Evidence of meeting #63 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was icc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:05 p.m.
Bloc
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Montarville, QC
I don't believe Mr. Zuberi denied his request for unanimous consent. I believe he simply wanted to make a clarification.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
If I may, I would just like to thank the minister and her officials for having made themselves available. We are very grateful for the time you provided to all of the members. Thank you.
Members, as you know, after consideration of the main estimates, there are a number of votes that we have to go through. Do the members want to vote unanimously in favour of the five votes we have to do?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Chair, I have a point of order.
If a request is made for unanimous consent and the committee has unanimously agreed on something—
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
No, there was no unanimous consent. You specifically asked for unanimous consent. There was no unanimous consent, Mr. Genuis, and you know full well that it is the prerogative of the chair to make sure things move smoothly—
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
The issue is that we have not heard from the minister for a full hour in a year. The minister has to be accountable to this committee. It's been a year—
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Mr. Genuis.
Is it the will of the members to vote by unanimous consent for the five different votes we want to do?
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT
Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$1,960,768,061
Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$197,425,761
Vote 10—Grants and contributions..........$4,946,749,600
Vote 15—Payments in respect of pension, insurance and social security programs..........$102,536,000
Vote 20—Payments pursuant to subsection 12(2) of the International Development (Financial Institutions) Assistance Act..........$1
Vote L30—Loans pursuant to the International Financial Assistance Act..........$201,000,000
(Votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, and L30 agreed to on division)
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE
Vote 1—Payments to the Centre..........$152,798,272
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
INTERNATIONAL JOINT COMMISSION (CANADIAN SECTION)
Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$8,659,481
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Shall I report the main estimates 2023-34, less the amounts voted in interim supply, to the House?
12:05 p.m.
An hon. member
On division.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Thank you.
We will now suspend for approximately two minutes before we welcome the ICC prosecutor.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Welcome back. We will resume our second hour of committee hearings today.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is holding a briefing with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
It is my great pleasure and distinct honour to welcome to committee today Mr. Karim Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
We also have with us today Mr. Irwin Cotler, former minister of justice and attorney general as well as the founder and international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
In addition, we have Mr. Allan Rock, former minister of justice and attorney general as well as our former ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Prosecutor, you will be provided five minutes for your opening remarks, after which we will go to the members, who will be provided the opportunity to ask you questions. Once you're getting very close to the time limit, either in your opening remarks or when you're responding to any of the members, I will hold up this sign, which indicates that we'd be grateful if you could wrap it up as expeditiously as possible.
That having been said, Mr. Khan, we welcome you. You have five minutes for your opening remarks.
12:20 p.m.
Karim Khan Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, As an Individual
Mr. Chair and honourable members, it's really a great honour and great privilege to be given the opportunity to say a few words. It would be remiss of me not to thank two great Canadians, two great democrats, whom I have the honour of having to my left and my right, the Honourable Irwin Cotler and Allan Rock. They are friends of justice in every situation, and I am really privileged to have their support.
I'm giving the Elie Wiesel lecture this evening, at the invitation of both. I think it's very appropriate because the ICC is a child of Nuremberg. The ICC was born as a testament to man's inhumanity to his fellow man, woman and child, and the promise of “Never again”, which should have compelled greater action after the Holocaust, remains an urgent need, because we see it with the Rohingya. We see it in the DRC. We see it in Ukraine. We see it in so many parts of the world.
We're very lucky. I feel very privileged to be here in Canada, because Canada has a distinguished record of being among the very strongest supporters of international law, not by way of words but by way of deeds.
Philippe Kirsch was the first president of the ICC. The current vice-president of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute is another great Canadian, Bob Rae. I count on his support every day in terms of his stewardship and vice-chairmanship of the assembly. The last president of the ICC was Chile Eboe-Osuji, who is a Canadian as well as a Nigerian. My special adviser on genocide, Professor Payam Akhavan, is another Canadian and the co-chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
I think that every moment, perhaps, can be seen as critical, and they are critical. Every moment, every generation, has different challenges, different opportunities, and history then decides whether the generations of the past rose to the challenges and exceeded expectations or failed. Did they not manage to live up to the demands of the hour? I think that is a critical issue now, when we see so many conflagrations in different parts of the world. We see the brutality of sexual and gender-based violence, the crime of persecution, the dislocation and deportation of the most vulnerable of our population—children—in so many different situations.
I think the ICC has an important role to play. We cannot be pedestrian. We cannot simply be a court espousing the importance of normative values. We have to show the impact of international justice where it is most needed and at the time it is most needed.
Since I became prosecutor, we have tried with great alacrity to focus on field presence. We have an interview facility in Cox's Bazar, where I was on February 24, when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. We have an agreement with President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian authorities to have an office in Kyiv. We're trying, with all the difficulties we have in Khartoum and in Tripoli, to have a field presence, and I have an agreement to have an office in Caracas.
Being close to the people isn't politics. It is essential to understand the demands of criminal justice, that we cannot succeed, cannot prove cases beyond reasonable doubt, unless we know the undercurrents, the history, the culture, the politics, the connections. We can't do that by big legal paratroopers parachuting into hotels for a few weeks and then flying out. We need to be with the people to learn, study and then collaborate. The other aspect is partnerships. The idea that the ICC is an apex court is legally wrong. It's built upon complementarity.
The revolution that we're in the midst of in the office to transform the eDiscovery system is, I think, absolutely necessary and long overdue. One cannot deal with this digital age with analog tools. The ability to use voice-to-text transcription, automated translation, and facial identification will give us the tools to ingest far more information. Not only will this allow us to build stronger cases and to investigate incriminating and exonerating evidence equally—as we're required to do—but it will also allow us to be a hub to give information to national authorities.
One thing I said before Ukraine—I said it before I was elected—was that I care not a jot about which flag is behind an independent judge, whether it's the flag of Canada or the ICC, whether it's the flag of Columbia or the flag of the Central African Republic. What victims need at this moment, what societies feel at this moment—when their trust in international institutions, whether it's the United Nations, the ICC or even member states, is not what we would hope it to be—is to see action and that their lives matter. They need to feel, when they're exposed to the elements and exposed to bullets, machetes, bombs or missiles, that the law provides them a shelter.
I think if we do that, then maybe, when we give up our current responsibilities and move on, the generations and leaders that come after us will think that we did our best and we didn't fall short of the needs of this present moment in time.
Thank you so much.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Thank you very much, Prosecutor Khan.
We will now open it to questions from the members.
For the first round, we have four minutes each. We start off with MP Chong.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for appearing in front of our committee. We appreciate it greatly.
I'd like to focus on Iran and some of the malevolent actors that may be there. Could you tell us what investigations or what work is going on to investigate individuals connected to the Islamic Republic of Iran and their human rights abuses?
12:25 p.m.
Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, As an Individual
The ICC has jurisdiction provided by the statute. Iran is not a state party to the ICC, nor has the Security Council referred the matter, nor has Iran made a declaration to accept the jurisdiction of the court.
In those circumstances, I'm not looking at Iran at all. I have no legal jurisdiction to do so.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Is there any opportunity to take a look at individuals or citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran who are engaged in these activities in the same way that you undertook your investigation of President Putin?
12:25 p.m.
Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, As an Individual
The jurisdiction in relation to Ukraine arose because Ukraine, as an exercise of its sovereign authorities and article 12.3 of the statute, made a declaration in 2014, and again in 2015, that it accepted the jurisdiction of the court. Because of that, I had jurisdiction to investigate international crimes in Ukraine.
I have not received such a declaration from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Therefore, I'm focused upon the jurisdiction I do have.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
In the case of President Putin, who is a citizen of the Russian Federation, which is not a state party to the Rome Statute, you undertook an investigation that led to the outcome that was recently announced. Is it not possible to prosecute members of the Iranian regime who are not in Iran and who are connected to human rights abuses outside of Iran in places where you have jurisdiction—where the member state is a state party to the Rome Statute?
12:25 p.m.
Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, As an Individual
I think the most honest answer I can give is that, leaving aside the specific country you mention, as a matter of law, if a crime is committed on the territory of a state party that is within our jurisdiction, the statute gives us authority to look into it. There has to be a crime of sufficient gravity on the territory of a country for which we have jurisdiction. If we don't have that evidence, the answer is no. If we have that evidence, the answer would be, exactly, we could. All of these issues are determined....
I know exactly what you're asking and why. It depends upon the evidence, and I'm not going to discuss evidence that we may have or we don't have. I'm trying to focus on solid cases with reliable evidence that is strong enough to withstand scrutiny in the courtroom.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you for that.
On the malevolent activities taking place in areas where you do have jurisdiction.... I'm thinking about sub-Saharan Africa and other countries where we are hearing reports of gross human rights violations being committed by the Wagner Group and other Russian mercenaries.
Can you tell us what investigations might be going on there?
12:30 p.m.
Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, As an Individual
I think you'll understand that, as with law enforcement in Canada, we don't telegraph investigations in advance, because the investigations have to be discreet. There may be witness protection issues and all the rest of it.
You're quite right; we have jurisdiction in most of the countries of the Sahel region and in Sudan and Libya, which were referred by the Security Council. We will use the resources that we have as effectively as we can, realizing that for a number of years, the demands on the office have been too great, the situations have been too many, and the requirement and the burden of proof is properly very high. We're not a human rights documenter where a smell of suspicion is enough to move forward. We have to be as vigorous as we would be if we were presenting a case to the central criminal court here in Ottawa. It has to be a high standard of proof. That's the standard we are holding ourselves to, and that has resource implications.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll pick up where Mr. Chong left off.
I understand quite well the reasons you have determined you have jurisdiction in the case of President Putin. I believe it was on March 17, 2023, that the ICC pretrial chamber issued the arrest warrants for both President Putin and his commissioner for children's rights.
As a signatory to the ICC Rome Statute, South Africa is legally obliged to act on the ICC arrest warrant, Mr. Khan, as you know, if Putin arrives in the country, as he is expected to do, I believe, this August for a summit in South Africa. However, South Africa's justice minister, Ronald Lamola, indicated he is looking at extending customary diplomatic immunity to President Putin.
Can you give us a sense, Mr. Khan, of what options are available to the ICC if South Africa is legally able to do that, and is there any way to enforce the arrest warrant while President Putin is in South Africa?
12:30 p.m.
Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, As an Individual
South Africa is a very important and respected state party. It hasn't been dragged kicking and screaming to the Rome Statute. There have been statements more recently in relation to the acknowledgement by South Africa about its obligations under the Rome Statute. They have gone on record as saying they are aware of those responsibilities. I don't think they need any tutelage from me. I think they are quite aware of their responsibilities, and I have confidence they will do the right thing.
I think I will leave it at that.