Honourable senators, I rise to speak at third reading of Bill S-217, known by its short title as the foreign assets repurposing act. This is a bill that has been around the Senate for nearly as long as the senator sponsoring it. It was first introduced by Senator Omidvar in March of 2019 as Bill S-259. When it died on the Order Paper, she reintroduced it two years to the month later as Bill S-226. That too died on the Order Paper and now we have the bill before us, sponsored again by Senator Omidvar.

Senator Omidvar’s efforts in this regard brings to mind the wisdom of the thirtieth president of the United States, the taciturn Calvin Coolidge.

Coolidge was elected vice-president in 1920 on the Republican ticket along with president Warren Harding. Harding would unexpectedly die in 1923, and Coolidge would succeed him then be elected as president in the 1924 election. “Silent Cal,” as he was popularly known, was not much for small talk. In fact, he would often accept invitations to public events only if it was agreed that he would not be asked, nor be expected, to speak. But when he did speak, he had some interesting observations, especially regarding the most important qualities of a politician.

Coolidge said that talent is not enough:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Coolidge insisted that a politician without persistence will have a hard time getting anything accomplished.

I want to personally congratulate Senator Omidvar for her patience and determination to get this legislation through Parliament – she has provided a great example for all of us on the importance of persistence in pursuing worthwhile goals. Well done, senator.

And now, the timing of this legislation could not be more significant. The difference now, of course, is the invasion of Ukraine by the authoritarian dictator Vladimir Putin, supported by his oligarchs. That has focused the Senate’s mind wonderfully on the issues that this bill addresses. So, we find ourselves in a little bit more of a hurry to get this bill passed at third reading and sent on to the House. In this circumstance, it has been around long enough for our hurry to not appear in any way unseemly, especially now that the government has shown its willingness to support this bill.

In short, honourable senators, in my opinion, Bill S-217 is a bill whose time has come. I can describe the reason for that no better than did the sponsor in her remarks this past March before the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, when she said:

In the past month, we have seen the world change. The brutality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has called for swift and severe action by the world. And we have seen sanction regimes, such as taking Russia out of the SWIFT banking system, which no one would have thought conceivable a few weeks ago.

Recently, the government announced that Canada will join an international task force with the U.S., the U.K. and others to:

. . . commit to . . . working together to take all available legal steps to find, restrain, freeze, seize, and, where appropriate, confiscate or forfeit the assets of those individuals and entities that have been sanctioned in connection with Russia’s premeditated, unjust, and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the continuing aggression of the Russian regime.

As Senator Omidvar has explained:

The frozen assets repurposing act, or FARA, as proposed in Bill S-217, would provide that legal basis and that legal tool to help hold dictators, human-rights abusers and kleptocrats accountable for their actions.

But while the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has certainly given this bill much-needed impetus, moral outrage, as we heard from professor Fen Hampson at the Foreign Affairs Committee, “. . . is not necessarily the basis of sound public policy.”

So, Senator Omidvar, while you may view with some chagrin the length of time it has taken your bill to be accepted, the rest of us who support this bill can at least console ourselves that it is not simply a product of this latest moral outrage, but in fact long precedes it.

Punishing Russian oligarchs by seizing and repurposing their ill-gotten gains would certainly be a satisfying outcome of this bill becoming law, but the current situation in Ukraine was neither the specific impetus for the bill nor were Russian oligarchs the particular targets, though they would clearly have been among them.

I think it is worth remembering that while this bill would be useful in addressing the Ukraine crisis, it also transcends it. Its genesis, as Senator Omidvar reminded us when she spoke to Bill S-259 in 2019, was sparked by what she called the most significant crisis in the world today, the crisis of the forcibly displaced — 70 million of them around the world, at that time, half of them children, who had to flee their homes because of armed conflict.

Honourable senators, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added more than a million refugees to that number and, unfortunately, the number continues to grow.

I was struck at the time when Senator Omidvar said that her bill was inspired by the World Refugee Council’s report entitled A Call to Action: Transforming the Global Refugee System, that had been released earlier that year at the UN. In her second reading speech on Bill S-259, she said:

It urges nation states, regional organizations and multinational institutions to do more than just talk; it urges them to take action. This bill is a direct response to the call for action.

However, I am reminded, and disturbed, by the amount of virtue signalling that the current government is still engaging in. For instance, it loudly proclaimed a few weeks ago that it is sending RCMP officers to Europe to probe war crimes being committed in Ukraine. This may sound good, but it is almost certainly an empty gesture given the basic reality that it will likely not be possible to arrest soldiers from a nuclear-armed state for war crimes. We can pretend that Russian generals will be arrested and tried, but how that would actually be operationalized is very difficult to imagine.

When we were considering this bill at committee, I also could not help but notice that former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy — when he appeared before our committee — took time to laud the anti-personnel land mines treaty that he spearheaded a quarter-century ago. It was certainly a worthwhile initiative. However, this was surprising since the invasion of Ukraine demonstrates exactly how that treaty is not working, since Russia is busy using exactly these weapons in Ukraine.

I really wish that the Government of Canada would stop pretending and virtue signalling. As a country, we need to begin to be honest with ourselves. And as the Parliament of the country, we must be honest with Canadians about the stark threat that we face.

I would like our government to initiate measures that can really make a difference. This bill can contribute to that if we work tirelessly with our allies on a joint approach. But then we need to be clear-headed and frank about the difficult road we have ahead of us and to avoid simply focusing on empty gestures that are part of pretending about the great difference we want to believe we are making.

To quote Professor Hampson again:

FARA levels the playing field when our country is forced to deal with bad actors and corrupt regimes. Our government needs the ability to fire back at those who are not constrained by the rule of law . . . .

It is action — not just more talk and not just pulpit diplomacy.

Honourable senators, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all the witnesses or even all the senators on the committee supported the bill. During the Foreign Affairs Committee’s study of Bill S-217, Transparency International was particularly critical of three aspects: that the focus was solely on displaced persons as victims; that the government has done such a poor job of seizing assets that there would not be enough to be repurposed; and that judges lacking knowledge in foreign affairs will be sufficiently knowledgeable of the context of the country or group that might receive these funds, such that the repurposed assets might end up back in the wrong hands.

Brandon Silver of the Raoul Wallenberg Center was a strong supporter of the legislation but also offered what he called three proposed refinements to the bill to strengthen it. That included broadening it beyond its application solely to displaced persons.

Many of these proposals informed our deliberations as we approached clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, leading to several amendments being proposed. In the end, only two of the amendments were adopted by the committee, both of which were, more or less, technical in nature in order to bring the bill in line with current government practice under the Special Economic Measures Act. Therefore, some of the substantive concerns remain unaddressed.

Perhaps this reality will provide the government with an opportunity to further examine how the bill might be improved. I urge the government and members of the House of Commons to undertake a serious effort in that regard if it were to help make this bill more substantive.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I had reservations about one of the amendments that will now broaden the reasons for the repurposing of seized assets to include:

a grave breach of international peace and security has occurred that has resulted in or is likely to result in a serious international crisis.

I realize that it simply aligns the language in Bill S-217 with that used in the Special Economic Measures Act, as Senator Coyle said in proposing the amendment, but I am concerned that this language is both too broad and possibly too limiting at the same time.

It could be too broad in the sense that, as Senator Richards pointed out in committee, it could be applied subjectively and used for almost any purpose. For instance, how will one define a “breach of international security” leading to a “serious international crisis?” Could Israel have been targeted for its defensive strikes in 1967, which certainly led to an international crisis?

On the other hand, I fear the language could also be too limiting in the sense of what might constitute a “serious international crisis.” Would Vladamir Putin’s relatively bloodless seizure of Crimea in 2014 have met this definition, or would his 2008 seizure of Georgian territory have met the definition?

Regrettably, it is far from clear.

Senators noted at committee that, ultimately, the question of what constitutes “a breach of international security” leading to a “serious international crisis” will be defined by the Government of Canada. But in all scenarios, leaving this solely to the government of the day may not be entirely reassuring.

I can only say that, fortunately, this will only be one of the conditions that would trigger action under the bill.

As we so often hear in this place, let us not let the search for perfection be the enemy of finding the good. On the whole, I do believe that this is a good bill. It is the right bill for our time. I urge all senators to unanimously support this bill and vote for it at third reading.

Thank you.