Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Madam Clerk, if we're all set to go and we have quorum, I would like to call the meeting to order.

Dear colleagues, today is the fifth meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to the motion adopted on January 31, 2022, the committee is meeting to study the situation at the Russia-Ukraine border and the implications for peace and security.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

First, please note that screenshots or taking photographs of your screen is not permitted.

Members and witnesses can speak in the official language of their choice, and interpretation is available for this meeting. You can choose between the floor, English and French audio on the bottom of your screen. Please let me know immediately if the interpretation is not working.

For members participating in person, please keep in mind that the Board of Internal Economy guidelines for mask use and health protocols are in place. As chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting. I thank you in advance for your co-operation.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly, and when you're not speaking, please ensure that your microphone is on mute. I'll also just remind members and witnesses that comments should be addressed through the chair.

Just before we go to our first panel, following on Mr. Morantz's comments earlier, I just want to verify briefly that it's the consensus of members that we extend the witness deadline for the Taiwan and vaccine equity studies, currently slated for this Friday, by two weeks, to February 25.

Do we have unanimous consent from members on that change?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Is there any opposition?

Seeing none, we have approved that change.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the first panel.

We have, from DisinfoWatch, Mr. Marcus Kolga, director. From the Ukrainian Canadian Congress we have Ihor Michalchyshyn, executive director and CEO; and from Hermitage Capital Management we have William Browder, who is also head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.

Each of you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. The way that has worked well in the past to enforce this is to give you a 30-second warning in a very analogue fashion through this yellow card. When you see this come up, you have 30 seconds to wrap up your comments. That also goes for the question and answer period that follows.

Without further ado, I would now like to turn the floor over to Mr. Kolga for five minutes, for his opening remarks.

Mr. Kolga, the floor is yours. Please go ahead.

[Marcus Kolga, Director, DisinfoWatch]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee.

I'd like to speak to you today about the threat of Russian influence and information operations, known more broadly as cognitive warfare, and how Canada and our interests are targeted in the context of the crisis in Ukraine.

Mr. Chairman, earlier this week a Toronto bakery owned by a Ukrainian Canadian family was vandalized with graffiti messages that said “F Ukraine and Canada” and “Russia is power”.

Police are currently investigating what seems to be a hate-based crime, but the messaging spray painted on the walls of the Future Bakery is consistent with anti-Ukrainian narratives promoted by Russian state media.

Such attacks are the product of the Kremlin's cognitive warfare against Ukraine and more broadly the community of western democracies. Over the past six months the Russian government's escalating tensions against Ukraine and NATO have been accompanied by an intensification of information warfare by Russian state media and the Kremlin supporters and proxies here in Canada.

The same false Russian state narratives that emerged during the Kremlin's 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine have re-emerged in efforts to undermine Canadian and allied support for Ukraine.

Among these toxic narratives is that Canada's foreign policy is controlled by Ukrainian and central and eastern European diaspora groups. Conspiracy theories like this one have been deployed by extremists in the past to marginalize and silence other minority groups. Such conspiracy narratives threaten to delegitimize the status of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage by relegating their voices to a second, lower tier of citizen, one whose voice isn't considered equal to those of other Canadians. The muting of this community in Canadian public discourse is precisely the outcome that Vladimir Putin seeks to achieve.

Bill Browder, who you will hear from in a moment, is a constant target of Russian state disinformation. A recent Russian television segment suggested that he masterminded the recent uprising in Kazakhstan. While he was advocating for Canadian Magnitsky human rights legislation in 2016, Russian state media accused Mr. Browder of being a CIA agent in a twisted documentary dedicated to discrediting him and other Russian anti-corruption activists like Alexei Navalny. The discrediting of critics by smearing them with false labels is a Soviet era tactic that has been resurrected by Vladimir Putin.

During the Cold War, Soviet officials indiscriminately labelled those who resisted Soviet repression and occupation as fascists and Nazi sympathizers, a tactic reactivated by the Kremlin to discredit Ukrainian pro-democracy supporters in the Ukrainian community in Canada.

Last week a member of Canada's Parliament sent out a tweet repeating this claim stating that Canada's recent announcement of a $120-million loan to Ukraine would go to a government run by “neo-Nazi militia”. This is disinformation. Ukraine's government is, of course, democratically elected and its president is a member of the Ukrainian Jewish community.

It's worth noting that the Russian government has directly funded extremist parties like the National Front in France, the League in Italy, Jobbik in Hungary, groups in Austria and other groups.

In the broader geopolitical context, Russian state narratives seek to undermine Canadian confidence in NATO and through that erode cohesion within the transatlantic alliance. These include false claims about a NATO commitment to reject the membership applications of eastern and central European nations in the 1990s. That false claim has been debunked by Mikhail Gorbachev but is being used by Vladimir Putin as a pretext for his current escalation against Ukraine.

Russian government disinformation narratives are often communicated through Russian state media channels that broadcast on Canadian-owned and -controlled cable and satellite television systems. According to a 2017 report, Russia Today, known as RT, pays Canadian cable providers to carry it as part of their cable packages, delivering Russian disinformation into seven million Canadian households.

During the COVID pandemic, RT and Kremlin-aligned proxies operating inside Russia's disinformation ecosystem have promoted narratives that undermine trust in western vaccines. They promote protests against government COVID protocols as righteous acts of civil disobedience. Indeed, even the Russian embassy in Canada directly promoted hesitancy towards western vaccines on its website.

Let me be very clear. The Kremlin's cognitive warfare does not genuinely share any ideology with any Canadian political party or movement. It exploits them. The pandemic has provided an opportunity through which the Russian government can manipulate western societies and the tensions within them through conspiracy theories and anti-government narratives.

The protests in Ottawa are no exception. They are also the targets of Russian state media platforms and their proxies. The concerns and emotions of Canadians who genuinely feel marginalized by COVID mandates are being exploited to further erode their trust in our governments, the media and their fellow Canadians.

According to a 2021 Facebook report, Russia is the largest producer of disinformation on its platform. There are measures we can take to help support Ukrainian sovereignty and protect our democracy at the same time. This includes targeting Vladimir Putin's own wealth and the corrupt oligarchy support, and holding Putin's assets abroad, including the hundreds of millions stashed away in plain sight right here in Canada.

A task force should also be created to develop a national cognitive defence strategy to help all Canadians understand and recognize the threat of foreign influence and information operations and to provide resources to defend our democracy against them.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Kolga, thank you very much, and thank you for sticking very closely to the time limit.

I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Michalchyshyn for five minutes of opening remarks.

[Ihor Michalchyshyn, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ukrainian Canadian Congress]

Thank you for the invitation to appear here.

As this committee knows, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is the federation of Ukrainian Canadian organizations here in Canada. We speak on behalf of a community of 1.4 million. We're looking forward to that census number and hoping it'll be even larger.

I am here to talk to you today about the Ukraine and Russia security crisis.

As you know, in February 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and since then has occupied Crimea and parts of the eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk; it has also continued to fuel a war in eastern Ukraine, where over 13,000 people have been killed, 30,000 wounded and 1.5 million internally displaced within Ukraine.

In November 2021, Russia once again started to intensify troop movements near Ukraine's borders. A series of diplomatic discussions between the United States, NATO, the EU states, Ukraine and Russia have not yielded any concrete results or commitments from Russia to de-escalate aggression against Ukraine.

The UCC and our community believe strongly that now is the time for Canada to act further to deter Russian invasion, rather than wait for this invasion to happen. The most effective way, we believe, to deter a further Russian invasion is to take proactive rather than reactive steps. We welcome the extension and expansion of Operation Unifier, Canada's military training mission in Ukraine, announced by the government on January 26.

In the long run, the extension and expansion of this mission will critically strengthen Ukraine's defences. However, the threat of a Russian invasion grows every day, and the Ukrainian armed forces need our assistance further today. More than a dozen countries, including NATO allies of Canada, are supplying defensive weapons to Ukraine's armed forces in response to Russia's recent escalation of aggression and threats against Ukraine.

The threat of invasion is severe, and Russia stands ready to invade at any time. Ukrainians are not asking anyone to fight for them, but they do need our help to defend their country against the colonial power seeking to re-establish its dominance. We know the government of Ukraine has requested such assistance from the government of Canada for defensive weapons.

Second, we believe that sanctions will deprive the Russian state of revenue to continue to wage war and will reinforce the message to the Russian government that the west is resolute in countering Russian aggression. The UCC urges the foreign affairs committee to support further provision of defence weapons and stronger sanctioning against Russia and its officials.

We conducted a public opinion poll on January 20 and 21, which we shared with members of Parliament. It shows that three in four Canadians support or are open to supporting Canada's providing defensive weapons to Ukraine. The number of Canadians, 42%, who explicitly support the provision of weapons outnumbers the number of Canadians who oppose it, 23%, by almost two to one.

As you've seen this past weekend across Canada, Canadians from the Ukrainian community in some 30 communities in all 10 provinces came together to demonstrate their support for Ukraine and for Canada to provide defensive weapons. From St. John's to Victoria, Canadians strongly supported this campaign, and it is incomprehensible to us that the Canadian government continues to refuse to join our NATO allies in this important step to support Ukrainian independence.

A survey published on February 9 by the European Council on Foreign Relations also found that the citizens of Europe see NATO as the organization that is best positioned to defend Ukraine. Sixty-two per cent of respondents stated that NATO should come to the assistance of Ukraine if Russia were to invade.

Just to sum up, I know our next speaker will talk more about sanctions, but we believe that the implementation of stronger sanctions against Russia will have two effects. It will deprive the Russian state of revenue to continue to wage war, and it will reinforce the message to the Russian government that the west is resolute in countering Russian aggression. Personal sanctions must be broadened against Russian officials responsible for egregious human rights violations of Ukrainian citizens, and Canada should target oligarchs who are close to the Russian regime, wealthy business people who serve as the Putin regime's enablers and who have significant assets in the west.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Michalchyshyn. Thank you also for sticking closely to the time limit; in fact, you were slightly under five minutes.

I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Browder for five minutes of opening remarks.

[William Browder, CEO, Hermitage Capital Management; Head, Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign]

Thank you very much for this opportunity to address you this afternoon on the horrible situation in Ukraine.

I'm here to talk about sanctions specifically.

As some of you know, I am the person behind the Magnitsky act. Sergei Magnitsky was my lawyer in Russia, who was murdered on November 16, 2009. After his murder, I was looking for a way in which to seek justice for him. The idea came about because there were no other ways of finding redress. We came up with this idea of freezing the assets and banning the travel of the people who were responsible for his murder.

I first took this idea to the United States and, in a truly bipartisan way, the Magnitsky act was passed in 2012 with a vote of 92 to 4 in the Senate and 89% in the House of Representatives. It became a law on December 14, 2012.

Vladimir Putin went out of his mind when this law was passed. In retaliation, he banned the adoption of Russian orphans by American families. After that, he put Sergei Magnitsky on trial in the first-ever trial against a dead man in Russian history, and put me on trial as Sergei's co-defendant. We were both found guilty.

They couldn't do anything more to Sergei, but they sentenced me to nine years in absentia and have been chasing me around the world ever since. They've issued eight Interpol arrest warrants for me, and they've gone to the British government on numerous occasions for my extradition. They've made death threats and various other things. It has become a full-time job for a number of people in the Russian government to come after me.

We know, then, that with the Magnitsky act we've hit a nerve. We know we've found something they really care about. In fact, it's a nerve probably greater than any other nerve: Putin declared it his single largest foreign policy priority to repeal the Magnitsky act and prevent it from spreading around the world.

Why does Putin care about this so much? He cares about it because Putin is a kleptocrat who has stolen an enormous amount of money from the Russian people, from the Russian state and from Russian oligarchs. I would estimate that he is worth $200 billion, but none of this money is kept in his own name. The money is kept in the name of people he trusts. I describe them as “oligarch trustees”.

As we're looking around at this Ukrainian situation, there are so many different conversations going on and asking, what do we do to stop Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine? The one thing I can say is that we should come up with something that he cares about. We know what he cares about. He cares about his money, and he cares about his money that's held through these trustees.

As we're looking at policies, the one policy that I've been advocating for—I'm advocating for it here right now and I've advocated in the U.K. and in the U.S.—in addition to all the other military strategies and so on, is a policy of going after the individuals who hold his money for him. My voice has gotten through in the U.K. and it's gotten through in the U.S., and both countries have made statements in the last 10 days to say they that would sanction the oligarchs looking after Putin's money.

It's very interesting, because there was a statement made by the British foreign secretary Liz Truss last Sunday, and moments after that statement was made, Vladimir Putin emerged for the first time to publicly discuss the situation in the Ukraine. He had been hiding, effectively, for the previous month, and not saying a word about Ukraine. He finally came out because we finally hit his Achilles heel.

As we look forward to what to do about this situation, my prescription is to make a list of the 50 biggest oligarchs who look after Putin's money. There's no mystery as to who these people are—various people, such as Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who's in jail, and many others have made this list—and we hit these people with Magnitsky sanctions.

We start with five before any invasion to show Putin we're serious. We then tell him that he has 10 days to pull back from the border or we hit him with another five. If he invades, we go after the rest of the 40. I believe this would stop Putin in his tracks and he wouldn't invade Ukraine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much. I thank all our witnesses for their opening statements.

We will now go to questions by members. In the first round, there will be four questioners, with six minutes each.

The floor first goes to Mr. Morantz. Please go ahead, for six minutes.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Through you, Mr. Chair, my first question is for Mr. Browder, but before I get into my question, I'll say I had the opportunity to read Mr. Browder's book, Red Notice. I recommend it to every member of this committee. It is an eye-opening account of the brutality of the Russian regime under Vladimir Putin, and homage to Mr. Browder's friend and lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.

Mr. Browder, I commend you for writing the book and doing all the work you've done.

[William Browder]

Thank you.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

First, I just want to get your view or opinion on the current Canadian government's record on the use of the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, or the Magnitsky act. What do you think of the track record of the Canadian government to date?

[William Browder]

The Canadian Magnitsky act was passed in November 2017 and I thought it would be a huge uphill struggle to get people actually on the list, but about 10 days after it was passed, the Canadian government sanctioned the people who killed Sergei Magnitsky, the people involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, some Venezuelan bad guys, and some of the officials from Myanmar who were involved in the Rohingya genocide. I thought this was a really good sign and Canada was off to world leadership in this sphere.

There was one more round of sanctions, and then from 2018 until now, the Canadian Magnitsky act has not been used. I look at this and I'm quite frustrated and disturbed by it, because it's inconsistent with how I viewed Canada when I was going through the advocacy process. It's unhelpful in the world if we're in a situation in which sanctions should be done multilaterally; when the United States, the U.K. and other countries do that, Canada should join.

There are a number of instances when other countries have sanctioned very despicable people doing terrible things and Canada doesn't join its allies. I think it should, and I think this needs to be addressed going forward.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

I know you've described Magnitsky sanctions as, I'm just paraphrasing, an Exocet missile directed right at the heart of the Russian oligarchs and Mr. Putin. They're very targeted and specific sanctions, which is why I'm so confounded. We've had Global Affairs officials before this committee, and they seem reticent to commit to using this legislation but rather to prefer to fall back on the more general legislation with respect to broad, state-based sanctions.

I wonder if you have any sense of why they might be leaning in that direction as opposed to using your very effective idea.

[William Browder]

I can't get inside the heads of the officials and inside the Canadian global affairs department, but what I can say is that there are a lot of people in the world on the bad side of the ledger who don't like Magnitsky sanctions. It's a real black mark for somebody to be put on a Magnitsky list. Perhaps it's an easier, less controversial sanction to use, but I think that question is probably best addressed to the people who have been reticent about using it, to understand what their thinking is.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

That's fair enough.

There have also been discussions in the media about the use of what's called the economic nuclear option: cutting Russia off from the SWIFT system, the global economic payment system. I want to get your opinion on that as a potential sanction as well.

[William Browder]

The way I look at it, that is truly the nuclear option. When that was used against Iran, it basically pushed Iran back to the Stone Age from an economic perspective. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we should use such a blunt instrument as a first choice or whether it should be the last possible choice, because it affects everybody in Russia, many of whom are just as much victims of Vladimir Putin as Ukraine is and as we are.

Furthermore, there are all sorts of economic repercussions that will happen in the west. If we don't allow Russia to use the bank payment system, how does Germany pay for its gas?

If we have another tool that avoids all this collateral damage—it goes straight to the heart of the decision-making system; it avoids hitting Russians and it avoids hitting ourselves—that should be used, and it should be used aggressively first.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Browder.

To Mr. Kolga, Ukraine has requested lethal defensive weapons from the Trudeau government. Many of our democratic allies, including the U.S. and the U.K., have granted this request and supplied these weapons.

Why do you think there is this reticence within the Canadian government to provide the lethal aid that Ukraine needs to fend off Russian aggression?

[Marcus Kolga]

I believe you'd have to ask the Canadian government why it has decided against sending lethal weapons to Ukraine.

As you mentioned, the United States and the U.K. have. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, which are very close to the border and on the front line with Russia, have decided to send lethal weapons.

It would be good if Canada coordinated with them and did the same.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morantz.

Ms. Bendayan, you have six minutes.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

I would also like to thank the witnesses.

As I was saying, Mr. Browder, as my colleague does, I have deep respect for your work. I have a number of questions for all of the witnesses. To the extent that you can make your responses brief, I would appreciate it.

Mr. Browder, how many countries have imposed Magnitsky sanctions since Russia increased its troops at the border of Ukraine?

[William Browder]

At the moment, Magnitsky sanctions have not been used for this particular issue since Russia has put its troops at the border.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Do you believe that Canada should go out on its own? I understand that the U.K. and the U.S. have indicated that they may one day look to this.

By the way, our foreign affairs minister, Minister Joly, has said that Russia will face severe sanctions if it makes further moves against Ukraine.

Would sanctions have the same bite and the same deterrent effect should Canada impose them on its own at this point?

[William Browder]

My recommendation is that Canada join its allies, the United States and the U.K., in proposing sanctions against Russian oligarchs. I've heard this terminology “heavy sanctions” coming from the Canadian foreign minister, which sounds good as a headline, but I think she should add the words “and specifically, we're going to look at sanctioning oligarchs close to Putin.” Those are the words that were said by the British foreign secretary and by President Biden.

I think it would have a very strong impact if Putin saw that all the allies were working together and there was no division in the sanctions or the language of the sanctions.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Why haven't the U.K. and the U.S. done so already?