Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 25th, 2026

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. McGhie, you just said again that Canada must become an example. However, I've had the opportunity to serve as vice-chair of this committee for six and a half years, and for six and a half years, I've been hearing that Canada must take the lead on humanitarian issues, among other things.

Canada is not a military or an economic power, but it does have a track record when it comes to defending rights. This is coming from a Quebec sovereignist. We need only to think of Mr. Mulroney and apartheid, or Lester B. Pearson and the peacekeepers. Even Mr. Chrétien had a policy on Africa that was quite remarkable. Mr. Trudeau came to power in 2015 saying that Canada was back. Today, Mr. Carney tells us that we should not see the world as we would like it to be, but as it is. So there has clearly been quite a paradigm shift.

What I'm seeing right now is not a Canada that is taking the lead, since it is cutting international aid. It is currently putting all its eggs in one basket when it comes to the oil and gas industry, even as climate change is worsening and more and more people will be displaced.

How can we try to make people in the government understand that there is an urgent problem, but that Canada has an opportunity to act meaningfully, within its means, as a moral leader in international human rights? How do we do that? I haven't been able to find the answer in six and a half years.

[Meredith Preston McGhie]

I'll try to answer that.

When we want to diversify on trade issues.... You mentioned oil and gas. We talk about the need to diversify our economy. We talked earlier about defence spending. That's fine. None of those things can exist in isolation from one another.

Take the example of the gulf states and Sudan. We want to increase relationships with certain gulf actors. We need to have an opinion on and engagement on Sudan if we're going to be engaging in the gulf. The gulf has engagement on Sudan. They're engaged in the conflict quite actively. Canada can play a role in the economic drivers of the conflict in Sudan—addressing those, trying to stem some of them and addressing the peace process in Sudan—as a way of demonstrating that we are a serious political actor when we're talking trade as well.

We need to connect these pieces to one another, not just do trade with one hand and political peace processes or diplomacy with the other. These things need to come together for us to have a mature foreign policy.

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

I understand, but let's talk about the most recent agreement between Canada and the United Arab Emirates, for example, which, according to what we've been told, is heavily involved in Sudan. This is an $80 billion agreement that was signed in November or December, when Mr. Carney made a brief visit there. I haven't heard about Sudan. Once again, there was an opportunity, but unfortunately, we are left somewhat empty-handed today. There's an $80 billion investment agreement, but there's no guarantee that anything will happen in Sudan. From what we are told, Sudan is part of the problem, as it is facing a very serious humanitarian crisis.

I didn't have time to address you earlier, Mr. Lawson. I would like you to tell us about what you are experiencing right now. As you said, you and the people on the ground are direct witnesses to the situation. I would like to know what MSF staff are telling you about the most urgent needs of displaced people in the most serious conflicts right now.

[Michael Lawson]

What I'm hearing from my colleagues and from all the MSF staff is that it's not easy to pinpoint a single need, because everything is interconnected.

The simple answer is that we see all needs specifically increasing, because we see the response decreasing. Just as my colleague here has said, these things don't exist in isolation when we're talking about a large-scale policy response. You can't confine the impacts of displacement and the significant humanitarian needs to one isolated piece.

Displacement, as you said before, drives exposure to violence and exposure to sexual and gender-based violence. Also, when shelters and displacement sites become overcrowded and under-resourced, this becomes a driver of disease transmission and exposure to outbreaks.

What are the needs in these places? All of these needs are in place: food rations, as we have seen in some contexts, which have been cut due to global funding cuts, and protection programs for—

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Can you wrap it up, please? The time is up.

[Michael Lawson]

Each piece, from medical care to food distribution and protection and safety...all of these pieces are in urgent need of escalation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Lawson.

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.

I will invite Madame Vandenbeld to take the floor for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start with Dr. Lawson. I'd like to talk a bit about the way in which we do our humanitarian and development assistance.

We've talked about this before, and there has been previous testimony about the inability to pivot. If you have a five-year program with activities and outputs, and then all of a sudden a catastrophe happens, it's very difficult for a lot of agencies to respond to that, because it's outside of what their project was funded to do.

I've never forgotten the story about Goma, where Médecins sans Frontières was active. You described going past a number of gated offices with the white vehicles and then literally two minutes down the road was a spontaneous refugee camp that had zero services—that irony.

Can you talk about how we could change the way in which we do our ODA and our development assistance that would allow for the flexibility, the pivoting and responding better to the needs on the ground? The world is changing. Things are happening much more quickly. Can you talk about a way in which we can maybe change how we do it?

[Michael Lawson]

Absolutely, and thank you for the question.

From the start, I will say that I can't lay claim to being a doctor, but thank you all the same.

MSF is an organization that by and large does not rely on institutional funding from governments around the world, although we do have a relationship with the Government of Canada. Almost the entirety of our funding is privately delivered, and this has allowed us to have flexibility in our ability to respond. However, we are just one small part of the response, no matter how that gets determined, so the question here is how that flexibility is built. That is an essential.... I'm very glad you've raised this point, because that absolutely needs to be built into how humanitarian assistance funding is determined.

Without that flexibility, we run into the exact same situation that you've described. Needs change, because these are all very dynamic contexts that are affected by any number of different factors, and if we maintain the traditional approach of long-term static funding allocations that's been in place, it does not set up agencies to be nimble and respond. Now more than ever, when we are looking at reduced resources and a reduced ability to respond, it is absolutely essential that the agencies that depend on governments for their funding have flexibility built in so that they can pivot to these needs.

It's a fundamental need. It is something that we have seen for a very long time from our perspective, because we try to emphasize this flexibility. However, when it comes to long-term institutional funding, this is a change that needs to happen.

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

Thank you. I agree.

I'd like to ask a question of Meredith Preston McGhie.

You had a statistic in your opening remarks. You said two-thirds of displaced people are in protracted situations. I think much of the popular imagination thinks of a displaced person or a refugee as somebody walking down a path or a road going from A to B in a temporary and mobile way, but that's not the experience for most displaced people in the world. It is very much not a temporary thing that lasts while you get to place B, where you will be safe. The way we think about displacement is perhaps something that we need to rethink.

When you talk about these protracted periods, how long are they? What does the actual experience of a displaced person typically look like today?

[Meredith Preston McGhie]

First of all, there isn't a single typical experience, but I will give a couple of examples.

We have friends and colleagues who've been born as refugees. Their parents fled, and then they were born in camps. If I may, I will read a quote from one of our Global Pluralism Award laureates—Trésor Mpauni, who is in the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi. He is a refugee from Congo. He's now been in Malawi.... I met him six years ago. He'd been displaced for 14 years. He's now been displaced for 20. He reminds us that:

Refugees are more than just “refugees.” They are doctors, engineers, architects, teachers, artists, dreamers, entrepreneurs, and ambitious people with much to contribute when given the chance. What distinguishes them is their heroic courage and unshakable resilience....

I use Trésor as an example because—

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Can you wrap it up, please? Time is up.

[Meredith Preston McGhie]

I would say that he's lived 20 years not in the society of Malawi writ large but in a refugee camp. We also have to remember that these durable solutions need to exist in the wider society. A lot of people are essentially confined in camps for decades, and we need to look at how we are building connection between those inside the camps and the wider society, those who are living in the wider population.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

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

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Dr. Imseis, I'm just a member of Parliament from Calgary. I'm not a legal expert, and I don't teach at one of the finest universities in the country.

In your April 2025 statement to the ICJ, you said, “UNRWA is the last hope that the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip, have of surviving Israel's genocide against them.” You have repeatedly described Israel's response to the October 7 massacre as genocide, as you did here today.

It's such a passionate debate, filled with very emotional content, and I'm trying to have an empirical conversation about it. It's a fair question: Do you apply the same legal and moral standard to Hamas's deliberate killing of 1,200 civilians, systemic sexual violence and hostage taking on October 7, or does international law bind only the Jewish state?

[Dr. Ardi Imseis]

Thank you very much for the question. I think the question answers itself, in a sense.

I have given evidence to you today affirming my commitment to international law and its universal application to all, without fear or favour. I have to correct you, dear sir: It was not said today that what Israel is doing is genocide. I have quoted the ICJ as saying it is a plausible genocide.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Which is not calling it a genocide, sir....

[Dr. Ardi Imseis]

Bear with me.

What you quoted just now, in terms of the submissions that I made before the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, the ICJ, was on behalf of my client—a state that asserts that it is a genocide. I think you are well enough prepared to understand that when legal counsel goes before any court, they represent their clients and not themselves.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Your inference that the ICJ's.... We can split hairs over this, but your testimony today, your inference, the reason you highlighted it, was to establish a fact pattern, unless it was just a footnote in a longer conversation you're having. It was in support of an argument that you presented as full, and when we go back to the record we can see that.

You cited Israeli statements as evidence of having genocidal intent generally. You cited that evidence today.

Have you similarly examined Hamas's founding charter, its leaders' calls for Israel's destruction and the explicit strategy of embedding military assets among civilian populations? Why does your analysis treat Hamas's actions as resistance while framing Israel's elimination of that threat as genocidal?

[Dr. Ardi Imseis]

I'm happy to talk to you and give you an answer to your question. I'm just dumbfounded in that I've not given any evidence, nor have I been asked to give evidence today about my position regarding a non-state armed group, Hamas. I've not said anything about Hamas.

I will try my best in good faith to answer your question about Hamas's actions on October 7. My view is that on that day, as a matter of international law, the attacks against Israel and Israeli civilians were unlawful, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, quite frankly. There are now arrest warrants out for the leaders of Hamas. Some of the arrest warrants are out for individuals, three leaders of Hamas, who have been killed by the Israelis since.

I would think that the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC is going to continue to examine this matter and perhaps deliver more arrest warrants in respect to the events that took place on that day, as directed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

At the same time, on that fateful day of October 7, to the extent that Palestinian armed groups attacked legitimate military targets, which they did empirically—IDF targets, pillboxes, the wall and military bases—

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Dance parties and villages....

[Dr. Ardi Imseis]

Bear with me. I've already dealt with the attacks against civilians. I acknowledged them. I said that they are war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. That's a matter of record.

Let me address the attacks against legitimate military targets, because I apply international law universally across the board. In this regard, those attacks are perfectly lawful.

An occupying power in the occupied Palestinian territory, there for some 60 years—

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Forgive me, I'm going to interrupt you. It's my time, sir.

[Dr. Ardi Imseis]

—they are using their militarized forces, and they are therefore legitimate targets.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

I'm not sure how a listed terrorist organization.... I'm not sure how you can justify that.