Thank you very much.
First, let me begin by thanking the committee for the opportunity to appear today. I am hopeful that my experience will be of assistance to your review. I also appreciate the opportunity to further refine the Canadian sanctions legal regime. It is an honour to be a voice in this process.
By way of background, I am a partner with the law firm of Borden Ladner Gervais. I regularly advise clients on a range of issues relating to Canada's various economic sanctions. Our clients have included very large sophisticated Canadian companies as well as a number of small and medium-sized enterprises.
I have assisted those clients in developing compliance programs, conducting compliance audits and investigations, determining the legality of potential export transactions, applying for exemption permits, and undertaking voluntary disclosure for inadvertent breaches with the RCMP. We have also had the opportunity to advise foreign companies and foreign nations on Canada's economic sanctions regime.
It's within this context that we've prepared our recommendations and comments today. I should also mention that my partner Jennifer Radford, who also works in this area, has assisted in the preparation of these recommendations. They represent our views based on our experience with our clients, but they do not necessarily reflect the views of our firm or those clients.
It's within this context that we have identified four areas of potential improvement that arise from the challenges that our clients have experienced with the administration of Canada's export controls and economic sanctions. At the outset, I'd like to stress one other point, and it's this. Our recommendations, while they highlight what we believe are some inefficiencies in the system that could be improved, are not directed at the civil servants, or at particular civil servants. In our experience, the civil servants have been extremely knowledgeable, helpful, engaged, and responsive within what we perceive to be the parameters in which they are permitted to act and the resources at their disposal.
Let me turn to four recommendations we would ask this committee to consider.
Recommendation one is to provide Global Affairs Canada with the mandate and the resources to improve outreach to Canadian companies. Many companies in Canada, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, do not have sophisticated, and what by necessity are often expensive, control systems in place to ensure that they remain compliant with Canada's economic sanctions.
We have seen, first-hand, Canadian companies elect not to pursue lucrative economic opportunities abroad because of the compliance challenges they face. Some easy steps would go a long way, and we'd like to highlight two. In the first place, we should provide written guidance on how programs for compliance with Canadian economic sanctions can be developed and how Canadian companies that have already developed compliance programs could determine whether their existing compliance programs are adequate from the perspective of the Canadian government. Such guidance is provided in other countries, most notably the United States. In the second place, we should provide a consolidated, searchable list of the designated persons and the designated entities as identified by the various pieces of legislation that form the economic sanctions framework. Currently there does not exist a publicly available, up-to-date, consolidated list of all of Canada's various sanctions lists.
Recommendation two is to provide Global Affairs Canada with the mandate and the resources to issue guidance on interpreting the meaning of specific provisions in the implementing regulations. Other jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union, issue written guidance on how to interpret particular provisions. Canada does not. The result is that Canadian companies often face a level of uncertainty with respect to compliance that their counterparts in allied countries do not.
While lawyers such as Milos or me can give advice based on what the U.S. or the EU says, at the end of the day, it is not what the Canadian government and the department in charge have told us that they believe it means.
Recommendation three is to provide Global Affairs with the mandate and resources to improve the exemption permit application process.
In our experience, significant delays in the processing of permit applications are too common. To avoid delay, we would urge this committee to consider recommending that a mandatory known period of time be imposed on the determination of permit applications. A known time frame will greatly assist Canadian companies that are anxious to know whether they may capitalize on an opportunity, and assist them in managing their business relationships abroad. Again, on a first-hand basis, there have been too many situations where a Canadian company seeking guidance from the department has had to turn away from opportunities simply because of uncertainty and because they didn't want to take on that risk.
On recommendation four, there currently in Canada does not exist a formal voluntary disclosure program that encourages Canadian companies that discover an inadvertent violation to come forward to bring themselves into compliance. We have had clients elect to voluntarily disclose a breach to the RCMP, and in my experience the RCMP has reacted very positively. That said, clients have elected to proceed in that manner with the knowledge that they are putting themselves at risk. When they elect to proceed in that manner, they do not have the protections of voluntary disclosure that we see in other statutory frameworks within the Government of Canada. The Competition Act is an example of a formal voluntary disclosure process, if this committee wishes to look for an example.
With that, let me close by saying this. Although our recommendations do not provide specific legislative amendments, we believe that they would improve the administration of the economic sanctions regime in Canada.
Once again, thank you for inviting me here today. It's my honour, and I look forward to answering any questions you may have.