All right. It is that Bill C-353 be amended by adding after line 2 on page 6 the following new clause:
5.1 (1) Any order or regulation made under subsection 5(1) must be evidence-based and outline the rationale for determining that a foreign national, foreign state or foreign entity has acted as described in subsection 5(2) and must be redacted to remove any classified or sensitive information.
(2) Before making an order or regulation under subsection 5(1), the Governor in Council must implement robust identity verification measures, including the verification of date of birth, place of birth and national identification number of foreign nationals, to prevent the wrongful inclusion of a foreign national, foreign state or foreign entity in an order or regulation.
(3) Any order or regulation made under subsection 5(1) is subject to judicial review to ensure compliance with Canadian law, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada's international obligations.
The reason that we have brought forward this amendment is that we are actively trying to prevent an individual from being unfairly designated as a “foreign national” and being unfairly designated as somebody who would be subject to sanctions. This amendment would require the government to use a more robust identity verification process, relying on multiple data points, like date of birth and place of birth, national identification and name spelling, to confirm someone's identity.
Under the current language, there is a risk that someone could be targeted because their name or partial details match those of someone else. We have seen this, and this is a particularly acute concern for individuals from certain racial, ethnic or religious communities where names may be more likely to overlap or be transliterated inconsistently.
There is, within this legislation, a real danger of racial or religious profiling disproportionately affecting those with ethnic or religious significant names.
We did hear testimony from Chief Superintendent Denis Beaudoin, who's here today with us, highlighting the critical gaps in the bill that could lead to systematic bias. He emphasized the broad discretionary powers granted to the Minister of Foreign Affairs without clear safeguards against profiling and the risk of misidentifying and unfairly targeting individuals.