Peter Kent

[Government Appointments, February 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, many of Canada's foreign service professionals, past and present, are highly critical of the mixed message the dual appointment sends to Germany and the EU.

A former Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, also a former ambassador to the EU, says “We look like amateur hour.” Another former diplomat, also on the public record, says, “It will be impossible to do justice to both EU and Germany with one ambassador”.

Again, can the Prime Minister explain what message he is sending to our important allies with this bizarre appointment?

[Government Appointments, February 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we know the Prime Minister broke with standard diplomatic process by announcing Stéphane Dion's dual diplomatic assignments to Europe before consulting the intended hosts. While dual responsibilities do occur occasionally, the Berlin and Brussels postings are among the most important relationships Canada has to manage. Could the Prime Minister explain the logic of Mr. Dion's twofer appointment?

[Foreign Affairs, February 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, how about something more than words.

British MPs today approved legislation that will make it more difficult for international human rights abusers to hide ill-gotten wealth in the U.K. The new powers were voted unanimously, and our mother Parliament named the Magnitsky Act initiative after the Russian lawyer jailed, tortured, and murdered for his investigation of corrupt Russian government officials.

This House unanimously approved a motion to implement Magnitsky-style legislation in Canada two years ago. The Liberals have dragged their feet. How long will they wait before they act?

[Foreign Affairs, February 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, although the Prime Minister and other ministers have offered very carefully worded reassurances that Canada's commitment to the beleaguered people and Government of Ukraine is undiminished, the Liberals have been pussyfooting around official extension of Operation Unifier and a direct response to Ukraine's appeal for weaponry to better defend against the Russian-sponsored war.

When will the Liberals speak up?

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, February 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his good question.

In fact, there are many considerations. Over the past 20 to probably 40 years, a variety of conservationists and conservation groups have come together wanting to preserve some of the indigenous heritage locations. They also wanted to examine a park that had been interrupted by human activity, to look at landfill dumps that had been remediated, for example, and to consider the sewer lines that ran through it. Residential houses have property that back on some of the wonderful marshes of the Rouge, and the wildlife can be observed from those backyards. However, our considerations were to make it both accessible to those who lived close by but also to 20% of the country's population that lived within public transit accessibility to the Rouge National Urban Park.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, February 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, indeed, it was the thinking of all those over the decades who had argued, campaigned, and crusaded for the Rouge National Urban Park to make it a springboard for Canadians, old and new, to experience a wonderful natural space, and to also spark an interest in travelling to some of the more remote areas, some of the wilderness parks.

However, as I said, I was wandering one of the Rouge trails yesterday. I was in some of the provincial lands which have yet to be transferred and which have been neglected, unpoliced, unmonitored, and insecure for some time. I was relieved to know that with this law being passed, and the lands being transferred, we will not see the litter along the roadside, which has been allowed under the Ontario responsibility.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, February 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Haldimand—Norfolk.

When I last spoke to this legislation, I remarked that it was both a delight and a disappointment, and I must echo that same qualification today as I join this final debate on Bill C-18.

It is a delight because it offers a wonderful opportunity to celebrate again the magnificent accomplishments of Parks Canada and the agency's pioneering protection and innovative conservation of precious Canadian spaces for more than a century and a quarter.

It is a disappointment because the unnecessary and mis-applied conservation principle imposed on Parks Canada contains a sad and unacceptable compromise of that great agency's conservation principles and practices, a compromise clearly intended by the Liberal government to provide federal political cover for the petty partisan obstructionism of the Ontario Liberal government in its refusal to transfer provincial lands to our Conservative government to complete the magnificent new Rouge National Urban Park. My disappointment is mitigated somewhat, because the Liberals have finally brought Bill C-18 to the point of passage.

I will speak first, again, to my delight. It was an honour to serve in a government that, in barely 10 years, increased Canada's protected areas by almost 60%, with new national parks, national park reserves, and marine protected areas. Many of these additions involved remote wilderness areas, such as Nahanni, Nááts'ihch'oh, and Sable Island, similar to Canada's original wilderness national park, Banff National Park.

Then came Canada's first national urban park, building on a decades-old dream of a broad range of passionate and dedicated conservation-minded citizens, community groups, and far-sighted local, provincial, and federal politicians. It is not quite in the centre, but it is certainly surrounded by the Canadian metropolis, the greater Toronto area.

In the 2011 Speech from the Throne and the 2012 budget, our Conservative government announced a commitment to work for the creation of a new national park in the Rouge Valley, and $143.7 million were assigned to a 10-year plan to create the park, with the provision thereafter for $7.6 million per year for continuing operations.

Parks Canada's unparalleled expertise and creative talents were brought to bear to meet the challenge of developing and delivering this entirely new park, and the challenges, as I am about to address, were considerable, unlike anything in Parks Canada history.

I had the pleasure of wandering one of the trails in the Rouge this past weekend, and I would recommend to colleagues in the House and to any Canadians or new Canadians watching our proceedings today on television to do the same at the first opportunity.

The Rouge Valley, from the shores of Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine, more than 20 kilometres to the north, is a once-pristine natural area that has witnessed more than a century of intense human activity. There are ancient first nation sites, but also a former landfill site and an auto wrecker's yard. Surrounded by residential communities and businesses, the Rouge is criss-crossed by hydro transmission lines, railway lines, highways and secondary roads, and waste water sewers.

In the north, there are 7,500 acres of class A farmland worked by 700 farmers, who were uncertain of their future for decades, on lands expropriated more than 40 years ago by a Liberal government for an airport that was never built.

Despite all of these realities that are so unlike Canada's traditional wilderness parks, the Rouge is still home to marvellous biodiversity: rivers, streams, marshes, a Carolinian ecosystem, and evidence of some of this country's oldest indigenous sites, human history dating back more than 10,000 years.

When the Rouge National Urban Park is completed, it will provide exceptional protection for all of the approximately 1,700 species of plant, animal, and marine life of the Rouge. This includes full, uncompromised protection for all of the valley's threatened and endangered species. Unlike past well-intended but unfulfilled plans for the Rouge, species recovery plans will be mandatory and non-negotiable and under the strongest protection of Canada's Species at Risk Act.

Rouge National Urban Park will provide, for the first time in its history, year-round, dedicated law enforcement through Park Canada's storied park wardens. As with other of our national parks, they will have full powers to enforce a single set of park rules and regulations.

The uncertainty experienced for so long by farmers in the Rouge created by short-term one-year land leases will be eliminated. They will be able to invest in repairs to farm infrastructure, apply best farming practices, and continue to both contribute to the local economy and provide an enduring and productive farming presence in the rich portion of the Rouge for visitors from far and near to see.

Parks Canada's carefully developed plan for this first urban park is exactly what conservationists in the Rouge Park Alliance, the former provincially appointed managing authority of the lands, have requested for decades. The plan was the result of consultations with 150 stakeholder groups and 11,000 Canadians. It has the endorsement of all municipal and regional governments that have committed lands to the Rouge National Urban Park.

However, there was one notable foot-dragging exception. That was the Liberal government of Ontario. That government, through successive infrastructure ministers, and not one parks minister, refused to allow conservation experts at the Ontario Parks agency to evaluate and respond to the Parks Canada plan. I would remind the House again, as I have in the past, that at one point, one infrastructure minister even demanded of me what was effectively a ransom. These were lands, incidentally, that the province had been neglecting, trying to be rid of for years. The minister said that he would transfer the provincial lands to the national park for the payment of $100 million. Of course, the Conservative government refused to pay.

There are other stories as well, but in the end, in the corridors of Queen's Park, the provincial Liberals said they would not transfer the land the province had been trying to get off its books for decades. They would not transfer the land until they could give it to fellow Liberals. With the outcome of the 2015 election, the Liberals paid back their provincial cousins, with the political cover that Bill C-18 so unfortunately provides.

Bill C-18 contains a bit of the sort of agency housekeeping that Parks Canada performs every year or so. Two of the amendments, as we have already heard today, are fairly routine: a slight change in the boundaries of Wood Buffalo National Park, and changes in the Parks Canada Agency Act regarding property considerations and compensation in protected areas. However, the main amendment is an insult to Parks Canada's well-deserved international reputation. As I said at the outset, it is a sad and unacceptable compromise of Parks Canada's conservation principles and practices.

The Liberal government would add to the Rouge National Urban Park Act the condition that it be enforced under the principle of ecological integrity. Ecological integrity does not have a universal definition, but Parks Canada has long considered it applicable only to our wilderness parks largely untouched by civilization. For example, in Banff National Park, where barely 4% of its territory has been disrupted by the Trans-Canada Highway, town sites, and ski hills, ecological integrity means that forest fires or floods are allowed to occur naturally, except where communities or human life may be threatened.

No rational conservationist would allow fires and flooding in the Toronto, Markham, and Pickering urban environments. Alan Latourelle, Parks Canada's CEO for 13 years, from 2002 until his retirement two Augusts ago, after 32 years, was responsible for the Rouge-enabling legislation and he opposed very vigorously the injection of ecological integrity into the legislation.

I am delighted the legislation is now close at hand, which will see, finally, the much-delayed transfer of the Ontario provincial lands. The Rouge National Urban Park, when it is completed, will be at least 13 times the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park, 16 times larger than New York's Central Park, and 33 times larger than London's Hyde Park. Too much time has been wasted on petty political partisanship. It is time to make this park a reality. Although disappointed in the way that would happen under Bill C-18, I look forward to voting tomorrow for completion of this wonderful new national park.

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's efforts in crossing back and forth across the floor of the House today, as a number of fellow colleagues have done seeking a way to find acceptance of both motions. On issues of human rights, I always look for advice at some point or another to the former Liberal justice minister, to the human rights champion Irwin Cotler. On this issue and on Motion No. 103, I take his advice where he says he would prefer that keynote word be taken from the motion and replaced instead by “anti-Muslim”.

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I have always enjoyed working with this member, on the defence committee and now on the foreign affairs committee. I would respectfully disagree with regard to his belief that there is a single definition to the keynote word in the Liberal Motion No. 103.

We have heard a number of interpretations, of definitions, of what it means to different people, what it means to Muslims, and what it means to non-Muslims. It is not a precise word in any sense of the definition of a word. We cannot find it in a dictionary. It is a confected word. It does send a powerful message, but it also, if adopted, would undermine and compromise the essential message, that this House I know believes in, about systemic racism, hate, discrimination, bigotry, and fear. It is that single word that stands between some of the members on that side of the House; while not all because I know there are many members on that side of the House who disagree with that word as well as on this side of the House. I would hope that in the hours ahead before we vote on this motion and in the days ahead before we vote on Motion No. 103, all members will reflect on what words mean and the power of words.

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.

I rise today to speak in support of the motion put forward by my colleague the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

I have been very impressed by much of the tone of today's debate, by the respect shown across party lines from all quarters of the House and by some of the very touching personal stories that have been offered to us to persuade us to reason, reconciliation, and recognition of what we all recognize as a continuing challenge to our country and our society, to fight hate and discrimination in all of its forms.

I am afraid I must say that, given the attempts by some Liberal MPs to misrepresent both the content and the motivation of the motion, it is worth revisiting the text. The motion reads:

That the House: (a) recognize that Canadian society is not immune to the climate of hate and fear exemplified by the recent and senseless violent acts at a Quebec City mosque; (b) condemn all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and other religious communities; and (c) instruct the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating all types of discrimination in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making, (ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities; and that the Committee report its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Conservatives are fully committed to freedom of religion and freedom of speech. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, any and all acts committed against religious communities, including at places of worship.

In my riding of Thornhill, I have two mosques, dozens of synagogues, dozens of churches, a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple just adjacent, and until constituency boundaries were redrawn in 2015, a Taoist temple. More than 100 mother tongues are spoken in my riding.

As Canadians struggled to come to terms in the days after the tragic, hateful terror attack on the Sainte-Foy Islamic cultural centre, I was invited to participate in a commemoration service at the largest mosque in my riding, the Jaffari Community Centre. It was a terribly sad but defiant gathering.

Representatives from across faith communities, from congregations across Thornhill, came together to pledge a shared commitment to the fundamental right of all Canadians in our homes, our workplaces, the public spaces we share, and particularly our places of worship, to enjoy and share all of the freedoms of this wonderful country in peace and safety. The names of the six murdered men in the Quebec attack were read into the record: Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi, Boubaker Thabti, Azzeddine Soufiane, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Ibrahima Barry. Those names cannot be said too often. Those names are forever inscribed in a terrible moment in our shared Canadian history.

However justice may be eventually dispensed, this tragedy demands of all of us a renewed commitment to reject prejudice, fear, bigotry, and hate.

We must mourn, we must reflect, but we must also go forward as friends, neighbours, and respectful, loving fellow Canadians.

As I have said repeatedly in the House since I was first elected in 2008, I am passionately in favour of the legal protection of all Canadians from discrimination in any of its forms; I am passionately in favour of the legal protection of all Canadians from hate crimes; and I am proud of the laws that have evolved over the years and the reality that Canada is recognized around the world for our recognition of diversity and equality.

I am proud that the current Canadian Human Rights Act defends the principle:

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, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability

The Conservative Party has long been the party of free speech and free expression. Conservatives do not support restrictions on legitimate freedom of speech, and we strongly support the fundamental right to freedom of expression. We must remember that it was the Conservative government that established the office of religious freedom under the leadership of Dr. Andrew Bennett in 2012. That office led the way internationally, as well as promoting Canadian values of tolerance and pluralism.

Regrettably, as we know, the Liberal government chose not to extend and strengthen the mandate of the office and the ambassador of religious freedom in budget 2016. As a result, Canada's voice on issues of religious tolerance in an increasingly intolerant world has been severely diminished.

Just as I said that I believe that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, so too is eternal vigilance essential in the fight against discrimination, hate, and fear. Many motions put before the House over the years have pledged to recognize that Canadian society is not immune to these worst tendencies of human nature and urged efforts to reduce or, ideally, eliminate all forms of discrimination in Canada. Again, as the motion before us stipulates, we must “condemn all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination”. As well, the motion directs the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to study how the government might develop a whole-of-government approach to better address the terrible recurring societal disorders we have discussed today.

Reduction or elimination of all forms of discrimination is a massive challenge, but we cannot give up. We must not stop trying. This motion just might move our wonderful country closer to achieving the dream I know we all share in the House of a fully inclusive, respectful, and loving society.