Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Fragiskatos.
I'd like to follow up on my colleague's questions around targeted sanctions in regard to individuals, such as the Magnitsky sanctions. In a sister committee during the summer, we heard some horrific testimony of extrajudicial arrests and torture in Crimea and in Russian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk. In one case, these extrajudicial arrests, the torture, and the killings were done to terrorize the local population. In the case of Crimea, the witness was transported to Russia for a show trial. The torture was a means to extract false testimony against a Ukrainian documentary maker and his colleague.
When we listened to this testimony, it became clear that names could be named. They named officials who engaged in this torture. They named FSB officials, the Russian intelligence agency officials. In certain cases, they were directing the torture, and in some cases were engaged in the actual torture.
We know that Professor Eckert will get back to us in regard to the effectiveness of sanctions that target human rights abusers very directly, but I'd like to put this question to Dr. Charron. For travel bans and asset freezes in cases such as that of Russia, where you have not only a re-emerging dictatorship, but also a kleptocracy, with these officials often travelling to the west and their family members travelling to the west—often, they have significant assets in the west—my question is, would sanctions not be effective?
It seems, by the reaction from the Russian side, that these individually targeted sanctions against torturers, jailers, and prosecutors and judges in show trials appear to be effective. One of the things the witnesses made clear was that they wanted to see those individuals who had committed these horrors against them named publicly, and in a way that would actually have an effect so that they couldn't hide in those shadows.
Professor Charron, back in 2005, you wrote a paper called “Canada's 3T's of non-Trade Sanctions' Employment: Tertiary, Timid and Tepid”. These seem to be the opposite, these very targeted sanctions. Do you still agree that Canada's sanctions regime is tertiary, timid, and tepid, as you wrote back in 2005? Is this not an effective tool based upon what we've seen so far with Russia?