Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 25th, 2023

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

That is a very good question. I think it touches on a lot of the points that I and other speakers mentioned today, as well as what I heard in the previous session.

I think it notably touches on the issue of transparency, because based on public information it's actually a bit difficult to answer your question specifically. There's a lot we don't know publicly in order to provide a specific answer. My first point, to answer your question, would be that I would be equally curious to hear somebody from the government answer that question. I wouldn't know how to fully answer it.

The second point I would mention is specifically on the role of GAC. This touches on a lot of other issues too. I would support formally giving Global Affairs a stronger role in coordinating sanctions. The OFAC model you mentioned is a model, but the American system is so different from ours, not just because of its sheer size but because it's a different system of government. It's not a complete analogy. There remains the idea that OFAC plays a very strong coordinating role that GAC cannot play because of silos within our system and because of the difficulties in sharing information with CBSA, RCMP and others involved in monitoring and enforcing sanctions.

I think part of the answer would be to give GAC greater tools to be able to do exactly what you suggested.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

As a follow-up, the U.S. did respond to 9/11 with the creation of Homeland Security. If I can paraphrase what I'm hearing, you're saying to make GAC somewhat more Homeland Security-like across agencies. Am I understanding correctly?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Well, the Homeland Security analogy is a bit different.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

It's a different situation, but it's the model I'm after.

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

The model, in a way.... Regarding the package of $76 million that was announced last fall, which I referred to, we know very little publicly about what the plan to spend that money is. That being said, there were little bits of information about a sanctions bureau being created within GAC. The term “bureau” implies a certain bureaucratic standing within the department. I think that's a first step.

Exactly how much coordinating power, how much gathering power, how much authority to bang heads and cajole and coerce departments to share information and work together is not clear to me, but I hope it's more than right now.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I won't have time to get into the unintended consequences. I'll leave that point for others.

You also mentioned the unwinding of sanctions. Would a more centralized or more powerful entity that has responsibility also help with the potential unwinding of sanctions once their cost has exceeded their benefit?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

It would, potentially, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

You have eight seconds left.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I'll concede, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, MP Epp.

We now go to MP Oliphant.

You have four minutes.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of the witnesses. It's all helpful.

I'm going to focus a bit on Professor Juneau as well.

I feel like I want three hours with you. I did read your testimony before the Senate committee that was studying the same issue a few months ago, and you echoed it today again. I have two questions.

The first is about the power of sanctions or the possibility of sanctions entrenching authoritarian power. I want you to dig into that a bit to help me understand what you really mean there. You used the example of how we have sanctioned the IRGC. We have listed the Quds group. How is this...? It ties in as well, I believe, to broadcast untargeted sanctions as well as targeted individuals. Can you comment a bit more on that? In fact, I'm going to give you the time to do that for me.

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Okay. That's a good question.

There's a lot of literature on the intended and unintended consequences of sanctions, the intended ones being to weaken the adversary and, hopefully, change its behaviour. In many cases, the behaviour doesn't change, but at least you weaken it by strangulating it commercially, financially, politically, militarily and so on. That's true, and in the case of Iran, Russia and others, that's an important aspect of it.

There's also huge literature on the unintended consequences of sanctions. One side is the humanitarian side, which was discussed previously. I'll put that one aside. It matters a lot, but it's not my expertise. The other one is on the economic side. What Iran has done over the years is develop tremendous skill at evading sanctions.

By the way, one of the really interesting but poorly understood consequences of this is a sharing of lessons learned among authoritarian states on how to better evade sanctions—for example, Iran and North Korea, and now Russia, since Ukraine. There are a lot of lessons learned being shared between these states on how to evade sanctions. That's a big problem, and I don't know what we can do about it.

What the IRGC has done is build a clandestine economic empire that allows it to control illegal—from our perspective—trade in sanctioned goods with countries in Asia. There is a lot through Dubai. That has made the IRGC extremely rich economically—not only its individual commanders but the organization itself—and therefore much more powerful politically within the country.

To be clear, the rise of the IRGC in Iran is not only because of sanctions. There are other reasons for that. That being said, an unintended consequence of sanctions on Iran undoubtedly has been to strengthen the IRGC. There is a tension here that we haven't fully figured out how to resolve. We want to sanction it—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

How contextual is it? The reality is that we have that issue in Iran, but that may not be the case in another country, so we have to be pretty nimble, I would think, on that.

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

That's a very good question. I'm reluctant to go beyond the case of Iran, because it goes beyond my expertise. What I would say is that experts on other countries have discussed similar dynamics.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Okay, very good.

On successes and failures, if the impact of sanctions is greater with respect to national security than foreign policy, how do we measure success and failure on that?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Do you mean on the foreign policy side or the national security side?

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Both.

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

On the foreign policy side, that is also a long-standing debate in academic circles: How do you measure success on sanctions? Part of the difficulty in answering that question is that in many cases the stated object of sanctions is not the same as the de facto objective. In many cases—Cuba, Iran, or even Russia, for that matter—the stated objective is to change the regime's behaviour. It's not happening. The de facto objective becomes to weaken the adversary, because it won't change its behaviour. That can be measured, but it's very difficult.

In the case of Iran, one of the never-ending debates is this. Iran's economy is struggling in many ways: negative economic growth, double-digit inflation and very high unemployment. How much of that is because of sanctions, and how much is because of mismanagement? It's very hard to say.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

That's the end of my time.

If there are any—not too many—relevant articles that you could send to us, that would be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Oliphant.

We now go to Mr. Bergeron.

You have four minutes, Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In our committee, we have so few opportunities to hear the language of Molière, Dr. Juneau, that I would really have liked to hear you speak to us in French, or at least hear you say a few words in French. That said, I fully recognize your right to use the official language of your choice.

In response to a question from my colleague Mr. Epp, you mentioned the office that Global Affairs Canada was to create. In fact, that announcement was made almost a year ago, last October. Don't you find it strange, even symptomatic, that, almost a year later, we still have no details about the creation of this famous sanctions office at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Yes, absolutely. That's why the last point I made in concluding my remarks was a call for greater transparency on sanctions. That's a problem. As you said, there is very little information on how the $76 million will be spent. We don't know what the office's mandate will be, whether it will have additional powers or what its objectives will be, for example.

By the way, the lack of transparency is a problem across the board in terms of foreign policy, defence, and national security. It's not just a problem for academics who would like to have more information to write their papers. This is a problem for accountability. A lack of information makes the work of civil society and the media much more difficult to hold the government to account. At the moment, it is very difficult to do so.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Moreover, according to a suggestion made by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in its brief to this committee, Canada's sanctions laws should enshrine the essential oversight role of the public and Parliament.

I understand from your comments that you think this would probably be a desirable thing, but how do you think civil society and parliamentarians could better oversee the application of the sanctions regime and, furthermore, take part in the process of designating sanctions and reviewing their effectiveness once they are in place?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Those are really good questions. I'm glad you asked them.

First of all, one of the roles of civil society, Parliament—I could very well include it in the list as well—media, academia, and the private sector is to hold the government to account, and that's just difficult to do when you have very little information about what works and what doesn't. We have access to the lists of sanctioned entities and individuals, but that's about it. We don't have much more information even on the basic objectives and the role of the office. So the problem in terms of accountability is major. It goes well beyond the issue of sanctions; that is something we could talk about for a long time as well.

With regard to the designation of sanctions, I am a little reluctant to venture an opinion on that, because we are getting into a more technical aspect that is outside my area of expertise. However, I would say that, in general, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, the government and the national security community do not have a solid tradition of involving the outside world, civil society and others, of consulting and listening to people and of gathering ideas, whether for the designation of sanctions or other aspects in general. It's just not something that we do well here in Ottawa.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I'd like to come back to the issue of effectiveness.

At the Senate committee, you mentioned that there was some question as to whether sanctions had led Iran to negotiate the 2015 joint comprehensive plan of action.

My question is very simple: To answer that fundamental question you asked, can we draw any conclusions from Iran's attitude following the United States' withdrawal from the joint comprehensive action plan in 2018 and the United States' reinstatement of sanctions?