Evidence of meeting #40 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 amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills North, ON
Mr. Chair, I support the amendment.
(Amendment agreed to)
(Clause 4 as amended agreed to)
(On clause 5)
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills North, ON
Mr. Chair, I move CPC-2, which all members will have.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
On CPC-2, what we're trying to do is prevent the sanctions evasion tactics that are....
Am I in the right spot? I want to make sure I have the right number here. There we go.
We want to make sure that “immediate family member” is more carefully defined, and we want to strengthen it to ensure that people aren't using their family members or extended family members, whether it's siblings, their dependent children, parents or even grandparents, to hide their wealth and to avoid sanctions here in Canada.
We've had support for that.
Brandon Silver gave some really great testimony on this. He said:
On a per capita basis, Canada is one of the leaders in sanctions implementation, but we are lacking in enforcement.... By adding in visa bans on immediate family members, we're helping to close some of those gaps”.
He also said:
I want to comment that their assertion around dependent family members does not reflect the practice of allies. The European Union has associated family members, which goes beyond dependents, and the United States also goes beyond dependent family members.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, in talking about what's happening in Russia, said that they “all hid behind not dependents but siblings, adult non-dependent children or spouses and so on.” That's for making sure they can hide their illicit wealth.
That's where we need to go to ensure Canada is not being used as a safe haven to allow those who have already been named and sanctioned to use the back door in using their family members to access our better property market or our safer banking system.
Liberal
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Our side will not be supporting the amendment. We have a concern that it introduces a wide-sweeping definition of “family member” not currently recognized by the IRPA. It is different, and it would use authorities in a different way.
Our concern is with regard to the mechanisms and operations of government. We believe that there is power under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, administered by the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, that would accomplish this work without us doing it. Therefore, we will not be supporting the amendment and ultimately will not be supporting clause 5.
I want to give Mr. Sharp, an official from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the chance to offer his comments on this.
Matthew Sharp Assistant Director, Admissibility Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The challenge we see with this is that the bill, as worded, talks of visas and documents, but it doesn't speak to admissibility, which is ultimately the heart of how we enforce the IRPA. My colleague, Mr. Bush, can speak more to that.
This government passed Bill S-8 in 2023, which introduced a new inadmissibility provision that covers all of the sanctions legislation. That's the Sergei Magnitsky Law, as well as the Special Economic Measures Act, which makes people who are sanctioned inadmissible to Canada.
If we were to deny a visa.... Suppose, looking at this list of relatives, we were to miss somebody somehow. For example, H is a foreign national who resides permanently with the foreign national in question. They could come to Canada, and we would lack an ability to enforce against that person because that person wouldn't actually be inadmissible under the IRPA. As a result, we would propose that sanctioning these individuals through the sanctions legislation would be a more effective tool to prevent their travel to Canada.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
I would just say that we are in agreement with our siblings in the other department in that we also think there are some other problems with this with respect to dual citizens, who may be in a different position and be able to come into Canada another way. We think that sanctioning is the better tool for stopping them. That doesn't mean we are not concerned about family members being safe harbour for funds or other assets that we need to be concerned about. We are concerned about it.
We also want to respect the work. As a machinery of government issue, it would be impossible to do. One of our problems with the bill as it forms is that it's an omnibus bill that is addressing several pieces of legislation, but not the IRPA. If there were some fine tuning under the IRPA, they could do it there, but we still think our acts are the best place to do this work. We will really take it under advisement to make sure that we are sanctioning the appropriate family members who don't harbour assets.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ahmed Hussen
Is there any further debate on this? Okay.
(Amendment negatived on division)
Shall clause 5 carry?
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
You will not support clause 5, even without the amendment. You're cancelling clause 5. Okay.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills North, ON
Mr. Chair, I propose an amendment for clause 5.
I'm sorry. Let's back up here. You're asking if clause 5 is going to carry unamended.
Conservative
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
We will be voting against clause 5.
(Clause 5 negatived on division)
(On clause 6)
Liberal
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
We have, again, an amendment to clause 6. We would amend it by replacing....
I just have to get my other paper here.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Yes, we're on G-4.1.
It states, as item (a), that Bill C-219, in clause 6, be amended by replacing line 20 on page 4 with the following:
4.4 (1) Within 24 months of the seizure or restraint of private
That's changing it to 24 months.
It would then, as item (b), replace line 22 on page 4 with the following:
the Minister must apply for forfeiture of the private property un-
It would also, as item (c), replace line 24 on page 4 with the following:
(2) The Minister must dispose of the private property forfeited
Those are our changes to proposed subsection 4.4(1).
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
We want to move a subamendment to the amendment.
Regarding subsection 4.4(1), it would say, “the restraint of private and public”. Under item (b), it would say, “apply for forfeiture of the private and public”. Under item (c), it would say, “(2) The Minister must dispose of the private and public property forfeited”. This ensures that government assets.... Oh, I guess it's not even going to be government assets, because it's not always public.
I'm moving a subamendment to add...because they're just talking about private assets. They're not talking about government-held assets. If you think about it.... Maybe the word “public” isn't appropriate. I think it should be “government” or “foreign government”.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
We would not be in favour of that, because there's a separate set of international law that governs government or public property, which is quite distinct from private property—the object of our sanctions and forfeiture activities. I'm not sure whether we have an expert on this here.
Maybe Mr. Brookfield could talk about that for us.