Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm very pleased to be with you today to comment on the study you are conducting.
First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to say that it's a pleasure to be appearing before you. Members may not know this, but before Chairman Ehsassi entered the world of politics, he was a well-known trade lawyer himself. He and I had a lot to do in the old days, when we were dealing with various trade law matters, so it's a double pleasure for me to be appearing today.
I'm going to address one issue. We can discuss it further during the question period. My understanding is that the committee is looking at the government's implementation of the 2017 recommendations by this committee regarding Canada's sanctions regime. The standing order talks about the committee reviewing the government's implementation of the recommendations in the 2017 report.
There's one recommendation that I want to address, because I don't think the government has done anything in implementing that recommendation. That recommendation in the 2017 report, recommendation 4, states that the government “should provide comprehensive, publically available, written guidance to the public and private sectors regarding the interpretation of sanctions regulations in order to maximize compliance”.
If you stand back and think about sanctions, they have emerged, in the last number of years, as a major element in our international relations, affecting business relations and commercial transactions in a major way. The private sector, the business community, is in need of greater transparency and greater guidance from the government itself.
In the comments that I've provided to the committee—I believe they've been translated and circulated—I've made a number of recommendations. Those are, I might say, very close to the recommendations I made to the Senate committee when it was looking at this very issue earlier in the year. I set out a number of points that the government could address in making the sanctions regime more transparent and more understandable and in providing some necessary guidance to the business community, who are often dealing with this very tricky and increasingly complex area of sanctions. I won't read them, because they're before the committee, but there is a need for a follow-up to the 2017 report. The same recommendations were made in the Senate committee report in May of this year.
As far as I can tell through my own research, nothing has been done to improve or enhance guidance and transparency on how the government implements the sanctions regime. That includes sanctions of the Magnitsky act as well as the United Nations Act, and of course the Special Economic Measures Act, which is the principal vehicle for Canada's sanctions regime.
Let me leave it at that. We can come back during the questions from committee members.
I would also like to say that I'm prepared to answer questions about the recommendations I made in my brief, which has already been submitted to the committee.
Thank you.