Mr. Chair, as I indicated, the Government of Canada needs to make the question of combatting human rights violations in Iran a major human rights priority. We have across both Liberal and Conservative governments taken the lead in passing an annual resolution at the United Nations General Assembly condemning human rights violations in Iran and in proposing actionable approaches in that regard.
As I said earlier, I think we need to go further to expressly sanction the major human rights violators in Iran and to do so through our SEMA legislation. We need to pass global emergency Magnitsky legislation, such as that now before the American Congress and European parliaments, and put Iranian human rights violators on notice that they will be held to account, that there will be travel bans and asset seizures, that there will be punitive sanctions taken, and that this will be mainstreamed as part of our foreign policy, which we will affirm and assert internationally as we do here domestically this evening.