Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ms. LeClaire, you said something earlier that I found quite striking. You were talking about the states. You said that whenever you do something, you can certainly expect a response. So if state A takes an action towards state B, state B is going to respond. I think of that and I think of regime types. I think of authoritarian states and how they might respond. The way they'll respond will be dictated by the nature of the regime, the nature of the political culture in that regime, the nature of the leadership.
This committee has heard testimony from a number of experts. Last week I mentioned Kim Richard Nossal, who's one of the foremost experts in Canada on sanctions legislation. This week I want to talk about Daniel Drezner, who's based in the United States, at Tufts University. He's a widely recognized expert. He told this committee that when sanctions are imposed, “usually the authoritarian state becomes even more authoritarian in nature in response to any sort of external acts of economic coercion”, “economic coercion” meaning, of course, sanctions.
I read that quote and I think of the proposed Magnitsky act that has been tabled as a private member's bill and has been the subject of much debate. If Canada were to enact a Magnitsky act of the type that's been suggested, doesn't that give carte blanche...or if not carte blanche, doesn't that open up the door to a very difficult response, from a human rights perspective? Doesn't that allow Russia to take actions that would go contrary to very basic democratic principles and lead to human rights abuses getting even worse in a state like Russia?