Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 21st, 2022

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both witnesses for joining us today, particularly those who are joining in the middle of the night. I apologize for keeping you up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

I'm sorry, can we suspend for a few minutes? We have lost the connection.

Allow me to start off by apologizing to our two witnesses for the inexplicable technical challenges we had there. We will now resume.

Ms. McPherson, you have five minutes for your questions.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Again, thank you to everyone for being here.

I was going to follow up on some of the questions of my colleague from the Bloc and ask a few questions of our witness from UNESCO. He spoke about the need for prevention, protection and prosecution. He spoke a little bit about how that prosecution can happen.

In the international forum, what is the best solution? How can countries be held accountable for these human rights abuses against journalists? What is a strategy for that or what is the best strategy?

[Guilherme Canela de Souza Godoi]

Thank you. That's a very pertinent question.

Obviously, when we have impunity, the cycle of violence remains. Tackling the issue of impunity is fundamental to improving the situation of the safety of journalists, globally speaking.

The first thing is that, at the national level, we need to support a more independent judiciary and more independent prosecution services that are actually able to take specific cases against journalists as they deserve, as specific violations of human rights and press freedom.

In the case of UNESCO, for instance, we have established a global judges initiative that has already engaged 23,000 judges and prosecutors from all over the world. We are providing them with specific material. It's basically strengthening the rule of law in this area.

Where we have the regional human rights systems—as in the case of the inter-American region with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in the African region with the African Court on Human Rights and Peoples' Rights, or in the European system—these regional systems can also be supported when the national situation is not improving on facing impunity. Regional human rights courts can actually play a very important role. As you mentioned in the previous panel, international courts like the International Criminal Court can also play this role.

That said, the other key element of the impunity issue is to keep underlining the importance of fighting impunity in the global arena and particularly supporting this very important relationship between rule of law and press freedom. This is absolutely fundamental when we are talking about ending the cycle of impunity.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

You did speak about sustainable development goal 16. We have seen some of the work that needs to be done in terms of the judiciary in that as well. I was very interested to hear about the possibility of Canada using our voluntary national review as an opportunity to highlight some of those challenges or ways in which Canada can help abroad as well.

You also spoke about the gendered impacts and how we have seen this being gendered. That's very, very important. I'd love for you to give us more information and detail about the gendered impacts of the violence against journalists and human rights defenders.

[Guilherme Canela de Souza Godoi]

We recently published a report called “The Chilling”, where we analyzed a series of interviews with women journalists and a global survey worldwide. We also did two case studies about the digital violence against Maria Ressa, who was mentioned in the previous panel, and Carole Cadwalladr. We have been seeing a specific trend to develop orchestrated attacks against women journalists worldwide. It goes from hateful speech against these women journalists to more sophisticated attacks in terms of bots or doxing—all those different words that we are now learning from this online environment of violence against journalists in general, but against women journalists in particular.

Here we need to engage the Internet platforms and companies in this conversation for a potential solution to this problem. One particular issue that is very crucial here is to demand more transparency of the Internet platforms and the way in which they deal with these issues, and also relating to the data of violence against journalists, and against women journalists in particular. If we want to produce evidence-based policy—for instance, to protect women journalists in the online environment—we need the evidence. We need the data.

Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Those companies are very much obscure in terms of the way in which they treat this data and do their human rights risk assessments for dealing with these situations. UNESCO reports have underlined, first, how dangerous the online environment is, particularly for women journalists, but also how difficult it is to design evidence-based policy, particularly because we lack transparency among these Internet companies.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you for the answer to that question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you for that.

Now we will go to the next round of questions. I'm afraid I have some bad news: We will have to restrict each time slot to three minutes.

We will be starting off with Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for both witnesses. This committee, in 2018, did a study on women human rights defenders, and recommended that Canada be a place of safe haven when human rights defenders need to get out temporarily. It may be permanently, but very often it's just a very quick, immediate place of refuge. Typically, human rights defenders, journalists and others want to return to continue the fight.

About a year ago, our government implemented a human rights defenders refugee stream of 250 per year. I can well imagine that journalists and others are part of that particular stream. We're doing it through third parties. Are there ways in which Canada could improve that process and potentially make this scalable and a model for other countries as well?

I'll start with you, Mr. Weimers.

[Clayton Weimers]

Thank you.

I can't say that I'm especially familiar with that program in Canada. I would have to look into it more. I'd be happy to get back to you. I can tell you that the needs for that type of program are only going to continue to grow, as long as repressive regimes are allowed to get away with the level of impunity they have.

Anecdotally, right now we know of about 600 reporters who are trying to get out of Russia, because they're fearful of persecution or arrest, or their organizations have shut down and they no longer have some of the protection they once had. One of the things my organization is working to do right now is help facilitate safe passage into countries with lesser visa requirements from Russia so that these reporters can get to a safe third country quickly.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. de Souza Godoi, please go ahead.

[Guilherme Canela de Souza Godoi]

As Clayton mentioned, I don't know the particularities of the Canadian system, but this is definitely a very concrete measure that can help human rights defenders, as well as journalists.

We've seen the situation, for instance, very recently in Afghanistan and now in Ukraine, where we have a considerable number of refugee journalists who need this kind of protection and shelter elsewhere. We have been supporting them through the UNESCO global media defence fund. This also comes with strong financial support from Canada, which I thank you very much for.

We have been supporting a structure under the International Bar Association called the high-level legal panel. This high-level legal panel was co-chaired by Lord Neuberger and Amal Clooney. Two years ago, they produced a very important report on these kind of issues: how to have a special visa regime, how to offer consulate assistance to journalists who are facing this kind of persecution in their countries, and so on.

I would recommend that the committee read the reports if you have not seen them yet. They really go into a very detailed approach on how different countries can improve their systems to help these journalists and human rights defenders who are in need of improved policies in that area.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

We will now turn to Mr. Cooper. You have three minutes, sir.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are for Mr. Weimers. In your testimony, you noted that, in terms of press freedom and protecting journalists, the international legal framework has improved. However, at the same time, things are getting worse, not better, at least based upon the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

You provided one recommendation, to support a UN resolution to establish a special envoy to protect journalists. You noted that, in particular, such an envoy would be important to address the issue of impunity. Could you elaborate on that recommendation?

Could you also address this issue of the legal framework being better than it was before, while at the same time things are sliding backwards? How would such an envoy make things any different?

[Clayton Weimers]

I should really preface my response here with the fact that I am not a lawyer, so you can take my legal analysis for what it's worth.

What I probably should have said, instead of the legal framework getting better, is that the legal framework has been discussed and it has been codified in many ways, but it's not enforceable without a mechanism in place to do the enforcing.

Setting up a special envoy for the protection of journalists takes the next step, from codification of the framework to actual enforcement. It would create a nexus where the international community can converge in order to start monitoring the situation, making recommendations working with organizations like UNESCO and the Human Rights Council, and following up with repercussions for bad actors on the international stage.

However, until we have that mechanism, this is just a framework that exists largely theoretically.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Do you have any other recommendations for what the Government of Canada could be doing?

[Clayton Weimers]

Guilherme also mentioned Canada's leadership in the Media Freedom Coalition, which we think is very important. Canada is also a participant in the Forum on Information and Democracy. These are important international forums for like-minded democratic governments to be able to come together to set the expectations when it comes to protecting the free access of information internationally.

I could go on and on, but I'll give you one quick example. Repressive regimes enjoy this competitive advantage whereby in an open democracy, their state media content is allowed to be published freely, but the same is not true, say, in China or in Saudi Arabia. RSF has been working with the Forum on Information and Democracy, for example, to develop a reciprocity mechanism by which the airwaves in Canada can only be used by a Chinese outlet if the Chinese government allows their airwaves to be used by Canadian media outlets. You set up this reciprocity to even the playing field and get rid of that competitive advantage that repressive regimes enjoy right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you for that.

Now we move to Mr. Trudel.

You have three minutes, Mr. Trudel.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will try to make my remarks quickly, even though the problem is vast.

Mr. Canela de Souza Godoi, UNESCO published a report—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Trudel, I'm going to have to suspend. We don't have the two witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

While we're waiting to get through this technical glitch, why don't we move to committee business?

The first item on committee business is the election of a vice-chair, given that Mr. Williamson is no longer a member of our subcommittee. To do this as expeditiously as possible, I will turn this over to the clerk.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Erica Pereira]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Pursuant to the motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on December 13—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I know we were offline, but we weren't in camera for a business meeting, so—