Public Safety committee  What you don't want to do is to be in a situation where these sanctioned individuals continue to conduct business, hold assets and potentially have access to those assets for the use of Vladimir Putin. I think it's quite an important thing that there be no loopholes, that Canada

Public Safety committee  When we talk about sanctions, there is a whole range of sanctions. We've been focusing on the oligarch sanctions, but I think the most relevant sanctions have been what I call “self-imposed” sanctions, which have been in the form of western businesses leaving Russia. Most self-re

Public Safety committee  On the oligarch question, as you mentioned, there are 118 oligarchs who are on the Forbes' rich list, and 35 of them have been sanctioned. A number of these people have not been sanctioned. On top of that, with the way the oligarchs conduct their affairs, they hold things in th

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  No. The answer is simply no, and this is a big problem. The oligarchs have spent the last 22 years assuming that one oligarch is going to steal from another oligarch, or a government is going to try to expropriate their money, so they've bought the best asset-protection advice th

Public Safety committee  I think that the general way in which Russia tries to create repercussions is by singling out individual countries. In this particular case, everybody—and when I say everybody, I mean just the western world, because India and Brazil aren't involved—has been involved on a combined

Public Safety committee  Well, I don't think Canada has to think about these issues on its own. Canada is part of a coalition of the willing that so far has done a great job in putting in place all of these measures against Russia, so these are conversations that you don't have to think about by yourself

Public Safety committee  There's one other thing we haven't talked about, which is that Russia is not the only oil supplier in the world. There are other oil suppliers. There's one big oil supplier that could solve a big part of this problem for us. On one hand, we're talking about restricting the purcha

Public Safety committee  Let me not compliment Canada on your implementation of the Magnitsky act. The Magnitsky act was passed in 2017, unanimously, by both the lower and upper houses of Parliament. Immediately after it was passed, a number of Russians, including those who killed Sergei Magnitsky, were

Public Safety committee  Is that for me?

Public Safety committee  You can plainly tell by the numbers. If you look at the United States, I believe there are more than 500 individuals and entities sanctioned under their global Magnitsky Act.

Public Safety committee  The number for Canada is, I think, 80% less than that.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for that question. It's an excellent question. One of the things I would point out now—and it's very important that everybody understand this—is that the oligarchs don't have political power in Russia. They are subordinate to Vladimir Putin. They're scared of Vladimir

Public Safety committee  Thank you for that question. It's a very important question. In my opinion, Putin didn't believe that we would come up with the sanctions that we came up with when we came up with them. He had looked at our conduct, and when I say “our”, I mean Canada, the United States, the E

Public Safety committee  Okay, let me finish it there. Thank you.