Randall Garrison

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, certainly New Democrats have been very supportive of any of the leadership initiatives taken.

Back in August of 2016, the defence minister and the former foreign affairs minister together announced Canada would be committing about 600 troops and 150 police officers to peacekeeping missions in Africa. Here we are, almost nine months later, and these plans appear to be on hold. Can the Minister of National Defence tell the House what Canada's official position is on contributing to the global peacekeeping efforts in this increasingly unstable world? Are we going to be committing to a peacekeeping mission in Africa, or not?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, given that the Prime Minister and the minister attended the NATO summit on May 25, did they present the outcome of this defence review there? Did they talk about what our priorities are going to be at NATO before it was presented in the House or to Canadians, or did they go there and have nothing to say? Which is it? Either they went to NATO with empty hands or they have already presented the findings of this review to our allies in Europe before they ever presented it to Canadians.

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, once again, I am not getting the answer from the minister that I would like. As a parliamentarian who was sent here to represent my constituents, I would like for us to have a chance to have a full debate of that Canadian defence review here in the House, followed by a debate or a reference to the committee, so that hearings could be held in committee on that defence review. Otherwise, it is the Liberal defence review, not the Canadian defence review, if it is not presented in the House.

The other peculiar thing I find with the defence review is that the minister keeps saying that it will be the solution to the funding problems. Therefore, why, in this budget, was there no set-aside for new initiatives under the defence review? If you were really serious that the defence review was going to provide this extra money, where is the set-aside in the budget? Where is the funding in this budget, or do we have to wait for another future budget down the road for any of these new initiatives from the Canadian defence review to actually take place? Where is the money for it? Why was there not a set-aside in this budget?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, the minister has referred several times to the June 7 date for announcing the defence review. I would like to ask him now for a specific commitment that the defence review will be presented in the House, tabled in the House, and that we will be able to hold hearings, either a debate in this general House or at committee, so that all parliamentarians can participate in evaluating what the minister is proposing in the Canadian defence review.

Will it be presented here on June 7, or will it be somewhere else? Will we be able to debate this new defence strategy here in the House?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, we are also seeing the Canadian Armed Forces right now in a period when we have the largest recapitalization needs we have ever had in the history of the Canadian Forces.

In particular, I, of course, am concerned as a member who represents a naval riding with the national shipbuilding strategy, which was approved by all parties in the House and which is really going to be the mechanism by which we renew the navy. My concern is that we have had deferrals, or reprofilings, and putting things off into the future, all kinds of terms have been used, first, again, started by the Conservatives and then followed up by the Liberals so that we now have about $3 billion deferred by the Conservatives, then another $3 billion deferred by the Liberals, and now another $8 billion deferred off to the future.

When we are talking about buying equipment, with the rate of inflation in the military of 3% to 4% to 5%, and we are putting off things 10 years down the road, how are we actually going to buy the same amount of equipment we were supposed to buy with this money? We are obviously going to get 40% to 50% less, at minimum, of the same kinds of equipment, the same kinds of ships that we were going to get with the original allocation. Where is the funding to sustain things like the national shipbuilding strategy?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I have to say that I am disappointed with that answer. I was hoping to get a clear commitment since we all know that information derived from torture is not only illegal under international law, but is almost always useless, as people under torture will say exactly what they think people want to hear in order to stop the torture. I am very disappointed that the minister has not given us that assurance.

I want to move on to some other things since we only have a short time this evening with the minister. I actually want to talk directly about the budget. I know the people sitting in front of the minister have huge books full of numbers and I have numbers on my desk. Numbers are difficult to discuss, but the one thing that we have seen in the budget is that the operational budget for the Canadian military peaked in 2012 and began to be cut by the Conservatives.

Where it has not been literally cut, it has been increased by less than the rate of inflation. When it is increased by less than the rate of inflation, obviously something has to give. We cannot keep sustaining the same activities year after year if the funding does not go up with the rate of inflation. The rate of inflation in the military, as we all know, is somewhere between 3% and 4.5%.

In the main estimates and the operational budget for the military this year, the Canadian Armed Forces appear to have received significantly less of an increase than the rate of inflation. How can they continue all the things we are asking them to do on our behalf when they get less money than they need to carry out those tasks?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I would like to ask the minister to give us the assurance in the House that if Canadian Armed Forces do come across these instances of torture or similar kinds of instances that we will stop our co-operation with the Iraqi government forces.

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I am going to ask the minister again. What specific measures do we have in place? If Canadian Armed Forces were to come across instances of torture like this that have been well documented, how do they report those? How do we make those known to the Iraqi government? How do we make sure the Iraqi government does something about it? What do we have in place to make sure that we do not become complicit in the torture that we have seen by the Iraqi forces?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I am going to be doing a brief preamble that is related to some of the questions I am going to ask, but I will primarily be focusing on questions this evening. I thank the minister and his staff from the Canadian Armed Forces for being here this evening, allowing us to perform one of these important accountability functions in Parliament.

Earlier this month we had a non-confidence motion in the minister, which was put forward by the Conservatives. We, in the New Democratic Party, supported that motion because of the conflict of interest problem that we believe the minister still has with regard to his role in Afghanistan and the varying stories that he has told about that role, and that is related to the question of Canada's complicity in torture in Afghanistan in the transfer of detainees. This has become much more important today, as we argued that it would. I am not going to talk about that conflict tonight because we have another complaint from our leader, the member for Outremont, with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, which we hope will be followed up on.

Why this has become extremely important this week is the fact that the minister, on Friday, March 31, announced the extension of our Canadian mission in Iraq until the end of June. At that time, there was a shift in the Canadian role. Whereas previously we had been advising, assisting, and training only the Iraqi Kurds, we now apparently have taken on a role in advising, assisting, and training Iraqi government forces. What we have just seen in a publication on May 25 are the disturbing photos by Iraqi photojournalist, Ali Arkady, of the allegations of torture, very brutal treatment of prisoners in Iraq by the government forces, including extrajudicial killings. There are actual photographs of killing of prisoners by military forces.

My question for the minister is very much an important question today. What specific measures has the minister taken to ensure that Canada's current role in training and assisting the Iraqi government forces does not make us complicit in the use of torture, which was documented by those pictures published in the Toronto Star on May 25?

[Foreign Affairs, May 29th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, at least 42 gay men from Chechnya have had to flee for their lives and are now hiding in dangerous situations elsewhere in Russia.

Given the ongoing campaign to wipe out the gay community in Chechnya—and that is what is going on—the lives of these 42 men are still at risk from reprisals from Chechnyan officials, Russian officials, and sometimes even their own families.

Will the government take immediate action in this emergency situation and grant these 42 temporary visas, and then work with NGOs to help these men find a path to safety in Canada?

The whole world is watching.