Thank you so much, Chair Hussen, Vice-Chairs Chong and Brunelle-Duceppe and members of the committee, for convening this important hearing and for the opportunity to testify before you.
The morning after I received my 25-year prison sentence in April 2023, my cellmate switched on the television to watch the news, and I heard that the ambassadors from Canada, Great Britain and the United States were being summoned to be reprimanded by the Russian foreign ministry for crude interference in Russia's internal affairs, an activity incompatible with diplomatic status.
Russian state propaganda never tells the real story, so they did not explain what the activity actually was, but given the timing, it was not difficult to guess. A few days later, I learned that the ambassadors, Alison LeClaire, Deborah Bronnert and Lynne Tracy had held an impromptu press conference on the steps of the Moscow City Court to denounce my sentence as unlawful and to demand my immediate release.
A few months earlier, Canada had become the first country in the world to sanction the Russian officials responsible for my imprisonment. A few months later, this Parliament voted to grant me the incredible privilege of becoming an honorary Canadian citizen.
I want to take this opportunity to thank members of both Houses of the Canadian Parliament, first and foremost, Tom Kmiec, James Bezan, Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Senator Pierre Dalphond and Senator Ratna Omidvar for their solidarity and for not letting the world forget.
As I testify before you today, thousands of political prisoners remain behind bars in Russia. These are people who committed no crime, who broke no law and who are only “guilty” of having the conscience and the courage to stand up to a murderous dictator and a brutal war. I believe that the free world has a moral obligation to stand with them.
Of all the provisions of Bill C‑219, which I strongly support, the most important but also the most personal for me is the requirement to publicly report on the status of prisoners of conscience and on the Canadian government's efforts to secure their release. If passed, this measure will send a powerful message of support to all those imprisoned around the world for their political and religious beliefs, and will set a historic precedent by supporting prisoners of conscience not only with words but also with concrete actions.
I strongly support all the main provisions of Bill C-219. I support renaming the Special Economic Measures Act as the Sergei Magnitsky global sanctions act, because this worldwide movement for accountability originated from the quest for justice for Sergei Magnitsky and because his name has long become synonymous with accountability for human rights abuse. I support adding transnational repression to the list of sanctionable offences, because dictatorships engage in this egregious practice to intimidate and silence their critics all over the world, including here in Canada.
I support extending visa bans to immediate family members of those sanctioned, because violators too often hide behind relatives to avoid accountability. I strongly support the provision to empower committees of this Parliament to initiate individual sanctions against human rights abusers, because, in my experience, parliamentarians have always been at the forefront of the global fight for accountability.
Going back to John Peters Humphrey, an original drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Canada has a long and proud history of leadership when it comes to human rights and human dignity. In 2017, Canada became the second country in the world to pass the Magnitsky human rights sanction law and the first to pass it unanimously. By adopting the amendments proposed in Bill C-219, the Canadian Parliament would send a strong message that human rights remain at the heart of this country's policy and that abusers and crooks will never be welcome.
By adopting the amendments proposed in Bill C‑219, the Parliament of Canada will send a very strong message: Human rights remain at the heart of this country's policies, and abusers and crooks will never be welcome there.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions.