Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and honourable members of the House, for the invitation to appear before you today. It's really an honour to be here. At the outset, I would like to applaud the work that you are doing in conducting this important review of Canadian economic sanctions law and policy.
By way of overview, my focus is on the broader international law issues implicated by the Magnitsky law and SEMA. I believe I was invited because of my policy report, “Economic Sanctions Under International Law: A Guide for Canadian Policy”, which was published in 2021 by the Rideau Institute and the University of Ottawa Human Rights Research and Education Centre. I do commend the report for your review, as I can't possibly do justice to the nuance and complexity of all of the issues that were analyzed in there.
In short, I suggest that there's a tendency in the Canadian sanctions discourse to simply accept that autonomous sanctions—that is, sanctions that are not authorized by the UN Security Council or some other international legal organization—are lawful. There is this assumption that if all our allies are imposing similar sanctions regimes, they must be legitimate and they must be lawful. Indeed, the view is that such sanctions are not only lawful but virtuous and are the best way to peacefully enforce human rights and other international legal obligations.
This view was largely echoed in the recent Senate committee report, based on hearings that it conducted last year, and while I commend some of the recommendations that the report made for improving the Canadian sanctions regime, it too largely accepts this assumption that autonomous sanctions are lawful under international law. This somewhat uncritical view neglects serious questions that are being asked in international institutions, in international law scholarship, and in the statements and practice by states in other regions of the international community regarding the legality of certain kinds of autonomous sanctions. Indeed, there are sharp questions as to whether certain kinds of sanctions, including the kinds of sanctions that Canada participates in, often imposed in the name of human rights and the international rule of law, do not themselves violate international law obligations in various ways.
First, for instance, there's whether they do not themselves actually violate human rights norms and obligations, whether in terms of comprehensive embargoes that cause humanitarian suffering in target populations in a manner that violates human rights law or in terms of targeted sanctions that may violate the due process rights of individuals who are being targeted.
Second, there's whether they may constitute unlawful intervention in the sovereign affairs of target states in violation of well-established principles of non-intervention, or third, there's whether some targeted or secondary sanctions may violate international law principles on jurisdiction that prohibit the extraterritorial application of domestic law, all of which potentially, rather paradoxically and ironically, undermine the international rule of law that sanctions are trying to enforce.
These questions are even sharper with the recent suggestion that Canada would not only freeze the assets of certain targeted individuals but actually expropriate those assets and convert them for purposes of reparations to victims such as those in Ukraine, all in the absence of any trial or other process, which is viewed by many international law experts as being inconsistent with well-established international law on expropriation.
What is more, critical arguments about sanctions are most strongly made by states in the Global South, precisely where Canada has traditionally tried to champion the rule of law and human rights compliance. There are thus potential tensions between the human rights objectives of Canadian sanctions law and policy—the effectiveness of which are often very much in question—and the possibility that such law and policy cause real harm, undermine Canada’s broader foreign policy objectives, make Canada vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy, and are indeed inconsistent with Canada's own constitutional values.
In closing, let me just say that this is only been a thumbnail sketch of what are really a very complex set of arguments and analyses. I'm happy to address questions on any of the issues in more detail in response to questions.
I don't want to overstate the case; many of these questions that I addressed regarding the lawfulness of sanctions are unsettled and contested. However, the unsettled nature of these issues calls for caution. The primary point I would like to leave you with is that the Canadian government has not done enough to publicly address these questions and explain how its sanctions law and policy comply with international legal obligations.
I would suggest that there are ways in which Canadian law and policy may not be consistent with international law or with certain Canadian values and that doubts regarding Canadian non-compliance can operate to undermine Canadian efforts to strengthen human rights and the international rule of law. Thus, in my view, Canadian lawmakers and policy-makers need to be more sensitive to these international law implications, develop and implement economic sanctions law and policy more fully informed by the relevant principles of international law, and provide a fuller and more detailed public explanation of how such law and policy are compliant with international law.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.