Marc Garneau

[Veterans, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are closing veterans' service centres and laying off nearly a quarter of the staff at Veterans Affairs Canada. At the same time, they are expanding their ministerial regional offices and hiring more and more staff for those offices. On top of that, the Minister of Veterans Affairs insults the veterans who come to see him. Why are the Conservatives cutting services to our heroes while ignoring the consequences?

[National Defence, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not happy to learn that Canada's spy agency is spying on them.

No one has the right to monitor the movements of honest Canadians or to know what they are writing in their emails. Someone needs to monitor the people who are doing the monitoring, which is clearly not happening right now. The Liberal Party has long been calling for the creation of a parliamentary committee to oversee CSEC's activities.

When will the minister take action?

[Situation in Ukraine, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments. We are all familiar with the decision the government made a few years ago. What it did was regrettable.

Let me turn to the issue we are concerned with today, the situation in Ukraine, and the fact that its current government may bring the country back into the orbit it wanted to leave a long time ago. In fact, it left that orbit to turn toward democracy. It must be said that democracy has been taking root in the country for 20 years.

It is not complicated. Canada's role is to protect democracy around the world and it must do its part. Canada must send a clear message to Ukraine that the actions of the Yanukovych government are unacceptable. We are here to support Ukrainians and to condemn the recent anti-democratic initiatives. They are not hard to understand in this case.

[Situation in Ukraine, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comment. He is right. There is a whole new generation, because Ukraine began on its path to democracy in 1991. That was over 20 years ago today. They have grown up in a different world, far different from that which I watched from afar as a young person during the period of the Cold War. They have also now been exposed to many other parts of the world outside the traditional sphere that existed when it was the Soviet Union. They also are very sensitive and want the freedom, the right, and the liberty to control their own lives and make decisions about the direction they want their country to go.

We in Canada, who have always been champions of democracy, a Canada that has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, must show this new young generation that we are with them and will support them to make sure that their aspirations are going to be realized in the years to come. They must feel our support.

[Situation in Ukraine, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Toronto Centre.

I am very glad that we are holding this important debate on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and I am privileged to have an opportunity to speak to it.

This issue is of great interest to Canadians, particularly the 1.2 million Canadians who can trace their roots back to Ukraine. Canada has the third largest population of Ukrainians in the world, behind Ukraine itself and Russia. They arrived primarily in three large waves between 1891 and 1952, in each case escaping chaos, war, and repression in their homeland and seeking freedom in Canada.

They have made immense contributions to our country, and these contributions continue to this day. While they are now well established as a community in Canada, many Ukrainian Canadians still maintain links with families and friends back in Ukraine and maintain a keen interest in the fate of their families.

Over the course of my remarks, I will argue that it is not only Ukrainian Canadians who have a stake in the crisis under way, but all of us. First, though, let me summarize the major events that have led us to where we are today.

The genesis of the current crisis, of course, can be traced back to November 21, 2013, when President Yanukovych suddenly and abruptly announced that he was walking away from an agreement, six years in the making, for closer economic and political ties with the EU, the same kind of agreements that other eastern European countries, such as Poland and the Baltic States, signed as part of their eventual admission into the EU and which are now bearing fruit in the form of more prosperous societies and better opportunities for its citizens.

Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and has been moving on a path towards closer integration with the European Union. President Yanukovych's actions broke sharply with that path, prompting an immediate and massive protest movement by ordinary Ukrainians, known, of course, as the Maidan.

For the rest of December and into the new year, vigorous but largely peaceful protests continued in Ukraine. This was met by increased repression by the Yanukovych regime and its Berkut riot police. On December 25, Tetyana Chornovol, a journalist and Euromaidan social activist, was brutally beaten by five assailants. This only reignited the protest movement into more determined opposition to the Yanukovych government.

On January 16, Yanukovych's party pushed through a series of draconian laws cracking down on the rights of Ukrainians to protest peacefully. The laws are too exhaustive to summarize, but I will include a few penalties, such as up to two years in jail for defamation of government officials, up to six years imprisonment for blocking access to someone's residence, up to three years in jail for distribution of extremist materials, and exemption from punishment for police who commit crimes against protestors.

Again, these harsh measures only made matters worse. In the last week, we have seen the first deaths of protestors by police, the spreading of the Euromaidan protests to more cities in Ukraine, and the occupation of several government buildings.

The crisis has reached the point where, as my colleague from Toronto Centre has put it, it will only end with severe repression or a total climb-down by the regime.

Over the weekend, Yanukovych gave signs of attempting such a climb-down. He offered senior positions in the government to two of the opposition leaders and floated offers to review some of the anti-democratic laws passed January 16. He revisited a recent constitutional change that gave his office of the presidency greater power, and he included more opposition members in the body overseeing elections and tasked with preventing election fraud.

We are at a critical moment in the history of Ukraine. What, if anything, can Canada do? What should we do?

Let me begin by stating the position of my party. We condemn the state-sanctioned violence against protestors. This is utterly unacceptable and should stop immediately. Those who have perpetrated violence must also be held to account.

The Ukrainian government must immediately repeal the anti-democratic laws adopted on January 16 and allow the Ukrainian people the right to assemble and speak freely and peacefully. They are now talking about it, but earlier today, they also talked about the possibility of imposing martial law, so we really do need to see some concrete results.

President Yanukovych must enter into real negotiations with opposition forces, not with ultimatums or unilateral offers, in order to de-escalate the situation and restore Ukraine's democratic path. Canada, for its part, should work closely with like-minded allies to bring real pressure on President Yanukovych and his political backers. Our government so far has offered that all options are on the table. While this statement is fine as far as it goes, we are at the point where we need to be more explicit.

When we last debated this situation on December 10, my hon. colleague from Wascana stressed on several occasions that Canada needs to move its position from rhetoric to concrete action. That was six weeks ago. Condemnations are fine but are not likely to contribute to real change in the long term.

What action might Canada take? Measures should include the Prime Minister directly contacting President Yanukovych. Efforts must be made by Canada to get the U.S. and European countries to join it in taking concrete steps to pressure Yanukovych into making changes.

There should be a push by Canada and its allies to set up talks between the Yanukovych government and opposition leaders; a demand to send observers, as we have done in the past; and the imposition of personal targeted sanctions against President Yanukovych and his political backers, both within and outside government, such as freezing personal assets and imposing travel restrictions.

As Liberals have long been calling for, the government has indicated that it is working with our allies to bring diplomatic pressure and coordinated action against the Yanukovych regime. Action is good, and we hope this consultation bears fruit soon. Joint action by Canada, the U.S., and the E.U. will be much more powerful than unilateral action on our part. However, in the event that our allies are unable to agree on coordinated action, Canada should be prepared to lead all the way. The example Canada would set might be important and would influence our allies to follow our lead.

Canada has a tradition of fighting for what is right: banning land mines; fighting apartheid in South Africa, including the imposition of sanctions; sending our peacekeepers into far-flung theatres such as the Balkans, Rwanda, Cyprus, and the Middle East to try to keep warring parties apart and save innocent lives; and crucial diplomatic interventions, going all the way back to Lester Pearson in diffusing the Suez crisis. Further than that, I would argue that we have an important stake in what happens in Ukraine, even though it requires us to think in a more long-term, strategic way.

The world is watching, in particular former countries of the Soviet Union, to see if Ukraine can continue to entrench democracy. My own colleague, the member for Toronto Centre, has described a competition between what could be viewed as democratic capitalism in the west and a more autocratic state-led capitalism in Russia.

While we are not back in the Cold War, and today's Russia is not the U.S.S.R. of the past, there is, however, a real competition of ideas, values, and systems at play. The rest of the world is taking note and is trying to determine which path leads to success.

Ukrainian protestors of Euromaidan can also teach us something about ourselves. They are not starry-eyed idealists. They understand that closer integration with the EU is not a complete panacea. In fact, it is likely to have some short-term pain. Ukrainians, though, especially the young people, understand that long-term economic success lies with the rule of law and institutions with free and democratic societies. They have seen the progress of their counterparts in Poland and the Balkan states. They see the wealth of the E.U. as a whole, despite its challenges. Most of all, however, they see the crucial importance of a country being able to determine its future democratically and with the rights and freedoms all humans deserve. They remind us of how valuable what we have here in Canada is, and it is important for us to remember this and be prepared to stand up for it.

[Situation in Ukraine, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his words on this very important issue. I know that his party and my party agree on the need for targeted personal sanctions against Yanukovych and his entourage. We brought this up in December through the member for Wascana, who also brought up in question period today two other possibilities. One, which I know the member for Ottawa Centre is familiar with, has to do with expedited visas, and the other has to do with observers. I wonder if he could share with us some of his thoughts on those ideas.

[First Nations Elections Act, December 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the parliamentary secretary and he made numerous references to the outdated, the archaic to the discriminatory Indian Act and I agree entirely with him.

Could we hope that the government is mustering the courage to scrap the Indian Act and to start over with something that is much more responsible from a government point of view and that brings us into 21st century?

[Canadian Human Rights Act, December 10th, 2013]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-564, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (time limit).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to introduce a private member's bill that would extend the time limit for filing a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission from one year to two years.

In addition, my bill clarifies the circumstances in which the commission can consider a complaint regarding an incident that happened outside that limitation period.

The Canadian Human Rights Act is modelled on the simple, indisputable principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, family status or disability.

That is a well-established principle in Canadian society, and so much the better. However, there is always room for improvement. We need to remain vigilant in defending those rights.

My bill is a modest attempt at improving the current law by giving Canadians who are suffering the consequences of a human rights violation a bit more time to have their voices heard.

I close by noting that today the United Nations celebrates the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Ethics, December 9th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, for months, the Prime Minister and his department have hidden Ben Perrin's emails from the RCMP. It was only when the cops were loading the battering ram for the Langevin Block that the deleted emails suddenly became un-deleted.

Canadians do not believe that the most controlling Prime Minister in Canadian history knew nothing of the corruption and cover-up in his office. It is time to clear the air. Will the Prime Minister agree to release all of the emails they have handed over to the RCMP so that Canadians can judge for themselves?

[Ethics, December 9th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives in the Senate have been protecting Senator Gerstein from having to account for his actions, including agreeing to use donor money to pay a sitting Senator more than $32,000, seeking to corrupt an independent Senate audit by Deloitte, and abusing his position as chair of the banking committee to shut down an attempt by the committee to get him to come clean.

Will the government commit to calling Gerstein and auditor Michael Runia to testify tomorrow to the House ethics committee?