Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. I was in Sri Lanka from late March to early April as Canada's Special Envoy to the Commonwealth. My role was not to comment on a sovereign nation's domestic affairs or on the bilateral

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  No, it's not. About 40 years ago, she did not attend a meeting after Prime Minister Heath had agreed to sell arms to the apartheid regime of South Africa. For various reasons her schedule didn't make her presence possible at that session, but to the best of my knowledge, that is

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The only development that I have seen is the notion of having a “census of the dead”. The hope is that there would be some record that might begin to put into hard data who disappeared and when they disappeared. There are many families who have no idea where their civilian family

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  As was said to us by one of the law professors with whom we met, you cannot have a process of reconciliation until someone admits that something bad happened. It may have happened on both sides. There may not be just one group of people at fault. But we should look at the remarka

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There's no question about it. I said in my report to the minister and the Prime Minister that there has been significant investment by the Colombo administration in what I would call the infrastructure of economic growth and opportunity—roads, hospitals, schools. There has been a

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  As some members of the committee may know, Canada has been providing funding for the translation into Tamil of the reports of the LLRC, for example, so that Tamil Sri Lankans can have access to those documents and understand them, and they can therefore assess how they might enga

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  No. To be fair there were some recommendations in the LLRC about reconciliation, about actually dealing with the hundreds of names that are still missing. Some people estimate they are in fact in the thousands. The notion of having a process whereby war crimes can be addressed, t

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Well, India is a keystone player in that part of the world. It's the hegemonic power, number one; second, it has taken a very constructive interest in the rights of the Tamil minority that is largely concentrated in Jaffna. Members may be aware of the fact that just before the

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  In the past, the leverage that the Commonwealth used when countries headed in this direction was to begin a process of staged disengagement and sanctions, of which expulsion is the last step. But there is a series of interim steps: suspension, a committee of inquiry, and the crea

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There are many dynastic family-based governments around the world. In some parts of the world that's the way in which politics is done. I don't pass judgment on that. That's beyond my remit. But the notion that there is less and less room for dissidence, for journalists who dis

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  When I was in Sri Lanka I saw that the army has become the dominant economic force in the north. So for example, our little Canadian delegation flew from Colombo to Jaffna, and the only place you can land is in the middle of an armed forces base. When we got out of the aircraft

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's a very good question. Part of what the Canadian government received in some criticism about having our Prime Minister not attend.... We didn't boycott the conference. We sent a very distinguished colleague of yours, a member of Parliament and parliamentary secretary, who

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We have a country in which 47 members of the existing presidential family hold positions of authority in judicial, corporate, central banking, transportation, and other critical parts of infrastructure. That contributes to the culture of impunity very directly. We have a countr

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Canada has been very, very active, as you will know, at the United Nations Human Rights Council in terms of campaigning for various resolutions, usually proposed by the Americans, that have been getting tougher and tougher upon the Sri Lankans. The notion that Canada would contin

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's a very, very serious question, and one to which I do not have the answer. I worry that the combination of a secretary-general who does not seem to want to draw any of these lines in any way, shape, or form, and a chair in office who will not be an enthusiastic supporter of t