Thank you, Chair.
I'll be relatively brief. I think we had a lot of this discussion at the last meeting, but I'll just reiterate.
I appreciate Mr. Oliphant's frankness in saying that yes, the intention of this government amendment is to gut this portion of the bill. I have a couple of comments about why we think this section of the bill is important.
Foreign policy in general is an area where the executive has, and should have, a wide degree of discretion—more discretion, I would argue, than in many other policy areas. I think we have to reflect on what some of the reasonable constraints on that discretion would be.
I think one of them is in the case of sanctions. The government decides on sanctions; Parliament doesn't decide. The government decides on sanctions. Many countries around the world have tried to develop mechanisms for parliamentary committees or for groups of parliamentarians to be able to have trigger mechanisms or other kinds of mechanisms for exercising effective accountability over the government's decisions around sanctions. I think it makes sense, in a parliamentary democracy, to have the required discretion on the part of the executive but to have some kinds of mechanisms.
This is a parliamentary trigger mechanism that preserves the discretion of the executive, but it allows a parliamentary committee to effectively nominate someone for sanctions. It requires a robust response that gives reasons for the sanctions having been or having not been applied, and it requires that response regardless of prorogation or dissolution. These are mechanisms in terms of accountability and response that are stronger than the existing Standing Orders, and they make sense in the case that the government has broad levels of discretion.
I have a draft amendment that I would like to move if Mr. Oliphant's amendment is defeated. That draft amendment would deal with some of the precision concerns around timelines as well as around ensuring that information that would tip people off isn't disclosed in advance of sanctions being made, so to speak. My amendment could be subamended at that point.
I think having a parliamentary trigger that uniquely applies in a foreign affairs issue of sanctions, an area where governments have broad discretion, is consistent with what our allies have done in terms of Magnitsky sanctions. There's a congressional trigger in the United States, for example. I think it preserves the accountability role of Parliament in an area where there is, and should remain, broad executive discretion.
I'm opposed to the amendment as said.