Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm pleased to be here with my colleague Heather Jeffrey.
Let me start early this afternoon with a grim quote:
This is your last hope.... Save yourselves. If you do not leave these areas urgently, you will be annihilated..... You know that everyone has given up on you. They left you alone to face your doom and nobody will give you any help.
This is in fact the Government of Syria speaking to its own citizens through leaflets recently dropped over east Aleppo.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank you and the subcommittee for your interest and action in response to this situation in Syria. Thanks to technology and social media, today's hearing is yet another action by Canada that will serve to counter the Assad regime and its backers' propaganda. It will serve to provide hope for Syrians in Syria and in Canada.
As you will hear today, Canada has not forgotten Syrians or the population of Aleppo in particular. Canada has not given up on the Syrian tragedy as Assad and his backers would like Syrians to believe.
Mr. Chair, I would like today to focus on what Canada is doing in response to this tragedy, which has regional and global political ramifications. The situation in Syria, and in Aleppo in particular, has recently been called our generation's shame and a crime of historic proportions at the UN. Srebrenica, Grozny, and Guernica have all been used to call up images of horror, fear, and destruction. As we've just heard, 250,000 people have been besieged, bombed, starved, and denied any humanitarian assistance since July.
Just this morning U.S. Secretary of State Kerry expressed the fear that Aleppo would be bombed to smithereens. In parallel, we had the Russian Minister of Defence saying that peace talks will be delayed indefinitely. The prospects are not good.
Mr. Chair, over the past months Canada has been an integral part of the wide-ranging diplomatic efforts to arrive at a cessation of hostilities. As part of the 26-member International Syria Support Group, Canada has been pressing all parties to contribute to the good will necessary for fighting to stop and for peace talks to get under way.
But in a blatant affront to the international community's efforts, things took a different turn when the Assad regime and his backers launched an all-out offensive on Aleppo. This opened a new, sombre chapter in the Syrian conflict. This was September 22, 2016, precisely to the minute as 26 foreign ministers, including Canada's, were in a meeting of the International Syria Support Group in New York co-chaired by the U.S. and Russia. This took place just after a coordinated aerial attack involving both Russian and regime aircraft on a UN-Syrian Arab Red Crescent humanitarian convoy. You'll recall the headlines.
The day after ministers met in New York and the day after the White Helmets briefed several foreign ministers in New York, the regime's air force launched a targeted attack on the White Helmets in Aleppo, destroying, as you've heard, three of their four stations in the city.
Since September 22 all eyes have been turned on the suffering afflicting Aleppo. Here are some of the actions we've undertaken. Canada promptly and strongly denounced the actions of Syria and Russia in targeting civilians, infrastructure, medical facilities, and humanitarian aid.
The Russian ambassador to Canada was called into Global Affairs on September 26. We conveyed our concerns that Russia's actions ran counter to finding peaceful resolution and were in fact driving the opposition to radicalize.
Canada co-sponsored a French-led resolution in the Security Council to that effect, which was defeated by Russia's veto on October 8. Canada was also among half a dozen leading nations to co-sign a letter with the U.S., the U.K., and France to the president of the UN Security Council deploring the stalemate and seeking the council's action.
Canada and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were also part of an early chorus of leading nations pointing to the commission of war crimes in Syria and calling for an investigation and greater accountability. This early condemnation was further given that one of those war crimes has been the repeated and systematic use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime against its own people, to which you've just referred, Mr. Chair.
Last week's report by the UN Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, also known as OPCW, concluded that there had been yet another instance of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, in the form of chlorine-filled barrel bombs, on civilians.
I'm proud to say that Canada is one of the leading contributors to this investigative mechanism, pressing for greater accountability in Syria in general, but on chemical weapons in particular.
Mr. Chair, the recent failure of the UN Security Council to act prompted Canada to lead an effort to apprise the UN General Assembly of the situation in Syria. We sent, on behalf of 70 countries, a letter to the president of the General Assembly. This resulted in a high-profile and unprecedented mobilization of the General Assembly on October 20. A passionate briefing of all 193 UN member states by the UN Secretary General, and by his envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, served to broaden the course of condemnation and to put pressure on the regime and its backers.
The Government of Canada, like this subcommittee, has been particularly concerned about the situation in Aleppo. To that effect, we've co-sponsored a U.K.-led resolution to apprise the Human Rights Council of the situation in Aleppo. I'm pleased to report that the resolution was passed, and there's a commission of inquiry looking into the human rights situation in Aleppo, as we're doing here today. We expect a report in the coming months.
As recently as yesterday, on October 31, the universal periodic review of Syria by the UN Human Rights Council provided yet another opportunity for Canada to call for an end to the violence, abuses, and torture; for timely and unfettered humanitarian assistance and access; for investigation into abuses and violations of human rights and humanitarian law; and for the release of detainees.
Finally, I'm pleased to inform you, Mr. Chair, that Canada is co-sponsoring the most comprehensive UN resolution to date on Syria, which, through its 10 pages of condemnation and calls for action, addresses the range of humanity's worst horror stories unfolding in Syria.
Mr. Chair, last Friday's election at the United Nations Human Rights Council may be an indication that international pressure is having an impact, as some observers link Russia's failure to get elected to its actions in Syria.
Canada will continue to maintain its global diplomatic engagement and pressures on all the protagonists of the Syrian conflict.
I would like to point out that, while the Syrian regime and its backers bear the overwhelming majority of the responsibility for the situation in Syria and Aleppo to date, we are carefully watching both sides of the conflict.
We are very concerned by recent reports that some of the most radical opposition groups may be using some of the tactics Canada has so strongly condemned and will continue to condemn.
Mr. Chair, in addition to our diplomatic actions, Canada is also making a difference with development, humanitarian and stabilization efforts. This is part of Canada's regional strategy announced earlier this year, in response to the crisis in Syria and Iraq.
As the other witness mentioned, Canada is resettling Syrian refugees in Canada, and providing development assistance across the region to help communities hosting large influxes of Syrian refugees ensure the provision of basic services to their local and refugee populations.
Canada is supporting civilians in opposition-held areas of Syria. We are supporting initiatives to protect civilians, to improve service provision, security and governance in moderate opposition-held areas, and to support Syrian civil society in playing an effective role in peace building and accountability efforts.
Earlier, I mentioned the issue of responsibility. We are supporting the gathering of evidence from Syria, to build accountability for this tragedy.
Canada is also helping the opposition prepare for the peace negotiations, however distant they may seem today. We are remaining hopeful that those negotiations will resume as quickly as possible.
We are working to support the efforts of many of our allies to keep the Syrian opposition alive, both figuratively and literally.
We are expediting several life-saving projects to protect civilians in Aleppo through support to strengthen civilian capacity in monitoring, early warning and emergency response. White helmets are well placed to talk about those issues.
Mr. Chair, the man-made humanitarian situation in Aleppo is unspeakable, intolerable. It's worth highlighting the systematic nature of attacks on both medical facilities and on rescue workers. Fewer than 30 doctors remain in the east of the city, and only six partially functional hospitals are still in service.
Canada's humanitarian assistance is provided through our UN and NGO partners. They're reaching vulnerable populations in besieged and hard-to-reach areas in Syria through a range of means, including cross-border aid deliveries and even, in some cases, air drops. Canada could do much more if conditions were more permissive. Since humanitarian access routes were cut off to eastern Aleppo in July, no humanitarian convoys have been able to access the besieged city. With no end to hostilities in sight, it's estimated that 250,000 people remain trapped in east Aleppo, an area that has not been reached by UN aid convoys since July 7. Food and medical supplies are expected to run out in the coming weeks if guarantees of safe humanitarian access cannot be provided by all parties to the fighting or if the siege cannot be broken.
Thus far in 2016, Canada has provided $65 million in humanitarian assistance to UN agencies and NGOs working in Syria, many of whom continue to have ongoing activities in Aleppo, albeit with limited access. Humanitarian stocks put in position prior to the access cut-off have allowed the continued distribution of life-saving assistance inside eastern Aleppo. These include food assistance, water, primary and emergency health care, nutrition intervention, and distribution of non-food items such as diapers and sanitary kits. However, as we've just heard, supplies of food, fuel, and medical equipment are running low, and the continued attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have cost lives and seriously limited the ability of those on the ground to continue their work.
Mr. Chair, through our efforts, we also need to make sure that Canada's commitment and actions are known in Canada and around the world. We know that, like you, Canadians care about Syria. They have demonstrated that, notably by welcoming tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into their homes and communities from coast to coast. Our Governor General was, yesterday and Sunday, in Jordan visiting a refugee camp and seeing first-hand the situation of the Syrian refugees.
Canadians are interested, as you are, in what Canada's doing, and it's vitally important that Syrians know that as well to counter the regime's propaganda telling them they've been abandoned. With this in mind, a new social media platform was recently created. The handle is @CanadaSyria. Over 300 Syria-focused tweets and images were issued by Global Affairs social media platforms in the past six months, and as with social media, they quickly reached the opposition and provided some hope to Syrians.
I'd also point out that Global Affairs Canada ministers have been personally very engaged and vocal about the many facets of the Syrian conflict, as has our Parliament. As an indication, our ministers have issued an unprecedented number of formal statements and calls for action on Syria. My latest count is 17 in less than one year.
In conclusion, and in relation to the other part of this hearing, you'll be pleased to know that Global Affairs is working closely with the U.K. to welcome the White Helmets into Canada in early December. I'd like to take this opportunity to salute, on the record of this hearing and on behalf of the Government of Canada, the courage of the Syria Civil Defence, more commonly known as the White Helmets. They risk their lives on a daily basis in their dangerous, relentless search and rescue efforts in Aleppo and across Syria. Further amplification of their story in Canada will allow Canadians to hear about their heroic struggle and to get a grim glimpse of life in Aleppo and on the front lines of this terrible, tragic conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and has disrupted the course of many millions of human destinies.
In conclusion, Global Affairs will work to ensure that today's hearings of the subcommittee on this situation in Aleppo reverberate all the way to those who desperately need the hope and solidarity your work and attention to Syria carry. It will be yet another action by Canada that contributes to keeping hope alive in Aleppo and across Syria.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
