Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 14th, 2016

[The Chair (Hon. Robert Nault (Kenora, Lib.)), Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

Before we get started with our witnesses this afternoon, just for your information, I want to bring to your attention a number of issues that we'll have to deal with procedurally at the end of the meeting. You could have a quick read if you haven't had a chance yet.

There are two letters. One is to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It relates to our interest in clarifying the situation with regard to the witnesses from the department over the next number of weeks. It's very precise, so I'd like you to have a good look at it. The second letter is to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. It lays out the information we'd like to get from her department. Have a good look at that.

Then there are two travel requests that we need to have approved. I'll get the clerk to distribute those items to you in your free time here over the next two minutes or so. You can do two things at once, I'm sure. Have a good look, and then we can have a little discussion at the end of the meeting. That's just to prepare you for those two issues after the agenda and the order of reference.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, April 14, 2016, and section 20 of the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, our statutory review of the act continues.

Before us this afternoon are Mr. David Kramer and Mr. Jared Genser. Both are in video conference with us. I want to thank both gentlemen for being here with us.

The process, if it's not been explained to our two witnesses, is that we'll hear from you both in order and then go straight to questions for roughly an hour. We will start with Mr. Kramer.

[David Kramer, Senior Director, Human Rights and Democracy, McCain Institute for International Leadership, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thanks very much. It's a great privilege and honour to be appearing before you via Skype on this important issue of sanctions.

If you don't mind, Mr. Chair, what I will do is focus on whether sanctions work and what the United States has been doing. I will not...I don't feel it's my area of expertise or responsibility to focus on the legislation you have before you, but I'll talk a little more broadly about the U.S. experience with sanctions.

Quite honestly, if this hearing were held even a week ago today, I might offer a slightly different testimony, at least at the end of my remarks, but in light of the election of Donald Trump, I do think that sanctions will be re-examined and given another look, even though sanctions had been an important part of U.S. foreign policy over the years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They have been important parts of the foreign policies of many other countries as well.

Before getting into the implications of the election in the United States, let me back off and look at the issue of whether sanctions are effective.

Some analysts argue that sanctions rarely work against intended targets. They harm average citizens and they even inadvertently help the targeted regime demobilize the international community by giving it the false sense that the international community is in fact responding to a crisis situation.

Some researchers such as Gary Hufbauer claim that sanctions have no more than a 34% success rate over the years. Sanctions have worked in places like South Africa with the apartheid regime, against the Polish government during the crackdown against Solidarity, and in the case of Iran, in bringing it to the table to negotiate over nuclear weapons. The Jackson-Vanik legislation that was passed in the 1970s involved the Soviet Union and its ban on emigration by Jews out of the Soviet Union. Most recently, there were sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At the risk of stating the obvious, they have failed miserably—most notably, at least, the U.S. sanctions when it comes to the issue of Cuba.

The Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, Jack Lew, said in a speech on March 30, “While every situation will require a tailored approach, the underlying goal of all sanctions is an effort to change behaviour.”

Sanctions are indeed most effective when they can take advantage of other economic conditions. That has been the case, for example, with the drop in the price of oil, where sanctions have been accentuated in their impact due to the precipitous drop in the price of oil from Russia.

Similarly, countries more integrated into the international financial system will feel the impact of sanctions more than countries that are isolated. This would be true in the case of Iran and even in the case of Russia, of course, in contrast to the situation with North Korea. Sanctioned countries tend to see a drop in foreign investment out of fear that even if a certain project is not currently prohibited, it could be prohibited should sanctions be ramped up against the targeted nation.

That brings me to the importance of the psychology of sanctions. The target of sanctions needs to think that it is going to get hit with more sanctions if it doesn't change its behaviour. The mistake we've made, for example in the case of Russian sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea, is that the conversation, particularly in Europe, has been about the hope that the EU will maintain existing sanctions. There is virtually no conversation about ramping up or ratcheting up sanctions should Russia continue to violate the Minsk cease-fire agreement.

Similarly, it was a mistake for Europeans to raise expectations that Russia might be sanctioned over its military actions in Syria, particularly in Aleppo, that killed hundreds of innocent civilians. Nothing happened in the way of new sanctions against Russia for Syria, and they were wrong to have raised the hopes and possibility that such steps would be proposed.

Sanctions today, unlike most of those in the past, which were broad and sweeping in nature, tend to be more targeted and aimed, if you will, at the bad guys responsible for egregious behaviour. They are best done with other countries, but that said, the extraterritorial nature of U.S. sanctions should not be underestimated. Secretary Lew said in his March 30 speech, “The power of our”—meaning western—“sanctions is inextricably linked to our leadership role in the world.”

Sanctions were forged in the context of our position as the world's largest economy and the dominant role the U.S. financial system plays in global commerce.

It's also important that we not confuse means with ends. Unity on sanctions, meaning trans-Atlantic unity, a global unity in which Canada, the United States, Europeans, and others come together, is an important issue, but it's a means to accomplishing what should be the goal with sanctions. Take, for example, getting Russia out of Ukraine and respecting Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Sometimes the search for unity on sanctions leads us to the lowest common denominator on sanctions. It's simply easier. It's not easy, but easier for the U.S. to pursue sanctions on its own.

I'm all for unity. I'm for the U.S. working with other countries on sanctions. As Secretary Lew said, “The more international support there is for sanctions, and for their underlying objective, the more effective they will be”, but not to the point of confusing unity with the objective of changing behaviour. Sanctions are best done as part of an overall approach to a problem, but sanctions are not the be-all and end-all in and of themselves. Imposed in a vacuum, they're less likely to work. They have to be accompanied by diplomatic and other means of coercive actions.

The question is not whether sanctions have worked or not, but whether they can be effective when used along with other elements. Sometimes they are the best option to have available, certainly as a step to ensure that we don't go straight to a military response. They can be part of the answer when we in the international community say something is unacceptable. In fact, they give meaning to the word “unacceptable” and make sure that we do not go back to business as usual after we have declared that a certain country's or a regime's actions are unacceptable.

To critics of sanctions I always ask, “If not sanctions, what then would you do?” Rarely do I get a satisfactory answer.

Secretary Lew, in his March 30 speech, said:

Sanctions are not meant to dole out punishment for past actions. They are forward-looking, intended to keep illicit or dangerous conduct out of our system and create pressure to change future behavior. This foundational principle is very different from civil penalties and forfeiture, which are punitive and meant to address past behavior.

Quite frankly, and with all due respect to Secretary Lew, I don't agree. Sanctions are imposed reactively, after something bad has happened, after a country has been invaded or a regime is in place oppressing a population's rights or a country launches a campaign in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Sanctions are not imposed pre-emptively, in anticipation of something bad happening. They do not look forward. They always follow something bad.

That's important to bear in mind, because when they are being considered, countries are not looking at ideal options. In an ideal world, sanctions wouldn't be necessary, nor would our militaries, but we don't live in an ideal world. Sometimes we have to resort to measures that we'd rather not have to take, and those include sanctions.

Sometimes sanctions seek to block funding to the bad actors, whether those are individuals involved in gross human rights abuses, as was the case with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act that the U.S. Congress passed in late 2012, or whether it is funding for terrorist organizations. Sometimes they're designed to change behaviour, such as in the case of Iran or in Russia's aggression and invasion of Ukraine.

It's important to demonstrate that sanctions also have an end when the target of sanctions changes its behaviour. Secretary Lew said, “since the goal of sanctions is to pressure bad actors to change their policy, we must be prepared to provide relief from sanctions when we succeed. If we fail to follow through, we undermine our own credibility and damage our ability to use sanctions to drive policy change.”

Let me explain the sanctions that we have in place against Russia. Two are currently in place and two have been talked about and considered, but no action has been taken.

The Magnitsky act that I mentioned earlier was done through legislation by the U.S. Congress, meaning it will be much harder for president-elect Trump to remove the Magnitsky legislation, though he would have the authority not to impose those sanctions under Magnitsky. I regret to say that no other country, including Canada, has passed any legislation comparable to the Sergei Magnitsky act.

There were Ukraine-related sanctions, and there were two different kinds of sanctions under the Ukraine-related sanctions. One was for Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, and the other was for its military actions in Donbass.

These are sanctions that in fact president-elect Trump could lift. They are not codified by U.S. legislation. Though if president-elect Trump were to lift such sanctions, it would be likely to generate a very negative reaction from Congress.

The other two areas involve Syria and Iraq, and here there has only been conversation about imposing sanctions on Russia for its military actions in Syria, especially in Aleppo, and for its unprecedented hacking of email systems in the United States with the goal of trying to influence or affect U.S. elections.

I am very worried—and I will end with this, Mr. Chair—that Donald Trump will move to lift sanctions on Russia. I'm equally worried that even before he has the authority to do so he will cause the European Union, when it reviews sanctions next month, to decide not to renew sanctions and roll them over for another six months. I think this would be a very dangerous move. It would be a disaster for Ukraine, for the region, and for the concepts of sovereignty and territorial integrity that many sanctions were designed to uphold.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kramer.

We'll go right to Mr. Genser, please.

[Jared Genser, Managing Director, Perseus Strategies]

Thanks so much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I'm pleased to be able to testify before the standing committee in your comprehensive review of the Special Economic Measures Act and the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act. I'll discuss my perspective on each of those laws in turn.

First, as you know, FACFOA was enacted in 2011, in the midst of the Arab Spring, as a tool for supporting states in political turmoil that were trying to transition toward democratic rule. FACFOA allows Canada to temporarily freeze the property of corrupt current or former foreign officials, as well as that of their families or associates, when the foreign state formally requests that Canada do so, all with a view toward ultimately recovering those assets for the foreign state. Given this relatively narrow scope, however, FACFOA has been utilized only a handful of times to sanction corrupt foreign officials, in the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, and Ukraine. I note that the Ukrainian sanctions were jointly authorized under SEMA.

In my view, the major problem with FACFOA as enacted is that it relies on a foreign state claiming that a politically exposed person from that state has stolen funds and then formally requesting that Canada act. The expectation that governments will be eager to call out corruption within their own ranks is not consistent with the reality that many of the world's countries are not free. Indeed, the organization that Mr. Kramer formerly ran, Freedom House, in its “Freedom in the World 2016” report, concluded that only 86 countries can currently be considered free, while 109 countries are either partly free or not free at all.

The effect of this reality is to limit FACFOA's usefulness to penalizing corrupt former officials when corrupted governments have changed, rather than productively sanctioning corrupt current officials, as foreign heads of state, in many cases, are often themselves complicit in or benefiting from corruption. Indeed, authoritarian governments that run on endemic corruption are thus totally outside the reach of FACFOA.

Let me illustrate the problem.

I serve as pro bono counsel to Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of the Maldives, the small island nation in the Indian Ocean. He was overthrown in a coup, and in February and March of 2015 was abruptly arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 13 years in prison on terrorism-related charges. The UN found that his detention was arbitrary and in violation of international law. With immense pressure brought against the Maldives by the international community, he was released in January 2016 and permitted to travel to the United Kingdom for medical treatment.

In September 2016, just a few months ago, the largest corruption scandal in the history of the country was uncovered. Nearly $80 million from the state-owned tourism firm was reported stolen, with President Abdulla Yameen at the centre of the scandal. Documents found on the electronic devices of the now disgraced and imprisoned former vice-president, Ahmed Adeeb, revealed a clandestine system whereby top Maldivian officials, including Yameen, senior ministers and aides, and members of the judiciary, received bribes and stolen money. Senior judges were reported to have received money and luxury flats and to have met regularly with the president and his deputy, who then fixed the outcomes in prominent court cases, including that of Nasheed. Yameen himself allegedly received bags of cash filled with up to $1 million.

Additionally, the documents uncovered a plan for the president's ministers and aides to launder up to $1.5 billion with the help of the country's central bank and a few foreigners. Other leaked documents accuse Yameen of corruption and fraud in state-owned entities, with a value of $150 million. This involved the selling of oil to the then military dictatorship of Burma in the early 2000s, when it was under Canadian and international sanctions. Yameen has publicly apologized for the scandal, but has refused to admit his responsibility.

Yet under FACFOA, Yameen and his ministers get a free pass and have total assurance that not only will Canada not sanction them for this corruption, but even worse, as long as their political party remains in power—I note that he and his half-brother, Maumoon Gayoom, have ruled the country for 33 of the last 38 years—Canada may actually be a safe haven where he can transfer and maintain his stolen assets for safekeeping in Canadian banks.

Why does this matter? In short, corrupt governments often stand against against the values and priorities of Canada and other western countries. In the case of the Maldives, President Yameen returned his country to autocracy, has strongly aligned his country with China, and has allowed it to become a hotspot for Islamic State recruitment, with more than 200 fighters estimated to have travelled to Syria and Iraq. That would be the equivalent on a per capita basis of Canada sending 21,000 fighters to ISIS. In my view, all of these are developments that are contrary to Canada's interests.

I understand and appreciate that in adopting the law initially Canada considered it easier to act when a foreign government had explicitly assessed evidence of corruption and requested assistance. Nevertheless, I believe that for the most egregious of examples of the kind that I have described, it would benefit Canada to consider amending FACFOA so that it could have the flexibility to act without the request of a foreign government and could stand publicly against grand corruption when it occurs on this kind of scale.

Second, with regard to the Special Economic Measures Act, while the law provides for a much more robust sanctioning capability than FACFOA, it too has room for improvement. Currently, the Canadian government can take unilateral action under SEMA only when “a grave breach of international peace and security has occurred that has resulted or is likely to result in a serious international crisis”. However, this threshold is significantly higher than that given by the UN charter, which empowers the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions when there is merely “the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression”.

As Canada readily employs the United Nations Act to join on to the UN's sanctioning of regimes, there is no reason that Canada should require a separate and higher threshold to trigger economic sanctions absent a UN regime, especially given that vetoes of China and Russia have arbitrarily blocked the imposition of UN sanctions, especially in the case of mass atrocity crimes.

To remedy this inconsistency, I would respectfully request that Parliament consider amending subsection 4(1) of SEMA to include a third justification for economic measures, in addition to the “international organization” and “grave breach of international peace and security” justifications that are already present, by adding this language, “or to prevent or respond to actual or imminent mass atrocity crimes including genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity”. An expansion of the language in this manner would give teeth to Canada's principled international leadership on human rights.

Lastly, I should note that as Canada reviews its sanctioning capabilities I very much hope that Parliament will consider amending SEMA and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize your government to impose entry and property sanctions against any foreign person or entity that's responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of international human rights.

In March 2015, a resolution advanced by Irwin Cotler was adopted by Parliament, unanimously supporting the creation of such human rights sanctions, but efforts to enact these amendments analogous to the U.S. global Magnitsky act have languished. In my view, having such authorities at the government's disposal would provide it with maximum flexibility to sanction the most egregious human rights violators around the world.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the standing committee today, and of course I'm also happy to answer any questions you might have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much, Mr. Genser and Mr. Kramer.

We'll go straight to questions by committee members. We'll start with Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony before us today.

We have heard through this study that the sanctions are only as effective as the capacity of various government departments to, on the one hand, monitor and force compliance, or on the other hand, to detect violations and carry out enforcement.

In the United States, the treasury's office of foreign assets control is the lead investigator and prosecutor. We have heard from different Canadian government agencies and departments that in fact there's a disconnect between their individual responsibilities, whether it's immigration, FINTRAC, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, the RCMP, or CSIS. I'm wondering how you feel about the suggestion that one central lead agency, with responsibilities for sanctions and for monitoring compliance and enforcement to make those sanctions more effective, should have the authority to guide other agencies.

That's for both of you, please, with Mr. Kramer first.

[David Kramer]

Thank you very much for the question.

Again, I'm here in Washington, so perhaps I will give how we do it here in the United States. My answer is also based on having served in the U.S. Department of State for eight years during the Bush administration.

There are two departments that take the lead on sanctions. On the financial side, when it comes to assets, it is, as you said, sir, the treasury department's office of foreign assets control, OFAC. In my experience in government, and even out of government, I find OFAC to be one of the most effective agencies or offices within the treasury department. There are also sanctions that could involve visas, and visas are handled under the State Department, so there is the breakdown of responsibility, depending on the kinds of sanctions are imposed.

Most of the conversation, not only here today, but in general, is about financial sanctions, which our treasury department would take a lead on. With regard to denying people, say, Russian officials on the Magnitsky list—it's a privilege not a right to come to the United States, either themselves or their families—denying people I think is an effective tool. It's targeted. It's against individuals. It's not sweeping.

That involves the State Department. Visas are discretionary by nature, which means they cannot be challenged in a court of law. Financial sanctions could be challenged in a court of law. Therefore, they are subject to a higher evidentiary threshold. The treasury department has to make sure it could prevail should someone challenge those sanctions.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Genser.

[Jared Genser]

Briefly, I'm obviously not an expert on how you organize yourselves in Canada on these questions, but I associate myself, of course, with Mr. Kramer's observations about the United States.

I will say that although monitoring and detecting is critically important and enforcement is important, I wouldn't underestimate the power as I described in my testimony of ensuring that you have the authorities and are exercising the authorities to actually render these kinds of sanctions publicly.

Let me give you an example from my real life experience. I spent five years as Aung San Suu Kyi's international counsel during the latter five years that she was under house arrest—of course, the now leader of a more democratic Burma. Recently, the United States removed its financial sanctions against Burma across the board, with the exception of people who were narco-traffickers or terrorist-affiliated people.

The general sanctions that had been imposed against many individual blocked persons and companies were removed. I heard, anecdotally, from a friend of mine in Rangoon about one of the Burmese companies that was off that list. They tried to open up a bank account with a U.S. bank, and the U.S. bank actually said, “Well, yes, you're not on the U.S. list, but you're still on Canada's list”, and refused to open an account on that basis.

It may well be the case that right now you don't have the full range of bureaucratic tools at your disposal to be able to do this on a larger scale, but I wouldn't underestimate the impact, and I think that story illustrates precisely what I'm talking about.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

You mentioned the Magnitsky act. While there was unanimous passage of a motion supporting the Magnitsky act provisions, you're right that the private member's bill died when an election occurred last year. There are now again two new bills, one in the Senate and one in the House of Commons, based on the Magnitsky act, with a couple of slight variations.

Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs has said that existing legislation is adequate to identify and prevent funds involved in the Magnitsky realm of fraudulent funds from entering Canada. However, Mr. Browder from the Hermitage fund has recently provided information to the RCMP that shows millions of dollars have come into Canada undetected and have been transferred again by various bodies out of Canada, and that Canada is being used as a base for millions of dollars of fraudulent money activities. I know both of you spoke to the importance of the Magnitsky act in the United States. I'm wondering if Mr. Browder is making the case that the Magnitsky act is needed in Canada.

[David Kramer]

I'd be happy to comment.

I do think it would be very positive for Canada to enact Magnitsky-like legislation. In the United States, Magnitsky legislation technically wasn't required for the president to go after those involved in the Magnitsky case. There is existing presidential authority in the United States for the president, delegated to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, to impose sanctions on people involved in gross human rights abuses, even for people involved in major corruption, which the global Magnitsky act, which has not passed the U.S. Congress, would also go after.

The United States has been the only country that has passed Magnitsky legislation. It happened now almost four years ago. Not another democratic country has passed similar legislation. I think it would help governments to impose the kinds of sanctions that are called for under the legislation, because sometimes governments need that extra push from their parliaments to make sure that they go after people who have been involved in gross human rights abuses. I understand the reluctance of governments to avoid codification of sanctions, because once sanctions become codified it is harder to remove them. At the same time, without that codification, without the passage of legislation, we sometimes see governments less eager or enthusiastic to propose them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

[Jared Genser]

I've had the opportunity to work with Canadian governments of various political stripes over many years, and have found Canada to be an outspoken and strong advocate on international human rights regardless of which government is in power. Obviously, there are different perspectives, I'm sure on that, but that has been my own experience working in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council on human rights issues, at the UN in New York, and other multilateral fora, including the OAS as well.

I do think that it would be very consistent with the kind of leadership role that I've seen Canada playing internationally to be able to move this kind of legislation. I agree with Mr. Kramer, of course, that there may be some existing authority. I'm not an expert on Canadian law. I'm not a Canadian barred lawyer, but in my conversations with Irwin Cotler, whom I've known for many years, he believes that while there may be some authorities on components of Magnitsky, there are not on others.

Speaking with a single voice through the identification and the censoring through travel bans and asset freezes of the most egregious human rights violators in the world, and doing that systematically under a single and unified set of changes to your laws, would create a very powerful voice internationally, on Canada's behalf, for the values that are embedded in your Charter of Rights and Freedoms and are so important to your foreign policy abroad.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fragiskatos, please.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Kramer.

I'm particularly concerned about unintended consequences. We have heard from, arguably, the foremost expert on sanctions policy in Canada, from Kim Richard Nossal, recently on the ability of authoritarian regimes to simply ignore or not be impacted by sanctions. There's a 2010 article, written by two noted academics, Joseph Wright and Abel Escribà-Folch, “Dealing with Tyranny: International Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers”. In that article they say that authoritarian regimes respond to sanctions by simply raising their tax revenue, and in turn, directing those funds to the maintenance of their tools of repression, such as the police, the military, and so on and so forth.

I'm particularly concerned, if we went down this road, how Russia would respond, and has responded, frankly. It doesn't look like the Magnitsky act has elicited the kind of political change that we had hoped for. I'm certainly not one that agrees with what Russia has done in the Ukraine and elsewhere, and I see that there are issues of a democratic deficit in Russia. However, if Canada goes down the road of enacting its own Magnitsky act, are there going to be unintended consequences, namely the empowering of the Russian state?

[David Kramer]

Thank you very much for your question. It touches on a very important issue.

In 2012, soon after the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky act, and the president signed it into law, President Putin responded by banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American citizens. He went after the most vulnerable, innocent segment of his population and punished them. That was obviously something we did not want. It also hurt American citizens who wanted to give a loving home to Russian orphans, but it does get at the nature of Mr. Putin and his regime, that he would respond by punishing his own people.

He did something similar after Ukraine-related sanctions were imposed by a number of countries, where he banned the import of food and agricultural products from countries that imposed sanctions on Russia. Again, Putin imposed a higher price on his own people in response to steps that we had taken. There are these unintended consequences, which I think you're absolutely right to look at, but the—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

You would agree, I think, that they're very significant consequences from a human rights perspective.

[David Kramer]

I agree completely, but the problem is not with the sanctions that have been imposed. The problem is that we have not done an effective job in the west to explain to our own citizens—and to Russian citizens, which is a challenge given Putin's control over the media—that the sanctions that have hurt the most have been the ones that Putin himself has imposed against his own people.

It is a response to our sanctions—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Considering the nature of media in Russia, it would be difficult to communicate that. Certainly if the United States as a superpower can't communicate it, I doubt Canada as a middle power would be able to communicate it.

I don't mean to cut you off, but my time is limited.

[David Kramer]

That's okay.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

In your view, is Russia the world's leading violator of human rights? I'm just confused about the fixation with Russia when we have arguably much more serious violations of human rights, as egregious as some of the human rights violations that Russia has engaged in. Certainly I have great respect for Mr. Magnitsky and even Mr. Browder, who has championed Mr. Magnitsky's name for very good, moral reasons.

[David Kramer]

Is Russia the worst human rights abuser? The short answer is no. However, Russia is one of the worst, and it's only been getting worse over the years, particularly since Putin returned to power in 2012. As Mr. Genser mentioned, I used to run Freedom House. It produces this category of “the worst of the worst”, and Russia is not in that category. Countries like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are among the worst of the worst.

Your question leads me to say that this is why I support the global Magnitsky act, which has not yet been passed. It would put the spotlight on other countries that are engaged in the greatest human rights abuses. My view is that Russia may not be the worst, but you sort of have to go after opportunities when they present themselves.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I would simply respond to that with some confusion, with all due respect. Wouldn't you want to go after far worse violators of human rights simply as a way to send a clear signal to the world that we're paying attention to the worst violators?

As a final question, how many entities have had travel bans and asset freezes imposed on them as a result of the Magnitsky act?

[David Kramer]

First, yes, I would like to go after other countries. That's why I support global Magnitsky. But the Magnitsky story itself presented an ideal opportunity to go after Russian officials involved in gross human rights abuses.

The number of entities under the Magnitsky act is zero, I believe. The Magnitsky act goes after individuals, not entities. It denies people the privilege to come to the United States, and it would freeze their assets if they had any here. There are about 38 people involved on the public list, I think, and there are at least two names on the classified list.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Kramer. I would just add that Canada has measures in place that would prevent individuals who have violated human rights from entering the country.

Mr. Genser, you talked about reforms. I believe you were talking about FACFOA. You talked about adding to the legislation a focus on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes—real, systemic human rights abuses. Could you expand on that?