I'll try to be brief in answering the previous question so that Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe gets a chance to ask his own question too.
On Alexei Navalny's case specifically, I'm sure many members of this committee have seen the recent large exposé published in The Wall Street Journal, an article that detailed the way in which the negotiations for our exchange began. They began in autumn 2023, while Alexei Navalny was still alive.
The reason they were delayed so much—it happened only in August 2024—was that a former German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, who is the current president of the UN General Assembly, was blocking the decision by the German government to release FSB hit man Vadim Krasikov. He was in prison in Germany, and he was part of the exchange from the other side. She was blocking it as a matter of principle. It was her position that, “We can't let a murderer go.” However, while she was blocking it, Alexei Navalny was himself murdered in a Russian prison; that was in February 2024. After that, former German chancellor Olaf Scholz overruled her and said, “We're not listening to you anymore. This exchange is going ahead because, otherwise, they're going to kill all of them.” My personal view is that, in the future biographies of Miss Annalena Baerbock, this is what she'll most be remembered for. That was specific to the case of Mr. Navalny.
As for the general point that Mr. Oliphant made, I can speak not just as a former political prisoner myself but as a historian who spent a long time researching and studying the Soviet dissident movement and political imprisonment in the Soviet Union. I had the honour of knowing many of these people. I made films and wrote articles about them. The one thing that never works, specifically when it comes to political prisoners—since we're talking about this issue here—is “so-called quiet diplomacy”. When somebody tells you, “Oh, we're going to raise it privately. We're going to make sure we'll discuss it with them in a polite way”, that's the best way of knowing they're not going to do anything about it. The only defence, the only hope, the only lifeline for a political prisoner who is sitting in a prison cell in Siberia, in Xinjiang, in Venezuela or wherever it may be, is publicity, advocacy and public attention. I am, in a very literal sense, living proof that this is the case.
Thank you so much, Mr. Duceppe.