Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 29th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 59 of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format.

I would like to inform the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

I'd like to remind participants to please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. All comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room and on Zoom, please raise your hand if you wish to speak. The subcommittee clerk and I will do our best to maintain the speaking order.

Before I turn to the witnesses, I would like to take a moment to draw the attention of colleagues to the four budgets that were distributed to subcommittee members this morning authorizing the spending for the studies that the subcommittee has decided to launch this fall.

First, the targeting of civil society in Venezuela; second, patterns of forced migration in different regions of the world; third, the implementation of Canada's universal periodic review; and fourth, transnational repression in developing democracies.

If the members of the subcommittee are ready to adopt these four budgets, we can do so now. However, if the members of the subcommittee wish to have more time to study the estimates, we can do so next week.

Is the subcommittee ready to adopt the budgets?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I declare the budgets carried.

Thank you.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the subcommittee on September 24, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of patterns of forced migration in different regions of the world.

I'd like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. From the Manhattan Institute, we have Daniel Di Martino, graduate fellow, as well as Emmanuel Rincón, lawyer. Both are appearing as individuals by video conference. From Oxfam Canada, we have Lauren Ravon, executive director, Oxfam-Québec.

You will have a maximum of five minutes for your remarks, after which we will proceed with a round of questions.

Welcome, Mr. Di Martino, Mr. Rincón and Ms. Ravon. I invite you to make your opening statement. You have five minutes each.

Ms. Ravon, you have the floor.

[Lauren Ravon, Executive director, Oxfam Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for inviting me here today on a topic that I think about every day of the week.

My name is Lauren Ravon. I'm the executive director of Oxfam Canada.

Every single day, families around the world are being forced from their homes in search of safety and a better life. They are risking everything to escape conflict, natural disasters, violence or hunger, often leaving with nothing but the clothes on their backs. In my 10 years with Oxfam, I have witnessed forced displacement increase significantly.

Last month I visited Somalia, where I met with families who had fled their lands and were now living in makeshift tents on the outskirts of villages. Their living conditions were so precarious, yet they knew they would never be able to return to their land. After four years of intense droughts, that land has been rendered uninhabitable.

I also visited the border between Sudan and South Sudan. I remember standing on the main road that connects the two countries and seeing hundreds of people by the hour crossing over the border by foot under the beating sun. Almost all of these people were mothers and grandmothers with their kids. Many of them had been displaced twice—first seeking refuge in Sudan when the civil war broke out in their country, and then fleeing back as returnees after violence erupted in Khartoum, knowing very well that the conditions weren’t in place for their safe return but being left with no other choice.

Forced migration is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years its scope has expanded dramatically. A staggering 120 million people have been forcibly displaced around the world. The reasons for this rise are complex and varied. Whether it’s the devastation caused by violent conflict, persecution or the worsening impacts of climate change, people around the world are being driven from their homes in ever-increasing numbers.

In Sudan more than 10 million people have been displaced since the conflict broke out. It’s the worst internal displacement crisis in the world today. In the DRC, 6.8 million people are internally displaced. It's 2.9 million in Myanmar. About 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced in the Gaza Strip, with many forced to flee multiple times. In all these contexts, the cause of displacement is conflict. Those who pay the price are civilians.

Syrians account for almost one in five refugees globally, with 6.5 million Syrians hosted in 131 countries. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their country over the last decade. This is the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history, and one of the largest displacement crises in the world.

In Central and South America, organized crime, economic hardship and political corruption have left countless individuals with no choice but to embark on a dangerous journey north. Meanwhile, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, droughts, floods and other environmental catastrophes have wiped out all livelihoods, leading to large-scale displacement as communities seek safety and sustenance elsewhere. In South Asia, the 2022 floods in Pakistan resulted in eight million people displaced.

Oxfam, an organization with a long history in humanitarian work, has been at the forefront of responding to forced migration. Through our programs, we help people who have been displaced meet their basic needs, such as access to clean water, food, shelter and safety. We're also working to address the underlying causes of forced migration by reducing poverty, conflict and inequality. This speaks to the need for long-term solutions that go beyond immediate humanitarian response.

Forced migration is a global issue that demands a global response. Canada has been a leader in welcoming refugees to this country. Its commitment to providing safe haven for those in need is a source of national pride, but there is more that we can do collectively. I want to share four recommendations for the Government of Canada.

First, Canada should increase its levels of humanitarian aid. We should expand our support specifically to countries grappling with large internal displacement crises as well as countries that are hosting large numbers of refugees, providing financial resources and technical assistance to help meet the needs of these populations.

Second, Canada must recognize and address climate change as a driver of displacement. As climate change increasingly forces people to leave their homes, Canada should advocate for global action on climate migration and support policies that provide protections for climate refugees.

Third, Canada should champion international co-operation and work with international partners to improve the resettlement process, enhance legal pathways for migration and ensure that the human rights of all displaced people are upheld.

Finally, the only way to stem the tide of forced migration is to promote sustainable development. Investing in long-term development programs in regions prone to forced migration can address some of the root causes, thereby reducing the need for people to flee.

Forced migration is not just a humanitarian crisis. It's a test of our collective humanity.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Ms. Ravon. It was a great allocution.

Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, you have the floor.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Chair, whom I love with all my heart, could you ask the witnesses to speak a little more slowly to give our interpreters a chance to breathe? Otherwise, we won't make it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Please, I would like to appeal to all our witnesses, when they speak, to speak a bit slowly in order to give a chance to our people who do the good translation for us. Thank you.

Now I would like to invite Mr. Daniel Di Martino to take the floor for five minutes, please.

Mr. Di Martino, you could start.

[Daniel Di Martino, Graduate Fellow, Manhattan Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you for allowing me to testify about this very important matter.

I hail from Venezuela, the nation that has produced the largest number of refugees and displaced persons in the world, numbering nine million today. This is a shocking fact because Venezuela used to be the fourth-richest country in the world, and it welcomed millions of immigrants in the second half of the 20th century, including my own four grandparents.

Venezuela used to be the world's top oil exporter, yet it is now the world's top people exporter. It is the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet, yet there is no gasoline. I was forced to line up for food, medicines and other necessities, for hours, as the government told me when I could visit the grocery store and what I could buy. Inflation destroyed my family's income and made us extremely poor. I lost power and water in my home frequently, and my childhood was plagued with fear of robbery, kidnapping and murder amid rising crime.

Unlike other refugee crises, the world's largest refugee crisis in Venezuela was not caused by a foreign invasion, by an ethnic or religious conflict, or by a natural disaster. The world's largest refugee crisis was caused by socialism. The socialist policies of the initially democratically elected regime, such as nationalization of businesses, price and currency controls, and limitless government spending and deficits, turned my beautiful nation into a horrible and a dangerous place. That is why Venezuelans flee.

It's not just Venezuelans but also Cubans, Nicaraguans, Eritreans, North Koreans. It's millions of other people, today and in the past, who have died, suffered and fled from socialism. It is not just socialism. Behind rising numbers of refugees, authoritarian regimes of many ideologies and their actions are why most of the world's refugees have fled. Think of Syria, Russia and China. The question before you now is what to do about this.

I'd like to suggest two sets of actions.

The first is to attack the causes of the refugee crisis, and that means taking a stand against evil. You should stop allowing authoritarian regimes to take advantage of you and to enrich themselves. For example, Canada continues to trade with and to enrich the Cuban regime in the hopes that this is the best course of action with the oldest and the most evil dictatorship in our region. Instead of maintaining normal relations with Cuba, an ethical and smart approach is to take a stand against evil and support the Cuban people—not the regime—by helping to provide, for example, free satellite Internet on the island and by funding the democratic resistance.

I think this boils down to a simple question, which is this: If you knew your neighbour was kidnapped in his house, what would you do? Would you call the police? Would you try to save him if there were no police? This is the situation that afflicts well over a billion people around the world. They are kidnapped by tyrants, and it is our moral duty to help them.

Advancing freedom abroad is even more important because you simply can't welcome all of the world's refugees, and they would rather stay in their home countries, with freedom, than go to Canada.

Second, you must have a rational and effective refugee policy that picks the right number and the right kinds of refugees and that helps those refugees succeed. My research with the Manhattan Institute on immigrant assimilation and its fiscal impact in the U.S. has many lessons applicable to Canada.

First is that the immigrants who are most likely to succeed economically are those who speak the language of their new home country and who are more highly educated, as well as arrive as children or young adults. These are also the immigrants who tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits from the government. Selecting refugees who are younger, who speak English or French, and who are more educated means that you can welcome more of them at no cost.

Canada has a successful, privately run refugee sponsorship program, but a recent explosion in asylum claims and government-funded refugee sponsorship threatens the long-admired Canadian immigration model. Excessively high numbers of less-selected immigrants lead to a strain on public resources and on housing, which Canadians are now feeling and are complaining about.

Canada has already taken a good step to fix this by reimposing visa requirements on Mexicans, but you can continue by limiting government-funded refugee sponsorship and by relying more on private sponsorship.

Subcommittee members, I have met countless refugees, especially in my role as founder of the Dissident Project, my organization that sends immigrants from countries ruled by tyrants to speak at American high schools and to tell their stories. I view refugees as an asset to democracy. You should use the stories of the thousands of people who fled tyranny to come to Canada to educate young Canadians about the privilege of living in a free country. The best thing you can do for refugees is to honour the promise of freedom in Canada, for you and for the world, and not to let your nation turn into another place to flee, like what happened in mine.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Muchas gracias, señor Martino.

I would like to invite Mr. Emmanuel Rincón to take the floor for five minutes, please.

The floor is yours, Mr. Rincón.

[Emmanuel Rincón, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] discuss the effect of the mass migration in the western world and why we are facing this enormous crisis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Excuse me. Can you hold? We have a technical issue. We would like to check it, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

It has been decided that we are going to the first round of questions with the first two witnesses. Then, our IT team will be in contact with Mr. Rincón to try to solve the problem.

I'll allow members to ask the witnesses questions.

We would like to start with M. Ali Ehsassi.

Ali, you have the floor for seven minutes, please.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. It's great to have you back, Ms. Ravon.

I saw a report a few days ago, which was issued by the UN. Essentially, it was saying that in an era of indiscriminate warfare, like we're currently experiencing, they had found that 40% of the people who had died in war zones were women.

How common is this? This is certainly a new trend. I think this report was saying that the number of women who were dying in various countries, due to indiscriminate warfare, has doubled within a year.

What do you think the ramifications of this will be, and how do we address this issue?

[Lauren Ravon]

Thank you for that question. It's definitely something that we're observing.

The fact that more and more wars are being fought in densely populated urban areas in particular, with a huge impact on civilians, is, to be honest, kind of a disrespect for international humanitarian law. It means that more civilians, overall, are being hit. It's not only women. It's civilians in general, but in particular, women and their kids are dying more.

I would also say that something that is less covered but equally worrying is that many more women than men die in humanitarian and natural disasters. I don't think this is a well-known fact. As humanitarian disasters caused by natural catastrophes that are climate-driven are on the rise, we're going to see more and more women dying, in particular. This is often because women have less mobility than men. For example, they're the ones who are less likely to be able to leave their homes. They're the first to be caring for their elderly father or kids, and are not getting to safety in time. As the number of floods, hurricanes and violent storms happening is increasing, we're seeing more women dying.

Something that we've been really advocating for is more investment in women being able to prepare communities for the worst-case scenario, so that they are actually involved. We see that when women aren't involved in preparing for the worst, the worst happens to them first. Women not being involved in national disaster preparedness plans means that decisions are made that are based on men's ability to flee or to prepare—not women's.

Both in conflicts and in natural disasters, women are definitely bearing the brunt today.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Absolutely.

You made a number of really good recommendations. I was wondering if I could focus on the last one, which was promoting a focus on sustainable development. How prevalent is it for European and North American countries to promote sustainable development?

[Lauren Ravon]

It seems self-evident that, if people have good living conditions, are less at risk of a natural disaster and actually have access to jobs, they'll want to stay in their country. Most people have no intention of leaving their homes. They don't want to leave their homes, but we're seeing that, with the rise of conflicts and of climate-induced disasters, a lot of international aid is going to humanitarian response.

Our concern at Oxfam, and that we're experiencing ourselves, is that there's a bottoming out of financing for development work. We're running from one emergency to the next, putting a band-aid on and then going to the next place. Ultimately, the programs that invest in job creation, technical and vocational training, women's empowerment, climate-smart agriculture—all those things—are no longer being invested in because all we're doing is rushing around, trucking in water, emergency food aid and cash distribution. We're not investing in what keeps people safe, healthy and at home.

I am concerned about trends I'm seeing where, first of all, global solidarity with countries that are being hit by disasters is strained. Development budgets aren't growing around the world, by any stretch, but on top of it, the fact that we have so many emergencies means that more money is going to humanitarian causes, which we need. However, if you're not doing both in tandem, we're just chasing our tails.

We've talked a long time—and I think I spoke with many of you before—about the need to fund across the humanitarian development peace nexus. What that means is that we need to be connecting the dots so that, when we're going into a community that's been hit by an emergency, we're not only trucking in water for today but we're building, for example, solar-panel desalination plants in that community so that they will have access to water in the long term. It means also that we stop seeing efforts to empower women as non-life-saving and therefore non-fundable under humanitarian programs, which currently is the case.

Humanitarian program definitions are very narrow, so any work that has to do with gender equality or women's empowerment does not meet the definition and can't get funded. If we got rid of these strict barriers between what we consider to be humanitarian response, long-term development and, then, peacebuilding efforts, we could have a more seamless integration of the work that we do.

To give one example that I might have shared with you in the past, Oxfam supported a really interesting program funded by the Government of Canada, a women's voice and leadership program in Pakistan. The whole purpose of the program was to build up the capacity of local women's groups to advance their communities, whether it was with economic development, justice or women's political participation. When the floods hit in Pakistan, many of these organizations we were working with said, “We want to be part of the humanitarian response,” yet we weren't able to use the funding, which we had for programming for these organizations, to allow them to do humanitarian response. The line is so rigidly drawn that it would have required a whole new renegotiation of our programming. That's because the way development funding is generally set up is that it has this clear delineation and you can't move from one to the next.

We're really recommending that, at Global Affairs Canada, we have two things: First is more funding across that nexus of development and humanitarian, and second is that we include things that we refer to as “crisis modifiers”. Basically, when you develop a project, you already know that something is likely going to go wrong, so you anticipate that. In a country that's prone to flooding, for example, within your development program you have crisis modifiers to say, “If flooding hits the region where the programs are happening, then we'll pivot to these sorts of activities rather than having to go back to the drawing board.”

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Now I invite Mr. Majumdar to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you very much for your perspectives on dealing with this.

Mr. Di Martino, I want to talk a little about what your colleague from Oxfam raised. She said that, in your home country, 1.7 million Venezuelans are internally displaced, and that crime and corruption, broadly across the Americas, are fuelling a refugee crisis. I want to spend a little time, sir, focusing on the kinds of actors that animate this refugee crisis.

You had a chance to talk a little about the failed socialist experience in Venezuela. I'm curious, when it comes to how countries like Canada engage with Venezuela, Cuba and other authoritarian regimes in the Americas, what would be a better way to uphold principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in a way that would restrain the refugee crisis rather than exacerbate it?

[Daniel Di Martino]

In general, there's a misconception that these countries like Cuba or Venezuela have become poorer as a consequence of sanctions, when in reality the economies have been bankrupted by the governments themselves. The best example of that is what happened in Venezuela. When the whole western world sanctioned Venezuela and its government, the government was forced to dollarize the economy—and most of the population now uses U.S. dollars or Colombian pesos—and inflation fell. It didn't go up as a consequence of international sanctions.

The purpose of the sanctions should either be to dislodge a government or to contain its capacity to do harm. What is that capacity to do harm? They use foreign currency to buy weapons to repress people. They use international currency, trade with China and ties with other authoritarian regimes to fund terrorist organizations. There are Hezbollah ties with the Venezuelan government just as with the Cuban government. There are guerrilla groups working from Colombia and Venezuela that are funded by the Venezuelan regime. Those terrorist groups, guerrilla groups, fuel more refugees from other countries.

You want to starve these governments of funding so they stop doing harm. Understand that they are not governments but criminal organizations that occupy a territory.

The way to help the population is a different way. For example, with the Venezuelan people, Canada has done a lot to allow Canadians to sponsor Venezuelans to come to Canada as refugees, and so have other countries. A different way to help the internal population is humanitarian aid, which people have mentioned. I think the best way is to facilitate international transactions.

How can we allow the Venezuelan people to access U.S. dollars rather than domestic currency so that they can escape inflation? How can we provide Internet access and access to information so that democratic leaders within the country can make change?

That's the kind of thinking we need to have.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

When you look at how Canada, the United States and others are acting in Venezuela today as the pressure continues, do you think more can be done to recognize the forces of democracy, human rights and the rule of law than has presently been done?

[Daniel Di Martino]

The biggest issue is that Canada continues to trade with Cuba, and Canadians continue to visit Cuba as if it were a normal country, thinking that this is going to stimulate the economy. I mention Cuba specifically because the sanctions policy and international relations of Canada and Cuba are very different from Canada and Venezuela. Canada has taken a strong stand in favour of freedom in Venezuela while it has not for Cuba.

That matters because the reason the Venezuelan regime stays in power is Cuban spies and support from the Cuban regime on the island. They are the same transnational organization. The Cubans receive oil, and the Venezuelans receive Cuban spies. This is widely reported.

This matters because a lot of people believe that, for example, Canadian tourists in Cuba will help the Cuban people when, in reality, the Cuban government keeps all of the proceeds and pays a miserly salary of one dollar a day to the Cuban workers who are in those hotels. You're not stimulating the economy of Cuba. You're stimulating the regime, and that's really unethical. This is even beyond economics. This is about ethics here.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

When you think about how the northern part of the hemisphere deals with refugee pressures coming from the southern part of the hemisphere, how do we have better tools to try to differentiate between screening out the oppressor, the criminal, the dictator and the trafficker, and spending more time on finding ways to help marginalized people succeed at starting a new life?

[Daniel Di Martino]

The people who will be best able to know who the people involved in these regimes are when they come into a freer country like Canada are other people from that country.

If you're going to screen Venezuelan refugees, you likely need input from other Venezuelans who are already in the country. This is why I think so many people say they're part of the Cuban Communist Party or the Venezuelan United Socialist Party, people who distribute food and withheld food aid for political reasons in Venezuela, who have been able to get to the U.S. or Canada. They have been able to get through because there were no other Venezuelan or Cuban immigrants who were paying attention or looking at those files. It's much more likely that people from those countries will know who is involved in criminal activity than people from other places.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

I think we have 30 seconds left for a quick question.

Sustainable development is a topic that's been raised today, and I'm sure we'll raise it many times after.

In 15 seconds or so, how important is establishing the rule of law, free markets and actual capitalism as an antidote to the types of socialist failures we're experiencing across this hemisphere?