Jasbir Sandhu

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, over the last 17 years, I have had a chance to talk to many Canadians, especially the descendants of the passengers from the Komagata Maru. The stories they have heard from their grandfathers and great-grandfathers still pains those descendants. They have repeatedly told me that they are looking for closure from the Canadian government to heal the wounds that are still open.

How can we put closure to this? What can the government do to provide closure for the families?

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have talked to thousands of people throughout Canada about the Komagata Maru over the last 17 years.

A political announcement in a park is not an official apology. An apology is a dignified way of recognizing our past wrongs. Yes, we live in a more tolerant society today. The community wants, to put this dark chapter to rest, a dignified apology in the House, so we can begin the healing process and the reconciliation process. That is the voice of the South Asian community.

Again, I urge my Conservative colleagues to vote for this motion so that we can provide closure for the South Asian community.

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Newton—North Delta has done great work in our community over the years, and continues to do that work.

It has been 98 years. Over the last 17 years, I have been across this country, talking to many Canadians. I have talked to descendants groups and other activist groups involved in the community. I have talked to grandchildren of the passengers who were on board the Komagata Maru.

This is not about money. Nobody in the South Asian community wants any sort of money from this. It is about a respectful apology. Everywhere I went there was only one thing the community requested over the years. The community asked for a respectful way to close this very dark chapter in our history, and that is by officially apologizing, recognizing that incident in this House so the healing process can begin.

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that we live in more tolerant society today than in 1914. In 1914, these discriminatory laws were put in place to restrict people of South Asian origin from coming to Canada, even though at that time they were British subjects. Canada was under the Commonwealth, as were the South Asian countries that we are talking about here under British rule at that time.

It took 39 years to abolish these discriminatory laws. The South Asian community has been waiting for 98 years for an official, dignified apology in this House so the healing process can begin.

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2012]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should officially apologize in the House of Commons to the South Asian community and to the individuals impacted in the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which passengers were prevented from landing in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

Today I rise in support of the NDP motion calling on the government to officially apologize in the House of Commons to the descendants, the South Asian community and the individuals impacted by the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which passengers were prevented from landing in Canada.

Next week, May 23 will mark the 98th anniversary of the arrival of the Komagata Maru in Burrard Inlet, Vancouver. Today I am asking all members of this House to vote in support of this motion. The South Asian community should not have to wait a century for an official apology for this tragic event. The tragedy of the Komagata Maru marks a dark chapter in Canadian history. The South Asian community has waited far too long for a dignified apology in the House of Commons.

The journey of the Komagata Maru was one of tragedy. The passengers left their homes to make a new life in Canada, the land of opportunity. What they did not realize was that Canada was not the land of opportunity for all, but only for some. The tragedy was one of several incidents in the early 20th century involving exclusion laws that were put in place to keep out immigrants of South Asian origin. It was a well-known secret. The “continuous journey” was a racially motivated regulation, the same as the Chinese head tax that did immeasurable harm by keeping South Asians out of Canada. At the same time, Canada was accepting massive numbers of immigrants. In fact, 400,000 immigrants came to Canada in 1912 alone, a figure that remains unsurpassed to this day, almost all of them coming from Europe. The Komagata Maru carried 376 passengers. Of them, 340 were Sikhs, 24 were Muslims and 12 were Hindus. They were all at that time British subjects.

The passengers were prevented from disembarking while the ship remained in Burrard Inlet for two months. The men, women and children aboard the ship were denied basic necessities such as water and food. The conditions on the ship worsened on a daily basis and the people aboard the ship suffered greatly. Everyday Canadians, at great risk to themselves, took food to the ship during those two months. In the end, only 20 passengers were admitted to Canada since the ship had violated the discriminatory exclusion laws. The ship was turned around and sent back on July 23, 1914. After its arrival in Calcutta, now Kolkata, on September 27, 1914, police fired on the passengers and 19 were shot dead. The rest were imprisoned or kept under village arrest.

I am an immigrant. I came to Canada 32 years ago to have a better life here. I came here with the same hopes as the people who were on board the Komagata Maru, and I have had incredible opportunities. Being elected to this House to represent my community of Surrey has been the greatest honour and opportunity of a lifetime for me. What if I had endeavoured to make that journey to Canada in the first half of the last century? I too would probably have been turned away. I would have been like those passengers on the Komagata Maru. These policies were racially prejudiced and they were wrong. My community and the whole of the South Asian community deserve a dignified, formal apology in this House for this tragedy.

I have spoken to many Canadians across this great country of ours on this issue. For 17 years I have been fighting for justice for the Komagata Maru incident, along with my good friend and colleague Sahib Thind, who is the president of the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada.

In 2006, we urged the Prime Minister to make an apology in the House of Commons. I was on the stage with the in Surrey in 20Prime Minister08. We were expecting the Prime Minister to announce the date of an official apology in the House of Commons. However, a few days before the event we learned that the Prime Minister would be apologizing from the festival stage. We advised the Prime Minister's office that this would be inappropriate and that the community would see this kind of apology as disrespectful.

The Prime Minister's statement in the park was immediately rejected by thousands at the event and those who heard about it. Many felt disappointed and insulted. The current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism said at that time that the apology had been given and it would not be repeated. This added insult to injury.

The minister went on to say that the turning away of the Komagata Maru was different from other incidents, such as the Chinese head tax. The Komagata Maru tragedy, like the Chinese head tax, was an injustice that happened due to racially prejudiced Canadian immigration laws that were designed to exclude Asian people from the largest wave of immigration Canada had ever experienced. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism dismisses the Komagata Maru tragedy as one incident and refuses to acknowledge the continuous journey policy that was in place for 39 years. The Komagata Maru tragedy is a symbol of these policies that were in place to prevent people of South Asian origin from immigrating to this country. Again, I want to emphasize that these policies were in place from 1908 until 1947. That makes it 39 years that the exclusion policies were in place.

Even now, there is no transcript or written record of the statement the Prime Minister gave in the park and the Prime Minister's office refuses to provide one. How can the Conservatives think this is acceptable? Without an apology in Parliament, there is no official record of what the government has done. That is unacceptable. South Asian Canadians deserve to have a respectful acknowledgement of this historic wrong. By refusing to formally apologize for the Komagata Maru incident, the Conservatives have essentially created two levels for apologies for historic wrongs. That is unacceptable.

We support the steps taken by governments over the years to offer respectful and dignified apologies, such as the apology for Canadian Japanese internment camps and the apology to Chinese Canadians for the head tax. In apologizing for the Chinese head tax, the Prime Minister stressed that it was a “grave injustice that we are morally obliged to acknowledge”. The Komagata Maru incident highlights the grave injustices that occurred against people coming from South Asia.

Recently, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism was out in my community celebrating the contributions by South Asians to Canada and its economy. Photo ops do not cut it and homilies do not cut it. An official and dignified apology is what is required. I urge the Prime Minister to reconsider and make a dignified apology in the House. An announcement in the park is not an apology. My generation and the next generation of South Asian Canadians are waiting for a wrong to be made right. The suffering and loss of lives cannot be set right, but a formal apology is part of the healing process.

In pursuit of a better life, Komagata Maru passengers risked everything. When they arrived on our shores, our government, in ultimate cruelty, turned them away because they were not the right colour or religion. New Democrats are respectfully requesting, in the strongest possibly way, that the Prime Minister officially provide closure for the trauma this has caused in the South Asian community. Let the Prime Minister finally apologize in a dignified way in the House so that the process of healing and reconciliation can begin.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we have seen that the government does not really believe in facts and figures. The crime bill illustrates that. There has been much research that has indicated this is not the direction we should go.

We see it with this omnibus bill. The government is trying to take money away from seniors. The PBO's research and the government's own research indicate that these draconian measures are not needed for our OAS to be sustained.

The government is taking money away from seniors, yet it is putting it somewhere else. Could the hon. member highlight where the money is going?

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster was speaking on behalf of all Canadians. He was getting messages from across the country to let the government know that this bill is not acceptable to all Canadians. That is what he was talking about.

This budget is not only about the financial side. This is about the environment and fisheries deregulation. This is about health care transfers. This is about weakening our Auditor General's office. This is about reducing our food inspectors. This is about a lot more than just financials.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the international trade committee, and this morning I was looking through the trade deficit. Over the last six years, under this government the manufacturing sector trade deficit has ballooned from $18 billion to $75 billion. What that means is that our manufacturing industry jobs, good-paying jobs for families across the country, have been decimated. Jobs in the manufacturing sector have gone away. What they are creating are service jobs that pay very little compared to manufacturing.

Again they say one thing, yet they are doing another thing.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, since the last election I have seen the Conservatives constantly either fudging the numbers or using only numbers that fit their own overall secret agenda. During the crime bill we heard the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety constantly talking about how they do not believe in stats or how they do not believe in research. I have seen the gutting of research that has been available to make decisions that are facing Parliament.

Here is a prime example. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, along with the government's own research, indicates that the OAS is financially viable and that we can provide OAS to our seniors, yet the government is cutting the funds available to vulnerable seniors.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill of more than 450 pages. Not only is the bill's content an affront to the democratic process, but so is the way in which the government intends to ram it through without proper examination. The Conservatives know it is inappropriate to make so many sweeping changes to so many different areas in a budget bill.

They know it is inappropriate to include a series of previously unannounced measures in a budget bill, like the measures that contribute to a less transparent and more secretive environment, including a massive gutting of the powers of the Auditor General.

They know it is inappropriate to give themselves the power to change employment insurance rules without the approval of Parliament. They know it is inappropriate to gut environmental protection and rewrite Canada's fisheries laws in a budget bill. But they do not care.

The Conservative government members have made it very clear over and over again that they do not respect this House and, by extension, they do not respect the very people we were all elected to represent in this House.

I was elected to represent the people of my constituency and my community. They expect more from the current government, which does not even blink while undermining this Parliament by tabling a massive bill that goes far beyond the budget. Clearly, its objective is to ram through its radical Conservative agenda while hiding from oversight and avoiding accountability.

In an attempt to restore some sanity to this House and ensure a proper review of this bill, which is mostly made up of non-financial elements, the New Democrats have asked the government to work with us. That is why yesterday we asked Parliament to split the bill in order to allow for an appropriate review of it, which must include relevant committees hearing from experts about these sweeping changes being proposed.

Instead, what the Conservatives have proposed is to create a monster subcommittee to study all the changes, which is just another way to avoid accountability for measures they are hiding in this Trojan Horse budget bill, a budget bill that does not help our economy or get people back to work. It most certainly does not represent the priorities of the people in Surrey North or people across this country.

Last month, I held a public forum on the budget in my riding to ask my constituents what their concerns and priorities were. They said they did not understand why the government would add two more years before they could qualify for the OAS, when the program has been proven to be sustainable. Both the PBO and the government's own research team has shown that the program is sustainable.

They could not comprehend why the Conservatives would cancel the long gun registry when it helps to save lives. They thought that the government's insistence on destroying the registry records is ridiculous and reckless.

My constituents further told me that they did not understand why the government is paying lip service to the problem of foreign credential assessment and recognition, and not addressing the real shortage of doctors, nurses and medical professionals in our hospitals.

They want a national transit strategy and effective transit to facilitate economic growth in our region. They do not understand why the government would not make that a priority when every other G8 country but Canada has a national transit strategy.

They were very concerned about the protection of salmon habitat and the small and medium-size fishing industry in coastal British Columbia.

They want the government to protect our food security and implement the labelling of GMO foods.

They also do not understand why the Conservatives would dismantle the Wheat Board that was protecting our farmers.

They further told me that they do not want the gutting of environmental protection and removal of accountability that we see in Bill C-38.

However, the Conservatives are not listening to Canadians; they certainly are not listening to the people of my community or the full 80% of the British Columbians who opposed the northern gateway pipeline.

Instead, the Conservatives have done exactly what we have come to expect from the government, exactly what they want with no regard or respect for the people of the country or the democratic process by which they should be governed.

We all know that, when Conservatives do not like rules, they either break them or they undermine Parliament to change them, like changing the rules to undermine an entire environmental review and oversight so they could ram through a reckless pipeline project that puts the coastline of B.C., communities and local economies in peril; or like changing the rules so they could attack charities that target the organizations that are standing up to protect our coasts; or like gutting the office of the Auditor General so we will not know when they break the rules.

Those are just a few of the highlights of what we see in the bill. It is clear that the priorities of the people in my community are not represented by the government and they are most certainly not represented by the contents of the bill.

The Conservatives claim that budget 2012 is about job creation, but the PBO says the budget will cost 43,000 Canadian jobs. In fact, the budget actually plans for unemployment to rise. When the PBO's estimate of 43,000 lost jobs is combined with previous rounds of cuts, this number is closer to 102,000 jobs lost. Still the Conservatives stand in the House day after day, blustering about how the bill is about job creation. It is truly unbelievable.

One-third of the bill is actually dedicated to gutting important environmental protection regulations, so I would humbly suggest to the members across that they cool it on their talking points and admit what the bill is really about: ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who peacefully protested on Earth Day to show their support for expanding environmental safeguards; showing contempt for Canadians by taking this country backward when it comes to environmental protection; and creating a less transparent and more secretive government so they can lurk in the shadows and get away with their dirty tricks.

Proper oversight is a cornerstone of our parliamentary democracy, of any democracy, and New Democrats will fight for proper oversight and accountability. We will not allow the Conservatives to quietly sneak through these far-reaching changes. Trojan Horse budget bills cannot become the new norm, so if the government is not afraid of being held accountable, it should agree to work with us to split the bill into proper committees.

Separating the bill makes sense. It would allow for a full study with proper expertise at the table, and we would be able to make decisions that would benefit our country. It would allow opposition members to do their job and provide proper oversight. It would also help the backbenchers in the Conservative government to have input into this budget bill.

My sincere hope is that the Conservatives will take a step back and think about the consequences of undermining Parliament and removing oversight and accountability from our democracy.

I hope they will consider the consequences of seriously eroding the trust Canadians have in this House, which is precisely what they are doing with the bill.