In response I'll add very quickly two practical points and one theoretical one.
First, from a practical perspective, there's a heavy obligation on the federal government, if we adopt this modus operandi of continually adding countries to the list, of keeping track of everything. As things move forward, there's the obligation if Canada in good faith and well meaning wants to remain fair, to ensure that the list is always current.
The second point that flows from that is that Canada then becomes far more actively engaged in this operation of bringing foreign states to justice than Bill C-483 discusses.
As I mentioned, Bill C-483 puts the burden on private litigants to litigate their disputes. The federal government would be involved in making sure that there's this exception to state immunity, but after that, it does not need to take a position. It does not need to say that it follows foreign state A or it does not follow foreign state A. It is up to litigants to do it.
By pressuring the government to maintain a list of perpetrators, that is really asking the government to have a much more active role that may or may not be appropriate for it as it feels at the time.
Finally, as a principled point, I have no trouble saying that all state torturers, all states that commit genocide, all states that commit crimes against humanity, all states that commit war crimes should be caught by a bill that creates an exception to state immunity, because we have faith in our justice system to mete out frivolous and abusive claims. We have faith in our justice system to do this.
I have no question that to the extent a state is unjustly accused, we will not see on the merits that state have repercussions lobbied against it. On the other hand, if we do not adopt this position, there is a very significant risk that in principle this bill would fall short of what it seeks to do, which is to take a large bite out of the impunity foreign states have with respect to these crimes.