Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. In our view, “foreign state” includes “country”, so there is no unintended consequence with that.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. With respect to that particular amendment, we noted preliminarily that it is already missing an element that is in the Special Economic Measures Act. There is a reference to “organization” that is missing, which is actually quite important for the effectiveness of the sanction.

Foreign Affairs committee  It's missing from this definition. It's an element that's missing from the proposed definition here. It's in the sanctions-issuing statute.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. That's absolutely the case.

Foreign Affairs committee  In principle, it's a similar scenario. As I mentioned before, the multilateral sanctions under paragraph 35(1)(c) of the IRPA, which reference country and individual, can be imposed under the Special Economic Measures Act, in addition to the United Nations Act and any other act that allows Canada to act in concert with an association of states.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. Do you want to take this question, Scott?

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. There is no definition of “country” in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. That's one point. That in and of itself doesn't affect the administration of the inadmissibility provisions, however, because the sanction is imposed by the Governor in Council or whatever instrument is provided in those other statutes, for instance, the Special Economic Measures Act or the United Nations Act.

Foreign Affairs committee  I will make one comment, and then, if I may, Mr. Chair, turn to my colleague, Scott Nesbitt. With respect to the definitional issues, the one thing that is very important to note is that any time there's a definition in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that doesn't perfectly align with the enabling sanction-imposing statute, you have imposed a new test for immigration officials to apply, which somewhat undermines the intent of this bill.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. With respect to the proposed amendment and the questions you have raised, it's important to note that, in our view, there's a bit of misinterpretation by some former witnesses. As pointed out by some members of the committee, the reference to “country” has existed in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for nearly 20 years now.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. With respect to definitions, it's important that it's not only about the Special Economic Measures Act. If you look at paragraph 35(1)(c) of the IRPA as it exists today, it doesn't actually limit the imposition of sanctions to that one act. For instance, there's also the United Nations Act, which is used to impose some United Nations Security Council sanctions and travel bans.