Foreign Affairs committee  You're absolutely right. We have no credibility, because we take a double standard. These two courts are, as you said, two of the only mechanisms that can be utilized to seek justice in the situation in Palestine, and not merely for Palestinian victims but also for Israeli ones.

Foreign Affairs committee  Frankly, there's no other explanation for it. The legal principles at play in occupied Palestine are so abundantly clear and well known, at least to the executive of this country, because we wax lyrical about them when it comes to Ukraine: the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory through force, the right of peoples to self-determination, and so on.

Foreign Affairs committee  The short answer is yes. I have no doubt about that for the following reason. The Canadian government claims that it supports the two-state solution. One of those states is recognized by Canada and has long been, since 1949. We actually had a role to play in the partition of Palestine.

Foreign Affairs committee  As members of the committee know, I had the great pleasure of being named by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to the UN commission of inquiry on Yemen. I served in that capacity for two years, between 2019 and 2021, and had a front row seat to Canada's position.

Foreign Affairs committee  I think it's doing exactly what you're doing here. Meet with people who are in the know, collect information and make sure there are value bases, as well, that the government operates under. We are told, for instance, that we share values with various countries in the world with whom we share tight, strong relations, yet those countries are engaged in violations of the most basic principles of international law we claim also to have fidelity towards, so clearly our values aren't worth that much when we consider other competing factors.

Foreign Affairs committee  In my respectful view, one example of where there was a negative for us was that in what I think was about 10 years, we twice tried to get a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations and twice lost out to much smaller countries, relatively speaking: to Ireland, I think, and to Norway, if my recollection serves, both of whom have a much broader and larger footprint on the international plane, both of whom have much deeper ties to the global south and both of whom basically have their ears on the ground based on values of what the world community actually expects in the 21st century.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In brief, I have three simple points. First, Canada's declared commitment to the rules-based international legal order is crucial to maintaining its moral standing in the world. Upholding international law as the only normative yardstick on the international plane is essential if Canada's future diplomacy initiative is to succeed.