Mr. Speaker, I cannot say I am pleased to rise in debate on this matter, but I am moved to do so given my own personal long-standing connection with many of the minority communities in Iraq that are now facing what can only, in my view, be described as a genocide by a form of unbridled evil being manifested Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant by the so-called in Iraq and Syria.
I find it peculiar that in this debate there has been such an obsession over process in this place and so little discussion about the nature of the evil that the civilized world seeks to confront and diminish in the Middle East, an evil that is claiming the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Let me offer some reflections on what I mean because in our post-modern cynical world of moral relativism and sometimes to speak in the stark moral language of categories such as evil is considered politically incorrect. I recall just yesterday a member of Parliament suggesting that those involved in beheading innocent civilians had sweetness and light in them, which is merely unrecognized by us.
We need to speak plainly when we see evil being manifest as we do through the spread of violent terror through this organization that is combining a kind of apocalyptic theology, a kind of extreme distortion of the Islamic doctrine of armed jihad with the political efforts to reconstitute a caliphate. Essentially this is an eighth century political religious ideology which this organization is seeking to impose through literally the violence of the sword on innocent human beings.
In March 2013, I visited Baghdad in order to attend the installation of the new patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the major Christian denomination of Iraq, the ancient Christian Aramaic people who have been present there in Mesopotamia for over 1,800 years and who are in the words of today's political parlox indigenous people who were, quite frankly, there long before there was the presence of Islam in Iraq. I was the first Canadian minister there in 34 years.
I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the hon. member for Don Valley West.
I was in Baghdad on behalf of Canadians to express our solidarity with the Christian minority community of Iraq and with the other minority confessions whose leaders I met. I was there for the installation of His Beatitude Archbishop Louis Sako.
Last month when I was in the Middle East I spoke by phone with Patriarch Sako. He had just returned to Baghdad from Erbil where he had been greeting the displaced persons fleeing the Islamic State monsters who had just cleared them from their ancient homes in Mosul and Karakush along the Nineveh Plain, their ancient ancestral indigenous homeland.
We have all heard the stories about when Da'esh, also known as the Islamic state, arrived in Mosul, they issued a fatwa to all so-called infidels, also called non-believers, that they were to convert to Islam within three days or be executed or become dhimmis, essentially to become de facto slaves.
He told me that all of the Christians of Mosul consequently rushed to flee the city. He was very disturbed, I must say, that even some long-time neighbours of these families who had lived side by side for generations, told Da'esh where many of the Christian families were. He said that the Christian families fled, and on their way out of Mosul, the so-called soldiers of Da'esh confiscated all of their worldly belongings, their jewellery, their suitcases, their cars, even their shoes, to go out into the desert in the Nineveh Plains barefooted.
However, Patriarch Sako told me that was not the end of the story, because he said that there were certain elderly, infirm Christians left in their hospital beds who had no family and who could physically not leave. This is a dimension of the story that I gather has not received media coverage, but he told me that these members of Da'esh, of the Islamic state, went into these hospitals and threatened these infirm, elderly Christians with execution through beheading in their hospital beds, or conversion. This is the nature of the evil that we are discussing tonight.
To give one other example, Adeba Shaker is a 14-year-old Yazidi girl from the same region of Iraq, and she recalls how the militants arrived in her village and separated old women from the rest of the group, then they took the children. Young women and girls faced terrifying fates. Some girls were raped by the commander, who had the privilege of taking their virginity, before being passed around among the fighters. After the prepubescent girls had been gang raped, they were sold off to the highest bidder. Women and girls were auctioned for as little as $10, according to numerous reports. Others, like Adeba Shaker, were to be married off to the militants.
As we speak, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of girls who are facing serial gang rape in this circumstance in Iraq. Children have been beheaded. Thousands of people have been massacred for no crime other than their faith as Shias, as Yazidis, as Sufis, as Christians and others.
This place and so many of the politicians here speak in high-minded terms about the responsibility to protect, a notion that we had the United Nations recognize. I submit that if the responsibility to protect means anything, if our moral obligation to defend human dignity means anything, it must mean that we act in this instance.
I am proud that Canada has done so. We have done so through the substantial contribution of humanitarian aid, $28 million, through $15 million in support for Operation Impact, through the provision of heavy-lift aircraft to bring armaments from Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Europe to the Kurdish regions of Iraq so the Peshmerga militia can defend, yes, the Kurds, but other minorities from the fate similar to that which befell these infirm Christians in their hospital beds in Mosul and these little girls from the Yazidi community.
Canada, yes, has also decided to provide logistical training and advice to Kurdish forces at the invitation of the sovereign government of Iraq and the Kurdish regional authority to provide them with the experience that we have gained and the advice that they can use to defend innocent civilians from such a fate.
I am proud to say that as the immigration minister in 2009, I launched Canada's largest refugee resettlement program since that of the Indo-Chinese Vietnamese boat people in 1979 for Iraqi refugees who had fled similar sectarian violence and terrorism in recent years.
I am pleased to inform the House that we have received, welcomed and protected some 18,200 Iraqi refugees and we will continue to protect more. Through our practical logistical support, humanitarian assistance, our refugee resettlement, the visit of our Minister of Foreign Affairs and our political support, I am pleased to say that Canada is doing what we can within our limited means and ability to protect these people and to give real practical expression to this notion of the responsibility to protect.
