Madam Speaker, when we look at this legislation, it appears on the face of it to be a good thing. We all have concerns about human rights and war crimes. We would have to say that the devil is in the details or in some cases lack of details in respect to some of these things. There are some very vague definitions and in other cases, no definitions at all.
Our party supports war crime tribunals in practice and the apprehension, trial, conviction and punishment by due process of genuine war criminals. However, we have some serious reservations about the international criminal court. We have these reservations because the statutes that were agreed to in Rome in 1998 regarding the international criminal court were negotiated without adequate public consultation and input from parliament. They were negotiated with the aid of NGOs that did not represent the values and principles of most Canadians. The international criminal court is flawed in several ways. From the larger perspective of international treaties in general, we see that there needs to be a democratic reform of the whole treaty-making process in Canada.
An esteemed member of the Bloc yesterday put forward a private member's bill in regard to this whole problem. We agree to these international treaties without ever having scrutinized them within this House and without having had any discussion or forum across the country. We see the same problem in what is before us today.
Our party supports foreign policy guided by the values and the principles of Canadians, that is political democracy, economic freedom and human rights. Therefore, we support in principle the idea of war crimes tribunals. However, as I said, the international criminal court threatens to become an unaccountable institution with power to investigate, prosecute, indict and try citizens of Canada, thus undermining Canadian sovereignty and Canadian justice. As a new and permanent international institution, the international criminal court creates a new power hungry United Nations type of bureaucracy.
Canada and its like-minded allies failed to win the support of the United States and some other critical countries around the world. Without that support, the input and the co-operation of those major countries in the world, how can the international criminal court ever be effective or ensure true justice?
The international criminal court threatens to become an international stick in the hands of rogue states and special interest groups in particular to beat the United States and its allies, including Canada. That would be the primary intent of certain of those who are involved. The international criminal court could undermine the ability of UN members to act in the interests of international security and peace, for example, stopping Saddam Hussein or sending a message to terrorists. Charter and common law rights such as the right to a fair trial by jury would not be guaranteed under the international criminal court.
The federal government paid for special interest groups to attend five weeks of meetings in and to advise the Canadian delegation. I do not have time to speak today about some of the shenanigans and games that were played. There were secret meetings off to the side. Certain other Canadian people were shut out because it was known that they would oppose certain elements and aspects of the international criminal court.
The failure to consult with Canadians about what is wanted at the international criminal court is a major problem. Canadians were again left out of the process as they were at Kyoto and with the MAI, the multilateral agreement on investment. This situation is no different.
We believe that the people, through parliament, should have an oversight of treaty making and international agreements well before it gets to the stage where we have our leaders signing.
The international criminal court will have power to investigate. I think we are pretty much agreed in terms of the war crimes area, but there are other vague terms such as crimes of aggression that are used where it is left wide open to judges from around the world who will constitute the tribunal to interpret. It is another reason why we have some serious reservations about this.
We support human rights objectives in co-operation with international organizations. Such activities must be the result of free and sovereign Canadian initiatives acted at the will of parliament through international instruments of our choice and not the other way around. The emphasis should be on working with them as that suggests a voluntary nature of working alongside them instead of an element of coercion as is the case here. This is another reason why we have for many decades now supported ad hoc tribunals, agencies with a sunset provision rather than permanent bureaucracies and the concept of an unaccountable international court.
Some supporters are calling for empowering this court to prosecute not only war crimes and things of that sort, but to prosecute drug trafficking, something we should be going after, as well as such other vague offences as serious threats to the environment and committing outrages on personal dignity, whatever that possibly could mean. This is the direction many individuals are pushing this to go. Obviously we do have concerns about some of that.
As an alliance, we are certainly prepared to work with international organizations, but we feel it should be our Canadian parliament first and foremost that makes decisions. We should not give up our sovereignty.
I want to read for the record part of a letter from a rather outstanding individual, Judge Eli Nathan, head of the delegation of Israel to the UN diplomatic conference where this was being discussed. I read this into the record because Israel was one of the countries that over the years because of the Holocaust and so on has had a real strong interest in a court, generally speaking, of this nature. Israel initiated this.
Israel was the original country to come up with this idea and has been promoting it because of the terrible injustices and genocide committed against its people. I think it rather significant and very noteworthy that Israel itself had to back away and could not vote in favour of the statutes agreed upon by other countries. Israel, as one of the prime movers of this, had to back away and could not give its approval. I will cite at least one of its major concerns but it has other concerns as well.
The letter from Judge Eli Nathan states:
Mr. President, it causes me considerable pain, both personally as a victim of the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people, and on behalf of the Israeli delegation which I proudly head, to have to explain the negative vote which Israel has been unwillingly obliged to cast today with regard to the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
It is no secret that out of the embers of the Holocaust against the Jewish people—the greatest and most heinous crime to have been committed in the history of mankind, came the calls of Jews throughout the world, and leading Israeli lawyers and statesmen, as far back as the early 1950s, for the establishment of an International Criminal Court, as a vital means of ensuring that criminals who commit such heinous and terrible crimes will be duly brought to justice. This was, Mr. President...our idea!
He said “With this aim in mind, Mr. President,” and having regard to the world renowned judiciary established in Israel, we have enthusiastically and quite responsibly been involved at the earlier stages here.
The letter goes on to point out and make the particular point:
We therefore fail to comprehend why it has been considered necessary to insert into the fist of the most heinous and grievous war crimes, the action of transferring population into occupied territory, as it appears in Article 8, Paragraph 2(b), subpara.viii.
Without entering here into the question of the substantive status of any particular alleged violation of the Geneva Convention...can it really be held that such an action as that listed in Article 8 above really ranks among the most heinous and serious war crimes—
That refers to the resettling of people as they have done in the Middle East. We can question that but there are many in the world who do not accept that on the rank of a heinous war crime or the nature of the others listed. He asks whether:
—this has been inserted as a means of utilising and abusing the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Court itself as one more political tool in the Middle East conflict?
That gets to the nub of it.
This international criminal court already has become very politicized and will be more than ever because of the special interest groups that are involved, the radical feminist groups and the anti-family groups and so on. It will be a very politicized tool in the hands of elite and special interest groups.
One of the delegates, this esteemed judge from Israel, goes on to say:
Despite all our entreaties, during the discussions of the Prep-Com as well as here in Rome and directly to capitols, this paragraph still remains as a symbol of politicization, sullying the entire Statute.
He went on to say:
Mr. President, neither the Delegation of Israel nor other delegations have been given the opportunity to vote against inclusion in the Statute of Article 8, Paragraph 2(b), sub-para.viii.
He further talks about his frustration at this politicization of the statute and the court. Then he goes on to say:
Mr. President, Israel has other problems with the Statute, which we will address at the appropriate time.
It is very insightful and eye-opening to understand that a country, which of all should most be concerned and wanting something like this, has grave concerns with the direction this has taken.
I mentioned before the matter of overriding our national sovereignty. This permanent international body, if that is what it becomes, could be very unaccountable and might override the sovereignty of our nation's legal and government systems.
Some people defend it and say that it has been structured so that the sovereignty of nations will remain primordial, and it does so by requiring the enactment of domestic legislation as before us in each ratifying state, which gives that sovereign state both the judicial equipment and the right to prosecute suspected cases of the said crimes domestically.
We would rebut that by saying that requiring an enactment of legislation does not allay our fears. The legislation may simply enact the signing away of Canada's sovereignty.
Actually, while the legislation gives Canada the right to prosecute suspected cases of said crimes, there is a whole list of them and there are some vagaries in there as well, we do have the right to prosecute domestically. It also imposes not only a right but an obligation to do so with the penalty being that the international criminal court will step in and take over if in its judgment Canada does not fulfil its obligations.
Our courts over the course of time, including the supreme court, are dangerously close to conceding Canada's sovereignty. For example, a recent decision in the Supreme Court of Canada states that international covenants have no direct application within Canadian law, however, it goes on to say:
Nevertheless, the values reflected in international human rights laws may help inform the contextual approach to statutory interpretation and judicial review...The legislature is presumed to respect the value and principles enshrined—
In whatever international law happens to be out there.
In so far as possible, therefore, interpretations that reflect these values and principles are preferred.
Referring to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Chief Justice Antonio Lamer gave impetus to that when he said:
—the Charter can be understood to give effect to Canada's international legal obligations, and should therefore be interpreted in a way that conforms to those obligations.
What we are saying here is that we have in effect been invoking international arguments about which Canadians and their legitimate lawmakers were never properly consulted, and that is the problem, getting back to the ceding of our sovereignty to other countries.
What we also find somewhat disconcerting is the fact that Bill C-19 writes a blank cheque. What I find rather disturbing is the fact that the rules of procedure and evidence are currently being negotiated through a series of meetings of prep-coms which include delegations from signatory states and other interested states.
The details of precise meetings, of terms found in the statute, evidence and court procedures and administrative structure are to be concluded in consensus agreements adjacent to, not part of, after the fact, it seems. It is kind of like buying a pig in a poke or signing a blank cheque for these things to be worked out over the course of time, but we already agreed to be part of the deal.
The negotiations address some of the critical and fundamental issues, the things that as we said before are not discussed here in parliament. Issues such as the definition of aggression and other terms, the conditions of imprisonment, judicial protocol are controversial issues. All of these decisions taken at these negotiations should be subject to the input and ratification of parliament, otherwise the values of Canadians might not be adequately enshrined in the law, the structure and procedure of the criminal court.
I also draw attention to something which may be of interest to some. Some words make up new terms and expressions in a surreptitious manner. I draw attention to some of the concerns from the pro-family, pro-life perspective.
There were certain things with respect to the protection of family and so on which some of the Mideast and Arab nations wanted to be put in yet they were turned aside. They have grave concerns about the intrusion into family and imposing our culture, a western mindset if you will, on some of the other cultures. Some of the Arab states are concerned about removing protection for families.
Another one is in terms of respect for life or a pro-life point of view. They realized they could not get abortion into the statutes, so instead they talked about enforced pregnancy. That was a new one to me. What is enforced pregnancy? We find out as we begin to read the material and get at a definition of what they have in mind. An enforced pregnancy is where a woman has become pregnant, a wife or a girlfriend, and she has to carry the child for nine months. I think this is a beautiful and wonderful thing. An enforced pregnancy is when there is no access to abortion so in effect the pregnancy has to run its course.
Countries that do not have abortion facilities nor provide that option to women would be subject to the International Criminal Court. An enforced pregnancy has to go its nine months because the abortion clinic or facility is not available. It would be a punishable crime if a country did not provide abortion clinics.
For example, in 1992 in the state of Utah, the American Civil Liberties Association came up with this new, strange and perverse wording. It argued that the law caused enforced pregnancy because there was no possibility of an abortion, that a woman had to carry and give birth to a child, that it was an intolerable and dehumanizing form of servitude. It said that it was an awful, atrocious thing and tantamount to a war crime, a crime against humanity.
A lot of special interest groups have got in at the very beginning and are pushing their point of view in a pretty persistent way. In fact these groups can have individuals helping out in the International Criminal Court, funded by wealthy individuals, the billionaires of this world, and of course are beholden somewhat to those individuals.
Instead of the International Criminal Court, we should support the continuation of the concept of ad hoc international tribunals. Such tribunals would not be permanent. They would always remain ad hoc and subject to “sunset provisions” as are the tribunals that operate at present. An ad hoc body has the advantage of being able to be set up and dismantled again by sovereign governments.
The bureaucrats of ad hoc bodies in turn can be removed at the will of elected parliamentarians by dismantling these bodies. That is why officials and bureaucrats are keen supporters of a permanent body that is not subject to the will of the electorate or the public in any one country.
Primarily, because of the imposition of international law, and we have a good law system here in Canada, there is an overriding of our sovereignty. The vagueness of some of the definitions leaves room to shoehorn in some rather strange terms that impose other cultures upon certain countries around the world, to which we have major objections.
In effect we are signing a blank cheque. The rules of procedure and evidence, which are well established and have stood the test of time in our country and within the British Commonwealth, are still being made up on the fly. We would be signing on to something over which we would not have proper control with respect to that.
For those and other reasons, notably that there are certain major countries around the world that have grave concerns, it is not a good thing for our country. Countries like Israel no less have not been able to sign on because of the politicization of the International Criminal Court.
It may suit the Liberal government and its agenda of soft power, but frankly we think for a whole host of reasons, it is not a good thing to do. As a Canadian Alliance government coming into power, we would have to revoke and pull back on this.
