Madam Chair, it is an honour to rise tonight in committee of the whole to delve into the main estimates and to question the cabinet ministers who are here with us tonight. I appreciate their being with us and taking the time to answer all our questions.
First, I have to thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs for her support of Bill S-226, the justice for victims of corrupt foreign officials legislation, the Sergei Magnitsky law, which I am sponsoring in the House on behalf of Senator Raynell Andreychuk of the other place. The minister has long had a passion for this, as someone from the Ukrainian community in Canada. I am proud of those same roots, being a Prairie Ukrainian kid off the farm. The bill is incredibly important for going after corrupt foreign officials.
The legislation really comes as a result of an individual by the name of Sergei Magnitsky, who was a lawyer working on behalf of Bill Browder in Russia. Unfortunately for him, he uncovered this incredible corrupt scheme of taxes and money laundering. He was falsely accused, arrested, tortured and murdered while in prison in Moscow. Bill Browder has taken it upon himself to raise the spectre of this problem.
As the minister has already said, this was a bill in the last Parliament. It received unanimous support and passed. Our former colleague Irwin Cotler brought forward the first version of the bill and I tabled a similar bill in this place. Senator Raynell Andreychuk has really taken it to a new level. She has gone beyond just corrupt foreign officials and those governments with human rights abuses against their citizens. It also goes after those individuals and governments that go after individuals based upon religion, ethnicity, sex and gender. These things are now in the bill, and I congratulate the senator for doing that.
The minister said that the government would be supporting Bill S-226, but with some amendments. I know we have chatted about this, but if there are going to be amendments, what type of amendments are we looking at? How will that change the flow of the bill coming through the House for expedient passage?