Foreign Affairs Committee on June 8th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Senator.

We now go to MP Green.

MP Green, welcome to committee. You have four minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

In light of the constrained timelines, I will ask that you provide your comments as briefly and succinctly as possible, but I would love for you, Senator, to carry on that thought. Even with this legislation having been passed, you mentioned it wasn't a fait accompli and that more needed to be done. As you watch and observe how the government is responding to your legislation, what would you like to see implemented or what could we recommend through this committee now to get to that gold-standard level of legislation given the international uncertainty we have?

[Raynell Andreychuk]

Just quickly, I would hope the government would pay attention to the recommendations out of the Senate committee, which I was not involved in making, and this committee, as in the past. That would be my first step.

Second, I think to have it go ahead is to understand what implementation will mean when we get to the level beyond seizure. If it's forfeiture, who gets the amount? We have an act that deals with the freezing of assets. We need to look at that again. That act came in very quickly. I was involved in that one. But we knew that it was our first attempt, and it was as a result of a crisis, and then it was amended and amended. I think this is what the government has to do—involve more consultation and dialogue to get the evidence. The evidence is all those other parts.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Professor, you've come a long way, so I would like to pose a question to you, sir. Since February 2022, the 27-member EU has agreed to 10 packages of sanctions in response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine. How have the EU sanctions packages against Ukraine evolved since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

[Prof. Paul James Cardwell]

Thank you very much.

Essentially the evolution is more and more finding who to sanction and how and on what and trying to pick up on examples we've heard of where things maybe have slipped through the net. It's clear in the latest messages from the European Commission that the focus has to go back to what we were saying a moment ago. There has to be a shift to enforcement as well within the member states.

Again, one of the problems when you try to ramp up the sanctions and you need that political focus to keep the European populations on side is that in the context of this multinational organization—where you have elections coming up in states, which might shift the balance a little bit—you have to ensure that the EU is still responding to that and is still doing things, which means finding those to sanction—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Let's explore that a little bit further.

What compromises, if any, can be seen in the packages of sanction measures adopted by the 27 states?

[Prof. Paul James Cardwell]

It terms of compromises, again you're talking about the EU with 27 member states and with different interests, and some of the sanctions themselves, especially when you're talking about a large neighbour like Russia, will impact more heavily, for example, on bordering states, but of course the bordering states are the ones that have been pushing the hardest for the sanctions. There have been others further in the west, perhaps, on which they have been lighter, with one or two exceptions, notably, such as, of course, Hungary.

Another thing to take into account, if we go back to before the invasion but when further sanctions were imposed on Belarus, which of course was also envisaged here, was that some of the sanctions packages were held up because one member state was trying to get something else on something completely different as well. So the impact of compromise comes into something that is far bigger than the actual substance of the sanctions on which generally there is political agreement, but there is also the question of the intelligence and where that comes from, how that's fed up from populations, from NGOs and of course through the member states themselves.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

Now we go to the second round of questions. For the second round, each member will get three minutes. We start off with MP Epp.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll continue with Professor Cardwell.

You talked about the complications of coordinating 27 member states. You also talked about reaching out with autonomous sanctions in alignment with third party states close by. Can you comment about the relationship with Canada? We have autonomous sanctions. Is there a coordination process going on now within the EU, and how does it look, under Brexit, specifically from the U.K.?

[Prof. Paul James Cardwell]

Thank you. The examples that I used in my research were of a rather different scenario from that of Canada and of the U.K. Largely this arose from the enlargement process, whereby states that have applied to join have to be brought into the system of thinking, so the opportunity to align was part of that. Then it was extended to these other countries in partnership countries in the western Balkans. It's a way of sensitizing them to EU foreign policy generally, but the focus has been on sanctions.

With Canada and the U.K. now, it is rather different. The situation is also one in which it's more difficult for an outsider to find information, mainly because when you're talking about individuals, you need to keep that information as tightly controlled as possible.

You have the institutional difficulty with the EU not being a state and relying on information that comes from national agencies as well.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you. I'm sorry. My time is so limited.

Senator Andreychuk, in your opening comments, you talked about inadmissibility and that sanctions need to be coordinated. Bill S-8 was a bill that addressed that.

Can you comment on the gaps that linger? Does that address most of them or not? Answer very briefly.

[Raynell Andreychuk]

My very brief.... I can follow up, if you want, in writing later.

It opens more issues than it closes.

Following on just one point—and that is coordination on all of this—we have to keep in mind that some of the activity and the actors in sanctions are not like Russia and Ukraine. They're also actors within our own states. That's why the Magnitsky bill is important. It is one that I think needs more attention from government, and that's where the coordination really should be coming from.

The second part, which I don't think we've focused on, is there's a large community that isn't involved with these sanctions for various reasons in other regions, and my focus has always been to try to get universality. We need to think about the way we approach sanctions and the way we approach—

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Senator. I'd appreciate something in writing.

I want to get one question in to Mr. Schmitt.

On technology sanctions, there have been reports that Russia's been circumventing some of the sanctions by acquiring parts through breast pumps and washing machines, etc., through third parties.

Can you comment? Should the sanctions be extended?

[Benjamin Schmitt]

Absolutely. Technology export controls restrictions for components, systems-level technologies and a wide range of technology development software has to be remembered. CAD, CAM and BIM platforms need to be tightened, especially those that can be directly or indirectly used in the Russian military campaign. The goal of western democracies needs to be to degrade significantly the Russian military, aerospace and space sectors, in this case.

On how to track these, I think the one thing Canada can help with a lot is working with its private space sector and private space sector actors around the world to more rapidly release geospatial imaging satellite data to help fill in the “dark ship” problem. We can do this using multiwavelength data to find ships that are evading sanctions, as well as ship-to-ship oil transfers and things like this. It's using not only optical satellites that have open-source use from the commercial sector, but synthetic aperture radar, RF—radio frequency—and other domains.

This will really help and it will build capacity, because then you can have—because these are all open source datasets—civil society, NGOs, academics and the investigative journalist community work to build capacity and then flag for governments like Canada who to enforce on and how to get this done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

We now go to Dr. Fry. You have three minutes.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much.

I must say that three minutes isn't a lot to get questions asked.

Welcome, Senator Andreychuk. I haven't seen you for ages. I want to thank you for your work on Magnitsky, but I want to ask a really important question.

We were looking at sanctions to do three things: to change behaviour, to create constraints on any kind of future behaviour and to look at human rights violations. Would you say that sanctions have been working against Russia?

While they may have dealt with behaviour and looked at trade—we looked at economic sanctions—Russia is still taking children from Ukraine, and it's actually almost a cultural genocide. There are children being brainwashed into becoming Russian citizens. That's one huge human rights violation that's going on. The rape of women in Ukraine is another human rights violation that's going on.

Can we say that sanctions are actually working? What do we need to do to move them forward—especially when we have rogue nations like China, Belarus, India and Iran around the area, also trading with Russia at the moment to give it an input—as much as you would like to do so?

You said it takes time—and I agree—but in the interim, while we're taking time, what do we do?

I'm looking at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is 57 nation-states, of which Russia and Belarus are two. How do we deal with the central Asian countries in the OSCE? They're silent because they're so dependent on Russia for their well-being and, in fact, their economies.

What do we do about some of those things? Can you tell me how we deal with all of those challenges?

[Raynell Andreychuk]

Thank you, Dr. Fry, and thank you for saying we're old friends—

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Sorry about that.

[Raynell Andreychuk]

—my having just retired from the Senate.

There's no easy answer. In any situation, you can have influence and an impact on people, and short of military intervention, everything else is up for grabs. You want to use every lever you have to impress upon those who are committing the violations to stop; but if you can't stop them, then you look to accountability, and it is after the fact.

One case that I'm following very closely is that of the children who have been taken to Russia. We don't even know how many were taken. We don't know what's happening to them. We only have little snippets of knowledge, but the International Criminal Court has already pursued that issue, so it isn't just sanctions working alone. It is all of our levers impressing upon a government or individuals to stop the actions they are taking. We want in time to have an impact, but there is no guarantee. We simply have to keep moving.

The apartheid issue and sanctions is a good lesson to look at. We imposed sanctions. Canada was on the forefront of continually being there. Persistence is important, but also imagining new levers, not just sanctions, not just the International Criminal Court. What else can we do?

In my case, I would say we involve more of the world to know the consequences to them.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We now go to MP Garon. You have a minute and a half.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cardwell, you wrote an article about regional leadership in sanctions, entitled “The EU, sanctions and regional leadership”. You've looked at groups of major western countries. As compared with the U.S. or the EU, Canada wields less economic influence, so I'd like to know what that might look like.

I wish I could give you more time to answer, but since the committee is running so late, you have only a minute.

[Prof. Paul James Cardwell]

Thank you.

I think the difference between the EU and Canada is definitely size. That is also what makes it hard for the EU's 27 member states to reach a consensus on the application of sanctions. Of course, they all have very different interests.

Another difficulty is maintaining the sanctions once they are in place. As I said earlier, that is sometimes the result of internal factors. For example, a newly elected government in a member state may not be fully in favour of maintaining sanctions.

I think that is the risk the EU faces as an international organization, unlike a country.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I want to use my remaining 17 seconds to ask a quick question.

Is there a region where Canada could exert or show more leadership?

[Prof. Paul James Cardwell]

The short answer is I don't know, but I will think about it.