[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Wednesday, November 8, 1995
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[English]
The Chair: This is the Sub-Committee on Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Today we have with us witnesses from Foreign Affairs and International Trade. We've been waiting for you.
We have Ross Hynes, the director of human rights and justice; Adéle Dion, the deputy director for human rights and international women's equality; and Mr. George.
Mr. Ross Hynes (Director, Human Rights and Justice, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade): We're expecting him, but he hasn't arrived yet.
The Chair: We will begin with you, Mr. Hynes, for the first half of our meeting and have Mr. LaRose-Edwards for the second half, if that is all right with you. Did you have a presentation?
Mr. Hynes: Yes, Madame Chair. We were told that you were interested in hearing about four subjects. We thought Adéle and I could take maybe ten to fifteen minutes to address those issues.
Dan George, our deputy director for west Africa, central Africa and the Maghreb, has just arrived.
Mr. Daniel George (Deputy Director, Africa and Middle East, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade): Sorry, Madame Chair. I was next door for a little while.
The Chair: Welcome. We would be very interested in hearing your presentation.
Mr. Hynes: It's certainly a pleasure to be here. We've been told, Madame Chair, that the subcommittee is interested in hearing about four subjects today: first, how the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is organized to deal with human rights questions; secondly, a bit of information on the multilateral United Nations process for promoting human rights; thirdly, some background information on our processes of consultation with Canadian non-governmental organizations; and finally, the question of Nigeria.
I will try to say a few words on the first two points and Adéle will say something on NGOs, if you agree. Then I think Dan will be prepared to say a few words about Nigeria. We propose to address each of those questions in turn.
By way of general background, however, it might be useful to recall briefly some of the relevant conclusions that emerged from the foreign policy review that the government conducted in consultation with Parliament in 1994. The topic of human rights was quite prominent in that process, of course, and it was addressed in many parts of the government's response to the parliamentary report.
The essence of the government's response was that it agreed with the parliamentary committee's assertion that human rights and democratic development reflect universal values that should find central expression in our foreign policy.
I think the real issue in that process was not whether human rights should play an important role in Canadian foreign policy, but rather the essential challenge, as it was put in the government's reply, was to identify how we can best influence other governments to respect international human rights standards. On that question, the government declared its intention to use a wide range of means at its disposal to promote human rights, means including bilateral channels of influence, development assistance, and multilateral channels as well.
I thought it important to emphasize the latter point because it underpins the way the foreign affairs department is organized to address human rights questions, and in particular the fact that no single division, least of all my own, is uniquely responsible for dealing with these questions.
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So on the question of how the department is organized to carry out human rights policies and activities, the human rights and justice division of the department, of which I am the director - the acronym we have in the department is AGH; it's a terrible acronym if you try to pronounce it, use it, or say it - is one of five divisions that comprise the global issues bureau. That is a new bureau created just after the foreign policy review to manage a range of issues that cut across various aspects of Canada's relations with other countries.
In addition to human rights, my division is also responsible for international narcotics and crime issues. The other divisions in the bureau deal with questions of environment, population and humanitarian affairs, economic and social development, and peace-building and democratic development.
The human rights section of AGH is comprised of seven professionals who are responsible for developing policy and advice relating to international human rights and also to women's equality matters and questions of international indigenous affairs. Those are two areas that are very high on the government's agenda and on which we spend a lot of our time.
In dealing with these questions, we spend a great deal of time liaising and consulting with other interested parts of the department, as well as with CIDA and with a range of other concerned government agencies and departments. We also spend a great deal of time working with, consulting with, Canadian non-governmental organizations.
Within the department, our key partners are officials from the geographic bureaus. The geographic bureaus are responsible for managing all aspects of Canada's bilateral relations with other countries, as well as our relations with regional organizations such as the Organization of American States, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the OSCE.
When I say all aspects of the relationships, we include also the human rights dimension. The geographic bureaus have the lead in determining ultimately our policy responses to specific human rights problems in specific areas.
That assignment of responsibility, or decentralization, if you will, reflects the fact that human rights concerns are an integral and often pervasive factor in relations with a large number of countries in most parts of the world, certainly in east-central Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
As I've noted, the government's basic goal in human rights is to try to identify a means of truly influencing other governments to respect international standards. Our geographic colleagues from headquarters, as well as from our diplomatic missions abroad, are inevitably the best sources of expertise and knowledge needed to provide advice on such specific cases. We have with us today an excellent example in the person of Mr. George.
That is not to say that the geographic bureaus are entirely left to their own devices in developing human rights advice, and that is where our division comes in, with its responsibility to advise our colleagues on human rights issues that arise and to seek to ensure effective and consistent adherence to the government's policy.
Generally speaking, I think the system works quite well, in part because senior management and ministers insist on receiving advice that reflects consultation between the geographic and the policy side of the department, but also because officials throughout the department share in common a strong professional appreciation for and a commitment to the importance of human rights and democracy in Canada's foreign policy.
I might mention one aspect of my division's responsibilities that have, I think, contributed over the years to developing that professional commitment; that is, the human rights training programs that we deliver twice yearly - three days of intensive human rights training to a broad range of departmental officers. Since 1988, over 700 officers have received such training.
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I think another factor is the priority the department gives to very regular and systematic human rights reporting by our missions abroad as an integral part of the work of those missions.
As for our coordination with CIDA, I understand the concerned CIDA officials were not able to join us today but you do intend to meet with them at a future meeting.
From Foreign Affairs' point of view, CIDA is a crucial partner in the government's efforts to promote human rights abroad. The foreign policy statement in February attached a great deal of importance to the role of development assistance in advancing human rights as a constructive means of promoting human rights through such initiatives as human rights education, the strengthening of democratic institutions, and the strengthening of judiciaries, for instance. Of course, human rights was set as one of the six priority aims of CIDA's programs.
Members of our division are in frequent and in fact often daily contact with officials from the CIDA policy branch. These contacts are supplemented by regular meetings, at least once a month, between ourselves and the policy branch. I think it's fair to say also that contacts between our geographic bureaus and their counterparts in CIDA are a very important part of the equation. Certainly major projects and programs in specific regions are developed by CIDA in close collaboration with their colleagues from Foreign Affairs, such as Mr. George.
I might mention briefly that there are also some more formal mechanisms in place to ensure effective policy coordination with CIDA. One of the most important of those is a deputy minister's policy coordination committee that was established in the wake of the foreign policy review. This consists of the deputy minister of foreign affairs, the deputy minister of international trade, and the president of CIDA. They meet quite frequently. They shoot for once a week, but certainly once every couple of weeks they meet to discuss issues of mutual concern. Finally, our deputy minister for global issues co-chairs a policy coordination group with the CIDA vice-president of policy. They meet on an as-needed basis to ensure that the deputies are receiving the input they need to make their decisions.
On the question of United Nations processes for promoting and protecting human rights, the government has made clear in the last couple of years that it considers multilateral channels, and especially the United Nations, to be often among the most effective channels for influencing other governments on human rights questions. This is an area unlike the bilateral sphere, where the human rights and justice division has a clear lead role in operational terms as well as in the provision of policy advice.
I understand that some written material has been made available to subcommittee members in advance on that subject, so I'll try to keep my introductory remarks brief.
A chart has been circulated. It is quite instructive. The chart readily conveys two very significant aspects of the UN human rights system. The first of those is that it is an extremely complex, very bureaucratic-looking system, even by UN standards.
That is particularly clear when you look at the second page and the bewildering array of funds and rapporteurs, working groups and experts that have been created under the umbrella of the UN Commission on Human Rights. This is, in good part, a consequence of the way in which the system has evolved. Virtually every one of the rapporteurs or working groups that you see listed on this chart have been the product of an individual and very difficult political battle at some stage in the UN over the last ten to fifteen years. The system has essentially been built up over the years through incremental efforts by governments like Canada to secure a rapporteur, to monitor the human rights situation in a given country such as Iran, or to study the worldwide incidence of a particular cruel phenomenon such as torture.
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A very important step in trying to bring some order to this system was achieved in 1993-94 with the creation of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and it's Canada's hope that this office, with its broad mandate for coordinating UN human rights activities system-wide, will help to make the overall effect, the overall impact, of the system perhaps greater than the mere sum of its parts.
The second aspect, which is highlighted by this chart, particularly the first page, is that human rights has become an increasingly prominent feature of the agenda in a very wide range of bodies in the UN, ranging from the Commission on Human Rights, through the Economic and Social Council, to the General Assembly, and even to the Security Council.
A very important development in recent years has been the increasing engagement of UN Security-Council-mandated operations, such as those in El Salvador, Cambodia, Haiti, Yugoslavia - the explicit involvement of these operations in human rights monitoring and related activities.
In its foreign policy statement last February, the government made clear and placed a great deal of emphasis on the importance of trying to address the root causes of conflicts. In many cases, those root causes, of course, are human rights abuses. So the strengthening of the UN's human rights machinery is a major aspect of the government's overall approach to the United Nations, and in this connection we are, again, attaching a great deal of priority to assisting the new high commissioner to establish his office and to secure the resources he needs to fulfil that mandate.
The two major public governmental fora in the UN for debating human rights policy and for discussing specific violations are the Commission on Human Rights and the Third Committee of the General Assembly.
The Third Committee is about to begin its annual human rights debate, and Canada's delegation in New York will be very active in pressing for resolutions on a wide range of country situations and other policy issues.
As for the Commission on Human Rights, of which Canada is a member, it will begin its next six-week session in March, and Canada's delegation to the commission is headed by our Ambassador to the Holy See, Léonard Legault. He would no doubt be very pleased to meet with subcommittee members when he next comes to Canada in the spring to prepare for the commission. This was a practice that we followed with predecessors to this subcommittee, and we would certainly be pleased to carry it on if the committee is interested.
Before leaving the UN, let me just mention one important corollary of Canada's UN efforts to encourage other countries to respect human rights, and that is our readiness to have our own human rights - Canada's human rights - record assessed and scrutinized internationally.
Canada is party to the six major human rights treaties. You see reference to the six committees that monitor those treaties in the central column on this chart number 1. As a party to those treaties we regularly submit reports on our human rights performance within the framework of the obligations that Canada has assumed under those various treaties.
We do this by working very closely with officials from a range of domestic departments and also from provincial governments. A great many of the obligations undertaken in these treaties do involve provincial jurisdiction, so we also work very closely with provinces in preparing our reports to these committees and in presenting them and defending Canada's record before the committees.
This is an aspect of the UN human rights system that the government takes very seriously. I think our adherence to these processes enhances Canada's credentials to call on others to respect international human rights standards.
The third subject, Madam Chair, on which the committee has requested information is that of consultations with Canadian non-governmental organizations.
The department has a long history of this. In its foreign policy statement earlier this year, the government emphasized its intention to build on and extend that practice to other areas.
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Adèle Dion has had considerable experience working with Canada's human rights NGOs in that regard. With your agreement, I would suggest having Adèle say a few words.
The Chair: Yes, please.
Ms Adèle Dion (Deputy Director for Human Rights and International Women's Equality, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Affairs): Thank you.
Our division is responsible for coordinating a wide range of consultations on international human rights issues throughout the year. As Ross has mentioned, while we take the lead on behalf of the department, other divisions are always also closely involved - our colleagues from the geographic branches and other areas of the department.
Contacts with non-governmental organizations vary from outreach activities such as speaking on human rights issues to various groups, regular meetings with individual organizations such as Amnesty International and many others, and of course the more formal two-day annual consultation that is held prior to the Commission on Human Rights every year....
This annual two-day consultation has been taking place since 1988, so it's certainly well-established by now. It involves approximately 200 Canadian non-governmental human rights organizations as well as academics and agencies such as the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, the Canadian Labour Congress, the University of Ottawa Human Rights Research and Education Centre, the North-South Institute, IDRC, and the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
While the primary focus is the Commission on Human Rights' agenda and also Canadian objectives in multilateral fora, the organizations do make use of the occasion to raise bilateral issues as well with the full range of departmental officials who attend the consultations.
During the two days of consultations, various formats are used. There's a formal plenary session that opens the consultation at which the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the secretaries of state give statements or take questions. Then there are smaller working groups that are chaired by members of our division to focus more on specific country situations. This breaks down even further to smaller round table discussions on specific countries, such as Rwanda.
It's also a very good opportunity for informal bilateral conversations between members of non-governmental organizations and ministers, senior departmental officials, and other people who are attending the consultations.
I should mention, as well, that in addition to this all-inclusive annual human rights consultation hosted by our department, the Canadian NGO network on international human rights hosts two additional smaller meetings each year. These meetings are scheduled to fit into the UN schedule. At the spring meeting we report on and discuss the outcomes of the Commission on Human Rights. In the fall we look ahead to the Third Committee of the General Assembly, as well as discuss outcomes of any recent world conferences or any other major world developments in the UN or other multilateral fora.
I think I'll stop there. Certainly if there are any other questions, we'd be most happy to respond.
Thanks.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. George, did you have a presentation?
Mr. George: Thank you.
I would ask your indulgence for the fact that this is my first day back after four days of being sick, which prevented me from circulating some papers that I might have liked to do on Monday. Also, if I don't seem to be all there, it's probably true. But now you'll know the reason. I might add that I don't hear very well. So please give me the benefit of that doubt, too.
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I am very pleased that the committee has taken an interest in Nigeria. I think it is an interesting case study, if you will, of some of the things Ross Hynes and Adèle Dion have been talking about. I'd like to take this occasion to acknowledge the committee's interest in it and, most recently, Bill Graham's appeal on behalf of human rights leader Ken Saro-Wiwa on Friday. That has been transmitted, so the committee is right up to the minute as we understand it.
I don't think it would be very useful to speculate on what's going to happen at the Commonwealth Summit. The key players are all there. The curtain is about to rise. When 52 prime ministers get together, it has its own dynamic. What officials may or may not have advised them of may bear little resemblance to reality. I think that should be left to speak for itself, but what we can talk about is the situation on the ground in Nigeria and what Canada has been doing about it bilaterally, especially in the last two years.
To go quickly through the situation, next January Nigeria will have had military rule for thirty years; the first military ruler took over in January 1966. I won't bore you with the long succession there except to say that there was a democratic interlude for about three and a half years in the early 1980s before the military came back. That was brought about by Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was the military ruler who actually succeeded in handing on to a democratic successor. So far, he has been the only one able to do that.
The other thing worth mentioning perhaps is the Biafran civil war. People may remember that it occurred at the end of the 1960s. It lasted for two and a half years and entailed at least a million deaths, although no one knows for sure. It was pretty awful.
To fast forward then to a few years ago, military ruler General Ibrahim Babangida embarked on a transition to democracy in 1988. By 1989 he had a constitution. There were local municipal elections by 1990. In 1991 there were state elections. Parliamentary elections took place in 1992 and were followed in 1993 by presidential elections.
The June 1993 presidential elections in particular were probably the cleanest that Nigeria has ever had, and Canada had observers on the ground. There were two candidates: Chief Moshood Abiola and Bashir Othma Tofa. Unofficial but virtually complete figures were available that showed Abiola was winning over 58% of the vote and had taken twenty of the thirty states, as well as the federal capital territory. He even won in the military polling stations and in his opponent's home state. The turnout wasn't high by the standards of the Quebec referendum, but it was high by west African standards. It was around 40%.
This election was supposed to be the last stop on Babangida's transition program; however, before official results were finally proclaimed, the military regime decided to annul the election, to scrap it. This caused quite a storm of protest both at home and abroad. Babangida realized he could no longer retain power, so he handed on to a civilian transition government under Chief Ernest Adegunle Shonekan, who never really got a grip on things. There were about three months of turmoil and drift, which was finally ended when General Sani Abacha, who had been defence minister to Babangida - he had in fact been a major player in every coup since 1983 - took power in his own right in November 1993.
Abacha's first act was to scrap all the previously elected bodies under Babangida, right down to the municipal level and to the level of band parties. The entire democratic transition was junked.
I think it would be useful at this point to separate what Abacha is doing or not doing on the side of democratization from what he is doing or not doing on the side of human rights. In democratization, his plan has turned out to be almost a carbon copy of Babangida's. He called a constitutional conference in 1994, to which a third of the members were appointed, while the rest were elected. I believe the turnout for that election was well below 10%, which I think speaks for the authenticity with which it was viewed by the Nigerian population.
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A month ago, on Nigeria's national day, October 1, General Abacha set out a three-year transition plan that would leave him in power until October 1998. Nigeria would now go through all this business of local elections, state elections, parliamentary elections and presidential elections all over again, along with a bunch of other things like enumeration and various commissioned appointments, perhaps the creation of new states, and a number of things in which delays and wrangling could occur. It could be said that the transition program is more or less destined, if not designed, to fail.
On the human rights side, Abacha's approach has been characterized as that of the bulldozer, essentially riding roughshod over any and all opposition. After disbanding the entire political structure put in place by Babangida, he jailed Abiola in the spring of 1994, and Abiola remains in jail. This was the man who won what certainly appears to have been a free and fair election in the previous year.
In the summer of 1994, union leaders held a very stiff strike, especially in oil production. It took Abacha two months to suppress that, and when he did he dismantled the entire union leadership. Dozens of them went to jail, and the unions themselves have been disbanded now.
At the same time he was beating up on the Ogoni minority in the Nigerian oil patch in the delta. Their leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa, whom you may have heard about in the news lately, was detained without charge as long ago as May 1994. He was finally put on trial this year on charges of conspiring to murder some Ogoni rivals. He was tried at a military tribunal. This was not done in secret; Canada and others did have diplomatic observers present for a number of the sessions. Last week, he and eight of his supporters were finally found guilty and were sentenced to death, even though the judge himself admitted that Saro-Wiwa was not directly responsible and was indeed twenty kilometres away when the murders were committed. Those sentences, I have just learned this afternoon, have apparently been reviewed and were confirmed by the Provisional Ruling Council, the military regime's supreme body. So it's anybody's guess now as to how soon they will be carried out. In the past they have sometimes been carried out fairly soon after they've been confirmed.
I did leave out one really quite important thing on the human rights side. I mentioned that General Obasanjo was the only military ruler who succeeded in handing over to a democratic successor. Obasanjo, presidential runner-up Shehu Yar'adua, who was also Obasanjo's vice-president, and about forty others were jailed in the spring and put on a secret military trial for plotting a coup. There was never any public evidence that a plot had really occurred. There were many appeals by Canada and others for clemency for the coup plotters. It was reported but never reliably confirmed that there were fourteen death sentences handed down, along with quite a few other stiff prison terms.
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It was as part of General Abacha's national day message on October 1 that he finally responded to worldwide appeals and commuted these sentences. There are going to be no executions there, but the remaining sentences range from fifteen years to life, so they're still pretty stiff.
In terms of what Canada has done about all this, we did have observers at the 1993 presidential elections and we began taking action right away. We condemned its annulment. We received Moshood Abiola in Ottawa that same summer. Some people may remember that. He came here and met with parliamentarians of all the major parties around Labour Day of 1993.
We cancelled a visit to Canada by the Institute for Strategic Studies, we suspended military and police training assistance, we cancelled a proposed visit of the inspector general of police, and we declined a request to negotiate an investment protection agreement with Nigeria.
Since General Abacha's takeover in November 1993 and the dissolution of all the political structures, we have added several more measures. We have refused visas to senior Nigerian military and ministers, most notably at the Commonwealth Games in August 1994, which were held in Victoria. When several very high-profile people wanted to attend, Canada refused them visas. Only the athletes and trainers were given visas.
We have also blocked requests to send military-capable exports to Nigeria. We have called repeatedly for Abiola's release as an indispensable part of any solution. We have lowered bilateral relations to the acting high commissioner level. That's now true in both directions; both countries are represented by acting high commissioners. We declined to host a meeting of the Canada-Nigeria Joint Economic Commission that it was our turn to host, and we have cited Nigerian abuses in several UN human rights speeches.
We co-sponsored a UN resolution on human rights in Nigeria, which came before the Commission on Human Rights last March. I believe this is the first time there has been a resolution on Nigeria in the human rights context since the time of their civil war. Unfortunately, this resolution was defeated, although we co-sponsored it. I believe the vote was 17 in favour, 21 against - mostly Africans - and 15 abstentions. A relatively narrow vote like that may be revisited in the future. Of course, we have also refused to accredit the newly nominated Nigerian military attachés in Washington.
Apart from the measures that were intended to target the military and the regime as a whole, we have also tried to encourage Nigerian democrats in a number of ways. We have provided some small project funding for their organizations. We have brought several of them here for training at the Canadian Human Rights Foundation. We have interceded repeatedly on behalf of various detained human rights activists, and we have had five of the more prominent ones come to Canada and tour various Canadian cities.
The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development gave the Nigerian campaign for democracy its freedom award in December. Femi Falana came here to accept that award and toured quite a number of cities, including some in the west, at that time. He was subsequently arrested for leaving Nigeria illegally, but didn't spend very long in jail.
Just before that we had the editor of Nigeria's leading newspaper, The Guardian, which at that time was banned but which has been allowed to republish again since then. In April we received the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Ken Wiwa was here; he went to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal and was received by Mrs. Stewart. He's now in New Zealand for the Commonwealth Summit.
In June we received Nigeria's Nobel winner, Wole Soyinka, who won for literature in 1986. He was the first African Nobel winner until Nadine Gordimer won it. We had him here in June to commemorate the second anniversary of the annulled presidential election. He was interviewed by the media. He met Mrs. Stewart. He also met, I believe, with several MPs. He was recognized in the House during Question Period.
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Christine Stewart gave a statement in the House that same week marking the anniversary and what Canada's been doing. I believe that was June 15.
The Chair: I don't mean to be rude, but we have so many questions and the bell is going to ring at 5 o'clock, so could you...?
Mr. George: I'm almost finished.
The Chair: I know we all have lots of questions, and we're champing at the bit here.
Mr. George: Christine Stewart did appeal for clemency for the coup plotters in July, and this past week she wrote to the Nigerian foreign minister on behalf of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and also brought out another press release on that issue.
So I think it's fair to say Canada's position has been at least as energetic as any other western country's and has earned real credibility with Nigeria's democratic movement and also in the Commonwealth.
What we can say is that in future our measures will be geared to developments in Nigeria. We will want to recognize progress if and when it occurs, and if it doesn't occur, we may have to take account of that too.
Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Graham.
Mr. Graham (Rosedale): Mr. George, you told us Mr. Saro-Wiwa was convicted and sentence has been confirmed by the military council. Does that mean the last resort would be an appeal to the head of state, or have all formal appeals now been exhausted?
Mr. George: I believe you're correct that the Provisional Ruling Council is the last formal stop in confirming a death sentence, but the head of state still has executive clemency. In practice it can still be appealed to him as long as it has not been carried out.
Mr. Graham: So it would be expected that at the Commonwealth conference coming up, this would be a matter of discussion with the Nigerian head of state, who will be there, I presume.
Mr. George: I'm sure it's being discussed.
We were told the head of state was attending, but there was always an escape clause of ``unless something comes up''. Frankly, the informed opinion in Lagos seemed to suggest he would not attend. He has not attended most other multilateral gatherings this year, even in Africa.
The betting was that he would not attend and that Nigeria would therefore be represented by Chief Tom Ikimi, the foreign minister. But we don't actually know that yet. People are still arriving, including our own Prime Minister.
Mr. Graham: I wonder if I could turn to more general issues.
You mentioned the Commonwealth conference. We had the Secretary General of the Commonwealth here. I think some of the members of the committee had breakfast with him just recently when he was in Ottawa.
Do you get the impression the Commonwealth is going to focus more on issues of human rights than it has in the past and indeed make human rights performance a condition of membership in the Commonwealth? Is the government actively pressing the Commonwealth to be more aggressive in this respect?
Mr. Hynes: I preface my response by saying I think the original intention had been to try to have a more in-depth discussion of the Commonwealth at this session, but because all the people who really know what's going on in the Commonwealth are now at a government meeting, it was decided to put that off.
The Chair: We're planning on having the people who attended the Commonwealth where we're going to be.
Mr. Graham: Fine. Why don't I withdraw that question?
Mr. Hynes: I can give you a bit of general background if that would be useful. It's up to you.
The Harare Declaration, which goes back to CHOGM 1991, was a new, modern statement of the purposes and objectives of the Commonwealth. Human rights, democracy and the rule of law were put very high on the list of priorities there, and that led to the creation of some programs within the Commonwealth on human rights. I think Paul LaRose-Edwards is going to talk about those.
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The question of how to implement Harare more effectively is certainly on the agenda at this CHOGM, and Canada has been working with the secretary general and with like-minded countries in trying to flesh out the Harare undertakings - maybe put a little bit more teeth in them - and identify some steps that might be taken by the institution as a whole when certain countries backslide on democracy. It's very difficult to say where that exercise is going to go, but that is a big subject on the agenda at this CHOGM and I'm sure we'll hear more about it when the delegation returns.
The Chair: Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison (Swift Current - Maple Creek - Assiniboia): Mr. George, I'm wondering if the sad history of the last three or four years has anything to do with the curse of ethnic nationalism. Are the generals still by and large northerners and was Abiola, for example, a southerner? What's the situation there?
Mr. George: That is basically true. The generals are from the north. Both Babangida and Abacha are northerners. Abiola is a southerner, but one of the reasons he had nation-wide appeal was that he was a southern Muslim, so that he could appeal to the north, which is mainly Muslim, and also the south as a Yoruba tribesman. I think it's one factor that enabled him to win in some of these states.
Mr. Morrison: What was Babangida's objection to the man? He called an election. He must have wanted to have somebody elected president. What was the problem?
Mr. George: It's debatable if he really did want to have anybody elected president, because the threshold was set very high to ensure nation-wide support of the candidate. One interpretation, and it is only one interpretation, is that he fully expected that both candidates would fail to meet that threshold of nation-wide support and that he would, therefore, dissolve the election and continue in power.
But in fact one of the candidates was able to meet the requirements of the election and then he had no choice but to annul it.
Mr. Morrison: I see.
The Chair: Paul LaRose-Edwards is the former head of human rights at the Commonwealth Secretariat.
I think you could talk to us and then perhaps we could ask our other questions as well. We'll target you all at once.
Mr. Paul LaRose-Edwards (Human Rights International Adviser): I wasn't too sure what the committee wanted to hear from me today. I have notes on a number of different things, so I'll make it fairly short. I'm more than happy to talk at length about the Commonwealth, although as you'll see from my comments, I don't think the Commonwealth is where the action is going to be or even has been for quite awhile in this area.
Very quickly, I'll give you my background so that you know what kinds of questions you perhaps might want to pose to me. I was with the Commonwealth Secretariat for four years heading their human rights unit. Before that I worked in a number of different human rights positions. I worked with Amnesty International. I was with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Since I've been back from London I've been working in a number of different areas and doing some studies for Foreign Affairs on human rights in UN field operations and peacekeeping, and doing some teaching with the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre on human rights and peacekeeping. I recently finished a study for the Somalia inquiry, looking at the kind of non-traditional training of the military for peacekeeping - in other words, everything apart from combat training, particularly human rights issues.
That's some of my background. Perhaps that's enough. Perhaps you just want to go straight to questions, as your time is short, because I'm not too sure what kind of agenda you want to have.
The Chair: I think that sounds good, because there are a number of issues that, speaking for myself, are fairly unclear for me. Maybe we can do that.
Mr. English, did you want to begin?
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Mr. English (Kitchener): Yes, thank you, Madame Chair.
Following up on Mr. Graham's question about the Commonwealth and human rights, we did have the secretary general here, and we had some British parliamentarians who spoke to us about the possibility of the Commonwealth raison d'être being human rights.
There is some history there and there is some possibility, I suppose, of Nigeria. But I just heard you say that you didn't think that's where the action would be, and I wonder if you could expand upon that comment.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I think a lot of us had high hopes with the new secretary general, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, when he came in, in 1990, that he would actually work on human rights. The previous secretary general had a very good pitter-patter on human rights but behind the scenes was really not supportive, but there was a feeling that Emeka Anyaoku was a very upright man and would attempt to do things.
In fact, that hasn't been the case, and if we look at statements by the Commonwealth over a long period of time, back in the 1960s when it started, and certainly in the 1970s and 1980s, there is a consistent theme of having some fairly nice statements, but with no teeth in them. I think the Harare declaration is another example of this. Every CHOGM comes out with a communiqué, which is their main document, and every once in awhile they come out, as they did in Harare, with a declaration, which is an additional document.
If you look at the human rights component of the communiqué coming out of Harare, ostensibly at a time when they're putting a renewed emphasis on human rights, it's weaker than their statement on human rights at the previous heads of government meeting in Kuala Lumpur, and consistently they have not put teeth in it.
For example, in almost every communiqué there's a call for countries to ratify the two international covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social and cultural rights. There was an attempt to put a clause in the communiqué in 1991 that the secretary would be tasked in reporting back to the next heads of government meeting on states' progress in that regard. In other words, it would have been a very soft way of putting countries on notice that we will be watching how you progress on this question, so how will you react to this call to accede to these international instruments.
It never made it into the communiqué. It was pulled out very quickly. Attempts were made to put it back in, unsuccessfully. I think this is indicative that the Commonwealth really has not truly been carrying on much work in the area of human rights.
I passed around a small document that I give out when I'm giving a small course to CIDA on programming human rights and the fact that it's very difficult to advance human rights in an IGO - an intergovernmental organization - such as the Commonwealth, or the Francophonie, or even the United Nations. I think we have to pick and choose which ones we want to struggle in to try to get things moving forward. I think the UN is one of them, but I don't think the Commonwealth is.
The Chair: You think the Commonwealth isn't a viable avenue for us to...?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: No. It takes a lot of time and effort. It's a bit of a contradiction to try to advance human rights in an IGO because the members are states, invariably the governments are part of the problem, and so it's very difficult. There's that philosophical or fundamental contradiction about trying to get them to work harder on human rights.
So it takes a lot of time and effort, as Ross and Adèle know, to try to get small moves forward within the UN. But because the UN is so central to what we do internationally, it's worth the effort. I think the Commonwealth is on a downward spiral, and for the time and effort it would take to do things in the Commonwealth, the pay-off would be minimal if any. Its past record has been that the advances have been minimal.
Mr. English: Did you work there for a long time?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: Yes.
Mr. Graham: I take it you're not working there any more.
Mr. English: I have one question and one comment. The question is, in your view, is the difficulty the chief is having with these questions a result of where he comes from?
The second question is, if the Commonwealth has been so ineffective in terms of human rights, why did Mrs. Thatcher dislike it so much for that reason?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: She disliked it on South Africa, and South Africa was a win-win -
Mr. English: No, she didn't like it generally.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: Well, yes -
Mr. English: My goodness, read her memoirs.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: She disliked it generally, but it focused more on the issue of South Africa, and South Africa was a human rights issue apart from any other. It was a win-win...I mean, everybody was supported there.
Mr. English: And Zimbabwe.
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Mr. LaRose-Edwards: Right. It was seen by a lot of Commonwealth countries as an issue apart. We can push for human rights in South Africa, but we really don't have to worry about human rights in Nigeria because we're different; this is not apartheid.
That was the tenor of that whole debate. I think that's why there is a difference there. The Commonwealth did a good job on South Africa. It played a role. But on human rights it has not.
This secretary general, for example...and this is anecdotal and you have to be careful what you read into it. When I quit as head of the human rights unit, I gave them nine months' notice. That post was not filled for a year and a half after I left. It's a minor point, but this has been repeated in a number of different instances where you say, well, okay, where's the beef; what are you actually doing; what kind of programs are coming out of the Commonwealth that make a difference? In fact, they're not there. The resources are not put into it.
Canada, I think, took the decision to back off on the Commonwealth on human rights about 1991-92 when Canada put in a one-off contribution of $400,000 for programming human rights because very little was being provided within the system, with the rider that they expected that this amount would be put up by the Commonwealth secretariat the following year to add on to the kind of funding it provided to human rights. The secretary did not do that. As a matter of fact, the budget stayed identical the very next year. I'm convinced that within Foreign Affairs the decision was, okay, we tried hard, we pushed hard, we came up with $400,000 with this clear rider and there was no response from the Commonwealth secretariat; it's really not worth it any more. Then they backed off on this.
It's not necessarily a strategy that I oppose. If you have limited energies, then I think the UN and the OAS are organizations that deserve more concentration than perhaps the Commonwealth.
I don't want to get too much on the one track on the Commonwealth and be too hard on them, but I think there are other areas that Canada and the committee should focus on, and IGOs, and the UN is one of them.
The Chair: During our boycott of South Africa, people came and visited us and they were saying to us that Canada will be sorry because South Africans have long, long memories. Now that apartheid has been abolished, did that affect our trade? Did we recover or recoup some of the trade we lost during that time? Would you know that?
Mr. George: Madame Chair, I might be able to address this. I did do South Africa in a former incarnation, in fact during the time that Mr. LaRose-Edwards is speaking about when the Commonwealth was very active on South Africa.
Yes, our trade did rebound after sanctions were taken off. The economic sanctions were removed in September 1993 and trade did rebound very smartly. Certainly it is true that the government did have long memories. They remembered that Canada was there for them when they needed us, and a significant slice of government contracts was coming our way afterwards. Of course, clearly they weren't going to give us anything grossly uncompetitive, but they did throw quite a few business -
The Chair: I guess you could say that maybe there is money to be made in human rights.
Mr. George: I think the other point to be made about the Commonwealth in South Africa, elaborating on what Mr. LaRose-Edwards has said, is that the Commonwealth was ultimately effective but it did take it quite a long time to get going. John Diefenbaker, after all, led the charge to throw them out in 1961. They didn't even have the arms embargo until 1977, I believe, and the major sanctions were adopted after 1985.
The Chair: I have looked at the Foreign Affairs reports to the UN and their assessment of human rights violations in certain countries, and Foreign Affairs often differs greatly with the reports we get from NGOs like Amnesty International.
Paul, what would your response to that be? You've worked with NGOs. On-line, front-line people are bringing back first-hand reports of human rights violations. Why do our Foreign Affairs reports not mesh with them?
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Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I must admit I haven't looked at them exhaustively to compare and analyse, but I think we have to recognize the tough situation Foreign Affairs is put in when it's trying to work in the United Nations. I certainly am forgiving when I look at a Foreign Affairs statement that is not quite as forceful as we would have hoped.
There are certain ways you have to operate in the UN. There are times you have to downplay it a bit and work behind the scenes. That's part of the game, and if we're doing it, then there's nothing wrong with being a little bit more cautious about what we say. That's true in the Commonwealth, as long as you are taking those other routes.
I'm certainly convinced, from what I've seen of Foreign Affairs, that within the UN there are these efforts behind the scenes to make a difference. Lots of different mechanisms can be created or strengthened in the UN that are more important in the long term and in the medium term than getting up and making a strong, forceful statement that may stymie those other efforts. I'm not trying to be an apologist for Foreign Affairs here, but -
The Chair: For example, a couple of years ago, if I had wanted to visit Lebanon and if I had called our embassy, they would have said no, no, don't come to visit; it's not a safe place for you to visit. Yet, in our own policy, to people who are claiming refugee status, we're saying oh, no, there's no problem there, in spite of the fact that they have situations that are totally unacceptable.
Shouldn't there be some sort of coordination between one department's assessment and another's? It doesn't necessarily have to be public and it can be done diplomatically. I understand we can't get up and call everybody names, but should there not be some sort of coordination between departments in our policy towards these countries, refugees and the like?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I would suggest the refugee issue is very different, having worked for the UNHCR. You really have to give refugees the benefit of the doubt. If you make a mistake and send them back to a country where they really are persecuted, then you've made a major mistake. So you have to lean over backwards.
They are really at arm's length from the rest of government in many ways in that regard. Their documentation centre has to take a separate approach to canvassing and finding out what the heck is going on in that particular country.
I don't think you could ever really merge their views of the world, because there is that contradiction, and there is a need for the refugee board to be at arm's length in order to make a separate decision in that regard.
That's not a very good answer, but they're dealing with apples and oranges, so to speak.
The Chair: But they are both departments of the same government.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: When they first created the documentation centre for the Immigration and Refugee Board about five or six years ago, there certainly was a move toward the idea that it would come out with regular reports and be quite public on them. They would be akin to the state department reports but would be put out on a regular basis and would be perceived by a number of different countries as an important source of material.
It was never really given the resources to do that, so it hasn't ended up filling that task and has focused mostly on providing information for the board members.
The Chair: Did you have something to add to that, Mr. Hynes?
Mr. Hynes: I'm at a bit of a loss to respond clearly to your comment because I'm not sure exactly what reports to the United Nations you're referring to.
Canada makes the occasional speech, at the UN General Assembly or at the Commission on Human Rights, on specific situations. Often we don't put our views or assessments in precisely the same terms as NGOs might in a given case, but I can certainly say that in preparing those speeches and comments we are very cognizant of what NGOs, particularly Amnesty International, have to say. We also take into account reporting we receive from our own missions and try to come up with some kind of objective analysis, from the government's point of view, of what the situation is.
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Then, as Paul has said, we have to make an assessment of what kinds of actions and statements will be most effective in influencing the actual situation on the ground. In some cases the assessment is that quiet diplomacy rather than loudspeaker diplomacy is the most effective.
On the question of refugees, of course the issue before any refugee determination board is whether the applicant is likely to face persecution if he is forced to return to that country. So certainly it is a human-rights-related issue in many cases, but it is a different issue also.
I was going to try to jump in and comment on Paul's remarks on the Commonwealth, but perhaps we can get off that topic. It's up to you.
Mr. George: On the subject of reports, as a geographic division we are quite often consulted by the Immigration and Refugee Board about situations in the African countries we're responsible for. We're also consulted by consular people in our own department who issue travel reports to those countries.
I was wondering if the reports you were thinking of that may diverge from NGO assessments might be the country issues that come up at the NGO consultations in January every year. Foreign Affairs circulates reports on a number of countries that are before the UN and the NGOs see these in advance. If that's the kind of report you mean, I might say that in Nigeria at least, and in some other countries in west and central Africa, we do work very closely with the NGOs and exchange information throughout the year in terms of reaching our assessments. Some of them have co-sponsored some of our Nigerian visitors, for example, with us.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. LaRose-Edwards, I'd like to perhaps take advantage of your former life here.
You made it fairly clear that you don't think the Commonwealth is a very productive field for people interested in human rights to cultivate. In your opinion, as someone outside this committee, where do you think we should be directing our deliberations or ultimately our efforts? If you were on this committee, what would you want to be doing?
Take your time.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: Canada is very good at all sorts of things, and lots of principles on how we promote and protect human rights in Canada can be extrapolated and usefully used abroad.
If you want to work on IGOs - intergovernmental organizations - most of the focus should be on the UN. That's where the greatest scope for success in the short term is, as opposed to with other IGOs, and a number of different issues can be dealt with there. We're talking about the UN and reform. In the area of human rights, as I mentioned, there is a contradiction in an IGO dealing with human rights, because they're talking to the states, some of which are part of the problem.
One of the principles that underlines the effectiveness of human rights commissions and ombudsmen in Canada is they are at arm's length from government, although they receive government funding. They have a kind of independence and a mandate to get on with their job. I would venture that perhaps the committee would want to look at UN reform of human rights in that regard.
We have a new High Commissioner for Human Rights who really is part and parcel of this system, and perhaps there needs to be some change in how he and his office - and perhaps the Centre for Human Rights, which reports to him - work. They need to have greater arm's length distance from the UN Secretariat as such. They need regular funding they can rely on so they don't have to keep on fighting within the system on a yearly basis for amounts of money. The senior staff should have tenure - quite apart from the high commissioner, who already does - so they can take positions on human rights that don't end up getting them fired or moved out of the system. That's one thing to look at.
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Another UN issue with which perhaps the committee is interested in dealing is a bit of an extrapolation of what happened in Somalia and our commission of inquiry. In fact, we are doing the right thing. We're probably the only government that has reacted in the right way in Somalia. There were abuses by all sorts of UN forces in Somalia. We're the only ones who are really taking our people to task and doing a proper job of it. We should be rather proud that we are doing the right thing.
There have been calls for some sort of mechanism within the UN, an ombudsperson or some sort of body that can accept complaints from people in field operations about the conduct of UN staff, military and others. So perhaps this is something the committee wants to look at and try to push forward.
Outside of the UN, there are a lot of different countries where Canada has sway and perhaps our activities could be a little bit more pronounced and more active in pushing human rights. We all know that there's an ongoing debate where we have Team Canada going to countries such as China and Indonesia and others and that there is a certain ambivalence about Canada's approach to that link or how to deal with trade and human rights at the same time.
I am certainly not of the opinion that it's either/or. Yes, we can combine the two, but we're not doing it on a very informed basis at this point in time. Perhaps the committee wants to look at that in more depth and try to figure out what are our principles in bringing those two together. What are our fundamental values below which we certainly will not negotiate them off? What comes with a trading relationship with Canada in the area of human rights? This needs to be thought out at length. I don't think people in Canada are clear about how we should proceed on this.
So there, very quickly, are some points. There are all sorts of other areas that Canada is good at or has an interest in on which you could focus.
Mr. Graham: If I could follow up on the matter of the UN high commissioner, when the meeting was held in Vienna one felt that the establishment of the high commission was an extraordinarily important step in creating an international enforcement body for human rights that was lacking before. I was somewhat distressed when we met with the high commissioner when he was here and he told us his office is almost totally without any resources necessary to act as an ombudsman or in any way to act effectively to enforce human rights in the extraordinarily complex United Nations system, such as it is.
My question really is to the members of the department. Since you say that you're focusing a great deal on the United Nations system, has the department some policy or program that you would be advocating in order to strengthen the position of the UN high commissioner financially and in terms of resources in order to enable them to do their job better? Or do you see this as having to work its way through the UN system itself, making our normal contributions through the UN and trying to get the UN to come about, making changes and reform from within the UN itself?
Mr. Hynes: You have alluded to a couple of aspects of that question.
You're suggesting, I suppose, that voluntary contributions might be an alternative to the financing of the high commissioner's operations from the regular budget.
Mr. Graham: Yes, there might be some way of going to the UN and saying we'll make a contribution to that budget and that budget alone. You would probably get a few other like-minded states to be willing to do the same thing.
Mr. Hynes: In fact, there are opportunities to do that. There is, in particular, a voluntary fund, which the high commissioner controls, for technical assistance in human rights. When the high commissioner was here last spring, Canada contributed an additional $100,000 to that.
You've put your finger on a fairly fundamental issue there. The promotion and protection of human rights is one of the three charter purposes of the United Nations. So Canada and many other like-minded governments have taken the view that if it is indeed a purpose of the United Nations, then it is a purpose that should be adequately funded from within the system, from within the regular budget.
You note that the creation of the high commissioner was strongly resisted. It was considered to be a great victory. That's indeed the case. When he did come to office, he found himself in charge of a unit whose budget commanded 0.7% of the budget of the United Nations for one of its three purposes, and that is something Canada has always considered to be completely inadequate. We have achieved some progress in the last couple of years in working with the high commissioner to increase that. The figure is now up to 1.4%, but it is indeed an uphill battle. As I said in my introductory remarks, it is one to which Canada attaches a great deal of importance. There is a scope for voluntary funding and assistance to the UN to work in this area but we really strongly believe the regular budget of the UN must give more support to this particular program.
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The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. English: I just want to give Mr. Hynes the opportunity to comment on the Commonwealth because I think we were left hanging a bit there. I think the comments from Mr. LaRose-Edwards were very useful, but you said you had some comments of your own.
Mr. Hynes: They're very general ones, Mr. English. As an official of a government whose Prime Minister is now winging his way to a Commonwealth heads of government meeting, I don't think I could afford to be quite so blunt in my assessment as Paul was. But I think it was implicit in your initial question that human rights, and particularly the old British concept of the rule of law, is really regarded as an important unifying theme for the Commonwealth. It is certainly a theme that Canada has emphasized very strongly and continues to emphasize.
However, we have to recognize that the Commonwealth is a very large organization of countries from all over the world and with different levels of development, and it is an organization that works by consensus. I think some very frank discussions do take place behind closed doors when the leaders only have their retreat on the weekend, and that will happen again this week. Of course, when they have to come out and produce a declaration, it has to be a consensus statement, and progress can be rather slow in moving the agenda ahead on that basis.
As I said in response to Mr. Graham's earlier question, at this CHOGM we are very much looking at ways to strengthen the secretary general's hand in pushing the Harare objectives. I think it probably would be of interest to the committee to hear from some of the officials who attend this meeting after it takes place.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. George.
Mr. George: Could I just add to that a little bit by coming at the same question from perhaps a slightly different approach? The Commonwealth has spent most of the past decade with a clear leading role on South Africa. It led the world and helped to build global consensus on South Africa and it was extremely effective. Those elections marking the end of apartheid were really only held last year. In the past year or two, the Commonwealth has kind of been looking for a new focus for its further work, if you will. In the Harare Commonwealth Declaration and elsewhere, it certainly has the potential to take more of a leading role on fundamental political values, democracy and human rights. It could be said that perhaps that potential is going to be explored at this meeting, but it remains to be seen whether it will take on that potential. That is one direction in which it might move in looking for a new mandate.
The Chair: I want to know how human rights factor into the sale of Canadian military equipment to countries that have a less-than-nice reputation for human rights violations.
Mr. Hynes: There's a very explicit policy on the export of military goods by Canada. I think it dates back to 1986. Human rights are, I believe, one of four criteria that must be reviewed and considered when considering export applications for military goods. The human rights criterion states that the government will strictly control exports to any country that has a serious record of human rights violations or abuses, unless it can be demonstrated that there is no reasonable risk that the goods in question could be used against the civilian population of the country. That's a fairly stringent criterion.
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As for the way in which the policy is implemented at Foreign Affairs, the human rights and justice division - my division - does review all applications that arise in which this human rights consideration might be a factor. Our views and advice on that point are factored into the advice that goes to the minister, who decides whether to approve or disapprove a given export application.
The Chair: There have been some recent sales for which we've received a lot of criticism. Do you feel the factoring of the human rights element has been large enough in that as a proportion of the equation?
Mr. Hynes: I think it has to be borne in mind that it is, of course, ultimately the minister's decision as to whether or not to approve an application in light of the advice provided to him. I wouldn't want to respond to your question without looking at specifics, but basically the way the system operates is that such advice is provided to the minister systematically and he certainly insists on seeing it before he makes any decisions.
The Chair: Okay, thank you.
Adèle, you're primary area right now has been international human rights for the equality of women. We keeping talking about human rights violations. That has become such a wide term. Are you looking at some form of redefinition of degrees of human rights violations? For example, I can be violating your human rights if I don't give you a job because I don't like the way you look, but that is quite different from the violation of human rights in which I'm not going to allow you to live because I don't like your politics or your religion or your behaviour as a woman. Do you think there is some way in which we have to redefine and categorize human rights to deal with them properly?
Ms Dion: That's a very interesting question. I don't think we're there yet. One of the things Canada has been working on very actively for the last few years is simply ensuring that women's rights are acknowledged and reaffirmed as human rights, and in fact reaffirming that the human rights as defined by human rights covenants are fully and equally applicable to women.
What Canada has been doing, and what we have been doing in our division in various United Nations fora, is to work to make sure that the human rights of women are mainstreamed throughout the UN so that we don't have a situation in which women's issues are compartmentalized in the Commission on the Status of Women, thus resulting in the Commission on Human Rights not considering them. We've made some important advances in that area.
I also think that at the World Conference on Women in Beijing, we gave a considerable boost to the concept that it is important to look at all issues with a gender perspective, be they economic issues or human rights issues or poverty issues, health issues, or whatever.
So I think we certainly have come a long way, but there is still certainly much work to be done.
The Chair: Do you have another question, Mr. English?
Mr. English: I was just interested in one comment that Mr. Hynes made, I believe, about working closely with the provinces in establishing Canada's human rights policy. Of course, the provinces have a major responsibility in this regard. Indeed, when the first debates took place after the war, Canada hesitated to sign the universal charter because of concerns about the provincial character of human rights. What is the nature of your consultation with the provinces on the human rights question?
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Mr. Hynes: The work that we do with the provinces is principally focused, or exclusively focused these days, not so much on our work in promoting human rights in other countries, but rather on Canada's efforts to ensure that it respects and adheres to the various international human rights commitments it has signed onto - the covenants and the various treaties that I mentioned before.
So as I said, the provinces play an integral role in our preparation of reports to the various committees that Canada has to report to.
Mr. English: What level does the consultation occur at? Does it occur at the level of deputy ministers, or what?
Mr. Hynes: What we have is a semi-annual meeting of a federal-provincial-territorial body called the Continuing Committee of Officials on Human Rights - I guess that sounds like a typical Canadian pea soup - which is in fact going to have a meeting next week. This group meets twice a year, roughly at the ADM level.
On a year-round basis, we're in regular working contact with the provinces, and it is the Department of Canadian Heritage that leads in the sort of liaison function with the provinces on these questions.
Mr. English: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Mr. Morrison, do you have a short one?
Mr. Morrison: It's very short and hostile, and it goes to Mr. Hynes.
You were talking about how we have internal rules governing who we do or don't sell military equipment to, depending partly on their human rights record. How do you determine what is or is not military equipment? I seem to recall that not too long ago we sold helicopter components to Indonesia. The Indonesian army uses helicopters to terrorize their civil population on a fairly regular basis. Where do you draw the line? What is military and what isn't?
Mr. Hynes: Was it Indonesia or Columbia?
Mr. Morrison: Indonesia.
Mr. Hynes: I recall the controversy with Columbia.
I can't give you a clear answer to that, sir. It is a very technical question. There is a very long list, a catalogue, of what constitutes offensive military equipment and what constitutes non-offensive military equipment. It is done on the basis of those rules and regulations that are on the books and that are consulted on a given export. I would hesitate to give you more than that without consulting with the real experts on our trade policy side.
The Chair: Thank you.
As you can hear, we've got the bells. What do we have, another ten minutes to get over there?
An hon. member: Mr. George had something to add to that.
The Chair: Oh, I'm sorry.
Mr. George: I might just add that in the case of Nigeria, we don't try to pick and choose among the various types of equipment. All military-capable equipment is in fact banned for Nigeria.
An hon. member: Good.
The Chair: I think many of us feel we've just scratched the surface, but it has been very interesting and informative. I hope that in the near future we can call you back and you can accept our invitation. I thank each and every one of you very much for coming.
The meeting is adjourned.