Thank you. I appreciate that.
I too heard those comments about the review of Canada at the universal periodic review. Of course, the great hope was that this mechanism at the UN Human Rights Council would be a little more free of those kinds of political factors than the previous commission was. But I very carefully went through the discussion of Canada that day, and there are countries asking questions from all parts of the world and from all levels, from very developed countries, who ask questions about Canada's record of implementation, to those, yes, who might have less attractive records than Canada says it has.
I would also highlight that there was input to that process from the treaty bodies that are made up of experts. Those are not country political figures, and they had input into the process and suggested that Canada needed to improve.
If you look at all of the reports coming to Canada from the various treaty bodies over the last five years, I would suggest that you're going to find a common theme.
Another thing I would highlight for MPs is the number of Canadian NGOs who chose to make submissions under that process because they are concerned and have not been able to find avenues to improve that.
So when you put all of that together, I would say this cannot be dismissed as simply a few rogue states who want to punish Canada for another vote at the Human Rights Council. It's more substantive than that.
In terms of NGOs and the Continuing Committee of Officials on Human Rights, the latter has no mandate to meet with anybody. That's what they told us. Then we asked if they could just tell us what was being done, but they have no mandate to do that either.
What I'm saying here is that I don't think a mechanism of that kind can be adequate when it comes to human rights and when the government and others continue to say.... And we know that federalism is a challenge for us in terms of meeting human rights. But then surely you put in place some mechanisms that have some transparency and that can work with civil society across those boundaries, because that's the way you will make real progress.
So it's simply inadequate and outdated. It simply needs reform. To find out what could work, that's the challenge we face now.