Thank you to all the witnesses for reminding the committee, and more important, the Canadians who are following these hearings, just how many definitions there are of sanctions and the intent of the different sorts of sanctions, whether it is to penalize, to shame, to persuade, to restrict, or, as has been referenced here, to send powerful signals. I regret that I'm old enough to remember the first UN sanctions, imposed against Rhodesia in 1966—90% sanctions, trying to force the country to comply with UN direction, which were largely unsuccessful because they were flagrantly breached by South Africa.
I'd like to come back, today, to the Magnitsky Act as it was passed in the United States, recognizing that in Canada both SEMA and the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act have sort of responded to issues of the day and been updated as conditions and challenges arise in different ways.
As I read it, the Magnitsky Act is certainly effective in sending a signal and shaming the particular country in question, but its ultimate purpose, as designed, is to ostracize or isolate corrupt criminal individuals and their wealth and basically bar them from removing themselves, their families, and their ill-gotten gains to the United States. As the Canadian Parliament passed a motion last year, it would do the same in Canada.
I'm just wondering—for Dr. Lilly first, but our other witnesses as well.... I think the patron of the Magnitsky Act, Mr. Browder, is hoping that individual unilateral legislation banning or blocking these individuals and their wealth would have the multilateral effect—as more and more pleasant places around the world close their doors—of targeting not the individuals in FACFOA, who are senior officials in government or high-level criminals, but the jailers and the policemen—as Mr. Browder said, the engineer who drove the train to Auschwitz. We are seeing more and more, particularly in Russia but also in other countries, these low-level criminals accumulating vast wealth and then seeking to move it to safe havens around the world.