Government leader, our problem isn’t with the Speaker’s ruling in itself; our problem is that this government likes to bend the rules to meet their political narrative. All you have to do is take out a Liberal Party membership, and you can move time allocation, you can be the government leader as per the Constitution. Life moves on, and we don’t have to have these debates.

My question is for the Leader of the Government, which happens to be a Liberal government, but I digress. Last week, I raised my concern in this chamber about the troubling human rights situation in Türkiye, in particular, the abduction, torture and detention by regime officials of eight Canadians. The Kaçmaz and Acar families, with whom I met personally last month, filed a submission with Global Affairs asking the Government of Canada to implement targeted sanctions on 12 Turkish officials responsible for gross violations of human rights committed against them and against their friend Gökhan Açikkollu, who was tortured to death in a Turkish prison around the same time. Senator Gold, can you please confirm to this chamber if the government intends to implement targeted sanctions on these 12 Turkish officials, and if not, why not?

Thank you, government leader, I will appreciate that. They’ve already filed this brief with Global Affairs Canada a number of weeks ago, and I think these Canadians of Turkish descent deserve an answer on these issues. We have an obligation.

Despite all the nice words from the current government in regards to human rights, we have a long list of inaction that illustrates a broader problem when it comes to our sanctions regimes. They’re used inconsistently and in a manner that is overtly politicized, in my opinion.

The Erdoğan regime has committed widespread and serious human rights violations for many years. Since 2016, it has detained over 300,000 people. Detainees were tortured and raped, and hundreds have died. The latest data from the UN Refugee Agency indicates that 1.3 million people have been forcibly displaced from Türkiye, and over 4,000 of these refugees are living right here, thank God, in Canada. Yet the Government of Canada has failed to place a single Turkish official on the sanctions list. When will your government do the right thing, and when will we start using our sanctions tool box to protect the human rights of Canadians of Turkish descent?