular relevance to Canada which bear recall today.

It recommended that Canada call upon the federal government:

To double its efforts to put an end to the feminization of poverty and to reform laws that both directly and indirectly result in discrimination against Aboriginal women. The CEDAW Committee also recommended that Canada: i) improve its Live-in Caregiver programme by re-examining the legal obligation that workers live with their employers and by fasttracking access to permanent residency; ii) double its efforts to eliminate violence against women; iii) adopt measures to increase women's representation in politics and public life; iv) work harder to implement a national child care strategy; v) increase benefits allocated to maternity/parental leave; and that Canada vi) double its efforts to achieve pay equity and increase funding for legal aid, notable by restoring the budget to the Court Challenges Program devoted to addressing inequalities in the provinces.

In that regard, what I would like to do within the time constraints is address three areas in which government action or inaction can have a positive or prejudicial impact on the state of women's rights in both the domestic and international arenas, as the case may be.

First and foremost, and having regard to the motion before this House today, I will address the issue of pay equity, where the government has failed to act on this issue on the grounds that no consensus exists as a matter of principle and policy in this matter. Yet, this response by the government ignores the seven points of consensus that have arisen from the pay equity task force group which conducted a comprehensive review of pay equity law and policy in this country, a consensus which our government adopted and which, as I indicated in one of my last submissions as a minister to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women of the House of Commons, we were prepared to act upon in that regard.

Let me briefly identify the seven points of consensus for the purposes of our understanding, arrived at after a series of sustained consultations across this country with a myriad of groups, all engaged in this issue and arrived at within the 113 recommendations.

First, all stakeholders were committed to the principle of pay equity.

Second, all agreed that the principle of equal pay for work of equal value is a human rights principle.

Third, all agreed that employers have a positive obligation to take steps to eliminate wage discrimination.

Fourth, all agreed that any new pay equity regime should be equally accessible to unionized and non-unionized employees.

Fifth, all stakeholders agreed that any new pay equity regime should provide more guidance on how the pay equity standards should be met.

Sixth, all stakeholders agreed that there should be a neutral source of assistance, information and respect.

Finally, all the stakeholders agreed that there should be an independent adjudicated body with expertise to deal with any pay equity issues.

One would have hoped that the government would have acted upon this, not only because of the seven points of consensus, but because the Prime Minister, in his remarks on January 18, 2006, in the midst of an election campaign, declared this on the whole issue of women's rights:

Yes, I'm ready to support women's human rights and I agree that Canada has more to do to meet its international obligations to women's equality. If elected, I will take concrete and immediate measures, as recommended by the United Nations, to ensure that Canada fully upholds its commitments to women in Canada.

One would have hoped that the Prime Minister would have followed through on the commitment. Yet if one looks at the Speech from the Throne, if one looks at the mini budget, there is nothing to reflect and represent that commitment which, at the time when uttered by the Prime Minister, encouraged us to believe he would act on the recommendations as set forth by the committee, regarding the convention on the elimination and discrimination against women.

One would have hoped the would have appreciated the clarion call that came out of the Vienna Conference on Human Rights, which said, “Women's rights are human rights and there are no human rights which do not include the rights of women” and that we must act on this, not as a matter of rhetoric but as a matter of principle and policy.

As women's groups across the country and Canadians have affirmed, not only as principle and policy but to ensure its implementation, this should be a priority on the government's agenda. Yet there does not appear to be any expressed priority on the government agenda in this regard.

I mentioned the seven points of consensus on pay equity. Regrettably, in the matter of pay equity, the Prime Minister once said, “Pay equity is a ripoff”. I would hope that the Prime Minister, in light of his own statement in the election campaign on January 18, 2006, and which I quoted and I take him at his word, will therefore move to act on the issue of pay equity, which at this point is out of reach for many women, and the statistics speak for themselves.

On average, women working part time earn 30% less than their male counterparts. I am just quoting some of the data. Indeed, in the Prime Minister's province, Alberta women make only 56¢ for each dollar that men make. Moreover, regardless of their educational attainments, women suffer from pay disparities and inferiorities. In 2003 women earned on average $24,000 per year while men earned $39,300.

Accordingly we recommend that the government should take the comprehensive pay equity task force set of seven points of consensus seriously. First, it should introduce as recommended a proactive law to rectify pay inequality from the start. Second, it should set more than clear standards for pay equity and ensure that the laws apply and this right is redressed.

This brings me to a second issue that I wish to address. It has to do with the whole question of a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid system in the country.

At a meeting of the ministers of status of women, held in Saskatchewan in 2005, all the women there, reflecting and representing a consensus across this country, called for a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid system in Canada, recognizing, as they affirmed that the absence of such a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid system prejudicially impacted on the rights of women, whether we talk about family matters, or child custody cases, or low income single parents who are women, and I could go on.

Later that year, in November 2005, the meeting of federal-provincial-territorial ministers of justice across the country, acting upon the recommendation of the ministers on the status of women conference, unanimously recommended that such a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid program be put into effect. Regrettably, the government has not taken any initiative in this regard, neither in the area of enhancing the criminal legal aid program, nor, in particular, the civil legal aid program with all the adverse fallout that the absence of such a comprehensive program has for women and other disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in the country.

This brings me to the third and final point, which is the importance of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the promotion and protection of equality rights in general and women's rights in particular.

The advent of the Charter of Rights, as the women of Canada have themselves affirmed, has had a transformative impact, not only in the protection of equality and women's rights but in fact on the ground, in the lives of women.

As justice minister, I went across the country. When I asked women if they were better off now than they were before the Charter of Rights was enacted, the answer was, invariably less. This was also because the women were particularly responsible for including in the charter the section 15 guarantee in the language in which it reads, which now prohibits discrimination on grounds of gender inequality and it speaks about equality before the law, under the law, equal protection law, equal treatment law, and has the only non-substantive clause in the charter dealing with gender equality. Notwithstanding anything in this act, men and women are equal in all respects.

Regrettably, however, in the throne speech, before and since, there has been no reference to the promotion and protection of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, nor to the promotion and protection of women's rights.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, October 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I distinguished Ahmadinejad's Iran, and I would associate with that also former President Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Khomeini. Both have incited to genocide in their calls for the annihilation of a Jewish state and both, along with Mr. Ahmadinejad, have been engaged in a massive repression of the domestic human rights in Iran, religious communities such as the Baha'i political dissidents. There have been an increased number of executions in the last year alone.

There are a number of initiatives we can take in that regard on the human rights level. As we learned at the Prague conference, which was held and brought together for the first time dissidents from countries all over the world, it said that we had to make human rights a priority in our foreign policy. We have to lend support to dissidents who are themselves the targets of this repression. We have to stand in solidarity with those who are being singled out for differential and discriminatory treatment.

We should therefore combat in all forms the culture of impunity that Iran has been allowed to escape its responsibilities from, both with respect to the domestic as well as international levels.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, October 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I share the hon. member's concern. Indeed, the government of Iran is not only engaged at this point in the processing of enriched uranium and plutonium along the road to develop nuclear weapons, but it has defied UN Security Council resolutions calling upon it to cease and desist from doing so.

The government should take the lead in supporting enhanced sanctions at the Security Council where we can be supportive of those initiatives that are to be taken and work with governments like Russia and China, which have impeded such sanctions and resolutions being adopted.

As well, on the matter of state sanctioned incitement to genocide, we should not only refer the matter to the appropriate agencies of the United Nations, the Security Council and the like, but we should call upon the UN Security Council to refer this to the International Criminal Court for investigation and prospective prosecution, as we did with respect to the Darfuri in that regard, and ensure that all initiatives be taken to combat this culture of impunity with respect to Iran's incitement to genocide, including the Government of Canada initiating a state to state complaint before the International Court of Justice against Iran, which is also a state party to the genocide convention.

We can also call upon the secretary general of the United Nations, under article 99 of the United Nations charter, to refer this matter to the UN Security Council as threatening international peace and security as Iran continues to be a standing threat to the right of states to live in peace and security, free from any threats or acts of force. These are some of the initiatives that I would hope the government might in fact initiate.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, October 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today on behalf of the great constituency of Mount Royal in response to the throne speech. I want to address the speech, not only in terms of what it says, but the importance of what it does not say, thereby undercutting its own stated priorities. I will address the missing priorities and the diminishing, thereby, the stated priorities on both the international and domestic levels.

First, the throne speech makes eloquent mention of our shared values: democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law and the need for international leadership to protect these values. We agree with that. However, it ignores the most compelling international concerns today and the corresponding assaults on these very fundamental values.

I am referring, for example, to the genocide by attrition in Darfur where 400,000 have already died, where four million are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, where the violence, including the indiscriminate bombing and burning of villages, sexual violence and assaults on humanitarian aid workers continues unabated, and both the Darfur peace process and the comprehensive peace process are in danger of unravelling, threatening, not only the stability of Sudan but its nine neighbouring countries.

I am not saying that the government is unaware of the Darfur tragedy or that the government has done nothing but it has not identified it as a priority. The best evidence of this is that the word Darfur, even the word Africa, is not even mentioned in the throne speech, let alone addressed in terms of the “commitment, focus, and action” of which the throne speech otherwise speaks.

This is not a partisan problem. To put it simply, while the international community hesitates, the people of Darfur continue to die. I would hope that this government will show the necessary moral, political and diplomatic leadership within the international community to ensure that the required concrete action is taken.

Nor is there any mention in the throne speech of the state sanctioned incitement to genocide whose epicentre is Ahmadinejad's Iran. I say Ahmadinejad's Iran because I am not referring to the Iranian people nor to the many publics in Iran who are themselves the object of a massive domestic repression of human rights.

This flagrant omission is particularly disconcerting. As mentioned during the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide, held last week at McGill University, the enduring lesson of the Holocaust—and the genocides that took place in the Balkans and in Rwanda—is that genocides happen not only because of the “machinery” of death, but also because of an ideology of hate propagated by the state.

This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, is where it all began. As our own courts have affirmed in upholding the constitutionality of our anti-hate legislation, “the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words”. These, as the court put it, are the catastrophic effects of racism. These, as the court put it, are the chilling facts of history.

Tragically, Ahmadinejad's Iran, in violation of the prohibition against the direct and public incitement to genocide, in both the genocide conventions and the treaty for an international criminal court, exhibits all the precursors to genocide that have lead us down that road in the past.

Accordingly—and I repeat, this is not a partisan issue—the Canadian government should be a world leader in combating this culture of impunity, referring the matter to the United Nations and its agencies in order to ensure that the instigators of this genocide, promoted by the state, are held responsible for their actions.

On the domestic level, the omissions are again glaring. For example, the throne speech speaks eloquently of anniversaries we are commemorating, the 60th Anniversary of Canadian Citizenship and anniversaries we are about to commemorate, such as the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City.

However, it makes no mention of the fact that we are commemorating now the 25th Anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Indeed, there is no mention at all in the throne speech of the Charter of Rights even though the charter has had a transformative impact not only on our laws but on our lives.

For we have moved from being a parliamentary democracy to a constitutional democracy; the courts have moved from being arbiters of legal federalism, which they still are, to being the guarantors of our rights, because we, Parliament, vested in them that power; and where individuals and groups now have a panoply of rights and remedies that were unthinkable prior to the charter, which is why the charter has emerged as a respected and indispensable centrepiece, not only of our legal culture but for our human relationships.

Indeed, the only justice priority that the throne speech identifies is violent crime. Now safe streets and safe communities are the shared aspirations of all Canadians and the common objective of all parliamentarians and parties.

The point is that five of the six pieces of proposed legislation in the tackling violent crime act were initiated by the government in which I served as Minister of Justice. We were not only prepared to support that legislation in the last parliamentary session but we were prepared to fast track it into law.

However, the more important point here is that the justice agenda is not only about combating violent crime, whose objective we share, but it should include as a priority the protection of the vulnerable: women, children, aboriginals, minorities and the poor. The test of a just society is how it treats the most vulnerable among us.

There is no mention of women's rights, thereby marginalizing, as principle and policy, the principle that women's rights are human rights and there are no human rights which do not include the rights of women, while marginalizing also the needs of veterans and students.

Moreover, not only is there no mention of women's right and the ignoring of the Charter of Rights as a whole, but the government has dismantled the court challenges program, which was a bulwark in the promotion of both equality rights and minority rights, and while we welcome the government's commitment to the promotion and protection of official languages in Canada, it again undermines its own stated objective by the abolition of the very instrument that promoted and protected minority language rights.

Nor is there any provision for an early learning and child care program of the kind set forth in our government's federal-provincial child care agreements, which were jettisoned by this government, thereby denying needed child care to thousands of children, while repudiating a federal-provincial agreement, thereby undermining the government's own stated commitment to open federalism.

There is only perfunctory mention of poverty and the plight of the poor, but no undertaking of making poverty history on the international level or poverty reduction on the domestic level as a government priority. This, notwithstanding the fact that one million children live in poverty; that 2.8 million families, or one in five, live below the low income cutoff ; and that the gap between rich and poor has reached a three decade high, an inequality gap usually associated with underdeveloped nations.

In the matter of aboriginal justice, while we welcome the government's apology to first nations as part of the residential school agreement that our government had negotiated with the Assembly of First Nations and the Conservative government is duly respecting, this is far from making aboriginal justice a priority on the justice agenda as recommended by federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers at the 2005 FPT conference. This includes the other framework agreements that were negotiated, as well as supporting the international declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples.

Further, there is no reference in the throne speech as a matter of principle and policy, let alone a priority, for a comprehensive sustainable civil as well as criminal legal aid program, also identified unanimously as a priority on the justice agenda at the FPT conference in 2005. The lack of such a program also impacts adversely on the most vulnerable of our society: women, children, minorities, aboriginals, the elderly and refugees, thereby further exacerbating their plight.

Indeed, the government's throne speech is diminished by the absence of even reference to these priorities, while its own stated priorities are undercut and undermined by the priorities that are excluded to the detriment of all Canadians.

[Aung San Suu Kyi, October 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in granting honorary citizenship to Nobel Peace Laureate and imprisoned Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, this House has recognized one of the great personifications of liberty, courage and moral authority in our time, indeed in any time. She is someone whom the Nobel Committee characterized as an outstanding example of the power of the powerless; who endured the assassination of Burmese independence leader General Aung San, her father; who herself survived an assassination attempt in which 100 of her supporters were murdered; who, as the democratically elected leader of Burma, has now spent 4,000 days under house arrest; who symbolizes the long march to freedom of our other honorary citizens; who is a metaphor and message of the heroism of the Burmese people and brutality of the Burmese dictatorship.

For what kind of government arrests a Nobel Peace Laureate and murders and tortures peaceful monks and students?

I trust that one day we will be able to honour Aung San Suu Kyi by welcoming our honorary citizen to Canada as the leader of a democratic and free Burma.

[Foreign Affairs, October 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Saul Itzhayek, a Canadian citizen in my riding, Mount Royal, has been rotting in a prison in India for the past five months.

I spoke with Saul from his squalid prison cell, who advised me that he has been sentenced to three years for an alleged visa violation resulting from entrapment by Indian officials and has not received the needed consular assistance.

Will the Canadian government take the requisite steps to assist and expedite the return of a Canadian citizen to Canada and his family?