Evidence of meeting #24 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was venezuela.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
And it'll continue until the next election?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
In terms of timing, I'd want to look at the numbers carefully, but it's certainly in effect today. October 7 is the election, so we could do the math, but yes, it should run into the electoral period this October.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
Has it completely displaced their legislative process?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
No, I think there's a process still ongoing, but obviously what this does, we believe, is it distorts again the proper democratic process in the country and it distorts the role of the assembly. It's essentially giving far more authority to the presidency than we think is normal in an open western society in our region. We've not been happy about this. A number of countries, including Canada, have made our views known to the government.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
I presume every indication is that Chavez is going to run again.
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
We have the President of Venezuela in Cuba this week, of course, for treatment in terms of the cancer situation he's facing, so I can't prejudge what will transpire in the next few days or weeks.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
But every other indication is that.... He has not said he's not running.
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I think he's certainly very keen on running again, health permitting, I guess.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
I'd like to dig a little deeper into this relationship with Iran. This committee spent a lot of time over the last couple of years studying Iran. It came out, both in that study and in our previous meetings on Venezuela, that there's a close relationship between the two. There are direct flights. Who knows what the cargo is.
What can you tell us about that relationship? Obviously the world community is watching very closely what's happening in Iran and their initiatives to perhaps arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Do you think Venezuela is playing a role in that?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
It's hard for me to comment in detail on that kind of relationship. I suppose these are two leaders who are very isolated. We can think of other examples in the world where leaders who feel isolated and left out of the mainstream for their own reasons, perhaps, tend to come together, try to work together.
It's a pattern that I think we've seen with President Chavez, that he reaches out to sometimes unorthodox leaders who are considered outside the mainstream of international diplomacy, of international law. In this case, as you could see from the last visit of the Iranian president, they seem to have quite a strong personal rapport, and I'm sure there are commercial interests and other interests at stake. I'm not privy to any of the details of that, obviously, sitting here, but it is a situation where sometimes these countries that are very much on the fringes of the mainstream tend to coalesce together. We've seen that with a number of other countries as well.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
So you don't have any detailed information about the nature of it and whether there's a strategic component to that relationship?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
No, I can't really say. I'm sure the committee could call other witnesses who could comment on that more specifically. We continue to monitor that, and we're very troubled by this element of his international relations.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
I found it interesting that they took the recommendations of Canada and the UPR so seriously that they actually rejected some of them. I would have thought that the easier thing would have been to give a nod and say “sure” or “fine” and then do nothing. But they actually accepted two and rejected the rest. It was a bit more honest than I expected.
I also noticed that they rejected the one about the independence of the judiciary. That's one thing we've heard a lot about here at this committee, the complete lack of independence of the judiciary appointments—decisions unappealable, bad decisions. What can you tell us about that?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Well, it's part of a process of politicization of the judiciary, as I was mentioning in regard to your other question, and I think political loyalties weigh more in the balance than professionalism does. Therefore, you begin to see senior judges who may have risen because of their loyalties to the leader rather than their competence. That, I think, tends to distort their perception on cases, as we've seen in some instances.
In the UPR context, I guess it is encouraging in the sense that they did accept some of those. But we also have to monitor now to continue to ensure that they actually abide by them. I must say, in the UPR, I think the countries that do present and get critiqued tend to take the process quite seriously. Whether they implement everything is another story.
Conservative
Liberal
Irwin Cotler Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to follow up Mr. Hiebert's question with a comment, because I found it disturbing, frankly, that Chavez was receiving President Ahmadinejad in an open embrace in the course of Ahmadinejad being engaged in his state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide. I would have thought that given that Canada is representing the target of that incitement in Venezuela, we might have commented on that and expressed our concern.
Do you know if we've done that?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I can't say 100%, sir, if we undertook a formal démarche, but we certainly would have expressed our views in Caracas through our ambassador. As I mentioned, we also have very limited access, so we can make public comment, but we continue to have difficulties engaging with senior levels of that government even if we want to.
But I would like to confirm what was done on our part in that context and get back to you.
Liberal
Irwin Cotler Liberal Mount Royal, QC
I would appreciate it if you would, because since the state-sanctioned incitement was of a public and sustained character, I think it would have warranted at least some public critique on our part.
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Understood.
Liberal
Irwin Cotler Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Let me go to the recommendations.
Among those that were rejected were two that I find of particular concern. One is regarding the promotion of freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. We've had witness testimony here to the effect that such fundamental freedoms have in fact been criminalized. That includes criminalization of media expression, which was another parenthetical recommendation in that regard.
The second was about promoting the independence of the judiciary, and here too we've had witness testimony regarding the harassment and even imprisonment of members of the judiciary.
Can you comment on those two specific recommendations that were rejected, and can you tell us about their current status and about our representations in that regard?
Director General, Latin America and Caribbean, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
We will undertake to review these, obviously, with the Government of Venezuela, but also in the context of the Human Rights Council itself. Our concern continues to be, as you mentioned, sir, the restrictions on press, the harassment of journalists, and situations like that, which are completely inconsistent with the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the United Nations.
We remind Venezuela that it is a signatory to international and regional agreements and that it has to abide by them, and we continue to monitor those very closely.
In the case of the judiciary, I think it's an ongoing concern. I refer to the Supreme Court decision vis-à-vis the opposition party candidate upholding the government's position, which clearly was not credible and was simply a political tactic.
These are two areas of concern to us, and we will monitor the follow-up in terms of these particular issues with the Government of Venezuela.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
Okay.
We'll go back to the Conservatives then.
Mr. Sweet, go ahead, please.