Madam Chair, other agencies such as the United Nations Human Rights Council do have a role to play. When I had to abbreviate my remarks, I was about to follow with that which the UN Human Rights Council can do by way of an independent commission of inquiry as recently voted upon. The problem is Syria, because it does not admit that UN commission of inquiry in order to engage in that investigation.
Similarly with regard to the UN Security Council, the UN Security Council has not been the problem. It has adopted resolutions, admittedly somewhat belatedly. The problem has been China and Russia, which have vetoed those resolutions. I might add that two unanimous resolutions were passed, but they were not resolutions, actually; they were more by way of a presidential statement.
What is needed at this point is a binding UN Security Council resolution, the elements of which I have sought to describe. Maybe I might just continue to give some of those elements that I could not give before for reasons of time.
What is needed are expanded and enhanced sanctions that the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as the U.K., France and others have called for. In other words, global travel bans and asset freezes, utter diplomatic isolation and condemnation, the expulsion of Syrian diplomats, as our government and others have done, and the treatment of the Syrian government as the pariah it has become, devoid of any legitimacy.
I might add that the Syrian government has continued to violate all principles and canons of international law. One need only look at the documentary evidence in this regard to appreciate that the authorizations for all these violations have come from the highest levels of the Syrian government, from every layer of the Assad regime's military intelligence and security apparatus. They have to be held accountable for their war crimes, and they have to be put on notice that they will be held accountable.
Seventh, and again pursuant to the Annan peace plan, the UN resolution must require the release of all arbitrarily detained persons and political prisoners. Any resolution must order and implement, as a means for verifying, a complete arms embargo again as a condition of maintaining the peace, and the member for Ottawa Centre mentioned this as well. Just recently there have been documented reports of arms shipments by Russia to Syria. We need a complete arms embargo.