Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 10th, 2014

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Mr. Chair, I don't have exact figures. I could certainly, if the member is interested, try to locate some more information, but certainly since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an increase in church construction.

In the western part of the Ukraine, there is also the very complex matter of restoring certain churches that had become Orthodox churches but were previously Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches. There was a lot of tension around the restoration of church properties. I think that's still a bit of an issue, although it's not as conflict-provoking as it was in the 1990s.

In terms of observance, just from my own experience in travelling to the Ukraine in the past, there is a very high degree of observance. That's one of the reasons, I think, why the Moscow Patriarchate is so concerned about the situation in Ukraine: because the Moscow Patriarchate faithful in Ukraine are actually the most faithful within the broader Russian Orthodox Church. I think there's an awareness of that, so again, it can lead to some conflict.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Mr. Dewar, you have five minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I want to follow up on my other question in regard to Burma—Myanmar—and the Rohingya minority group there.

I had one other question, which I think we've discussed before, about how your office deals with the whole issue around aboriginal and first nations groups and indigenous peoples. For instance, recently we met here with some people from Colombia. We see the disappearance of language and of access to ancestral lands. It's an interesting question, I think, for your office. I'm wondering how you deal with that, because it's a faith, it's spiritualism. Have you had time to figure out how you engage with that?

Could you comment on Burma first and then maybe on that second question?

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

In the case of Burma, as the committee will be aware, we now have a mission in Burma. As they've been getting themselves set up, we've been trying to engage them on opportunities to program in the country.

Certainly we're concerned about the deteriorating situation in the country with regard to different minorities, particularly the conflict between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists and also the conflict with Christians, particularly Chin and Karen Christians. The added challenge in the case of the Rohingya Muslims is the ethnic dimension as well. They're generally not accorded the status of even being Burmese. That factor comes into play there as it does in many countries where you have ethno-religious tensions that play out.

We've had a chance to engage a number of the different communities here in Canada—the Chin community, the Rohingya community—and again, working with our mission now in Burma, we're looking to find some way where we can get on the ground. I think this is a really important time in the history of Burma. Obviously it's a period of democratic transition. It's a period when you can begin to look at constitutional documents and other types of documents that are put into place that can afford a degree of religious freedom. But then you have to ask, “Okay, then—how do you actually act on these documents?”

It's early days, and we've been reaching out on a regular basis to try to find good partners who can engage with us on this. It's a bit tough, to be very honest. There are not a lot of different groups engaged yet on this particular issue that have the track record that we feel confidence in working with, but we continue to reach out.

I had a chance to meet with a group of Burmese parliamentarians last year. We had a very fruitful hour-and-a-half to two-hour meeting. They wanted to know how we in Canada understood religious freedom. We got into some very different questions, especially on marriage rights.

I think the fact that we now have a mission on the ground will help us immensely. As of yet, we don't have any projects that we're launching there, but I'm looking for continued engagement.

On the question of first nations religion, I'll be very honest with the member: I've been struggling with how to engage on this, particularly when it comes to, for example, the Americas and issues of indigenous religious rights in certain parts of South America or Central America.

I guess what I would say in response is that I would welcome groups that the member might be aware of, or that other members might be aware of, that I could reach out to on this question. I do think it is an important question. The religious freedom aspect gets tied up with land claim issues, with socio-economic difficulties, so it's a very complex issue. I think Canada, given our experience, might be able to assist some of these countries in that regard.

As I believe I mentioned to the member when we had an opportunity to chat before, we do have an interdepartmental coordinating committee. We'll be meeting fairly soon for another meeting, and I would like to involve some of our colleagues from the aboriginal and northern affairs department in that conversation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ambassador, you spoke earlier, either in your opening remarks or just afterwards, about some of the engagement you have with the larger diplomatic corps here in Ottawa. You also spoke a little bit about training for our own diplomats who are going overseas.

I wonder if you could expand on that and tell us what you do with diplomats who are coming into Canada in terms of explaining your role. Is there any uptake from any of the diplomatic corps, when they're returning, to take that message back to their own countries?

I wonder if you could speak about those two aspects.

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Certainly. I'll take the training aspect first because I can be brief on that, Mr. Chair.

I had a chance to speak to outgoing heads of mission last year to talk to them about our mandate. We're in the process of developing various tools that they can make use of. We've just developed a very quick two-sided information sheet that they can make use of and pass out to their main interlocutors when they're abroad on posting. Then we have a human rights training component, so I was speaking to colleagues in the foreign service two weeks ago on what we mean by “religious freedom”. We had a wonderful panel. We brought together an evangelical Christian, Rabbi Reuven Bulka from here in Ottawa, and one of the leaders of the Baha'i community here to talk about their experiences and how their communities understand religious freedom. Then we have the Religious Freedom Forum that I mentioned. The broader sort of training that we're developing, that's in the works over this next quarter, as we move into the next fiscal year.

In terms of engaging foreign diplomats here, it's been a bit of a two-way street. I've been reaching out to them and many of them have been reaching out to me. I think within the first two months of my being here I had a chance to meet with certainly all of our key allies on this file, and also some of the key ambassadors for countries that we want to focus upon, including China and Turkey. I had a chance to engage again with the Pakistani ambassador, and a number of others.

We organized an event at headquarters, at foreign affairs, where we brought together roughly 20 ambassadors to talk about what the office is doing. I continue to have ongoing dialogues with them. They're not always easy dialogues, as you would expect, but we want to maintain that dialogue. There are times when we issue démarches for different acts that take place in certain countries. I referenced the case of the Sri Lankan Muslim human rights activist.

But again, the fundamental premise is that we want to engage in that dialogue, even with countries where it's going to be difficult to have that dialogue. We can't just sort of cut it off. We need to find ways to engage. So on a weekly basis I'm meeting with foreign diplomatic officials. Certainly when I go abroad, typically our missions will bring together key like-minded countries, where I can engage with them and get their perspective of what's happening on the ground in these countries. Then we're always engaging with multilateral partners, whether it's the European Union, the UN, or the OSCE. That's a core element of my outreach.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Speaking of countries with which it's difficult to engage, I have a rather active Baha'i community in my area of Newmarket—Aurora, who have expressed their concern about the Baha'i community that is in Iraq.

Any comments on that?

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

In Iraq or in—

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes, in Iraq. They were part of Camp Ashraf, they were moved to Camp Victory, and of course, they're being dispersed from Camp Victory. Obviously, the situation in which they found themselves in Iraq, and certainly the persecution in Iran as well....

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Mr. Chair, I'm not as familiar with that particular case in Iraq, but I can certainly look into that and get back.

We've engaged fairly regularly on the situation in Iran. I've developed a very good relationship with the Baha'i community here in Canada. Also, when I've travelled abroad, I always try to meet with the Baha'i community, whether that's travelling to like-minded countries, such as France, the U.K.... I even had a chance to meet with the Baha'i community when I was in Turkey. When I was recently in the Middle East, I spent the better part of half a day in Haifa and met with the Baha'i World Centre, and people representing the Baha'i community there in Haifa, to get a better understanding of the situation in Iran and more broadly.

The Baha'i community, I think, is really important because not only do they have specific religious freedom concerns, but they continually want to present, and they do present themselves, as a community that advances religious freedom, because it's really implicit in their own set of beliefs. We've found them to be very helpful allies. They've been very engaged, not only with my office but multilaterally. They have a very strong presence and have had almost from the beginning of the United Nations, so they're a regular interlocutor when I'm down at the UN. We see them as a very important component of our outreach because they do have a global presence. They are facing persecution in different countries, notably Iran, and I can certainly get back to the member on Iraq. But, yes, the Baha'i community is really essential to the work that we do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Brown.

We're going over to Mr. Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank your, Mr. Chairman.

I would also like to welcome the ambassador and thank him for his remarks.

I would like to follow up on what my colleague raised regarding aboriginal people and their freedom of religion. You were wondering how you could become involved with these people. You may want to consider using in the future a very appropriate tool, and that is the periodic reports that the signatory countries of certain international covenants must submit to various committees, including the Human Rights Committee. I did this for more than 25 years. You will see that in each country, especially in Latin America, aboriginal issues are always at the forefront. I would therefore quite humbly suggest that tool for your consideration.

I would add that I was a little surprised by one of your answers earlier regarding your status within the Department of Foreign Affairs. If I am not mistaken, you said in your answer to my colleague that you were a little like a director general who, within a department, reports to the deputy minister.

Is your status itself within the department problematic? After listening to you, I was wondering if the freedom to act on the part of the ambassador of the Office of Religious Freedom is restricted by its status within the Department of Foreign Affairs.

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for his question. I'll take the last part first, if I may.

My career has been as a civil servant, and so with the exception of one year when I took time out to return to my theological studies, I've been a civil servant in various departments within the government. In taking up this position, I found fairly early on within the department that I was very well received, I think because of my status as a civil servant. Obviously, I'm on leave now from the civil service to take up the GIC appointment. Certainly there has been strong political support for the work we're doing, but I've also found from the beginning, even if what we were planning on doing and what our role would be might not have been entirely clear, that there has been very strong support from colleagues within the foreign service and within the department here in Ottawa.

Much of my work has involved raising awareness and talking about why we're doing this and why it fits in squarely with Canada's human rights framework. I've always emphasized that this is what Canada does. We speak out on these issues of fundamental human rights. This advancing of freedom of religion in no way denigrates from the other types of rights we're advancing, because they all fit together. No one human right can stand on its own. I think freedom of religion dovetails very nicely with freedom of expression, freedom of association, gender equality, and all of these different issues. So in presenting our work in that broader context, I think my colleagues said , “Okay. We get it. We see where you're going”. I've had very good support, and I don't feel limited in any way in terms of the work we're doing.

I thank the member again for his thoughts on engaging these particular reviews and reports that hold countries to account for how they're dealing with particular situations including the treatment of aboriginal communities, first nations communities.

One avenue we have been considering, which we hope to make effective use of, is the universal periodic reviews that countries are held to. We hope to use that UN avenue as a way of saying, “Here are issues of religious freedom that perhaps dovetail with aboriginal issues, gender equality issues, and the issue of early and forced child marriage, all of which we need to address. This is in the universal periodic review of your country. How can we engage with you in a dialogue to address these deficiencies and, in many cases, the persecution of different groups?”

I thank the member for that question. Our team will take him up on his advice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Earlier, we talked about some specific countries. I think Mr. Dewar mentioned China in particular. I think pretty much all of us are disappointed that the development of human rights there hasn't paralleled the economic improvement they've shown.

The understanding I have is that many of these religious freedoms are given more on a regional or a provincial basis or are taken away more regionally or provincially than they are nationally. I'm just wondering if you have a comment on that. Are there ways that you could see for Canadians, Canadian companies, and Canadian organizations to be working on that in order to take advantage of it? When we find regions where there is more freedom than there is in others, should we be doing more business with them? Also, how do we encourage that development?

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Certainly, from the analysis I've seen and that I think our team has been working with, while there is an overarching framework for controlling religion in China, it's a very complex administrative framework. There's no law on religion in China per se. It's basically administrative and sort of command and control.

That said, there are regions of the country where certain communities are able to practise their faith quite openly, whether we're speaking of indigenous Chinese religions such as Daoism, Confucianism, or certain forms of Buddhism, and whether we're speaking about the growing Han Muslim community or even certain parts of the country where Christians are somewhat unmolested. As for whether we use that as a tie-in to where we target different types of commercial activity, I can't really speak to that. Again, I would defer to those within the department who may be fitting those things together. I would say that the office hasn't been directly engaged in that particular question.

That said, there is some very interesting work being done now by a former Pew Forum senior analyst, who is examining this exact question about how we can link in with the private sector as they engage and invest in particular countries, so that they're aware of where there are violations of religious freedom taking place, perhaps even in territories where they are engaged in certain types of economic activity. I think there's a very laudable goal of raising awareness amongst private sector investors around religious freedom and how it's treated in certain countries—or how it's maltreated in certain countries.

I know that in this particular initiative I'm speaking of they're looking at ways to have that discussion with the private sector to inform them and to raise awareness, and to then perhaps, from that point on, maybe factor into the broader corporate social responsibility the aspects of how you ensure religious freedom is being respected in certain places. Presently in our office we're not engaged directly on this linkage, but there are some interesting projects that are beginning to be launched and that we're plugged into.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay. It's an interesting area that I don't think we've talked about maybe as much as we need to.

You've talked about the escalating persecution of people of faith and about the state of religious freedom deteriorating. Have you done any work on identifying the reasons for that? We would obviously say that there's a kind of increasing militancy in some religious groups, but there are also some other things going on, which is that there are secular governments that seem to be insisting on pushing the expression of religion out of the public realm. Have you done any work on identifying why this is deteriorating around the world, or even in our own country, and why it's not improving?

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Mr. Chair, I would respond by focusing on what we're seeing in the countries that we're engaged in. In many cases most of the countries we're looking at don't have rule of law. They don't have a broad respect for human rights. That obviously exacerbates violations of religious freedom, and in many cases they do not have the institutions that can ensure protection for these groups. Every country often has religious freedom issues that come to the fore, but when we're speaking of liberal democracies, you have institutions in place: the courts, parliaments, legislatures, the actions of citizens themselves to uphold religious freedom. The countries that we're focused on are where people are being tortured, imprisoned, killed for their faith. In focusing on those, we need to have an understanding of what is leading to this increased persecution.

I think the rise of different forms of militancy, of fundamentalism....We see this in certain countries. We see shifting geopolitical realities. We see countries in transition where you have weak institutions that aren't able to ensure protection for certain communities. I think there are a number of different factors.

The rise in governmental restrictions can be as a result of a number of different things, but I think a lot of the increase we're seeing is as a result of social hostilities. Getting back to China, one of the reasons why the numbers in the Pew Forum's research is so high is because China is one of those countries that has high government restrictions. Those restrictions have really not changed a great deal from my knowledge of them—and I don't have an in-depth knowledge of them—but there hasn't been much change there. I think when we see increasing violations of religious freedom, a lot of it is on that social hostility side of the spectrum.

Again, I think we can point to a number of factors that include countries in transition, the increase in militancy, the exporting of different types of militancy, particularly Wahhabi and Salafist Islam, which is a real concern, including within the Islamic world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

Mr. Garneau, I know you had a quick question and then we'll finish up with Mr. Goldring.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

You've partly answered something that I'm curious about, but I'll ask it anyway. Religious freedom presumably means freedom of all religions in all parts of the world. How do you reconcile your mission with respect to the fact that in some religions, for example, I'm going to use the example of homosexuality, it's condemned? We in Canada, of course, with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, believe you cannot discriminate on the basis of a person's sexual orientation. What do you do in countries where that situation is presented to you?

Or we could be talking about—I don't know if it's in some religions—female circumcision. I don't know if that is built into certain religions. It's certainly not something that we accept here, child brides, things like that. How do you deal with those whilst still respecting freedom of religion in other countries?

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for the question because I think it's a very important one. I think that at the core of everything that we're doing, we have to focus on human dignity. All human rights need to have the inherent dignity of every human being at the core. Where there are various religious traditions that have a particular understanding of sexual ethics, sexual morals, they would say that they would not, for example, condone same-sex marriage and so forth.

Those religions, those faiths, certainly have a right to hold those beliefs, but no faith community, no individual, has a right to persecute someone because they have a same-sex orientation. No one has the right to persecute, or to diminish the rights of a young girl who is attempted to be forced into marriage. I think that all of these—

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Let me get into that very specifically. There's a program in Nigeria that you mentioned. Nigerians repress homosexuality. Do you bring that to their attention?

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett]

In the work we're doing, we haven't specifically brought that issue to their attention. However, the committee will probably be aware that within our foreign policy now there is quite a bit of work being done on LGBT rights, especially with regard to how homosexuals are being targeted in a variety of countries, such as Uganda.

I would just say that the targeting of people with violence and with various forms of unacceptable restrictions because of something that is inherent to their human nature is unacceptable. We need to distinguish out something that violates human dignity like that and to say, as we have, that it is unacceptable. I think that's very different from when you have a particular religion that has a different understanding of sexual morals—i.e., we don't believe in this particular form of lifestyle or behaviour. That's different, I think, from saying we need to target that person because of this.

So I think the targeting of someone, the violation of a person's human dignity, is fundamentally inconsistent with any human right, and it's certainly fundamentally inconsistent with religious freedom. All of these different rights and freedoms must work together. One can't trump another. They have to work consistently with each other.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

So you're really the ambassador of human rights and freedom of religion.