Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-19, on the issue of the International Criminal Court, its purpose and relationship to Canadian law and rules.
I will do an overview on the purpose of the International Criminal Court. It is designed to be a permanent institution that would prosecute serious crimes of international concern. It is designed to be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions.
I note that our Minister of Foreign Affairs is vigorously supportive of this court. On September 25, 1998 when the minister appeared before the UN General Assembly he said, “A strong reinvigorated United Nations is still the best foundation for the future. The contours of that future are emerging. A new system based on humanitarian standards and new practices based on humanitarian needs and human security is emerging. Also enhancing human security requires establishing new legal instruments. The agreement in Rome which establishes the ICC, the International Criminal Court, is a major step toward that goal”. Our minister has stated publicly and internationally that he supports this initiative.
In trying to review issues like this one I believe in doing an equilibrium or balance. I will try to do that today to lay out some of the positives behind the bill, this institution, this court and then highlight some of the potential concerns which I think could well be addressed and should be addressed.
On the positive side, the crimes are defined pretty specifically as crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. A reasonable thinking Canadian citizen would say that any of those things should be prosecuted, should be taken care of and should see sanctions.
A second positive aspect would be that war criminals would have difficulty hiding. In this modern day of rapid communication it would be very difficult for a war criminal from another country to hide. With international scrutiny and the scrutiny of the public, I think that would surely be a positive. This process would leave the right to prosecute still with the nation's judicial system. In other words, if Canada had a war criminal living here, we could prosecute that individual here under Canadian law. To my mind that would be appropriate.
Another thing I find positive is that the bill is a forward looking bill which could not look backward at crimes committed before the bill was enacted. We have a bill which is trying to look at things that most reasonable thinking individuals would say are horrific. They should not be condoned. They should not be allowed. They should be prosecuted. To that end those are the positives.
What concerns are there related to going down this road? One of the concerns is about national sovereignty. When there are extra country bodies there is a concern about national sovereignty.
I listened to my colleague from the NDP, which is regularly against globalization when it relates to financial issues, praising globalization of court issues. That is one thing I would like to engage in, in terms of an information gathering source. If globalization is bad with these big international companies coming in and taking over, and I think that is a legitimate concern in some cases, how is it that suddenly globalization of a court system would cause no anxiety whatsoever? There seems to be a bit of an imbalance in that debate.
National sovereignty is a concern. Would the prosecutor have powers that would override national laws? I am not certain that I have the answer to that. I pose that more as a question than as a statement of fact.
The second big issue for me is accountability. That is a buzzword phrase these days in politics. By that I mean that if there is an expansion of rules relating to specified crimes, if there is a problem with the bureaucracy growing and becoming very expensive, are those mechanisms of accountability present? In my reading of this issue that is another question mark. The regulations which go with these processes often do not follow the line or the trend intended. Accountability is a second concern.
There is the issue of cost. It would be a very foolish politician who said “Here is a blank cheque. Let's have an international court that is not subject to cost”. I listened to those who said that war crimes tribunals would be more expensive than an international criminal court. I have yet to see an international organization save money, especially one run by politicians and bureaucrats.
The politicization of some of these issues, these war crimes, is another concern I have. I will use the specific example of expansion. I said before that one of the big crimes was crimes against humanity. That is a very broad categorization. During war crimes rape is one of the horrific crimes. No one would argue with that.
Another crime under crimes against humanity is enslavement. If someone were to ask me if a soldier enslaving a group of individuals would be a war crime, my answer would be categorically yes. To bring people under bondage is a crime against humanity.
What if the definitions went a little further? In a relatively more narrow form the family position in many Arab countries is that the woman stays home, covered and does not have much interchange with the masculine component of society. What if that were to become enslavement?
I have heard from members of Arab nations that they have concerns in that regard. How would I prevent those definitions expanding? The means to do that so there are no court challenges would be to have very specific definitions of enslavement. I will not go deeper into that, but the specific way in which those crimes are defined is very important in something of this nature.
I mentioned briefly the issue of globalization. There are many who think that globalization is absolutely ideal when it comes to economic issues. There are many who think that globalization is absolutely ideal when it comes to a large police force in the world to do peacekeeping. There are many who think that globalization is ideal with regard to a court system for these crimes.
I raise my own personal concerns because I have not seen good accountability, good cost control and a lack of politicization at that level. The idea of going after criminals worldwide for heinous crimes is one that any sound thinking Canadian would support vigorously. The bill may end up being supportable. Bill C-19 may end up having enough definition and specificity brought to it. I certainly hope that would be the case.
I will pause in my commentary on the international criminal court and sum up by saying that I believe this could move toward a point where it is supportable. At this point in time, in terms of the positive and the negative, maybe we need to tip the scales of balance a bit to bring in more of the positive before I could personally support the way the bill is laid out.