Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will look to you to cut me off, because the clock is behind me, and having served in Parliament, I know it's a danger to go over the time.
I want to start by thanking the committee for accepting to hear from me again on the issues of the Magnitsky bill and the sanctions in general. It was from the hard work of parliamentarians in Canada over numbers of years in trying to increase attention on sanctions and particularly human rights abuses that the Magnitsky bill came to fruition. I was very pleased to introduce the bill and have both houses of Parliament pass it unanimously. It is to your credit that we are at least at the stage we are now. Hopefully, this committee will continue to build on that.
Much has been said.... You can read what I've said over at the Senate. I recently testified before them on the same issue. I'm not going to talk about Russia—I think it's been adequately covered—and will say why the Magnitsky bill was important.
We had SEMA, the Special Economic Measures Act, but it was really geared for trade violations and economic sanctions, when in fact there was a feeling in the view of many Canadians that we needed human rights to be raised to an equal status in foreign policy and that the rights of those who have to defend their countries deserve the same attention as those who are working within the trade field, so the Magnitsky bill came to.... What I want to talk about is that it was intended to entrench human rights as an equal pillar with the foreign policy aspects.
Secondly, it was to be universal. There was much talk even then about Russia and that threat, but those of us who worked in foreign policy knew that the threats could come from anywhere at any time and that we should be ready with a regime that can be easily accessed by the government. The universality is very important.
It was also intended to support human rights defenders in general. Mr. Magnitsky was certainly the example, but he's an example of so many others around the world who have sacrificed their lives, been jailed and tortured and have suffered innumerable losses—and their families—due to the fact that they stood up for what was right and just in their country. These human rights defenders need to be supported. That was one other reason for the Magnitsky bill.
The thrust of the bill is to ensure first and foremost—and that gets lost because of the Russia issue—that we are not aiders of and abettors to any of the crimes that are committed by these perpetrators in other countries and have it spill over to us. We do not want their money parked in banks in Canada. We do not want it parked in real estate in Canada. We do not want them to be in our countries. The part that has been missing in the Magnitsky bill and should have more attention paid to it is the fact that we can limit their access to coming to Canada. There's also the question of whether that should include their families or not, but that would take a further inquiry, I would say.
What we want, as Mr. Kara-Murza said, who languishes now in one of the worst jails with none of the attention that he requires medically and otherwise, testified before all of our committees is.... If we don't take these steps within our own borders, how can we then issue sanctions and talk to others?
What the gap was in our sanction regime up to this point was that we didn't look to what we do in this country to ensure they are not within our borders. That would be the first step to protecting the human rights defenders and having credibility on this sanctions issue.
I agree that sanctions take a long time. The other reason for having the Magnitsky bill and the SEMA bill together, I should say, is that it was a compromise. It was intended to be the first stage. It was not intended to be a fait accomplibill. It was to be an all-inclusive look at sanctions and to see where the Magnitsky bill fits and where SEMA fits but also to see what else we need in the sanctions area.
Further, we should not look only at sanctions. We have many levers in foreign policy that we should exert and utilize in these cases. How sanctions fit into that has not really been studied by me and many others as much as we should, and I think we will do so.
Just to finish, the government has leaned on SEMA because it has been there for quite some time. It has a definition to do, but it is about international issues, not specific in the way the Magnitsky is. What those of us who have worked in the human rights field were hoping for and still appeal to the government for are the policies and the practices known to Canadians and internationalists so that we could work more co-operatively with others. We would also be in the ready when an issue erupts.
It isn't just Russia. We know we're in a very interesting world, and perhaps sanctions or other foreign policy are necessary elsewhere. If a broad-based look at foreign policy is done, we can then see if we should use sanctions or not, and we have a scheme ready to go rather than being behind and trying to catch up.
Thank you.