Canada's Conservative Party launched a parliamentary motion to declare China's human rights violations against the minority Uighur Muslims as genocide, The Associated Press said on Friday.
The Tories on Thursday demanded that Canada join allies like the U.S. and formally declare crimes committed by China against more than 1 million Uighurs in the western Xinjiang region.
The motion is the latest by the Conservatives to increase pressure on the Liberal government on the situation in the Chinese province.
This comes after former Donald Trump's outgoing administration last month said China's detention of mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is tantamount to genocide and crimes against humanity.
"It is a word that is extremely loaded and is certainly something that we should be looking at the case of the Uighurs," South China Morning Post quoted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as saying during a news conference.
There was no immediate indication of what Trudeau's Liberal Party would do on the planned declaration.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau said that the oppression against the Uighurs are "alarming," he was unwilling for Canada to implement the genocide tag without the official backing of other nations.
A vote is expected Monday and the main opposition parties support the move and control majority of seats in Canada's House of Commons.
Human rights advocates and international legal experts have been gathering documentation for almost the last 10 years on the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, which Beijing has consistently denied.
