Thank you very much, Chair.
I listened very carefully to what the officials were telling us, but I think that, as most people are saying at this committee, the intent of this bill is excellent. I think we can all agree with it.
There are certain areas in the bill that we think are too broad. Is it possible for the department to accept clear definitions? For instance, the whole term “prisoner of conscience”, I think, is very specific. It's not a human rights defender. Nelson Mandela is a famous prisoner of conscience. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was another one. Navalny was taken as a prisoner of conscience, it was removed from his name and it is back again.
I think prisoners of conscience are people who are peaceful. The term is very broad. In every sense there is a definition. It's a person who is imprisoned for their peaceful expression of religious views, of conscientiously held values that a government does not agree with, or of identity. Race comes into it, when you look at certain people being imprisoned just because of their race.
I think it's an important term, and I wonder if we could look at an amendment that said, “providing that the prisoner's family and the prisoner's advocates agree to their name being published”. Otherwise, we would never have heard of Nelson Mandela and all the good work that was done in South Africa because of some of the things that went on, or of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and all of the work that she did in that part of the world. I just think it's an important distinction, and I'm hoping we can do something about clarifying it.
I agree with you on the issue of not giving a heads-up to people who are going to be sanctioned so that they can't take their money out of the country. I agree on that one.