Evidence of meeting #41 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was human.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
If you don't know, Mr. Khan, we're well over. I'll give you ten seconds.
Conservative
Wajid Khan Conservative Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Is it possible to have fifty-fifty participation in the House of Commons? What are the obstacles to it?
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
Sure it's possible, but it's possible to have more than that. In law schools now we have more women than men. In medical schools we have more women than men, and that's because of the opportunities. Girls as well as boys now can compete on an even keel. I don't think it's the same in politics as yet, unfortunately.
February 20th, 2007 / 9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Thank you very much, Ms. Mahoney. It has been very enlightening having you here.
Reading your bio, I have to applaud the work you've done. I appreciate that on behalf of all of us as Canadians and around the world. Many of the comments you made don't only apply abroad. They apply very much in Canada when we get into various other issues you touched on, but we don't have time to go there.
You talked about developing the base, getting that neutrality, if you're going to try to get democratic reform happening in many of these countries. But in countries like Iraq, where there has been such an effort to try to bring stability, and religion continues to get in the way, do you think there will ever be the opportunity to move those countries forward until they separate state and religion?
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
I think it's fundamental—especially, as I said, with these extreme fundamentalist views, where there doesn't seem to be middle ground—that the separation of religion from the running of the state is absolutely important.
But in places like Iraq, I think there has to be a cessation of violence before anything can happen. In my opinion, you can't begin to start on.... These are relatively sophisticated approaches, which require commitment and a certain atmosphere of willingness to develop your own country and your own society. You can't do that where the society itself is in complete turmoil.
I think the security issues in Iraq are paramount. They have to be dealt with first, before any progress can be made.
And then, my own personal opinion is that the separation of the church and state would be the next step. And then, perhaps, the society can move forward very incrementally, putting some very basic building blocks into place, such as the rule of law—just those basic concepts, and the basic concept, other than of picking up a gun and settling disputes, of there being some place else to go to settle them, whether it's village-based or a more formally-based court system.
But having people accept that there is another way to solve disputes than violence is very fundamental before any of this becomes relevant.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
I expect there's a lot of work being done on that very issue in those countries, given the commitment we all have to finding a solution to the ongoing war there.
Would we be better off putting more emphasis on trying to educate people on the peaceful way to resolve issues than we are putting on the military section of it?
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
Oh, absolutely. I am an educator and I believe deeply in the power of education. I've seen it: changing people's minds is the most powerful thing you can do. It's more powerful than shooting someone, because as soon as you shoot someone, you generate feelings in somebody else of wanting to shoot you for shooting that person. But education is changing people's minds, and that's why it is so critical for developing anything new, whether it be gender equality or racial equality or democratic institutions.
I've spoken about judicial education in particular, but education about human rights, I think, is even more basic than this in changing people's minds. The concept of human dignity, which seems so simple and fundamental to us that we don't even think about it, is a profound concept. If people internalize it, for themselves and others, it can change their mind about so many other things.
Canada has a huge role to play there. We're not a strong country in terms of our military strength and our population, but we have a huge ethic of respecting education and we're good at it. It strikes me that if we're to be effective in the world, we can take what we do best, which is to transmit knowledge and understanding and those kinds of fundamentals, rather than try to compete in this other world, where we don't have the population resources or the geopolitical position to do so.
That's been the focus of Rights and Democracy, and it's certainly been my focus in my human rights work all my life, that the most powerful contribution you can make is to educate people.
Conservative
Bill Casey Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
Yes.
Thanks very much for coming and helping us with this.
I'm going to go along the same lines as some of the others. On one hand you say we must develop ways to promote democracy that include the culture of the area. But in so many cases the culture is very much against human rights. I don't know how you can reconcile that, in a case where gender equality is absolutely not accepted in many areas.
How do you promote democracy without that basic human right?
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
Culture, as I said, is often used as a handy tool to be dismissive of them and to tell people they are totally irrelevant. For example, I was once in a meeting at the United Nations and the topic was genital mutilation of women, which some people purport is a cultural activity. This one particular chieftain stood up and started berating women for saying that there's anything wrong with that, how dare you tread on our culture? He was promptly asked by a woman from his own country, “Who do you speak for? Are you speaking for the women of your country or are you speaking for your power over women in your country?” It was quite a comeuppance for him, because he was using culture and his own definition of culture in his power base to promote an abusive practice.
That's not western culture imposing itself, that's the culture in itself saying we don't want this any more. On the one hand where it wasn't very successful for western human rights advocates to condemn genital mutilation, it was very effective for western nations to support women in their own countries to say to the men in their own countries, or to their government or to their organizations that would either turn a blind eye or support this kind of activity, “We don't want this. It's harmful to our health. It's harmful to our future children. It's harmful to our society to have this kind of practice.” The most effective way western countries could support that is by supporting the local women.
Another good example was stoning. Remember when there was that big exposé about stoning a woman who had committed adultery or something. What was very damaging in that scenario, because Rights and Democracy supported the local lawyers in Nigeria who were assisting that woman, was western countries condemning the government structure, saying “You're so brutal, you're so savage, imagine stoning someone.” That was very unhelpful, because all it let the chieftains do was say look at these western people trying to corrupt our culture, and they're even more punitive.
What was helpful in that situation was to empower the lawyers working for that woman, give them the resources and support that they needed so they could bring to the Muslim court the arguments to show the judges that they were wrong in interpreting the Koran the way they were. It turned out to be a local solution to a local problem rather than a western culture imposed one. At the end of the day it promoted gender equality, because the judges then said this law is wrong; it's being interpreted wrongly. That did more to support the equality of women in Nigeria than western culture being imposed to say that these people are savages and they shouldn't be doing this. It just makes the local people feel bad and in fact turns some women against people saying that locally.
This is what I mean when I say that cultural relativism can be used as a sword and it shouldn't be used that way. But on the other hand, those who are providing assistance have to be very sensitive to acknowledging local people being able to solve these problems themselves, and empowering them to do so, giving them the resources they need to do so but not necessarily imposing the way we would solve the problem through using human rights as a sledgehammer, for example.
The genital mutilation thing, just to finish that story, was solved, and is being solved in many countries by promoting health, promoting good practices, and educating people about how women's reproductive capacities work and how this can damage those reproductive capacities. As opposed to name calling or suggesting that they have a primitive culture, it's enriching that culture to respect the integrity of the woman's body, the role of the woman in society, and how important a role they play. They should be elevated, as opposed to being able to treat them in this manner that hurts them physically, emotionally, psychologically, and in every other way.
Bloc
Johanne Deschamps Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us, Ms. Mahoney. Your presentation was most enlightening.
Getting back to something you said at the beginning of your testimony, you stated that human rights were constantly evolving. Today, human trafficking is becoming a problem of global proportions. All continents and cultures are affected. The principal victims are women and children. At our last meeting, we heard from several representatives of Status of Women Canada, since the committee was doing a study on human trafficking. Agencies working in the field that have attempted to collect the little data that is available have pegged the number of victims of human trafficking at between 400,000 and four million. As you can see that is quite a range.
The witnesses informed us that at the court or judicial level, there are very few programs or little training available to address this problem.
I'd like to hear your views on the subject.
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
Actually, your numbers are very low, from what I understand. I've done quite a bit of work in this area. I used to be on the international committee on trafficking in women and girls. It's a huge problem. It's a huge problem in Canada that there are all sorts of girls being trafficked and brought to Canada.
In Calgary, for example, there came briefly into the media the existence of the so-called trick pads, where young girls—Asian girls, primarily—are brought into the city to serve as prostitutes. They're teenagers, and sometimes, horrifically, of a lower age than teenagers. They're moved very quickly from house to house and often are servicing 30 or 40 customers per day. Of course, these young women have very dismal futures. In fact, their life expectancy is very short.
This is really a discussion about prostitution. Prostitution, in its broadest sense, includes wife-buying, pornography production, importing women and girls for the purpose of prostitution, and trafficking in them around the country once they're here.
Judges very rarely get to deal with these issues, because the whole area of prostitution is one where there's huge bias against these people in the population. They are the most devalued people in our population and as a result get very little attention.
I think you can see that in the whole Pickton trial going on now, with estimates of well over 60 disappeared women. And this was known for years before any real, systematic, and rigorous investigation went on. My own personal view of it is that the victims themselves were largely aboriginal, they were all prostitutes, and they were drug-addicted, so they were very low-value people.
If you look at, for example, the community's reaction to the Montreal massacre, it was far more dramatic. We recognize it every year—we have special acknowledgments, there are monuments, and the like—because they were high-value women. But there's no difference, in the sense that in Vancouver women were targeted and were massacred, and these were largely aboriginal women.
This points, I think, to a real problem in our own society of the different biases we carry. All human beings, if one approaches this through the lens of human rights again, are valued and have value regardless of their life circumstances. Often, if you investigate who are prostitutes and why they are prostitutes, you'll see poverty as the fundamental bottom line.
But there's also social disadvantage—and abuse, usually—in their backgrounds, and so “there, but for fortune, go you and I”. And increasingly we are seeing young boys getting trapped into this world of abuse and violence that prostitutes live in. It strikes me that again, just as in the indigenous rights area, we have our own backyard to deal with in terms of this human rights abuse, as well as giving assistance to others who need it.
There are certain countries that Canada has relationships with that are the source of trafficking, and certain countries that are the conduits for trafficking. It strikes me that when we are making decisions about our relationships with these countries, this should be on the agenda among conditions for trade, or conditions for aid, and for our participation in strengthening these countries.
If we turn a blind eye to this fundamental and profound violation of human rights, it not only encourages that country to continue in what they're doing, but it strikes me that it also blackens our country. If we turn a blind eye to those situations abroad, we also do it at home, and that has been going on, in my view, far too long. If we value all of our own citizens, that should colour our policies in our dealings with others.
Conservative
Conservative
Peter Goldring Conservative Edmonton East, AB
Ms. Mahoney, your comments about the local tribal level or local village level, and about the importance for us of viewing these things in the lens of what the local customs and the local laws are and trying to make improvements within their own understandings of their laws and justice system, are I think absolutely essential. And of course, that's going to be the challenge, because it involves understanding their local governance too, and what changes you might be able to make so that the government may be able to impact some of the local customs and laws as well.
My question will be more towards what your viewpoint of constitutional law would be, understanding that some countries have constitutions and others haven't. We've heard several times that sometimes the Koran is being interpreted as a constitution, and of course, it would be a very immovable thing to try to make any changes, in that aspect.
What would your viewpoint be about encouraging evolutionary constitutional development in many of these countries?
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
I think constitutional development is very, very important. It's not magic and it doesn't deliver as soon as you have a constitution, by any means. We operated quite nicely for a long time without the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. People were treated well, we respected the rule of law, etc., but what the charter did was focus public attention on some of these values. I think it developed a richer culture in Canada for human rights and for respect for human rights.
That's what constitutions can do, but many countries of the world have constitutions and they're the worst countries. They're some of the outlaws of the world, right? So there's no magic in a constitution. Along with a constitution must come the implementation of the values the constitution contains.
As I was saying earlier, things like access to justice have to go hand in hand with a constitution, because what good is it if the people it's designed to protect can't access the very body that is going to give them a remedy for the violation of the constitution? In Canada, we had the court challenges program. I was a proponent of that, because it was designed to give those people who are suffering the abuses the charter is designed to protect them from an ability to go before a judge and ask for a remedy. Otherwise, what's the point, because by definition, disadvantaged people do not have the resources to get in front of expensive courts, especially in our system.
Now, even to have a simple family law matter decided in court is minimum $25,000, minimum. By the time you get your documents filed, your lawyer hired, a couple of visits paid for, and you go to court, you're looking at at least that kind of money. Who has that kind of money? Certainly not people who are downtrodden. The prostitutes I was talking about earlier or children who are being abused or people who are being trafficked don't have that kind of money. Similarly, the person who's being sexually harassed in her minimum-wage job--does she have money to get to court? No.
So access to justice is important in a constitution. You can't protect gender equality or racial equality and then give no tools for people to have those rights respected. So legal aid is important. People's courts are important, if that's the alternative from formal courts, but those people's courts have to run appropriately, so they need education and rules to go by and some structures to work within.
Sure, constitutions serve as a framework. They're a bedrock, they're a reference point. They are something whereby people who are suffering in jail without access to a lawyer or being not charged can point to and accuse the government of not fulfilling the obligations they have promised to fulfill.
Conservative
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
There's constitutional development going on there, yes. Absolutely there is.
Conservative
Peter Goldring Conservative Edmonton East, AB
You mentioned also--and I'm not sure whether you had mentioned it was being done or you're suggesting that it be done--that certain rights, breaches, or violations conditionally impact international trade. Is that something you're approaching in Vietnam?
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
Without a doubt. What judges are telling us and politicians are telling us is countries want to trade with us, but they're saying they don't trust our system. The people in Vietnam don't trust their system. They won't bring disputes to the courts because they don't trust the courts. They're corrupt.
If you had a company and you were wanting to trade widgets with Vietnam and you knew inevitably there's going to be a dispute down the road, but there's no court to go to that you can trust to resolve that dispute, are you going to trade with them when you've got a choice to trade with somebody else? The Vietnamese recognize that problem. That's why they're so motivated now to incorporate a very heavy and sophisticated and demanding judicial education project into the list of priorities they've identified, which is going to bring them into the mainstream, so that the whole country can prosper.
As I said, countries such as Canada and others are going to say they'd like to trade with them, but what do they do when there's a problem? Where do they go? Who do they trust? So that's why the judicial system is key to the marketplace as well as to individuals who live there. They also have to trust the judicial system. Otherwise, if they don't, they're going to settle their own problems. If somebody steals something from them, they beat them up or steal something back and then you get a cycle of lawless behaviour.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
You're out of time.
You did mention the trade and the aid and you tied the aid to a certain benchmark. There are some countries now that we do not send aid to. I don't think we send aid to Zimbabwe, I'm not certain if there's anything that gets through to Zimbabwe, and maybe a few other countries.
Is there a problem of having too low a benchmark in some of these countries? We still send some aid to China. We still send some aid to other countries where we know there are human rights violations. We know that improvement can be made. How do you balance that cut-off of aid with sending them some aid, so we can influence them toward this lowest common denominator as a benchmark?
Then we'll go to Madam McDonough too.
Prof. Kathleen Mahoney
There are different ways of targeting aid. Sending aid to a corrupt government is not terribly useful, I think, because sometimes it goes to buying a new Mercedes-Benz or to other expenditures that don't help out anybody except the corrupt recipient.