Evidence of meeting #34 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Oh, it wasn't in camera. Okay, then I can....
There were discussions among the parties at that point around this, which I thought we had reached consensus on. I will want to look at the transcript—
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
—just to prove to myself. I'm very careful about privilege on those issues, so I want to be very careful. Thank you.
Thank you to the witnesses, not just for today but for coming back again and for the work you do all the time.
Ms. Csaba, how many consular cases do we have per year, approximately?
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Of all kinds, we have over 7,000 consular cases per year.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
How many complex, problematic cases are there that would require a variety of higher-level interventions?
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Those over 7,000 cases would include anything that is more complicated than, let's say, a passport renewal. Of that, it would be a much smaller number. It depends, really, on the country.
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Let's say it's something like that.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
For complex cases with prison or threat of capital punishment, would it be 100 per year?
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
For cases with threat of capital punishment, I would say there are fewer than 30 or so.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Okay. However, these are complex cases that you need to follow and need attention on, with limited resources.
Am I also right in assuming that our consular engagement sets a priority for Canadian citizens?
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Absolutely. Consular services are only available for Canadian citizens.
Liberal
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Yes.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Then we'd be very cautious about doing something that could undermine our work for Canadian citizens. A point was being made that we would want to be delicate in our strategic interventions around human rights defenders or prisoners of conscience who may not be Canadian citizens if those interventions jeopardized a Canadian citizen in an either similar or different....
We have people who do bad things. They may not be prisoners of conscience. They may be crooks who are in jail, but we still help them.
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Absolutely. We still want to offer as much consular assistance as possible and advocate for their well-being.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Listing activities by country and by name of person could threaten that work, in your opinion.
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
It could indeed, in our opinion, threaten that work and put at risk other Canadians who might be held in the same country and who would be equally affected by the country's dissatisfaction with our naming it publicly.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
When we're dealing with a consular case and with family members who are not the consular case themselves, what power of agency does the family have versus the individual?
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Thank you for that opportunity, because I want to raise an important point around the role of the Privacy Act. Any Canadian citizen who is arrested abroad and might fall within this category—or not—is then considered to be a consular client, and the Privacy Act then comes into play. Under the Privacy Act, a family member cannot allow for the divulgation of personal information. It is only the consular client.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
If the family of Jimmy Lai decided to go public with the case or if Jimmy Lai went public with the case, it would be different from the Government of Canada going public with what we're doing to support Jimmy Lai in incarceration.
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Indeed, it would be, although Jimmy Lai is not a Canadian citizen. Yes.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
He has family who are Canadians. We have a concern for him. We've raised it many times at the highest levels, internationally, bilaterally. However, it was the choice of his family to raise that, and it was his personal choice, as he's spoken a number of times.
Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
There have been cases in which we have chosen to speak very publicly. The case of the two Michaels has already been raised. In that situation, the government felt that it was in the best interests of those two individuals. They were able to give us permission to raise their cases publicly, because we had access to them in China, and we did so.
