Evidence of meeting #85 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
What about permanent residents? I know there is no obligation, but are there services we can provide in terms of permanent residents?
5:15 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
Yes, but it depends on the issue.
Permanent residents would not have Canadian citizenship and the consular services are essentially predicated on citizenship, but there have been any number of situations around the world involving permanent residents in which we have reached in. If the local government is willing to co-operate with us, then we try to provide whatever assistance they would find acceptable.
Back in 1994 in Rwanda, we had one situation in which we had nuns who were running an orphanage in Kigali, and we got them all the way out, with the kids, to Nairobi. We then got them on a plane, and they all ended up in Quebec City. None of them were Canadian citizens, but we do this sort of thing for humanitarian reasons in these situations.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Picking up on the humanitarian reasons, in our constituencies we all have the heartbreaking cases that involve family members. In my case, I know Bashir Makhtal's family is here, and there are others. We want to be able to do everything we can.
There was, in one of your papers, I believe, talk of having an ombudsperson for consular services.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
Yes, there are any number of examples throughout the government. This kind of person acts as an intermediary between a Canadian who feels they have been badly treated by actions of the government and on the part of government. I think you need somebody in that sort of role.
As far as I know, no one has ever created this anywhere around the world, so it's a unique thing in this area. I think it's worth looking at in detail here, because I've seen....
The other day somebody told me that the justice department has detailed upwards of several hundred million dollars of cases for which there is the possibility of the government being sued for wrongful actions in the eyes of the person affected. It's an area where I think an ombudsman, an intermediary, could in effect intervene easily early on and mediate and adjudicate in some of these cases and could start removing some of these, because the judicial system is not a good place to deal with these cases.
Can I add one other thing about the difficult ones you listed?
5:15 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
The most difficult ones to deal with, of course—and we've had a case in the last few days—are parental child abductions. Those are the most difficult ones. There is a bit of international law in this area, but the international law is based on the European-North American model of the family. Many parts of the world have other laws in this area, and it makes it very difficult in those cases.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Jati Sidhu Liberal Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Pardy, for your service to our country.
Consular Services is doing a good job. I want your expertise on how to make it a great job, or make it easier for Canadians to have access to Consular Services in cases of disaster such as we saw last year. With climate change, it's getting harder and harder.
I had a personal case, actually. A mother phoned me in the middle of the night. Her daughter was going to medical school. She wouldn't take no for an answer. She said, “I'm not getting anywhere with getting in touch with consular affairs. Americans are picking up people left, right, and centre.” Sure enough, she was so panicked that she showed up at my doorstep. It was two o'clock in the morning.
There is a lot of schooling going on in the Caribbean. Can we make this a mandatory registration? Can the airlines get somebody to fill out a form before they go, saying how long they are going for? What is your suggestion on that?
5:20 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
With regard to the mechanics of registering, we've been doing it for years and it's probably about as easy as it can be, but most Canadians, when they head off for the southern sun and things like that, don't think a disaster is just around the corner, and more often than not they're not prepared to register.
I think the other element in all of this, though, is that governments are not being proactive enough in talking to the media when these times of crisis occur. Quite often they will use the Privacy Act and say that we can't say things about an individual and things like that. If you go to the site of the Privacy Commissioner, he has a section on that that says things in this area are not what the Privacy Act is meant to protect.
It's not only Foreign Affairs; all parts of government will use the Privacy Act to not talk to Canadians about things they are doing. You're not out to expose an individual Canadian, but there is no reason you can't provide more of an explanation to Canadians about what's going on.
On your reference to the events in the Caribbean last fall, what surprised me as an outsider looking at all of this was how many got back home in a relatively short period of time. I don't know how many of those we've done over the years. The worst one, of course, was out of Lebanon in...I forget what year it was. It was 2006 or something. On the registration side of it, I think they looked at that and said that there were 3,000 Canadians in Lebanon that we had to help. By the time it was all over, there were 40,000 Canadians in Lebanon who had to be evacuated, and every other country that had populations out of the Middle East ran into exactly the same problem.
I think somebody told me that everybody arrived on the spot marked for charter boats, because it was very difficult to get in there by air. You had to use a boat to get from Lebanon up to Cyprus or somewhere else in the Middle East, and even the boats were just not available to do it, and the Israelis were maintaining a blockade on the Lebanese coast. There are problems you run into in these areas in terms of time.
That was a special case. There was an act of war under way. More often than not, and in the Caribbean in particular, as I understand it.... I have a friend who went down to the British Virgin Islands right afterward, who is quite familiar with the place, and he said he did not even recognize it. Everything had been wiped out on the island, and when I say “wiped out”, I'm not talking about just the vegetation; I'm talking about every service that you would hope would be available for you.
There is no easy answer, other than that I think you have to talk to Canadians as much as you possibly can while the crisis is going on, not after the fact, when you measure and say, “Yes, we did pretty well on that one.” Canadians want the information on that just as quickly as CNN or CBC gives it to them, because they are saying things that may be different from what the government is saying indirectly.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Like Mr. Sidhu, I had an incident. A father called, and his daughter had been sexually assaulted. She had just landed in Italy. Fortunately, the situation ended quite well. We were able to get in touch with Global Affairs Canada, and he was quite pleased with the result.
Now I can certainly appreciate.... I would want every single Canadian to have that level of care in whatever country they go to. However, I can also appreciate that there are a lot of countries where we may not be able to provide that level of care to all Canadians when they travel, but I certainly would want all Canadian to get the same care if they were within that country.
I'm having difficulty understanding the gap. I understand that there is discretion under the crown prerogative, but why does this have to be enshrined in law?
5:25 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
It is not enshrined. That's the problem. The crown prerogative is not enshrined in law. It is a convention of our constitution.
What I found surprising.... I think it's worthwhile, if you want more detail here, to go back and read the 2010 Supreme Court decision. This involved Omar Khadr, by the way. The Khadr family, I think, has provided more progress in terms of the use of our laws than almost any other family in the history of this country. In that particular decision, the Supreme Court said that his rights had been abused by CSIS's going down to interview him. At the same time, the Supreme Court said that it could not instruct the government as to what it should do in order to assist Mr. Khadr and get him out.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I'll ask just a quick question, then.
In your opinion, is it a privilege to travel on a Canadian passport?
5:25 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
It's a necessity. It doesn't carry any special protection because it's a Canadian passport. It is an international document. If you leave Canada.... It used to be that you could use a Canadian Tire credit card to go into the States, but that isn't going to work anymore, so it's there as an absolute need. It's imposed by other countries. There's no other way to do it. The passport is the international document that has to be used.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
February 8th, 2018 / 5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to split my time because Garnett has one little question, so I'm going to go really quickly in mine.
You mentioned the case of Alison Azer and her four kids, Sharvahn, Rojevahn, Dersim, and Meitan. That case has been ongoing. It still hasn't been resolved. My question is specifically on dual citizenship.
I'm a dual citizen. I've had a lot of these consular cases—not specifically to people in my riding, like Davud Hanci, who's still in Turkey. A Canadian citizen, naturalized in Canada, still holds citizenship in another country and travels overseas for a vacation or for business reasons, whatever it is, but the other country doesn't recognize our citizenship, our claim over that person. How do you fix that? There's no easy fix.
I just going to make a half-proposition here. Would a potential solution be that when we naturalize a citizen, we inform the other country of the case?
Some countries don't recognize dual citizenship. For instance, in the case of my wife, who is from Singapore, three years ago the Singaporean government sent her a letter and told her that she was no longer a citizen, but that she needed to send back to the letter to confirm it. In those dual citizenship situations, what more should or could Canada do to fix them?
5:25 p.m.
Former Canadian Diplomat, As an Individual
You can't demand that they give up another citizenship unless they want to do so. By the way, the other country that is quite rigid in this area is India. If you're somebody who suggests that you might have lived in India and you apply, say, for an Indian passport, the High Commission of India here will demand that you get a certificate from the Canadian government that you're not a Canadian citizen. Other governments are doing things like this.
The problem we do have in this area—and I'm not kidding you—is that in 1930 the League of Nations passed an international treaty that Canada signed on to back then. It basically says that when a citizen with dual nationality is in their country of second citizenship, then the other country has no right to intervene for consular services. That treaty is still out there. We were successful in 1996 in having Canada renounce its signature on that particular treaty, and it took a real fight in the Canadian government. It's the only time in our history that we have renounced a UN treaty. That was an effort to make sure that under Canadian law we would, in effect, then have a right to go and intervene and try to help a Canadian, regardless of how many citizenships that Canadian might have.
There's no easy answer. I agree with you, and it's becoming more so.
I should mention one other fact here—
