Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity today to speak on this important issue. It is one, as my friend from Manitoba pointed out, that some of us have been involved in for quite some time. Those of us who were here in the last Parliament who were interested in human rights and religious freedom issues worked on this previously, and, as was mentioned, Mr. Cotler took the lead on that. Many of us feel that this legislation could have been passed, and maybe should have been passed, prior to this point. I am glad to see that the Senate and the House are treating this seriously and are moving it forward.

I would like to talk a bit about what the bill would do, as the senator who introduced it in the Senate said. She talked about the purpose of the bill being to provide for taking restrictive measures in respect of foreign nationals responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. It would enable the Governor General to make orders or regulations allowing the assets and property of foreign nationals to be seized, frozen, or sequestered if those foreign nationals were deemed responsible or complicit in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. This would apply not only to business transactions and corrupt activity but also to violations of human rights. We have heard some discussion this afternoon about what those might be extended to.

The bill also proposes related amendments to the Special Economic Measures Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It would amend section 4 of SEMA to include responsibility for complicity in extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against any individual in any foreign country.

I guess the surprising thing is that legislatures around the world have been so slow to apply measures like this, but I think the time has come for us to recognize that this is an important development in international relations and that we can begin to hold people responsible who are violating human rights around the world.

This bill would make these amendments. It would impose stricter regulations on all foreign violators of human rights and give national governments, and our government, an opportunity to hold people responsible for their activities.

We need these sanctions. We cannot continue to allow our banks, our financial institutions, to be used as safe havens, in any manner, for corrupt foreign officials and human rights abusers. This legislation would enable the Government of Canada to much more quickly sanction individuals. We have seen sanctions against nations, but we have been very slow to sanction individuals. This would make it easier to do that and allow it to happen much more quickly, and it could be applied around the world.

We see so many human rights violations. We see so much corruption. We see officials moving money offshore to protect their own accounts and their families' accounts. We see torture of political activists, journalists, and human rights activists around the world. We need some tools to hold officials and leaders accountable for that kind of activity.

Unfortunately, illegal detention, torture, and death are used far too often to silence dissidents around the globe. It was just about 10 days ago that we had hearings at the Subcommittee on Human Rights on Iran, and actually, Mr. Cotler was part of the discussion that day and was one of our witnesses. I talked about the threat posed by the Iranian government, not only outside Iran but also toward its own people. It has the highest rate of execution of any nation in the world. There is a recognized, constant violation of domestic and international law. The president himself has nine departments under his strict control, and each of those departments has been recognized as violating Iranian domestic law. They continue to torture, they continue to export terror around the world, and they seem to be doing this with impunity.

We would love to see this bill in place so we can begin to hold people like that accountable for their treatment of their own citizens and for the impact of the expanded terror network they seem to be putting in place around the globe.

An example would be, within Iran, the Baha'i community. It is a minority religious community that has been basically slated for complete destruction by the Iranian government. Human rights defenders around the world have been trying to protect them and get some of their leaders released from prison. We now see some of that same activity taking place in Yemen, in the very small Baha'i community in Yemen. Interestingly, Iran's revolutionary guard seems to be involved in exporting the attitude and activity from Iran to Yemen, so another small minority community in another part of the globe is paying the price simply for what they believe in, not for what they are doing.

They want to contribute to their society, and they have been a good part of that society. However, we see a regime that is bound and determined to export its human rights violations around the world. A bill like this would go a long way to holding them to account. We believe that this would build on Canada's strong record of standing up for victims of human rights abuses.

Specific to Magnitsky and Russia, this legislation is strongly supported in the Ukrainian community in particular, and it is supported among pro-democracy Russian activists and human rights advocates. They believe that we desperately need this.

I should talk a bit about the genesis of this bill. Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer who uncovered a tax fraud, the largest tax fraud in Russian history, and was subsequently arrested and detained. He was tortured and killed in custody in a Moscow prison. Too many of these deaths go unnoticed and unrecorded, but in this case there was attention given to it. Since then, there has been an international focus on trying to bring legislation into place to remember the sacrifice he made, and to make sure that the people who were responsible, not only for his death but for the fraud and corruption that took place around it, could be held responsible.

In 2012, the Russian opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, travelled to Canada to call on us to adopt sanctions to try to protect human rights activists and pro-democracy standards. Here we are, almost five years later, and we are finally working on this. In 2012, the United States adopted a form of Magnitsky legislation. The European Parliament has moved on this legislation, as has Estonia in 2016, and the United Kingdom in 2017.

Our history, as I mentioned, starts in the last Parliament. There was a resolution brought before the House of Commons, and it was passed unanimously. It was going to go ahead, but we had an election campaign that interfered with getting that bill through. Interesting, all three major parties committed to this legislation during that time, so we look forward to it coming into play.

I mentioned earlier about the Russian reaction to this. I guess we are disappointed by it, though we are maybe not surprised. It is unfortunate that again the Russian government seems to be unwilling to accept that it needs to make some changes if the rest of us are going to accept the way they do business in their country. When they call establishing an act that would hold human rights abusers to account an unfriendly act, and seem to be threatening that it is going to affect relations between our two countries, that is going over the top. It might be better if the Russians took a look at their system and said they could improve some things, and perhaps moved into a situation where other countries are not concerned about the way they do business. For them to try to threaten us is a waste of their time.

There are some other countries, as well, that we might be able to impact on an issue like this. My colleague mentioned the Falun Gong in China and the organ harvesting that takes place there, and the fact that officials are not being held responsible for that. We had a young lady on the Hill for the 6th Parliamentary Forum on Religious Freedom, Anastasia Lin, who was Miss World Canada. Her father is a Falun Gong practitioner and he has been under pressure in China. She won a competition to go to the Miss World competition, and they would not let her into China because of her activism on the issue. Again, it would help them if they thought we took violations of human rights seriously.

It is important that the Canadian government, for our own sake and for the sake of people around the world, adopt this legislation and put it in place as quickly as possible. I am glad to hear that the government is going to be working with us on this. If they are going to make amendments, I would encourage the Liberals to make amendments that strengthen the legislation, so that it can be even more effective than it is right now. It is good to see that the House seems to be of one mind in getting this legislation passed as quickly as possible.

David Anderson

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