Foreign Affairs committee  I'm Hugh Adsett, Legal Adviser and Director General.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, and thank you for the question. On the specific question about whether the department is in a position to be able to provide legal advice to individuals who might seek that advice from the department, it is quite correct what Mr. Boscariol had to say, which

Foreign Affairs committee  It's also a question I've noticed that has come up in the committee hearings as well. We don't currently have a consolidated list. It is possible to access the lists in a couple of manners. One is through the department's website where the lists are posted immediately once they b

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me give a caveat at the very beginning. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to try to give legal advice to the committee, but maybe I can give some information, if that would be of use. I think the question you're posing, if I can word it slightly differently, is, what would b

Foreign Affairs committee  You can afford it.

Foreign Affairs committee  I have noted that the question of a consolidated list has come up a couple of times in the committee. We currently don't have one. It's a question that has been raised by stakeholders as well, and one on which there will be further reflection. I would say that one of the challe

Foreign Affairs committee  Again, without venturing into a domain in which I would get into trouble, to have an order in council, you would generally need to have some kind of legislative basis or some kind of legal authority in some manner, as well. The question, I think, would be, what is the legal autho

Foreign Affairs committee  Indeed.

Foreign Affairs committee  That question, I think, probably goes back to the question that was posed earlier about the manner in which we have organized ourselves to respond to queries from the public, and generally to respond to sanctions. I would say that, currently, we do have limits on our ability to

Foreign Affairs committee  I can try a fairly high-level response to that question without, again, dealing with specific companies or specific concerns that might have been raised. As a general approach, the enforcement of sanctions depends on, essentially, law enforcement agencies. That's the RCMP, and t

Foreign Affairs committee  I think the due process question is an important one. I would say it has been central to the way we have approached sanctions in our own existing legislation to date. I think you have probably heard from some witnesses who have spoken already about the United Nations process and

Foreign Affairs committee  There's an expectation that Canadian companies operating abroad will comply with Canadian law; it's a general expectation and assumption that Canadian companies will do so. I would say that's probably the case in most circumstances. There are, of course, enforcement agencies, inc

Foreign Affairs committee  Perhaps I could use this as an additional point to make. Again, without speaking about specific cases, when we're talking about United Nations sanctions, for example, there's a role not only for Canada but a role for all member states of the United Nations. When you're talking ab

Foreign Affairs committee  I will do my best to assist. Again, without trying to be too specific, as Marc-Yves was saying, the tool that is available to the government under the Special Economic Measures Act essentially has the two different.... We call them triggers, the two different triggers. One is t

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll have to look at my notes, Chair. It's a while since they were put in place in Burma, but at the time there would have been a concern that the situation was of such magnitude that it was a grave breach of international peace and security. That would have been the rationale fo