Crisis in Sudan
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Jenny Kwan: I am glad we are all here tonight talking about the emergency situation in Sudan and the horrific violence that is taking place on the cusp of, as my colleague and many other members have already indicated in the House, a civil war. The violence and harm that is taking place right now is devastating. As indicated, it is women, civilians, who are getting caught in the crossfire and are suffering beyond all measure, getting injured and losing their lives. As I was listening to the debate, I thought to myself, "What is the Canadian government doing?" We heard from the Minister of Foreign Affairs who indicated the efforts of the government in addressing the crisis and helping to bring Canadians and others to safety. In reality, what we are seeing is something very different on the ground. The government says one thing, but in practice it does something very different. I just heard on the news before this emergency debate that Canadians who are connected to people in Sudan on the ground are saying that on the process of bringing Canadians to safety, they are mostly left to their own devices. They have to find commercial flights to get out, and there is no assistance really from the Canadian government in that regard. However, when we look at other countries, they are doing much better with their evacuation efforts. This is reminiscent of other situations. I will use Afghanistan as an example. Just now we talked about the duty of care and the responsibility to locals who helped Canadians do their jobs while they are abroad, but every time there is a crisis like this, what happens? They get left behind. That is what happened in Afghanistan. In fact, in my office I have a growing spreadsheet of Afghans who put their lives at risk in support of the Canadian military to complete their mission, and their loved ones have been left behind. The government brought in an immigration measure and then patted itself on the back and said what a great job it was doing, yet it brought in an arbitrary number for those who helped Canada and who are in a humanitarian crisis come to safety. In fact, there are files that have been lost. Somehow GAC does not know where these people are, and their applications have gone missing. That is what is happening to the point where people have to take the government to court to see if it can bring them to safety. It is the same thing with Sudan. Locals have been left behind. I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs if the Canadian government will undertake special immigration measures to bring them to safety, including those who are not Canadians, including Canadians who have family and loved ones who are Sudanese who will need a special immigration measure to bring them to safety. Will the government commit to that? I did not hear an answer from the minister. She sidetracked. She talked about something else. Then she deflected and said that the Minister of Immigration is doing a great job. Well, not so much, I am sorry to say, because the government abandons people time and again. When we say that we have a duty to care, it is, in my view, a responsibility of government as well as a moral duty to bring them to safety. They served Canada in their capacity in helping Canadians to do their job. We cannot just turn our backs on them, but we are doing exactly that. This is why I am here tonight engaging in this debate. I appreciate some of the immigration measures the Canadian government brought in. For example, the Sudanese who are here in Canada on a temporary visit, whether it be a work permit, a study permit or whatever the case may be, will be able to extend their visit. I absolutely appreciate that, but I will say that the government needs to do more. The Liberals say they will expedite the processing of those who already have a temporary resident visa or permanent resident application that has been completed. That is great; they should have been doing that already anyway. For those who do not have an application in, like Canadians who have family members in Sudan, the Canadian government needs to extend a special immigration measure to them, so they can sponsor their extended family members to come to Canada. We also have the duty to care for those who worked and served Canada as local staff. They need to be brought to safety. We cannot do this over and over again, because when we do, the message the Canadian government is telling the world is that if someone steps up to help Canadians to do a job while we are abroad, when a crisis hits, we will abandon them. That is the message we should not reinforce. We must take a course correction, and we must do everything we can to live up to that duty of care. We talked about the humanitarian crisis. People in Sudan are in a situation where they are running out of food, supplies and water. I just saw the WHO in the news again with the latest update saying there is a warning of a biological risk, as one of the Sudanese labs has been seized. The UN officials are calling the development extremely dangerous, and that is the reality they are faced with right now. I question the government on what we are doing to work in collaboration with allies to address this crisis. We are just coming out of a pandemic, although there are still remnants of the pandemic going on, as countries face these kinds of crises. Inevitably I think they would spread across the globe, and not just in those regions, but it would have greater consequences as well. What is the plan the government is going to embark on to work with the international community to address this crisis? Equally important, and not just at this moment in time in Sudan, what is the Canadian government planning going forward, as we know these kinds of situations keep repeating themselves? At the special Afghan committee, we talked about this. We talked about lessons learned and what we need to do to get ahead of them, anticipating that crises will continue to emerge in the global community. As such, my questions to the government are these: What are we doing? What planning has been in place? What assurances can it give to Canadians and to the international community that Canada is on top of its game, that we will be there, that we will show up and that we will actually have plans in place in the face of these crises? Right now, I do not see any evidence of that. Time and again, situations emerge and then it feels like the Canadian government is caught flat-footed. It is not good enough. We have to do better. My colleague talked about Canada's role historically, about us being a middle power and about our ability to broker peace and have the trust and confidence of the international community to do that work. We have lost so much of that credibility, and we continue to slip deeper into a hole. We have to find the light, and we have to step up. We have to do better, because humanity depends on it.