Honourable senators, this motion is pretty straightforward. It calls on the government to publish an analysis by the end of next March of the Iran-sponsored terrorism, incitement to hatred and human rights violations emanating from that country, and to identify and impose sanctions pursuant to the Magnitsky law against Iranian officials responsible for those activities.

You will recall that on October 29, in speaking to another one of my motions on China, I went into detail about the origins of Canada’s Magnitsky law and what it does.

I won’t repeat myself other than to say that, due to the efforts of our former colleague Senator Andreychuk, but more importantly because of the ordeal suffered by the bill’s namesake, Sergei Magnitsky, at the hands of the Russians, there are now in Canadian law, consequences for foreign officials who commit human rights abuses and violate principles of fundamental justice and the rule of law.

I also mentioned at that time that, since the bill came into effect, foreign officials in Russia, Venezuela, South Sudan, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia have had Magnitsky imposed upon them. That is good, of course. What is mystifying is why this government has imposed no Magnitsky sanctions on officials in Iran.

Mystifying, although sadly it is perfectly predictable with this government since it took office in 2015, and in keeping with their approach to tyrannical regimes like Iran. It is an approach that, more than anything, seems to have sprung from the need by the Trudeau government to distinguish itself again from the Harper government that preceded it.

Maybe that’s the answer to the question I asked of the government leader earlier today. Perhaps that’s why his leader, Justin Trudeau, has departed from the long-standing principled position of not supporting anti-Israeli resolutions at the United Nations. When the PM first did so last year, it was because he was chasing a UN Security Council seat, which was nothing more than an attempt again to upstage former Prime Minister Harper. We saw how that ended up.

Mr. Trudeau did so again a couple of weeks ago. Michael Levitt stepped down as a Liberal MP this summer and is now president of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. I quote Michael Levitt who is not a Conservative and who is not partisan:

By supporting this resolution, Canada is providing ammunition to those who seek to delegitimize and demonize the State of Israel which ultimately sets back the prospects for peace in the region.

In supporting a resolution that so unfairly and unjustly targets Israel, in siding with every despot and tyrant in the world, it’s clear that it wasn’t a one-time departure, as the government leader in the Senate says, but that Canada will maintain an anti-Israeli position under Justin Trudeau. It’s not only a petty obsession with differentiating oneself from the former prime minister; it’s all the more dangerous given the approach to Iran.

As senators will recall, the Harper government took a tough line on Iran, going so far in 2012 as to sever diplomatic ties with that regime, expelling their diplomats and closing our embassy.

In doing so, then-foreign minister John Baird noted that Iran is amongst the world’s worst violators of human rights. But he went even further than that, noting that in addition to their abysmal record on human rights, Iran shelters and materially supports terrorist groups and incites hatred against and threatens Israel with annihilation, and was amongst the most fervent supporters of the murderous Assad regime in Syria. In fact, in recognition of Iran’s record as being the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, the Harper government enacted the Justice For Victims of Terrorism Act. The JVTA, as it is known, allows victims of terrorism and their families, in the words of then-justice minister Rob Nicholson,

. . . to sue perpetrators and supporters of terrorism, including listed foreign states, for loss or damage that occurred as a result of an act of terrorism committed anywhere in the world . . .

— on or after January 1, 1985. In other words, it removes state immunity from regimes sponsoring terrorism.

The first lawsuit under the JVTA was launched a year later by Vancouver dentist Sherri Wise , who sued Iran for its role in the 1997 Hamas bombing in which she was injured.

Three years later, in 2016, in Ontario, five court proceedings were launched by victims of eight separate attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. The judge awarded the victims millions of dollars from Iranian non-diplomatic properties and bank accounts in Ottawa and Toronto.

Honourable senators, the JVTA addresses Iran’s sponsorship of terror. The measure of its effectiveness can be weighed not just in the dollar amounts awarded to the victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, but in the amount of outrage it has caused on the part of the Iranian government.

An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman called the Ontario court ruling, “a political ruling,” that was hostile to Iran, and likened it to the policies of the “former extremist government.” He was talking about the Harper government, of course, and its hardline stance against terrorism and those who sponsor it.

What I say to that is boohoo. Like other authoritarian governments — China for instance — what the Iranian regime and its foreign minister in particular fail to appreciate about democracies is that in our system of government, the state does not interfere in judicial proceedings.

Of course, given the Trudeau government’s reprehensible behaviour in the SNC-Lavalin affair, the Iranian regime perhaps could be excused for being somewhat confused about this principle.

Honourable senators, I mention the JVTA for two reasons — as an example of an effective measure applied to a criminal regime and because, as then-Minister Nicholson mentioned in his speech, the JVTA has its origin in the Senate. Specifically, he referred to our former colleague Senator Tkachuk and other great giants of this institution, and to Bill S-7, which like the government bill that became law, sought to remove state immunity from those states who have been listed for supporting terrorism.

Bill S-7, under different bill numbers, spent some seven years in the Senate before former prime minister Stephen Harper made it a government bill and passed it into law. But Senator Tkachuk was not done yet. In 2017, he introduced another Senate public bill, Bill S-219, that cut a broader swath than did Bill S-7. It recognized that not only is the Iranian regime one of the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism abroad, but also an inciter of hate; an habitual and flagrant abuser of human rights.

Senators will recognize in my motion echoes of Bill S-219, which had it become law, would have, among other things, required the Minister of Foreign Affairs to publish an annual report on Iran-sponsored terrorism, incitement to hatred and human rights violations.

That bill was voted down in the Senate, though many of the senators who voted against it had only been newly appointed, literally days before they voted it down. They couldn’t possibly have been familiar with it or with the witness testimony for it or against it; yet they voted against it.

One of the witnesses at the committee was Irwin Cotler, without a doubt Canada’s pre-eminent expert on human rights and a former Liberal Minister of Justice. He can hardly be called by you partisan.

At the time of his testimony, Mr. Cotler was the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was a supporter of Bill S-219, which he described as “a modest framework . . . dealing with the three major threats of the Iranian threat network.”

Mr. Cotler went on to elaborate on the three areas that my motion is focused on. I quote:

It is important to emphasize that [Iran] is in standing violation of international norms and international agreements to which Canada and Iran are both state parties. In other words, if Iran engages in international terrorism, then it is violating a network of international treaties and agreements, including when it is engaged in international terrorism that ends up targeting diplomats, as it has, and this engages the whole network of diplomatic immunity, treaties and the like.

If it involves incitement to genocide, then, as I said, it’s a standing violation of the genocide convention and a breach of the obligations to us as a state party not to engage in such incitement.

If it engages in major human rights violations, it is in violation of major international treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the treaty on torture. Again, these are treaties where we are both state parties.

In a word, we are obligated as a state party to these treaties, let alone as a responsible member of the international community, to enforce these international norms, to sanction these violators, and to combat the culture of impunity that purports to immunize violators from accountability.

Those are not my words. Those are the words of former Justice Minister Cotler.

The main argument made by those who opposed Bill S-219 was that it insisted Canada maintain its sanctions against Iran until in two consecutive annual reports — similar to the report I am proposing in my motion — it could be demonstrated that Iran had made improvements on all three fronts.

Several expert witnesses were invited to committee and testified that Canada going it alone with sanctions would not work and might in fact be counterproductive.

Additionally, Global Affairs Canada sent a letter to the committee in which they strongly opposed Bill S-219 as being contrary to their policy of engagement with Iran. Global Affairs wants to engage with everybody. That’s their business, colleagues.

Senators will recall at the time that Canada was discreetly meeting with Iranian diplomats in order to further that engagement and quite possibly reopen our embassy there.

Initially, ISG senators on the Foreign Affairs Committee tried to kill it in committee, but wiser heads prevailed and it was sent back to the chamber, where it was defeated on third reading on May 9, 2018.

I guess the government was happy.

Honourable senators, much has changed since then. The Magnitsky law, which was before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee at the same time as Bill S-219, received Royal Assent back in October 2017.

In the time since, as I have mentioned, Canada has imposed Magnitsky on foreign officials in many, many countries. There are ample precedents here for imposing sanctions against Iranian officials who would be identified in the government’s analysis for Iranian regime behaviour that I am proposing.

Second, almost exactly a month after Bill S-219 was defeated in the Senate, members of both the government and opposition in the house voted 248 to 45 in favour of a motion that Canada, “. . . immediately cease any and all negotiations or discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran to restore diplomatic relations. . . .”

Supporting that motion were Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

The motion also called for the immediate designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a listed terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. Again, the Liberal Prime Minister, the foreign minister and the public safety minister voted in favour of the motion.

Honourable senators, no Magnitsky sanctions have been imposed on Iranian officials, who are members of a regime that remains one of the world’s worst violators of human rights.

The IRGC, the main organ of the regime perpetrating many, if not all of that — has yet to be listed under the Criminal Code despite the government voting more than two years ago in favour of a motion to immediately list it. Perhaps they need to be nudged again or they need to be reminded what motions they actually unanimously support in the House of Commons. It is well past the time for the Canadian government to identify who the Iranian officials are who carry out its many crimes and impose Magnitsky sanctions on them.

I hope, honourable colleagues, we come to recognize that without a doubt Iran is the biggest perpetrator of human rights violations, the biggest supporter of extremism right now around the world, yet time and time again our government refuses to call them out. They refuse and they have pushed aside the wishes of this Parliament. We now have another opportunity to continue to stand up for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. I hope, honourable colleagues, those of you who do will support this motion. Thank you.