Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before I begin, I'll say that we will be having a number of amendments that have been given notice for and maybe one or two that we will table during the meeting.
I want to start by thanking Mr. Bezan for the bill; Mr. Lawrence, who had a bill in the last Parliament; and Ms. Lantsman, who worked extensively on that bill. Raising these issues for Canadians and for the international community has been really important. We will be, in good faith, attempting to do two things as we walk through these amendments.
First, we want to strengthen some of the parts around transnational repression, which we think has been very much on Canadians' minds in a number of communities. This has been of interest to many Canadians who are worried about the safety and security of their neighbours and the ability for Canadians to exercise democracy in their daily lives without fear of some repercussion from another foreign entity.
We'll also be mindful through this bill about ensuring that there's no collateral damage that was unintended in the bill. We want to ensure that we have a bill that is responsive to the needs of human rights defenders and those who are prisoners of political conscience, while also making sure that we respect their liberties and their freedoms at the same time. We want to ensure that we do not restrict the government from being able to help Canadians in trouble—primarily—as well as citizens of other countries who may find themselves victims of repressive governments. We'll be mindful of doing that.
I come at this very much from my role as parliamentary secretary, more than my role as MP, in which I've had to work on these cases for many years. We've worked extensively with officials who do this in their daily lives. We get to pass legislation, and they have to work with it. Therefore, I also want to thank all the officials who are joining us today.
Behind these officials are hundreds of people in missions around the world who deal with complex consular cases, as well as human rights defenders from other countries. We are going to be doing that.
We also want to honour the life, work and witness of Sergei Magnitsky as we approach this bill. We want to make sure that it is honoured and that Canada can stand with like-minded countries around the world that are attempting to change the way repressive regimes work and the way we can stand up for democracy and human rights in the world.
That being said, I'm going to take the third amendment, G-3, from the government side, which is in respect to clause 2. Clause 2 begins at line 3 of page 2 and continues through until line 20 or so of page 3.
I move that clause 2 of Bill C-219 be amended by replacing line 10 on page 2 to line 13 on page 3 with the following.
It would begin—let me get this correct.