Foreign Affairs Committee on May 16th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Oliphant is on that list.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay.

I will very briefly say that it's our view that the language around “completion of the committee's studies” is important. I don't know if one can sub-sub. I'm happy to discuss it. I'm not wedded to the particular language of the original amendment, but our view is that the completion of the studies on Ukraine, vaccine equity and Taiwan is important.

Insofar as the subamendment removes the requirement that this work be completed.... I understand Mr. Bergeron's points with respect to Taiwan, and maybe there's a case for a subamendment that carves out the Taiwan piece in some particular way. However, insofar as the revised amendments, it now says that the other work would not have to be completed prior to proceeding to this study. That's not consistent with our position.

I'll leave my comments there for now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

We'll now go to Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will very briefly say that I will be supporting this amendment to the amendment. That's where we are, I think. It's a subamendment. I believe our side finds it helpful, because it doesn't tie the hands of the committee. It allows the committee to continue making decisions as we go. It gives us some flexibility, as opposed to being in a kind of fundamentalist position.

We like the openness of it. We want to thank Mr. Bergeron for a helpful suggestion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Oliphant.

We'll now go to Mr. Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Chair, I think Mr. Genuis said well why we'll be opposing it. Perhaps I could give a little information, since it's my first time in this committee, about my background.

I'd like to comment on Mr. Zuberi's earlier comment. I am young, too, in terms of being an MP, but perhaps not as young in age as Mr. Zuberi, and I have some familiarity with Mr. Oliphant's riding, having been a constituent of Don Valley West for 10 years in Leaside.

More importantly, I served in the Mulroney government as a member of the political staff for the Honourable Barbara McDougall through four different government departments, including the Department of Foreign Affairs. I was their senior policy adviser and executive assistant while she served in that role for three years from 1991 to 1993. It was a very interesting time in the world, obviously with the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the coup in Haiti, negotiating NAFTA, unrest and a coup in Peru, the departure of Pinochet in Chile, Nelson Mandela, who has been mentioned earlier, and obviously Tiananmen Square.

With regard to the collapse of the Soviet Union, this is where it ties to Ukraine and the study on Ukraine quite specifically. Canada, as we all know, was the first country to recognize Ukraine as an independent country from the Soviet Union. While I served in my role for Mrs. McDougall in the then named secretary of state for external affairs as the position was called, I can remember.... I don't know how many here remember what they were doing on December 1, 1991. Some in the room might not have even been born, but I recall where I was. I was sitting at my then girlfriend's parents' house in Hawkesbury, Ontario, as we were having a discussion on those old, big Motorola cellphones that we had back then about whether or not to recognize Ukraine, because the Soviet Union formally didn't collapse until between Christmas and New Year's of that year. It was important to us with our long-standing relationship with Ukraine and with the number of Ukrainian Canadians who are very active in Canada, over a million back then and still now, that we recognize Ukraine first and recognize it before the Soviet Union collapsed.

This was a difficult decision. It was not something the department was keen on at the time because the Soviet Union still existed, and recognizing a country within the Soviet Union while it still existed was not the diplomatic thing to do and because Prime Minister Mulroney—as these jobs are when you lead a country—had very close relationships with President Gorbachev. Being the first to acknowledge that a major part of the Soviet Union was no longer part of it was not something that Mr. Gorbachev wanted to see his friend, Prime Minister Mulroney, doing.

We used to take correspondence home for ministers and you know about the many letters ministers get in the big bags. I was sitting there doing that, and I got the call from Privy Council Office saying, “We want to try to work on this.” So I spent the better part of December 1 and December 2, 1991, negotiating back and forth just how and why and what we would say on the recognition of Ukraine.

I say that because at that time we were dealing with a lot of issues around the world that were important, too. We were in the middle of negotiating NAFTA with Mexico and the United States. I had just come back with the minister. We had had a military coup in Haiti against the democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically elected president of Haiti, where we had passed a resolution through the Organization of American States, led by my boss's speech there to impose western hemispheric sanctions on the illegal coup in Haiti. I can remember because we wrote it on the plane going down.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order on relevance.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The relevance—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Ms. Bendayan, that's it? Did you have anything—

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to expand further, but I think you see the reason for my intervention. We have happily listened to the resumé of the new member for the Conservative Party, but now we are veering off into discussions of Haiti. It is not relevant to the subamendment, and it's not relevant to the amendment, and I would remind us all that we are dealing with the motion on the reproductive rights of women.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Ms. Bendayan.

Yes, I would just implore all the members to actually try to keep their interventions focused on the subamendment before us.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair.

I haven't even begun to talk about all the things in my resumé. If you want to hear that, it should barely scratch the surface.

However, the relevance with regard to Haiti is economic sanctions and the way you deal with regimes that have gone rogue in the world.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I think your comments are very valid, but we also have bells.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes, we do have bells.

Do we have unanimous consent—

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

The meeting will be suspended until the next scheduled meeting of the foreign affairs committee.

[The meeting was suspended at 12:38 p.m., Monday, June 6]

[The meeting resumed at 11:32 a.m., Monday, June 13]

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Welcome back to meeting number 21 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Today, after having heard from parliamentarians from Ukraine, we will continue the discussion that began on Monday, May 16, 2022.

As always, interpretation is available through the globe icon at the bottom of your screen. For members participating in person, bear in mind that the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols are still being followed.

Members, before speaking, I would ask you to please wait until I recognize them by name. When you are speaking, please do speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute. I will remind you that all comments made by members should be addressed through the chair.

As you're all aware, we will be resuming debate. More specifically, we are now dealing with a subamendment that was introduced by Mr. Bergeron. As you will recall, there was a speakers list. I will just run down those names. On the current speakers list, we have Mr. Oliphant, Mr. Perkins, Ms. Gray, who is not here with us today, and Mr. Genuis.

We have Mr. Oliphant.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, Mr. Perkins had the floor when we adjourned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

That is not what the clerk has informed me.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

There's a transcript, and it will be very clear that Mr. Perkins had the floor. Could you verify, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Could we suspend for a moment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We'll resume.

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Mr. Perkins, the floor is yours.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For those who may be watching on ParlVU, to go over exactly what it is we're debating here, as I understand it, it's a subamendment to Ms. Fry's original motion. It deals with whether or not, at the end of Ms. Fry's motion, we should add a portion that says the committee needs to finish or complete its work on the Ukraine, vaccine equity and Taiwan studies which are already under way before proceeding with Ms. Fry's motion.

When I was speaking for only a few minutes last time, I told members a bit about my personal history. It was just a small piece. It wasn't the full resumé. I was accused of giving my full resumé. I can do that a little later, if you'd like.

I think it's important to step back and understand that the sanctions that we heard a lot of discussion on today in the meeting with officials from Ukraine and the sanctions the government has implemented all come from the Special Economic Measures Act. That act hasn't existed since forever in Canada. It actually was created after the coup in Haiti. I was part of the creation of this act, as I was the senior policy adviser—as I said in the last meeting—to the foreign affairs minister of the day, Barbara McDougall.

The context of 1991-92 is important in understanding the purpose of the act and how governments can and cannot use it. Prior to that time, Canada imposed sanctions a number of times, but it didn't have a standing act of Parliament to do it under. As an example, in the early 1980s, when the government of Prime Minister Trudeau had to impose sanctions on Iran, with the Iran hostage crisis, it had to bring a special act to Parliament and have it pass through the House and the Senate to get authorization to do that. It was the same in 1985-86 when Prime Minister Mulroney decided to try to lead many other nations in imposing economic sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. That required a special act.

Prior to 1991, Canada was not even a member of the Organization of American States. The Organization of American States, which dealt with the issue of Haiti, and the sanctions bill came out of it, because primarily there were a lot of, let's say, despots and dictators. It was not exactly a democratic hemisphere for many years. In 1991, we were in the unusual situation where 34 of the 35 western hemisphere countries were democracies for the first time in the western hemisphere, and for the first time, Canada joined the Organization of American States.

I was with my minister then. It was one of the first international meetings she went to as foreign minister. It was in June 1991, in Santiago, Chile. That was Canada's first meeting with the OAS. They passed something that's become known as the Santiago declaration on June 5, 1991. That declaration said that we were:

To instruct the Secretary General to call for the immediate convocation of a meeting of the Permanent Council in the event of any occurrences giving rise to the sudden or irregular interruption of the democratic political institutional process or of the legitimate exercise of power by the democratically elected government in any of the Organization’s member states, , in order, within the framework of the Charter, to examine the situation, decide on and convene an ad hoc meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, or a special session of the General Assembly, all of which must take place within a ten-day period.

That was a revolutionary statement for the Organization of American States in 1991, given the history of the western hemisphere. That was in June.

In the summer of 1991, in August, to be precise, there was a coup in Moscow, with Mikhail Gorbachev. The world took notice. He was trying to implement glasnost and move Russia towards a more open and market-based system. The military took over for a period of about a week. We didn't know where Mikhail Gorbachev was and the military was in charge.

Mr. Chair, the government of the day and former prime minister Mulroney vehemently opposed that and demanded the return of Mr. Gorbachev.

At the end of September—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Oliphant.