Michael Ignatieff

[OATHS OF OFFICE, March 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order relating to Bill C-1, which has just been introduced in the House. By dealing with this bill as the first order of business, the House is affirming an important principle.

This is an important constitutional principle: the government must be accountable to the House of Commons for its actions, and not the other way around.

In this spirit I would like to seek unanimous consent to adopt a motion that underscores the supremacy of the House of Commons and seeks common ground on the issue of prorogation.

I move that this House hereby establishes a special committee to be structured along the lines of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and having all the powers of a standing committee, to conduct an immediate examination into the issue of prorogation, to advise the House on the circumstances in which it is appropriate, or inappropriate, for the Prime Minister to request that Parliament be prorogued, and to repair such necessary changes to the Standing Orders or legislation, or both, and that the committee report to the House no later than April 15, 2010.

[Afghanistan, December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, there are no allegations against Canadian Forces. It is the conduct of the government that is in question. The government has withheld evidence, it has intimidated witnesses, it has censored documents. This morning it even tried to prevent Parliament from debating the issue.

The Prime Minister is responsible for this conduct. He is responsible for a year of wilful blindness. What does he have to hide?

[Afghanistan, December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, what do they have to hide? They covered up the evidence. They intimidated witnesses. They tarnished the reputations of government officials. They censored documents. This morning, in the House, the government even tried to prevent Parliament from debating this issue.

The Prime Minister is responsible for this behaviour. What does he have to hide?

[Afghanistan, December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, for over a year, there were credible reports of torture in Afghanistan, and this government did nothing.

They were wilfully blind for a year, and the Prime Minister is responsible.

When will he take responsibility? Why is he still refusing to create an independent judicial public inquiry?

[Business of Supply, December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it must follow from the nature of the motion that we have put forward that those documents must be uncensored. That is the answer to the first question. Second, it is our assumption that we are talking about immediate delivery of those documents, which is tomorrow.

[Business of Supply, December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would be grateful if you would let me know as my time draws to a close since I have an amendment to introduce. I want to thank the member for Vancouver South for his great work on this issue.

Recent events have confirmed that Canadians can be proud of the men and women serving in Afghanistan. It is not their actions that are being questioned, but those of the government.

Yesterday, General Natynczyk confirmed that a detainee transferred by the Canadian Forces was mistreated while in Afghan detention in June 2006.

The credibility of the Minister of National Defence is in tatters. Canadians cannot take him at his word. This Parliament cannot trust what he says. The issue here is trust.

General Natynczyk is making every effort to get at the truth, but the government is making no such effort. It continues to withhold certain documents and censor others. It has redacted with what can only be called Soviet zeal. It has intimidated witnesses and public servants. It has cast a chill over Canada's foreign service, as a growing number of former ambassadors have said publicly.

We must have the truth, uncensored and unredacted. That is the privilege of Parliament and the right of the Canadian people. That is the reason for today's motion. The government must account for an entire year of wilful blindness.

The Conservatives had credible information, even photographs, about torture and abuse, but did nothing to put an end to it. Instead they sought to cover up the facts. The issue here is the negligence of the Conservative government, not the behaviour of our soldiers. The questions raised will not be answered by the investigation announced yesterday by General Natynczuk.

We need a full independent public inquiry into the government's year of wilful blindness. This is not a partisan exercise because we are prepared on this side of the House for the inquiry to examine the whole length of the mission in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 under the previous Liberal government.

Let us remember how we got here. The sequence of events is extremely important.

On December 18, 2005, during a federal election, General Rick Hillier, then CDS, signed a detainee transfer agreement with the Afghan government.

The ministers opposite were sworn in on February 6, 2006, and the defence minister has admitted that he heard serious allegations of detainee abuse from the moment the government took office.

In March 2006, the U.S. State Department reported that Afghan authorities, and I quote: “tortured and abused detainees on a regular basis.” However, despite this information, the Conservative government carried on as usual. And a few weeks later, in spring 2006, the first detainees were transferred by the Canadian Forces.

In May 2006 Richard Colvin began sending reports of detainee abuse to his superiors.

On June 2, 2006, the Afghan independent human rights commission reported that a third of detainees handed over by Canadian Forces were abused or tortured in Afghan custody. On that same day Richard Colvin sent another memo with reports of torture in Afghan jails. Still the government did nothing.

Mr. Colvin sent three more reports before the end of 2006. He made additional reports in March, April, June and July 2007. Yet, 17 months, 17 memos, and still the government did nothing.

In 2006, the Canadian Embassy in Kabul had a report on human rights stating that torture was systematic in Afghan prisons. Once again, the government did nothing.

It was during the summer of 2006 that the detainee abuse confirmed yesterday by General Natynczyk took place. It was documented and reported by soldiers in the field who did their job. Still the government did not do its job.

In November 2006 the Department of Foreign Affairs actually issued talking points playing down reports of torture. Secret memos leaked to the press confirmed that the government's priority was spinning the issue rather than preventing torture from occurring.

In February 2007, there were three additional allegations of detainee abuse. That same month, the military police complaints commission initiated an investigation that was blocked by the government.

The government's year of wilful blindness only ended when graphic reports of abuse surfaced in the Canadian press on April 23, 2007.

It was not until May 3, 2007, that the government signed a new detainee transfer agreement. However, that did not put an end to the problems.

Mr. Colvin testified that inspections were infrequent because of a lack of resources. Even worse, he was instructed by his superiors to keep quiet and to stop documenting cases of detainee abuse and torture. Detainee transfers were suspended for the first time on November 6, 2007, because of reports of torture. They have been suspended a number of times since then.

Nevertheless, until yesterday, this minister and this government claimed that no detainee transferred by the Canadian military had been abused in Afghan prisons. We now know this is not true.

The record that I have just taken us through speaks for itself. For over a year the government had credible reports from multiple sources, independent credible Canadian sources, that Afghan detainees were being tortured in Afghan detention centres. These reports came from Canadian diplomats and soldiers in the field, and the government opposite did nothing.

It must account for that year of what can only be called wilful blindness. Its refusal to get to the truth is costing us our credibility as a nation on human rights and engages in a threat to the honour of Canada in the field, that honour which our troops so bravely defend every day. We need the truth. We need it now. Canadians deserve better.

Therefore, I would like to move the following amendment. I move:

That the motion be amended by adding immediately before the word “accordingly”, the following:

“All documents referred to by the Chief of the Defence Staff in his December 9, 2009, press conference; and all other relevant documents; and”.

[Pay Equity Task Force Recommendations Act, December 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, it seems to me a federal pay equity commission will set the standard nationally for pay equity. It will create a system that is proactive, that focuses exclusively on the question of the human right of equal pay for work of equal value.

That focus, an institution that then sets the standard in all federally regulated industries and in the federal public service, will constitute a standard of action which we hope will improve the standards of pay equity right across the country.

The ripple effect of good practice, the ripple effect of advanced legislation at the federal level will directly address the disadvantages to which the hon. member has referred.

[Pay Equity Task Force Recommendations Act, December 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the 2004 pay equity report was the work of a Liberal government seeking to make progress in this matter. I remind the hon. member that it was her party that secured the defeat of that government and made it impossible for us to make the progress that we wanted to make.

I further remind the hon. member that we have taken steps with this private member's bill today to make sure that a federal pay equity commission devotes itself exclusively to the issue of pay equity for women, and that we restore pay equity as a human right and not put it in labour relations where it could be traded away.

That is the purpose of the legislation.

[Pay Equity Task Force Recommendations Act, December 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am surprised that the question of cost should be the first thing in the hon. member's mind. We are talking here about human rights.

The proposal is very specific: to create a federal pay equity commission. Costs are entailed, but when the human rights of women are in question, the question of cost surely is secondary. The primary obligation is to do the right thing.

[Pay Equity Task Force Recommendations Act, December 9th, 2009]

moved that Bill C-471, An Act respecting the implementation of the recommendations of the Pay Equity Task Force and amending another Act in consequence, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I introduced Bill C-471, An Act respecting the implementation of the recommendations of the Pay Equity Task Force and amending another Act in consequence, in the House. This bill would repeal the measures that undermined pay equity in this year's budget.

The Conservatives hid behind economic recovery measures to launch an attack against the fundamental right to equal pay for work of equal value.

Bill C-471 would make clear in law what should never be in doubt: pay equity is not a labour relations issue, it is a human rights issue.

I take particular pleasure in introducing this bill. It is the first private member's bill I have had the honour to introduce, and I have chosen this subject because of its extraordinary importance to all Canadians, especially to Canadian women.

In this year's budget, the Conservatives put pay equity on the bargaining table and that was wrong. No human right should ever be subject to negotiation and that is the premise on which this bill is founded. My party and I believe the majority of members of the House are firm in their conviction that equal pay for work of equal value is and always must be a human right.

As members of the House will be aware, the fight for pay equity is not yet won. We have much to do.

Today in Canada, women earn on average 72¢ for every dollar earned by a man doing the same work. For a woman who has children, it is 52¢.

Two-thirds of all minimum wage earners are women and women are over-represented among part-time and unpaid workers, as well as those in the lowest income brackets. Among top earners, on the other hand, men outnumber women by the astonishing figure of 330%. In recent years, if we take a global standard, we have fallen to 25th in the world in terms of the gender gap.

Canada is behind 25 other countries when it comes to women participating in economic and political life.

This is Canada. This is the remaining inequality we have to overcome in the country we love. We must do better.

The statistics speak for themselves, but they cannot represent the people these statistics represent. I am thinking of a single mom in Mississauga who cannot find a quality day care spot for her son and who cannot afford not to work.

I am thinking of young parents in Laval who cannot spend time with their children because they need a second job just to feed their family.

I am thinking of a family in Nanaimo, B.C., trying to put their kids through school with two parents working full-time for one and a half incomes. This is why pay equity is a human rights issue. This is why this party has brought this into the House.

This is why pay equity is a national issue, and this is why the House should pass this bill.

Bill C-471 would take pay equity off the bargaining table where it should never have been in the first place. We would create a federal pay equity commission to ensure pay equity in the federal public service, crown corporations and federally-regulated industries.

We will create a federal pay equity commission to ensure pay equity in the public service and federally-regulated industries.

Under Bill C-471, any pay equity measures would be considered human rights legislation.

This Bill C-471 would establish clear and present safeguards to protect pay equity in the workplace. Some of these safeguards have been undermined or eliminated by the present government. Others were called for in the 2004 task force report but never implemented.

This bill calls for the financial resources needed to create a proactive model of pay equity.

The Government of Canada is Canada's largest single employer and has an obligation to lead by example, to start a race for the top and not a race to the bottom. When human rights are in question as they are in this case, federal leadership is not an option, it is a responsibility. This leadership has been sorely lacking in recent years.

Women's equality has been a casualty of the current government's short-term politics.

Women's equality has been a casualty of the government's politics. It cut the operating budget of Status of Women Canada by 43%, and it cut the word “equality” from its key mandate.

The government axed the court challenges program, the national child care supplement and $1 billion in child care agreements with the provinces and territories.

It ripped up the Kelowna accord and the support for aboriginal health and education, especially for women, that went with it.

Now it is reneging on its own promise in the 2008 budget to present an action plan for the equality of women, in order to improve the economic and social conditions of Canadian women and increase their involvement in our democracy.

This is the record of the government. Canadians deserve better.

The Senate, the other Chamber, made its own report on pay equity earlier this year and now this bill is an opportunity for all of us across all divides in this House to make a clear statement about gender equality in this country, to say, in other words, that women are not a “left-wing fringe group”, that women's rights are human rights, and that any attack on pay equity is inexcusable and especially so in the middle of a recession.

We must get this bill passed and I believe we will. However, our work will not end there.

As long as all Canadians, men and women alike, young or old, in rural or urban areas, aboriginal or not, do not have equal opportunities in life, we will not be satisfied with our efforts as parliamentarians or citizens of this country.

Regardless of where we come from or on which benches we sit, we in this House share a common obligation to the people of this country to make Canada the fair society we all believe it should be. This bill is a step in that direction. It is the step we must take. I know that sooner or later, in this Parliament or in the next one, take it, we will.