Thank you so much for having me speak with you today. It's a real pleasure.

I'll give you the usual caveats to start. The first is that, while I'm a Canadian born and raised, it's been quite a while since I've worked on the Canadian policy from the heart of it. From the perspective of the two pieces of legislation that you're looking at today, I really am just an interested outsider.

That said, I do work extensively on North Korea and on a range of other proliferation threats, and I look at the measures that we've imposed to restrict the ability of those actors to operate. I'm happy to discuss those in detail.

As a way of opening, I thought I would start with a plea: We have every reason to be extremely concerned and very attentive to the North Korean threat, which is the subject that I was asked to speak about, specifically. Really, that threat knows no geographical boundaries. It has affected Canada, both directly and indirectly, and will continue to. Often when I do presentations on this subject I put up a slide that shows, basically, everywhere that North Korea has had money-laundering cases, smuggling cases, or other forms of illicit activity in the world in the last five years. What that slide shows is that that activity covers an enormous swath and has, indeed, included Canada.

That threat, to characterize it, is growing in terms of its component parts. We've talked for a long time about the North Korean nuclear missile programs and, indeed, its other weapons of mass destruction programs at home. Coupled with that, of course, North Korea's behaviour is generally destabilizing. Barely a day goes by when it's not threatening to turn Seoul or Washington or Los Angeles into a sea of fire, but there are other concerning parts to this problem, as well. North Korea continues to sell ballistic missile goods, conventional weaponry, and related services to a very large number of customers around the world, given the strength of the sanctions regimes that we have against the country. One of the more recent manifestations of the North Korean threat is a major cyber issue. North Korea has shown itself willing to conduct sophisticated cyber-attacks against major multinational corporations, and is now regularly hacking banks around the world in a way that's destabilizing the international financial system. As I said, we have every reason to be concerned about this problem.

At the same time, in terms of your deliberations, it's important to acknowledge that while Canada is affected indirectly and directly by this issue, it's not the heart of the issue. Canada is always, in effect, going to be playing a supportive role in its solution, so it's important to talk about how we can bring life to a Canadian policy that recognizes that limitation.

Canadian policy towards the DPRK, from my view over years, has been extremely strong and firm, particularly in the last few years. As we know from a few years ago, Canadian policy has included a trade ban between Canadians and North Korea that's fairly all-encompassing, allowing only a number of limited exemptions for humanitarian trade, etc. Canadian policy, from my view, is also fundamentally low maintenance. Its sort of core tenets of limited engagement, essentially no trade, and a strong stance on human rights means that on a day-to-day basis, there's little active monitoring required for the implementation of Canadian policy.

I'm happy to talk a bit more about what that looks like. That policy has not shifted substantially between governments, at least not yet, from what I can see. The core framework that Canada has put in place over the past few years seems to still stand largely, and in my view, that is actually quite sensible. I don't see a reason necessarily for that core framework of approaches, the trade approach, the engagement approach, and the human rights approach, to actually change.

At this moment, given the developments in the North Korean threat, there doesn't seem to me to be a reason to be actively encouraging more trade with North Korea. Similarly, I can't see a convincing argument that Canada should put itself at the centre of a security focus discussion with North Korea and try to have an engagement and outreach program that does that. For me, the question is more about trying to think about what lies behind the core framework of Canadian policy. There are two specific angles that I think will be really interesting to work on and look at going forward.

The first is on intelligence and monitoring. This relates to North Korea's illicit behaviour pretty much across the board, because over the years North Korea has developed extremely sophisticated evasive techniques and patterns. Without going too much into the details, although I'm very happy to, in effect, North Korea is not doing business as North Korea when it's operating overseas, and that presents an enormous challenge for our sanctions implementation and for the general prevention of the listed activity as it relates to Pyongyang. Similarly, there are a number of countries around the world, indeed the majority of the world, that are struggling to implement the very extensive and quite complicated restrictions that we've put in place at the UN level on North Korea.

I'm sitting in New York right now, because on Wednesday we're slated to vote on a new UN Security Council resolution that will make this even more complicated. Really, we have an implementation problem. For me, it's worth thinking about whether countries like Canada can do more to help address that particular issue. It's the life behind the policy, if you will. Do we have the expertise that we can contribute to Southeast Asian nations, or African nations, which really are the holes in the sieve at this moment for the geographical areas that North Korea continues to be able to to operate in and conduct its elicit activity with the assistance of?

I'll leave it there, but I very much look forward to your questions, and I'm happy to delve into detail on any aspect of that, or indeed other aspects.

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