To both our witnesses, thank you very much for two different perspectives on the U.S. and the EU.
Dr. Drezner, we're reviewing our Special Economic Measures Act and our Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act. We're trying to figure out if maybe there's a spot we're missing. We've heard loudly from a number of witnesses who state that sanctions have unintended consequences and sometimes these things seem to be a challenge. Both of your remarks bear that out today in terms of once again talking about those stats.
I'm assuming, Dr. Drezner, you are familiar with Magnitsky, and that's part of the reason we're talking about this today. You did say that smart sanctions are more effective. We're looking at trying to figure out if we have a gap in some of our legislation that maybe doesn't address this or doesn't give us an opportunity. Do you have any comments on Magnitsky? I've certainly heard your testimony say that smart can make some sense, that targeted makes sense, that it can have an effect.
We're looking at those who have bad behaviour, massive human rights abusers who raid their countries of money and all these things, and then say, “Hey, we're going to park it in western democracies, and then when we're done ripping off our own countries we'll be able to travel there, we'll be able to live there.”
We're hearing a number of different things. Obviously, if you're going to do something you have to have the tools. You have to have the ability. We've heard here in Canada that maybe we need more resources to target some of these things.
We also hear the complications of what happens with banks. You also talked about that in your testimony. We'll go back to Magnitsky. It's pretty early stages in terms of this act in the U.S. We see some of the blowback that happened from Russia in terms of refusing adoptions of babies, etc.
What are your thoughts on that approach? What are some of the things we need to look out for as we review some of our legislation?