Foreign Affairs committee  I think everything should be on the table and there is going to be a recipe that is different for each country. In the cases of some countries, it's about highlighting political prisoners and sending the message into that country that the Canadian Parliament cares for the life

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm a great supporter of the global Magnitsky Act. I think it's an excellent idea. I think that in terms of these lists, again, we must underline these are not lists subject to criminal prosecution. These are lists of people who have been identified as having engaged in gross hum

Foreign Affairs committee  By this do you mean Canada on its own as opposed to Canada with a bunch of other countries?

Foreign Affairs committee  The problem with multilateral sanctions is that they tend to be watered down, or people tend to wait until it's far too late, or until really all the teeth are taken out. You're dealing with so many different considerations at the same time. I think unilateral sanctions are a gr

Foreign Affairs committee  Among the governments that I believe are using the might of government internationally to further discourage human rights abusers, different tools are being used by different governments. I could enter into this from a different perspective, not from the point of view of sanctio

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me begin by stating that we are not talking at present of sanctioning a government. We're talking about sanctioning individuals. I don't think it is a stretch or that it should be problematic for the Government of Canada to be willing to sanction specific individual officials

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, in terms of the example that I gave of Derwick Associates, I would not know why the Canadian system has failed to look into this, and look into how it is these men were able to blithely buy all of this Canadian stock with stolen money and not raise a single eyebrow in Canad

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me start start off by saying that obviously, I'm not responsible for the confusions or conflation of issues in terms apples and oranges said by people who preceded me in this conversation. I will, however, own up to everything I've said. Now, if the system that you describe

Foreign Affairs committee  What you've just said is music to my ears. I have no specific beef with just Russia. I'm an equal opportunity exposer and opponent of dictatorships and authoritarians and human rights violators. Most definitely, it would not take very much to alter the language, to expand the lan

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't mean to be flippant. I'm being rather specific. We're talking about visa sanctions and asset freezing, telling people we don't want them here. Some people may say that it doesn't matter, that they're going to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth elsewhere. However, these officia

Foreign Affairs committee  There is a reason the dictator of Uzbekistan is so afraid of this: because his daughter likes to go shopping in Paris. The daughter of the dictator of Angola—the richest woman in Africa—greatly enjoys spending time in the French Riviera, and visiting places like Whistler, and goi

Foreign Affairs committee  It's not a surprise that part of the skepticism people in the human rights field have with regard to the lack of Canadian enforcement has a lot to do with the fact that so many natural resource companies are based in Canada, particularly gold mine companies and companies that exp

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to tell you a little bit about my knowledge on the subject of corruption, and specifically what your committee is doing. I would like to underline something about the modern authoritarian state. Whether we speak of elected autoc