Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

Mr. Clement, please.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I want to get your perspective. You were talking about, either directly or indirectly, the social determinants of health and their impact on security as well. Of course, we've had a signature initiative since 2010, the Muskoka initiative on maternal, newborn and child health. I would love to get your perspective on what's working with that, what isn't working, and those kinds of things.

[Jacquelyn Wright]

In relation to disasters?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

It's a question of building up capacity and giving mothers and newborns a better ability to survive in difficult circumstances. In terms of your work, what have you observed with respect to Canada's contribution on that?

[Jacquelyn Wright]

I'm going to link these two points, because one of the things that's important is disaster risk reduction, including prevention of any kind, whether it be in training mothers, or giving access to infrastructure and medical facilities, etc.

Women can be trained and it can create a resilience in a community, which then allows for fewer deaths in a natural disaster. Particularly, I think that in health disasters women who are better prepared and whose children are better nourished stand a better chance of being more resilient. There's a medical aspect, of course, to the maternal, newborn and child health program, but there's also work around gender equality and creating the situation where men are supporting women's health and children's health, and creating the enabling environment for that. It really has built resilience in communities.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Go ahead.

[Julie Delahanty]

I think the maternal, newborn, and child health initiative really helped initially to raise the profile of some of the issues around particularly maternal health, although ultimately, I think there was a bit of a lack of attention.... The attention focused much more strongly on child health and child nutrition rather than on maternal health. I've always said, where's the “W” in MNCH? That was an issue. Women have many needs, and they have rights, and we did a disservice, in some sense, by not supporting women who have many, many needs, particularly in crisis situations.

We still don't have enough money. A certain amount of money went in the context of a declining ODA budget. We're very far from 0.7%. I think we need to keep on pushing for that, because we could do a lot more for women and children if we were actually paying our fair share.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Mr. Allison.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you.

To the organizations, thank you very much for the work you do and for being here today.

To follow up on Peter's comments, I believe that both micro-finance and microcredit are huge. I think they're very important. You guys talked about that. When you look at some of these initiatives, should micro-finance or microcredit be a part of it when you're looking at the programming for women in general? If we don't have the economic piece right....

It talks about all the things that are so difficult coming down the road. As Peter said, it's not a silver bullet. It won't fix everything, but in terms of programming for women, would this be one of the economic ones, or one of the tools we should be trying to use, when we look at programming overall?

[Jacquelyn Wright]

Absolutely. One of the cornerstones of CARE's programming across many different sectors, whether it be food, nutrition, security, humanitarian, or maternal, newborn, and child health, is that we use sometimes a village or savings and loan association type of programming. As was mentioned earlier, women in these situations often can't access the microcredit. They don't have collateral.

This is a step before that. It brings together a group of women who save money together, lend out money to each other, and slowly, over time, build their economic ability and work their way up to a more microcredit type of situation. When you do that, you also build a group who comes together in camaraderie. They find that they can meet a lot of needs that way, and not just economic needs. It also becomes a platform for engaging in other issues. It's a platform for talking to men about the sharing of household duties. It's a platform for talking about gender-based violence.

It's a real cornerstone to all the kinds of programming we do, where you can really work with these women's groups, hear their voices, and support them in the most basic of ways.

[Julie Delahanty]

I would just say that it can be excellent programming, but we shouldn't be assuming that it is for women. We should be asking the women what it is they need in their communities and what is the most important thing. I would say that microcredit is very useful for what we call the entrepreneurial poor, but for the most vulnerable, the poorest of the poor, the extreme poor, it doesn't necessarily work for them. They need asset transfers, not microcredit.

When you're helping within those communities, I think being really cognizant about who you're helping is really useful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, thank you very much.

Now that our hour has wrapped up, I want to take this opportunity to thank both CARE Canada and Oxfam Canada for very good presentations. They will be very helpful.

There is one issue I'd like you to think a bit about and maybe write back to us on. I'm very interested in your comments about women remaining largely excluded from the peace process. I'm curious to know what the key factors are to change that.

I was just thinking out loud to myself, and I'll say it to you, does that mean Canada doesn't have any women negotiators who are working on this, or are you speaking specifically about the negotiators in some of these troubled countries? I want to get your sense of that, and on ways that Canada could participate in and help make that change. That would be interesting for us to hear. Obviously we'd like to see more women involved in the peace process. That's part of what we're looking at here.

Knowing that this is a very large question to answer, I would very much appreciate it if you could get back to us in writing, in some fashion, to give us some direction and ideas on how we might do that as a government and as a Parliament.

[Julie Delahanty]

Invite them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

That's the easy answer, yes.

Having said all of that, thank you very much. I appreciate your presentations and the quality questions by my colleagues.

I'll take a five-minute break, and then we'll go to the next presentations. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

First of all, colleagues, pursuant to the Standing Order 108(2), this is a briefing on the campaign for Sergei Magnitsky and other issues.

The witnesses today are Mr. Browder, the head of the International Justice Campaign for Sergei Magnitsky and the author of Red Notice, and Zhanna Nemtsova, Deutsche Welle correspondent and founder of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, the coordinator of Open Russia and deputy leader of People's Freedom Party.

Welcome to our committee.

I understand, Zhanna, you want to make some comments. You'll go first, and then I'm not sure what the order is; there is no written...which is unusual. If the committee is accepting of that, we'll carry on.

Is everyone okay with that?

All right, that's fine with me too.

I'll turn it over to the witnesses, then we'll go through our usual presentations from the witnesses, and then over to the different members of the committee.

The floor is yours.

[Zhanna Nemtsova, Deutsche Welle Correspondent, Founder of The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

I have my statement written, but only electronically.

Thank you for the presentation. I'm a Deutsche Welle reporter, but I'm also the eldest daughter of Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated more than one year ago in front of the Kremlin walls.

In 2012 he visited Canada to campaign for the Magnitsky Act. Before visiting Canada, he wrote an article with Vladimir Kara-Murza for the National Post. It was called “Standing up for freedom In Russia”, where he said, “While the current regime is in power, Russian citizens can only defend themselves through international mechanisms.”

That is true. Until 2013 Russia was the leader in terms of the number of applications filed with the European Court of Human Rights. According to the recent polls conducted in Russia, over 50% of Russians do not believe that my father's case would be fully solved in Russia. Thousands of Russians signed a petition to initiate an international control over the investigation into my father's murder.

When my father was assassinated, I had little hope that his murder would be solved in Russia. My expectations have so far been proven true.

I started to look for international mechanisms, or at least international control over the investigation, that could be applied in this case. I found very few of them. Even those that could be used, such as a special rapporteur within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, are not easy to implement.

It is so-called real politics, and politicians tend to be reluctant in taking action on such issues as human rights abuses in Russia. That's why this enables the Russian government to block the most high-profile assassination in modern Russian history and provide impunity for those who might be involved, including the ruler of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. Moreover the Russian government encourages the criminal behaviour as long as these people are loyal to Mr. Putin.

Of course I understand there is lack of progress, but I'm still dedicated to solving this crime and to having justice for my father. I think in this case, and I strongly believe, that more international mechanisms should exist that can be used by the Russian citizens to bring justice and accountability to the Russian authorities in Russia. Otherwise, gross violations of human rights will persist in Russia. We're not talking about only political prisoners, but we are talking about death threats and the fact that Russian politicians and the leaders of the opposition might be killed in Russia.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

Mr. Kara-Murza.

[Vladimir Kara-Murza, Coordinator, Open Russia and Deputy Leader of People's Freedom Party, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Honourable members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before you today.

In 1991, 25 years ago, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which both Russia and Canada are full members, adopted the Moscow document, which upheld explicitly that human rights are not internal affairs but are subject to international obligations by member states. Under Vladimir Putin's government, the Russian Federation has made a mockery of these obligations in all the fundamental spheres of the human dimension.

Elections in our country have become a meaningless ritual for confirming the incumbents, with the opposition candidates routinely disqualified from the ballot, and the voting process itself marred by administrative intimidation, overwhelming media bias, and pervasive fraud. For instance, in the most recent parliamentary election, in 2011, up to 14 million votes, according to independent estimates, were stolen in favour of Vladimir Putin's party.

For more than a decade now, the Russian Parliament has been a decorative institution, devoid of any real opposition to the regime, “not a place for discussion”, in the unforgettable words of its own former speaker.

The same applies to Russia's largest media outlets today. Since the early years of Mr. Putin's rule, the state has taken over or shut down every single independent nationwide television channel, and TV channels have become outlets for the official propaganda, used to rail against so-called external enemies, which is mostly western countries and more recently Ukraine, and against Mr. Putin's political opponents inside Russia, us, who are denounced as traitors and foreign agents.

Many of the regime's opponents today are behind bars. According to the Russian human rights centre Memorial, which is probably the most respected human rights organization in our country, there are currently 53 political prisoners in the Russian Federation, and that's using the high standard established by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 1900.

These include opposition supporters jailed under the infamous Bolotnaya case, for protesting against Mr. Putin's inauguration on the streets of Moscow in May 2012. They include Oleg Navalny, the brother of anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who is basically held as a hostage. They include Alexei Pichugin, the remaining hostage of the Yukos case; Sergei Udaltsov, the leftist politician; and Ildar Dadin, a pro-democracy activist, who was recently sentenced to three years in prison for staging one-man protests on the streets of Moscow. There is a new law that targets street protesters. He was the first one convicted under it. Of course, they now also include citizens of Ukraine seized during Mr. Putin's military aggression against that country, most famously, or I should say most infamously, Nadia Savchenko, whose show trial is currently under way in southern Russia.

Of course, as you well know, disqualification from the ballot, slander in state-run media, and even prison are no longer the biggest dangers that face those who dare to oppose Vladimir Putin's regime. On February 27 last year, the leader of Russia's pro-democracy opposition, former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, was gunned down, killed by five bullets in the back, as he walked home over the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge, just 200 metres from the Kremlin wall, in what is probably the most secure area not just in Moscow but in the whole of Europe. Boris Nemtsov was the strongest, the most prominent, and the most effective leader of the democratic opposition in my country, and his murder left an enormous void in the democratic movement. The tens of thousands of people who came out on the streets of Moscow two Saturdays ago to walk in the memorial march in memory of Boris Nemtsov are testimony to this.

I am very fortunate and very happy to be able to appear before you today. Last May I slipped into a coma, as a result of a severe poisoning of unidentified origins that led to multiple organ failure. Tests showed an abnormal concentration of heavy metals in the blood, and medical experts told my wife the chances of survival were 5%. I am certainly very happy to be here. I have no doubt that this was deliberate poisoning intended to kill, and it was motivated by my political activities in the Russian democratic opposition, likely including my involvement in the global campaign in support of the Magnitsky Act.

As you know, that law, which was passed in the United States in 2012, established a groundbreaking precedent by introducing for the first time ever personal accountability for human rights abuses. These are not sanctions against a country or even a government. These are sanctions against specific individuals responsible for corruption and for abusing human rights. That law introduced visa sanctions and asset freezes against people involved in the arrest, torture, and death of Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered a large tax fraud scheme involving state officials—Bill Browder will speak in more detail about this—and also against people involved in other human rights abuses.

It is an honourable law, and it is a pro-Russian law in my view. It's a law that targets those who abuse the rights of Russian citizens and who steal the money of Russian taxpayers through official corruption.

It is also a very effective law, because for all the many similarities that we can discuss between the Soviet regime and what we have today under Vladimir Putin—and there are many similarities, as I mentioned, such as political prisoners, the lack of free and fair elections, media censorship, and so forth— there's also one very important difference. The difference is that while they were persecuting dissenters, harassing their opponents, and putting them in prison, members of the Soviet politburo did not keep their money in the west, did not educate their children in the west, and did not buy luxury real estate and yachts in the west. People in the current regime like to do that, both officials and Kremlin-connected oligarchs and kleptocrats. This double standard has to be put to an end.

Those people who openly trample on the most basic norms of the free world should not, in my view, be allowed to enjoy the privileges that the free world has to offer.

Back in December 2012, Boris Nemtsov and I published an op-ed here in Canada in the National Post, which Zhanna has already referenced. It was entitled “Standing up for freedom in Russia”. It called on the Canadian Parliament back then to adopt its own version of the Magnitsky law. The article states:

Canada has an opportunity to lead — just as it has led on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – by adopting the Magnitsky legislation.... The task of democratic change in our country is ours and ours alone. But if Canada wants to show solidarity with the Russian people and stand for the universal values of human dignity, the greatest help it could give is to tell Kremlin crooks and abusers that they are no longer welcome.

This is a message I would like to reiterate before you today. I hope our friends and our overseas partners here in Canada will act to stop this impunity for the crooks and the abusers, and will support this legislation in memory of Sergei Magnitsky and also in memory of Boris Nemtsov.

Thank you very much once again for the opportunity to appear before you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Mr. Browder, please.

[William Browder, Head, International Justice Campaign for Sergei Magnitsky and Author of Red Notice, As an Individual]

Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to come before you today and for your continued focus on the murder of Sergei Magnitsky and the efforts that I and my colleagues have embarked on to get justice for Sergei Magnitsky and for the other victims of human rights abuses in Russia.

As many of you know, Sergei Magnitsky was murdered on November 16, 2009, about six and a half years ago, after being tortured for 358 days after being unjustly arrested for accusing Russian officials of being involved in the largest tax refund fraud in Russian history. The evidence of his murder and his torture is well documented and overwhelming.

In spite of that, the Russian government exonerated every single person involved. It gave special state honours to some of the most complicit and, in the most absurd legal nihilism probably in the history of Russia, they then put Sergei Magnitsky on trial three years after they killed him, in the first-ever trial against a dead man in the history of Russia.

It became obvious that the only chance of justice was justice outside of Russia.

The people who killed Sergei Magnitsky killed him for money. They killed him to cover up the theft of $230 million.

Those people don't like to keep their money in Russia; they like to keep it in the west. They like to keep it in real estate in Toronto, in bank accounts in Zurich, and in villas on the French Riviera. They like to travel, to send their kids to boarding schools in the west, and to send their girlfriends on shopping trips, and they like to be on vacation themselves. So we came up with this idea of naming the names, freezing the assets, and banning the visas of the people who killed Sergei Magnitsky and the people who commit other gross human rights abuses. It became known as the Magnitsky Act.

I launched this initiative in Washington on a bipartisan basis with Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland and Senator John McCain of Arizona. I launched this effort in conjunction with Irwin Cotler, who's sitting right here today and who is a colleague of yours, and I launched it in the European Parliament and in various other places.

One of the principal arguments that the Russian government made to try to stop this from happening was that this law was anti-Russian. I could scream until I was blue in the face that it wasn't anti-Russian, but the person who showed up and helped quash that argument was Boris Nemtsov. Boris Nemtsov, the leader of the Russian opposition, showed up in Canada, in the United States, and in Europe, and said that this was not anti-Russian but pro-Russian. He said that it was anti-Russian for Russian officials to steal from us and then kill us, and that it was pro-Russian to go after those people on a targeted basis and sanction them for doing that.

Boris Nemtsov went around to all these different law-making bodies. So did Vladimir Kara-Murza. As we know, a year and two weeks ago, Boris Nemtsov was murdered in front of the Kremlin.

Vladimir and I were in the House of Representatives about two months after Boris was murdered. At that point, the Magnitsky law had passed in America and had become a law. We were asking the Congress to put on the Magnitsky list the people who were involved in calling for Boris Nemtsov's assassination. Vladimir, shortly after that, was poisoned in Moscow. He went into a coma and multiple organ failure, and his doctors suggested that he had a 95% chance of dying and a 5% chance of living. It's only through an act of God that Vladimir is sitting here next to me today, having survived this unbelievably terrible ordeal.

The situation in Russia since we started this campaign for justice for Sergei Magnitsky and justice for other victims of human rights abuses has become dramatically worse. Whatever restraint Russia had in previous times has all but disappeared. We're now in a situation where there's total and absolute repression.

In March of last year, I came to Canada. With Irwin, and with a number of people who are sitting here today, a resolution was put in front of the House calling on the Canadian government to impose a Canadian version of the Magnitsky Act. There was a unanimous vote in favour by the House. There was also a unanimous vote in favour by the Senate. I was promised by the foreign affairs minister and the immigration minister at the time that the government would impose a Magnitsky act for Canada.

I had meetings with the lawyers working in the foreign affairs ministry to discuss the mechanics of it, and then, sadly, the mandate of the government ended and we were not able to get the Magnitsky act fully implemented.

During the election campaign, my colleagues and I went to every party—the Liberals, the NDP, and the Conservatives—and asked them whether they would support a Magnitsky act. Every party put it in writing that they would support a Magnitsky act if they formed a government. The Liberal Party won the election and formed a government. Moments after the government was formed, I said to Irwin, “Let's go back to Ottawa and get the government to fulfill their campaign promise.” Irwin said, “Let's wait until everybody has found their seats.”

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[William Browder]

I was raring to go, and finally he could hold me back no longer. Two weeks ago, I came to Ottawa and met with about three dozen members of Parliament from all the different parties to see whether we were still onside, whether there was still the same amount of support, and I would say that the support has only become stronger. Not a single person I met with didn't support the idea of a Canadian Magnitsky act.

I also had meetings with members of the government, and I didn't get the same passionate response as I got from members of Parliament. Nobody said no, but nobody said yes. What I would hope for is that the new government would take this Magnitsky act and put it into place.

Mechanically, there's a way to do that. There's current sanctions legislation that's already in place, SEMA, the Special Economic Measures Act, which currently doesn't have the ability to sanction human rights abusers. The proposal we had in the previous version, before the end of the last government, was to make a Magnitsky amendment to the SEMA that would target the human rights abusers and allow them to name names of the human rights abusers and to impose visa sanctions and asset freezes.

That's what I'm here today to ask for. I'm asking your committee to support a call on the government specifically to amend the SEMA legislation and to call for a Magnitsky amendment. That would effectively close the loop we started so many years ago and would allow this country to sanction the people who killed Sergei Magnitsky, the people who killed Boris Nemtsov, the people who poisoned Vladimir Kara-Murza, the people who illegally took Nadiya Savchenko hostage, and many others.

It's a cost-free policy. It doesn't cost anything. It would put Canada in a strong moral leadership position, and it's something that was promised to us and should be done.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much to all three of the witnesses.

This is very much appreciated. It's a very difficult subject for sure, for Zhanna in particular and obviously for Mr. Kara-Murza. When he tells us that there was a 5% chance of living, it's pretty shocking that he's sitting in front of us here today.

With your presentations done, I'd like to turn it over to the committee for their questions and comments.

I understand that Mr. Allison is going to start.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a motion that I want to put before the committee. I know that we're going to do some questions, and I'm wondering if we would have a chance to discuss the motion at the end of questions today. I could read the motion into the record.

I have a couple of questions, but before that, Bill, I know that we've had a chance to meet, first back in Europe with the OSCE. You've been a champion for this. The question I have for you is, why is this important? You alluded to it and you've talked about it. Why do we need to do something like the Magnitsky law? What benefit does it have? What does it accomplish?

[William Browder]

Right now, basically, you have total impunity in Russia for people who persecute opposition members, whistle-blowers, and other types of people. The bad guys in Russia get away with it. This piece of legislation is something that we in the west can do and that targets something in the west that they covet, which is their ability to keep their money safe and to travel here.

It's within our jurisdiction, doesn't cost anything, and it touches them in the most profound way. I know for sure that it's an effective piece of legislation, because when it was going through the U.S. Congress, Vladimir Putin named stopping it as his single largest foreign policy priority.

This is something we can do in a time when we're all looking on, watching TV and reading the newspapers, thinking to ourselves that it's terrible what's going on over there, and asking what we can do about it. This is something we can do. It's something within our grasp. It doesn't cost anything.