Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 26th, 2024

[Tara Denham]

I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with some of those requirements. I'm not sure whether IRCC would be more appropriate to answer that question.

I'm not sure if our CBSA colleague has anything to add.

[Derek Janhevich, Director, Inadmissibility Policy, Canada Border Services Agency]

I don't, in the context of the question being asked. I apologize.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay.

[C/Supt Denis Beaudoin]

I can speak briefly on the authorization regime. I certainly would not be privy to the program in the bill.

You're right. In cases of hostage-taking, time is of the essence, and we can't let bureaucracy over the permit.... We have to alleviate some of the mechanisms that would be put in there. That's the only concern. Time is really of the essence in these circumstances.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Of course, as my examples illustrate, time being of the essence doesn't always mean the same thing to the government as it does to family members.

Mr. Chair, I believe I'm at five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes. You still have 13 seconds remaining, but thank you.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I will cede it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

Next we go to Mr. Aboultaif for four minutes.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

I'll give my time to Mr. Chong.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We'll go to Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for your testimony.

You mentioned in response to Ms. McPherson's questions that the official policy of the Government of Canada is not to pay ransom. Has the Government of Canada ever paid ransom?

[Tara Denham]

No, not to my knowledge. That policy has been in place for a number of years. It's no ransom, no policy changes, no prisoner exchanges and no immunity. That is the policy of the Government of Canada.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I appreciate that answer.

I'll yield the rest of my time to Mr. Aboultaif, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Aboultaif, go ahead.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing today in front of the committee.

Ms. Denham, you said that we have a tailored system that is victim-centric. You said that all cases are complex. We know that no two cases are alike.

You said that sanctions are not necessarily helpful. This bill in front of us, somehow, has a focus on sanctions. You also said that we always tailor our policy and profile our policy.

When was the last time that you made any significant change to the policy to cope with the new challenges that we see in this very strange and dangerous world? Why wouldn't sanctions be considered as a tool, if we know that no two cases are the same and every challenge could be different?

[Tara Denham]

I'll make a few comments.

To clarify, are you asking about our change in posture related to sanctions, or are you asking more broadly about how often we have reviewed our approach to consular...?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

I'm asking about both, yes.

[Tara Denham]

I'll say a few things, and my colleague can add regarding the sanctions specifically.

In terms of our reviews on our consular framework and guidelines that we share with our entire network, we do that on a constant basis. Officially, the last one was in 2019. We're actually doing that review again now. This is done every couple of years, because we want to make sure that we are integrating the best practices that we are hearing about into the approaches.

I was in New Zealand the other week speaking with all of our Five Eyes colleagues. That was specifically to learn about all the best practices and how we should adapt. Recognizing that the world is becoming more complex and more dangerous, we are always pushing ourselves to make sure that we understand how others have applied approaches and that we're building them into our consular framework and the guidelines that are in place.

In terms of sanctions, my colleague may want to add to this. In cases when individual Canadians are taken, there are many considerations that we have to put in place. Applying sanctions at a time when we're actually trying to get the individual home can actually undermine that situation. In particular, it could irritate bilateral relations, should it be the case of a country that has taken the individual, and criminal groups may not pay attention to sanctions. These are some of the considerations that we have to put in place.

Again, I'll ask my colleague to speak more specifically to this aspect.

[Vasken Khabayan, Acting Executive Director, Sanctions Policy, and Sanctions Outreach, Compliance & Enforcement, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

We currently have two autonomous pieces of legislation, the Special Economic Measures Act, which has been mentioned before, and the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, known as the Magnitsky law.

These can, in certain circumstances, be used to sanction individuals, entities or even states for actions that we believe, after careful consideration and after taking a look a the entire situation, may fall under the circumstances for sanctions, one of them being “a grave breach of international peace and security” or “gross and systemic human rights violations or acts of significant corruption”.

I would point out that after the October 7, 2023, Hamas hostage-taking, we did, in fact, do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much.

We now go to Mr. Alghabra for four minutes.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, and thank you for being here this afternoon.

I have several concerns about this bill. One of my biggest concerns is making non-Canadian and non-permanent resident individuals eligible for consular services.

Given how stretched our consular services resources are, can you comment on what that could do to the ability to help other Canadians who might be in a difficult situation?

[Tara Denham]

Sure. I'd like to note two things with that concern related to permanent residents.

The most important one is that under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, there is no obligation on other states to allow us to provide services to permanent residents. That is not in the Vienna convention. Therefore, by putting this into legislation, we would raise expectations that we would be very unlikely able to deliver. A lot of the countries that we're speaking about would not recognize Canada's ability. We don't have an ability to access permanent residents.

In terms of the financial cost, it would be significant. I was getting the numbers the other day, just to give an order of magnitude. There are eight million permanent residents in Canada. If we look at that globally and we add that to the number of people we would provide consular services to, you can see the orders of magnitude by which this would increase.

Our consular professionals are amazing and hard-working, all around the world. This absolutely would push the consular services teams, and the teams across the Government of Canada would need to be properly resourced. It would be an order of magnitude that would be quite significant.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

This bill goes even beyond permanent residents. It talks about protected persons.

Do we have a rough sense of how many protected persons there are, or of people who fall in that category globally? Even if you don't have an answer today, can you help us and provide this committee with an estimated number of protected persons around the world?

[Tara Denham]

In the last round, I think there were questions as to how exactly that would be defined. In our analysis, how that would be defined wasn't clear, so it would be really hard to give a number. I don't know where that definition is and how we could provide a number. If we're able to get that definition, then we can work on a number.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Can you imagine the number of Canadian families who have a loved one in a difficult situation abroad and how they would feel if the Canadian government paid an incentive or reward for a non-Canadian citizen while their loved ones are stuck in a difficult situation, even if maybe not a hostage situation?

Again, I don't want to take away from the humanity of this difficulty that other people are going through, but the fact of the matter is—and Ms. Lantsman herself repeated it multiple times, and I think we all agree—that the Canadian government's priority is the protection of Canadian citizens at home and abroad. The introduction of this category in this bill really undermines the government's ability to help Canadian citizens, and it creates a lot of confusion as to who is eligible and who is not eligible.

Do you want to comment on that?