Evidence of meeting #33 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was russia.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
What is so concerning about the lack of Canadian government sanctions about him is that the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States have placed sanctions on him and we haven't.
In effect, the Canadian government has given Mr. Prigozhin plenty of time to shift his assets outside of this country in anticipation of potential future sanctions. This is the reason why I believe it's so important that western democracies work in concert to impose sanctions on oligarchs, to ensure that they can't anticipate these sanctions and shift assets outside of our country.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Mr. Chair, I have no further questions. Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thank you very much, Mr. Chong.
We will go to the next set of questions, which will be asked by Ms. Saks.
Please go ahead, Ms. Saks, for five minutes.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Volkov, for joining us at the foreign affairs committee today. Your testimony is very important to the work we do here and critical for making the important decisions that we have to make as a Canadian Parliament and government.
Chair, I will be sharing my time with Dr. Fry.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
She's laughing.
If Dr. Fry wishes to share time, it's available to her. She can just give me a wave.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Excuse me, Mr. Chair.
I would like Ms. Saks to use the time fully. Splitting a small amount of time doesn't work really well.
You go ahead, Ya'ara, and do your thing.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
My apologies, Mr. Volkov.
We discussed earlier about the move to label and disband democratic opposition extremists. We have talked about the big picture risks for Mr. Navalny, family members and yourself from the very aggressive and despicable acts of poisoning that have been done by units from the FSB.
What are the risks to your followers and other democratic activists in Russia? These are the people on the ground day to day. In terms of fostering a movement, it's not just the leadership who are at risk.
Are the people on the street at risk?
Chief of Staff for Alexei Navalny, As an Individual
Yes, they are and the risks are growing.
When we had protests in January of this year, 12,000 people were detained, which was effectively the largest wave of repression in our country since 1937—since Stalin's time. Over 1,000 people were arrested following this detention. It was for short terms, like 15 or 30 days, but it's still very important. People are losing jobs, being fired and expelled from their institutions and their colleges and so on.
Putin has shown that he is ready to scale up the repressions, unfortunately. He has put our supporters at risk.
For instance, the new law and designation of our organization as an extremist would entitle all our donors to up to eight years in prison, so we will have to stop accepting any donations inside the country once this court decision is effective. We have 160,000 donors who send us an average of 500 rubles or $7 U.S. a month. We will have to stop all of this because otherwise any of them would be at risk.
Putin doesn't have a repressive machine strong enough to arrest 160,000 people, but he would arrest 10 of them randomly to scare all the others.
Chief of Staff for Alexei Navalny, As an Individual
It's just to scare all the others. That's what he's doing. At every large protest rally, he would arrest maybe 1% of the participants—very random people—but then the other 99% also feel vulnerable. He thus increases the level of terror and distrust in society. We each have to think a lot about protecting our supporters and we try to do a lot to protect them.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
I understand. In that vein, in these types of authoritarian and repressive efforts that we see from the Putin regime and the denying of human rights, there's always a trade-off for leaders. They have to promise something in return. You mentioned earlier that often Putin uses the line, “Our economic situation is due to the sanctions from the West”, but there's also the flip side of it, of trying to use economic promise to buy power.
What we see in the reality on the ground in Russia right now is that the average life expectancy of a Russian male is about 66 years of age, five years lower than the European Union average. In 2018, Putin, during the World Cup, made a change to pensions across Russia while syphoning billions for his own personal use. We've seen refutations to that, but what I'd like to ask is whether there is a growing opposition, in light of this reality? Where is the average Russian family and individual today in this mess?
Chief of Staff for Alexei Navalny, As an Individual
This also relates very much to Mr. Harris's important questions, which I didn't have time to reply to, so I'll try to combine them and keep the answer short.
Putin was very successful selling the idea of the nineties. The early nineties, after the destruction of communism, were really a disaster for many families. Many families were not ready to see enormous change in everything.
In Soviet times, people didn't know what money was. Yes, money is an institution. It didn't work in the same way in the Soviet economy as it works in the market economy. I'm not talking now about the stock market or something like that. People didn't know what banks were, what entrepreneurship is, what doing business is, what profit is, or selling. People were not prepared for it at all.
The early nineties, while they were the times of big political freedom, were economically a disaster. Putin came to power and managed to gain a lot of popularity by saying that these times will not be repeated. His main political idea was selling the notion of stability. “I brought stability to you”; this was his motto.
Well, it worked all the way from 2002 to 2010. People were ready to forgive him anything for stability. But now—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Mr. Volkov, I apologize. Just in the interest of time, we have to move on.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
You'll have an opportunity in the responses to other colleagues to elaborate on what you're saying. My apologies; we just want to make sure that we get through the second round of questions.
Mr. Bergeron, the floor is yours. You have two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Montarville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Volkov, I feel that everyone understands why you are waiting for a decision from the court as to the legality of banning your organization. However, while you wait, would it not be astute to launch a new movement?
It could be under a different name. At that point, the Russian state would have to legislate against the new movement.
Chief of Staff for Alexei Navalny, As an Individual
Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way. It would be a smart idea, but if a movement is recognized as an extremist movement and someone creates a new one, it is the expert of the investigative committee who will decide whether the new one is a replica of the old one or not. If the expert of the investigative committee finds that the new movement is doing the same as the old one was doing, it will lead to exactly the same repercussions for its participants, unfortunately.
Bloc
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Montarville, QC
So you are really forced to wait for the court's decision. If the decision of the court is not in your favour, how do you use see things proceeding?
Chief of Staff for Alexei Navalny, As an Individual
We don't have any doubts about what the decision will be. Russia, unfortunately, doesn't have an independent court. On May 17 it will happen, so we are getting ready for it. We are moving more now into the sunlight. The Internet feels still like a relatively free medium. A lot of things that we are doing are actually enabled through the Internet. For this tactical voting, we don't need offline infrastructure to do it.
We will of course keep moving on with our anti-corruption investigations. Now we relocate some of our stuff from Russia to Lithuania or to other countries to keep it safe. We'll pretty much continue doing what we are doing now. We face a lot of organizational changes. We have to rearrange many processes, but we'll carry on.