QUESTION PERIOD — Foreign Affairs
Economic Sanctions
December 15, 2022
Senator Gold, public opinion research commissioned by Senator Omidvar and myself and released this week finds that Canadians strongly support seizing the Canadian-held assets of those Russian officials who are waging war in Ukraine and those Iranian officials who are violating human rights in Iran, and then using these seized assets to assist victims.
In fact, in June of this year, as you know, senator, Bill C-19 enhanced two of Canada’s sanction regimes, the Sergei Magnitsky Law and the Special Economic Measures Act, to go beyond freezing the assets of corrupt foreign officials in order to permit confiscating and redirecting those assets.
My questions are as follows, and I’d like to focus on how these tools are currently being used, particularly against the Russian perpetrators: Is the government using these new tools? What efforts are being made? What steps are being taken? And what plans are developing to repurpose these assets, for example, in possible reparations to Ukraine?
Thank you.
Thank you for your question, senator. It’s an important one.
Starting with the latter part of your question, the government is, as all senators know, using Magnitsky-style sanctions to put pressure on the Russian regime and hold them accountable, but the government now has new measures to go further, not only to seize but to allow for the forfeiture of the assets of the oligarchs and their companies. My understanding, senator, is that efforts are under way to implement the liquidation process, which would allow Canada to compensate victims and support reconstruction. These tools that are now available to us will make Canada a leader in the sanctions regime, if I can use that term, in the G7.
Even as the government is working to implement these tools, it is also taking analogous steps to assist Ukraine. I’ll cite just one example: We know now that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance recently announced that Canada will transfer $150 million in tariff revenues collected on imports from Russia and Belarus to repair Kyiv’s power grid following the repeated and ongoing attacks by Russia on that.
This is just an example of the commitment Canada has both to hold Russia and its oligarchs to account and to use the tools that Canada now has to make sure that those assets are used both for reconstruction and assistance to Ukraine and for compensation to those who are harmed by the actions of Russia in its illegal invasion.
