Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of Parliament, Madam Clerk, I would like to begin by greeting the members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development and expressing my pleasure at appearing again before a committee of the House of Commons, where I actually had the privilege of serving as the member of Parliament for Beauharnois-Salaberry during the 36th Parliament, from 1997 to 2000.
I am here in response to the invitation to appear, sent to me by your clerk, on Bill C-281. As you said, Mr. Chair, I will unfortunately have to leave you quickly because I have a commitment that I want to honour, like any member, or former member, who wants to keep their word.
In the brief time I have, in those five minutes, I will comment on one clause of the bill, the one that proposes that the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act be amended.
I also want to say that I agree with the other three clauses of Bill C-281 that propose to amend the three other acts mentioned in the bill. So it is clause 2 of the bill that I am particularly interested in, the one that seeks to amend section 10 of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act by adding subsection 10(4).
You will recall that this section provides that, in exercising his or her powers, duties and functions under the act in respect of the conduct of the external affairs of Canada, the minister is to publish, at least once in every calendar year: a report that outlines the measures taken to advance human rights internationally as part of Canada’s foreign policy; and a list that sets out the names and circumstances of the prisoners of conscience detained worldwide on whose release the Government of Canada is actively working.
First of all, I fully agree with the proposal to create a requirement for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to publish a report on the advancement of human rights around the world. In fact, Canada would not be the first country to publish such a report. The United States of America has been doing so for almost 50 years. Its latest report was released just a few days ago, on March 20. It is a report broken down by country, which includes comments on Canada and the situation of human rights in Canada. Such reports are also published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and by a number of non-governmental organizations, most notably Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In my view, the publication of such a report would provide an additional source of information on the state of human rights around the world, within the international community and across states, from a Canadian perspective, and would contribute to a better understanding of the state of human rights around the world.
On the subject of prisoners of conscience and the proposed list to be published, I would first suggest that you define the concept of “prisoners of conscience”. Amnesty International's definition might serve as inspiration:
Amnesty International considers a Prisoner of Conscience (POC) to be any person imprisoned or otherwise physically restricted (like house arrest), solely because of his/her political, religious or other conscientiously held beliefs, their ethnic origin, sex, color, language, national or social origin, economic status, birth, sexual orientation or other status, and who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred.
I have a second and final point to make.
With respect to the list, I agree with the idea expressed during the review of Bill C-281, in particular the idea expressed by MP Christine Normandin, that exceptions should be allowed and names omitted from the list, and that mechanisms should be developed to do so because of the possible security breach for prisoners that could result from such publication.
Members of Parliament, Mr. Chair, these are a few observations. I hope they will be useful.
I wish you good deliberations. I regret that I won't be able to be with you for a longer period of time. I hope that Bill C-281 will be passed.