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EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 19, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: I call to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

We have with us this morning Mr. Clifford Chadderton, who is the chief executive officer of the War Amputations of Canada. Brian Forbes, the solicitor of the association, is with him as well as Air Commodore Birchall and Mr. Roger Cyr, national president of the Hong Kong Veterans Association of Canada.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming and joining us at the committee this morning.

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Let me state in opening that we have with us this morning, as well as the members of foreign affairs and international trade committee, members of the defence committee. So even though the chairperson of the defence committee is absent, we'd like to consider this as a joint meeting of both of those committees.

We appreciate your coming before the committee. We've read the correspondence you've had with Allan Rock, the Attorney General. We've had an opportunity to consider some of the background documents. I think I speak on behalf of all the committee members when I say we have enormous respect for what you achieved during the war and the conditions under which you had to live during the war, and we hope we personally may be able to help you in your present quest. Thank you for coming.

Mr. Chadderton, if you'd like to start, I understand you're going to take us through a presentation. Then maybe the members can ask you some questions when you've concluded. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Clifford Chadderton (Chief Executive Officer, The War Amputations of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, I really feel no need to apologize for the length of the presentation. We have filed a number of documents with the committee and I shall attempt to streamline my opening remarks and provide a little background.

With regard to the background of this claim, there is a document that has been distributed to you. I will run through it very quickly. It's entitled ``Background''.

There were about 2,100 Canadians held captive by the Japanese. Of those, 1,972 were army ranks, normally called the Hong Kong veterans, and the rest were air force with one or two merchant seamen and navy people. The Hong Kong veterans went to Hong Kong late in 1941, and after about three months the Japanese descended upon them and there was an honourable surrender on Christmas Day, 1941.

Now, 286 of the Hong Kong veterans were either killed or murdered - and I specify the word ``murdered'' because some of them were murdered after they were captured - and 269 died in prison camps. An international military tribunal implicated the Japanese for war crimes, which I think is well known.

The Canadian government granted a 50% pension to the Hong Kong veterans for what is called ``undetermined disabilities''. That may be an area this committee will have to look at.

On the kinds of compensation these Far East POWs get for their disabilities there is a straight pension in accordance with the scale of the disability. In addition, they received a maltreatment grant of $1.50 a day. That was granted by the War Claims Commission starting in 1948. It came from Japanese assets held by Canada and sold.

The area we are seeking consideration of, though, is payment for slave labour, and that has never been paid. We first took this case to the United Nations. The War Amps has NGO or non-governmental organization status, and we took this case to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva in mid-1987, so we're nine years along the road now. The subcommission in Geneva studied the claim. It concluded there were certainly grave breaches and no moratorium on war crimes, but it had to come to the conclusion that the subcommission had no authority to deal with the area of compensation.

We didn't stop there. The next step was to take another look at the Geneva Convention and go back to the human rights centre in Geneva and place the claim before the Sub-commission on Human Rights, before what is known as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

That committee studied it for a year and a half or two years and came to the conclusion it did not have jurisdiction to deal with it because we had not as yet exhausted all the domestic remedies, which is one of the great rules in Geneva.

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As a result of that, we came back and placed the matter first before the Prime Minister. He referred it to Mr. Allan Rock, the Minister of Justice. At that time we said it seemed to us that the problem was going to be one of deciding on legal definitions of either the Geneva Convention or what we call this Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We asked Mr. Rock to set up some sort of legal forum, but he came back and said that wasn't possible. Then we decided to make this matter political and referred it to Hon. David Collenette, who referred it to Mary Clancy, the chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. I believe internally it was shifted from that committee to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I'm pleased, as you mentioned here this morning, Mr. Chairman, that there are members here from the veterans affairs committee.

That's pretty well, in a few words, the background of this thing. I will be making reference to the report of the late Dr. Gustave Gingras, who was I believe Canada's leading authority on not only rehabilitation but matters arising from commitment of troops and personnel in foreign countries, particularly tropical countries. So that report is before you.

Next, I wanted to refer to what I'm calling the political responsibility. That's why I felt we had to bring this out this morning, because this is now part of what I call the political agenda. I must point out - and I regret perhaps that it's critical - that most of the refusals and the hurdles we have had came during the term of office of the Mulroney government.

A new book came out just last week to which I'll make reference. It's called Hell on Earth and provides the full background of this whole claim. It's the conclusion of the author, the late Dave McIntosh, and it's also our conclusion, that during this period from 1987 until 1993:

The agitation we felt as veterans involved in this reached what I call epidemic proportions when the Mulroney government approved a $21,000 grant to each of the Japanese Canadians who were evicted from the west coast to Japan during World War II. We saw a great parallel. We felt that if the Mulroney government could pay the Japanese Canadians $21,000 because they were evicted - some of them were interned - then the Canadian government now had to take a look at our claim, because it is for roughly the same amount of money.

By March 1990, the Canadian government had paid $357 million in claims to the Japanese Canadians. This is not a criticism of that initiative. It's just a matter of placing before your committee this parallel and asking you to understand how the Hong Kong veterans, as we call ourselves, felt about the fact that the Mulroney government turned a cold shoulder to all of our claims.

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It refused to support anything we had done. We had officials sitting in the United Nations Human Rights Committee meetings and the Human Rights Commission meetings in Geneva listening to us and not saying a word. As a matter of fact, in one instance when I was there they got up and left during our presentation. I'm not trying to lay blame, I'm simply putting facts in front of this committee.

That pretty well sets the political agenda, as I'm calling it today.

We will table with your committee a document entitled ``National Archives References''. This is evidence from the files of the Far East POW crime. I apologize for the fact this document is not in French. We attempted to find out what the situation is if you want to translate statements of people who gave evidence before the war crimes trials, and we have not had an answer back on that. Consequently, this document contains, in very cold facts, the statements made by the Canadians before the war crimes trials in Tokyo after World War II. I think it's relevant to the information we have to place in front of you.

Just to add to the evidence of the war crimes trials, a number of the statements taken from Canadian prisoners contained abundant evidence of what in international law is called grave breaches of the Geneva Convention.

I want to refer next to maltreatment. The war crimes trials produced ample evidence of maltreatment. As a matter of fact, the evidence is so bad that any person in his right mind would find it difficult to read about the torture, the surgery without anaesthetic, the starvation, and the deprivation of medicines that were available but not made available to the doctors treating these people. All of that gross maltreatment resolved itself in a payment of $1.50 a day. We're not suggesting that is enough, but we're suggesting we have to be careful about that because it is not what we are seeking here. If the $1.50 were paid, then we would have to accept that.

What we are seeking, and the main issue before this committee, is that there has never been a payment for what is called under the Geneva Convention payment or compensation for slave labour.

There are one or two other things in the opening statement that have to be cleared up. If you've read the documents, you'll note that in previous documentation filed from Veterans Affairs Canada and also in the previously mentioned letter from Mr. Allan Rock, reference was made to the fact that the Hong Kong veterans get disability pensions. I want to read into the record what the war claims regulations, away back in 1952, said about that:

In other words, they said in 1952 that if these people qualify for war disability pension, the same as any other war disabled, it is not to be taken into account when you look at the maltreatment and vice versa. Because the Hong Kong veterans and the Far East prisoners of war were paid $1.50 a day for maltreatment, that does not affect their pensions.

What we're bringing before you squarely today, however, is a question of payment for slave labour. Our feeling is that exactly the same principle applies. In other words, it is not sufficient for the federal government to say that these people are paid disability pensions and therefore they are well compensated.

I would bring a personal matter into it. I happen to have come out of the war minus a leg. I get a pension for my leg. Roger Cyr, who is here with me, came out of the war with other disabilities. He gets pensions for those disabilities. I would not qualify for slave labour because I was not in Hong Kong, but Roger and Air Commodore Birchall certainly would.

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We have to make this differentiation because there have been a lot of cloudy issues brought up that these veterans are all getting pensions, that they've all been paid for maltreatment. What we're saying, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, is that this is not the point. The point today is that they were never paid for slave labour. Their pensions are not to count. The maltreatment is not to count. The issue is clear: the Geneva Convention says that they should be paid for slave labour.

I have a note on the Geneva Convention to which I will refer. The Geneva Convention that was in vogue in World War II was the one signed in 1929. The first time that, in our opinion, the Canadian government refused or failed to back those prisoners in the Far East goes right back to 1941.

What happened was this. Argentina was a neutral country. The Canadian government, along with the American government and the British, went through Argentina and approached the Japanese. They said, you now have our prisoners; are you going to abide by the Geneva Convention?

Again, you can get sidetracked. Japan certainly agreed to the Geneva Convention in 1929, but it never ratified it. When on behalf of our government Argentina asked the Japanese government whether they would abide by the Geneva Convention, the Japanese government came back and said, and I'm going to quote from the British exchange of diplomatic notes:

It's our feeling, Mr. Chairman, that right then, back in 1942 during the war, the Canadian government should have followed that up. They should have said to Japan, that's not good enough; if you expect whatever you expect out of this war, you have to abide by the most famous covenant governing international law, and that's the Geneva Convention. However, the Canadian government did not follow up in 1942, and as far as we're concerned this is the first reason why this now becomes a political agenda.

Secondly, when Canada sat down in San Francisco and talked about the peace treaty with Japan -

The Chairman: Excuse me. I normally don't interrupt when one is giving evidence, but maybe we could clear this up with Mr. Forbes. Is it the position of the association that the terms of the Geneva Convention under which you are relying achieve customary international law conditions, and therefore whether Japan signed the treaty or not doesn't matter? Is that the position you are going to be taking as a matter of law?

Mr. Brian N. Forbes (Association Solicitor, The War Amputations of Canada):Mr. Chairman, that is precisely correct.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Chadderton: The second time when Canada, in our opinion, should have followed up with Japan was when they sat down and discussed the peace treaty. They should have said to Japan, you did not abide by the Geneva Convention. As your chairman points out, because he is a professor of law, this is the customary law of nations. It was never even raised. Our feeling is that this is the second reason why this now becomes a political matter.

During World War II Japan held prisoners from Australia, the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and New Zealand as well as Canada. There are a number of circumstances, however, that place Canada separate and apart from all these other nations.

Firstly, the prisoners who were taken at Hong Kong were the first North Americans to be in the hands of the Japanese. Secondly, they were in the hands of the Japanese longer than any other group. Thirdly, unlike any of the other allies, Canada had not been attacked by the Japanese, nor were they threatened. The Netherlands had been attacked. Great Britain had been attacked. The United States had been attacked. Australia was very severely threatened. Canada was miles and miles away, and outside of the firing of one submarine shell on Vancouver Island, we were never threatened at all.

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So I think there's a special case here for Canada as opposed to the other nations whose prisoners were held.

The third and perhaps most compelling reason is that the documents all point to one significant fact. The Hong Kong veterans were sent to Hong Kong for political rather than military reasons. I can give this committee ample evidence, if you would like to see it. The one I will quote is a book by Carl Vincent called No Reason Why, and what it says is this:

The evidence will show that even Prime Minister Churchill himself had said the Hong Kong garrison could not be defended; if you were to send people there, only two things would happen to them: either they would be killed or they would be captured. Notwithstanding that, Canada did send the Hong Kong troops there. A royal commission, the Duff royal commission, which sat in 1942, came to this conclusion.

So I think I'm suggesting with some validity that this presentation by this group before this foreign affairs committee is not necessarily a question of whether Japan abided by the Geneva Convention. It's a question of what Canada did. That's why we feel it is now on the political agenda.

We didn't start here; we started with the United Nations in 1987, and I'll take you through that a bit now, the presentations we made. But when it all came down to the final considerations in the human rights centre in Geneva, the Committee on Human Rights said we had to exhaust all our domestic remedies, and by that they were suggesting it has to be a political matter for Canada's decision.

Our statement of request is quite simple. We're not asking this committee to judge or evaluate the gross violations of human rights. We're asking you primarily to decide whether the claim for slave labour is valid.

What I would like to suggest - and I cleared this with your committee secretary, Mr. Chairman - is that on behalf of Roger Cyr we be allowed to show a short clip from a film we did, called Canada's Hong Kong Veterans: The Compensation Story. In this clip you will see that Mr. Cyr talks about the deprivations, the terms under which these Hong Kong veterans were forced to labour for war industries in Japan. If that's acceptable, we can turn that clip on.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Paré, I have been told that the interpreters have a copy. So they will be able to interpret it without too much trouble. We will see.

[English]

Mr. Chadderton: Mr. Chairman, I forgot to explain the clip is in French.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Ah, it is the other way around: it is in French.

[English]

Mr. Chadderton: In your main documents you have the script of this film, if you want to follow it.

This film was done about two years ago, and it's as current today as it ever was.

[Video Presentation]

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Mr. Chadderton: Mr. Chairman, I would now like to ask Roger Cyr, the president of the Hong Kong Veterans Association, to make a short statement following the film clip.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Cyr.

[Translation]

Mr. Roger N. Cyr (National President, Hong Kong Veterans Association of Canada, The War Amputations of Canada): Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, the film that you have just seen does, in my view, does quite a good job of explaining the conditions I faced at the time. This morning, I will not spend time covering the physical affects of my imprisonment. I would rather focus on the work the Japanese forced us to do.

First of all, we must put things in context. The context for us as prisoners was such that we were not only captive and prisoners, but that we had also lost all of our human rights. Our human dignity was dragged through the mud and in addition, we worked at gunpoint and under a bayonet. We had to get up at dawn and work until dusk, without any say whatsoever over what we were asked to do.

As I mentioned in the film that you have just seen, I worked on the Kai Tak runway in Hong Kong, which still exists today. After some time, I was taken to Japan and forced to work as a riveter in a shipyard for a Japanese company that is very well known in the world today. I finally ended up in the camps, in a coal mine in the north-eastern part of the central island in Japan. I was there when the war ended.

Since the Japanese forced me to work against my will, for their war effort, with a bayonet over my head, and with everything that entails, I feel they owe me some form of compensation.Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, that is the reason we are here today, to report on this situation. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Cyr.

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[English]

Mr. Chadderton: Mr. Chairman, I would now like to ask Air Commodore (Ret.) Leonard Birchall to address the joint committee. I believe your committee has a copy of his resumé. He was an RCAF pilot known as the Saviour of Ceylon, which means he was one of Canada's outstanding airmen during the war.

This recent book, Hell on Earth, has an awful lot about Air Commodore Birchall in it. If the committee has time to look at it or wants to discuss it further, fine.

I'd like Air Commodore Birchall to address you.

Air Commodore (Ret.) Leonard Birchall (Far East Prisoners of War): Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I'm indeed honoured and privileged to participate in the presentation to you on behalf of my fellow comrades who were POWs in the Japanese working camps, suffered a life of hell and still have to live with the residual effects of those years spent as slave labourers under the Japanese.

I apologize for my throat; that's also a result of prison camp.

You've been given ample proof of the horrible conditions under which we had to live and the abnormally high death rate both during our incarceration and after it, but that is not the major thrust of this presentation. What we are trying to accomplish is to place the blame for the forced slave labour where it belongs and to seek compensation from those or the agency that must bear that responsibility.

As shown in the submission, the War Amps have explored and presented this case to the relevant international courts of law. However, the Canadian government not only has not given them any support but has adopted a negative attitude to their attempts.

The result has been that the War Amps have not been successful in their attempts, in that it is most difficult for an international court to rule favourably on a claim that the sponsor's own country views with a negative attitude and disassociates itself from. But the international courts have still advised that it would be most appropriate to seek compensation from domestic sources, and that is being done here today with this presentation.

Basically the War Amps is saying that in signing the peace treaty, Canada has taken away the right to apply for compensation from Japan without any authority from the slave labourers to do so. As a result of this illegal act, the Canadian government can be held legally responsible for the Japanese actions and can be held liable for those things of which it has deprived the POWs, namely compensation for the use of slave labour by the Japanese.

I am not a legal authority and hence cannot indulge in the legal arguments involved. I am, however, a survivor of over three years in the POW working camps in Japan, where, as senior allied officer in those camps, I was responsible for my men. I not only witnessed but also was part of that slave labour force, which we had to endure under barbaric conditions, and I shared their tortures and living conditions. As such, I am totally convinced that their claim for compensation is valid beyond doubt.

Since the Canadian government has seen fit to take away their right to this claim in the international courts, the Canadian government is now morally responsible, in every sense of that word, to satisfy that claim. I've only the greatest honour in trying to obtain compensation for the forced slave labour and its subsequent disastrous health effects on my fellow comrades, with whom I have shared and still share so much.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on behalf of all those survivors who are still with us and the widows of those who have gone to their rest, I thank you most sincerely for making possible the opportunity to make this presentation, and I commend it to your serious and favourable consideration.

Thank you very much, indeed.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. Chadderton: Mr. Chairman, if I may now summarize the main submission, I'll do it as quickly as I can. I know you have copies of it.

As my comrade Air Commodore Birchall has said, the submission requests the Canadian government now to provide this compensation. The total number of people who would be involved is approximately 850, perhaps 400 veterans and 450 widows of veterans. The claim is for $18 a day.

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That amount was not drawn out of thin air. The Geneva Convention states that slave labour for the war industries of a detaining power should be paid - it says soldiers, because all of Japan was mobilized - at the rate Japan was paying its workers. If you go back and look at foreign exchange and the increase in cost of living and other things, it's certainly believed in Geneva, and we submit here, that it would be about $18 a day for 1,330 days.

I don't think there is any question, although the committee may wish to question further, that the Geneva Convention does specify that POWs who are placed in slave labour conditions and are working for war industries in the detaining power must be paid.

In addition to that, several other provisions of the Geneva Convention were violated, such as the working conditions. It states here that if they are placed in slave labour, the working conditions must be satisfactory, and of course we've seen plenty of evidence that this was not true.

The contention of the War Amps now is that Canada is liable for the payment of this money, although there is a way that Canada can get off the hook - and I'll mention that in a minute. Canada is liable first in signing the 1952 peace treaty without making provision for the compensation of slave labour. Canada is liable further in connection with what we're calling this optional protocol.

I'd be very quick to mention that it seems hard to realize this, but we have filed in Geneva 19 separate submissions since 1987. In other words, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, I think we did our homework. I think we took the United Nations and the Geneva Convention at their word. We went to the forum that we thought we should have gone to, which is not our own political forum here, but on 19 different occasions we went.

On the first occasion, under the Commission on Human Rights, we got to the point where everybody was in agreement that this was a fair claim, but they said they could not deal with compensation. Then we went back to a sub-group called the Committee on Human Rights, and we said that under the optional protocol we wanted to know whether Canada, a signatory to that optional protocol, had in fact done right by us.

We did not lose at Geneva. We did not lose in front of this Human Rights Committee. What happened was that they made a judgment. I'll quote the first part of that judgment: ``...domestic remedies should be exhausted before any complainant may resort to international fora''. In other words, in Geneva they said that we had to look to Canada; we had not exhausted all of our remedies at home.

The final document your committee might study - I mentioned it before and you'll find it in appendix F - is the letter from Mr. Allan Rock written to me and dated March 25, 1996. I'll paraphrase his statements. He said first that Canada has honoured all of its domestic and international obligations. Second, the payment from the Japanese of $1.50 a day was ``final settlement of Canada's claim for reparations against the Government of Japan''. We contest that. Third, Canada did not dishonour the terms of the international covenants.

We can't find agreement with these views, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen. If you go to article 2(3)(a) of the international covenant, it says that Canada, being a signatory, is required ``to ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms are herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy....'' We feel we have not had that effective remedy.

As far as article 26 is concerned, I'll quote part of it: ``All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.'' We cannot see that we've had the protection of the law in this particular situation.

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As set out in the Hon. Mr. Rock's letter on other issues, the position of the Canadian government is that the Hong Kong veterans have already received ``exceptional levels of benefits''.

As we argued earlier, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, the level of benefits to whichMr. Rock is referring are war disability pensions, available to any veteran with a leg off or whatever. Whether they are exceptional levels of benefits or whether they're not is not relevant to a claim for forced labour. That is owed to these people under the Geneva Convention.

Mr. Rock's letter goes on to say that ``[such] benefits are not compensation for violations of domestic and international obligations''. I'm glad Mr. Rock made that point, because it's precisely our point. We're saying all along, and have said all along, that the pensions that are paid to these veterans are - and I'll quote it again - ``not compensation for violations of international obligations''.

It would appear that the Canadian government's further position, as denoted in Mr. Rock's letter, is that ``the Hong Kong veterans could not claim an independent right to compensation, as there was no violation by Canada of any substantive right under the Covenant.''

We can get into a lot of legal arguments here, of course, but we suggest that under what we call this international protocol or this covenant, any Canadian can certainly claim an independent right to compensation. So we contest that letter and, in rebuttal, we simply say there are substantial grounds if we look at the whole history of this claim. There are substantial grounds to provide these veterans with what Mr. Rock calls ``an independent right to compensation''.

Another point I'd like to raise with the committee is that in our correspondence with Mr. Rock, we made reference to what we call ``claims of a parallel nature''. Mr. Rock's letter suggests that the Hong Kong veterans are not in that league, that they do not have a right to come before this government to ask for a right to compensation by reason of anything. We're suggesting that the Geneva Convention gives them that right, and we quote again three examples: one, the previously mentioned claim from Japanese Canadians; two, Canada's grants to the Canadian thalidomide veterans, a claim in which I was personally involved and which was solved by the Canadian government 25 years after the thalidomide drug was allowed on the market; and three, the more recent claim by the Inuit of Baffin Island.

So we suggest that there are parallel claims, and we suggest that Mr. Rock is not right in saying that our people do not have an independent right to compensation.

I'll just quote for you the amount of money that would be involved in this claim. First, under the Pension Act, the Far East prisoners of war get an automatic 50% pension. That's $829 a month. From then on, it's up to their disability, which is rated in accordance with the table of disability of the Canadian Pension Commission. The average that these people receive is 40%. In other words, they're not even rated at the top. They get 50% for being POWs and another 40% - that's an average - because of other disabilities. If they were to qualify for some of the other provisions of the act, such as attendance allowance because they need help in the home, or exceptional incapacity because they have an exceptional case, they would be entitled to additional moneys. So the actual average that the Hong Kong veteran gets under the Pension Act is $2,000 a month, and that's when all of the provisions of the act are taken into account.

I know we're pressed for time here, Mr. Chairman, so I will forgo the submission itself, except to mention one or two things that I think are of interest.

One of them is that we made fourteen separate submissions in Geneva to the Commission on Human Rights. Some of them were written, some of them were oral, but fourteen different times we went back because they wondered if there was a moratorium. We argued that there was not, and they agreed. There is no moratorium on human rights or those types of things.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the Commission on Human Rights, the big body in Geneva, offered its apologies and said it could not approve this because it could not deal with compensation. That took us to the Committee on Human Rights, which is a lower committee of working individuals in Geneva, and we made six different submissions to this Committee on Human Rights.

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I don't know if any of you have had the experience of going to Geneva before the Committee on Human Rights. They're very ponderous, they're very thorough, but you have to be right. If you go with a submission and there's something you haven't covered, they say to come back and to cover it. It's really the height of bureaucracy, if you like. But we actually made another six submissions to this Human Rights Committee, and we ended up with the pronouncement that we had to look for domestic remedies at home - which brings us here.

Incidentally, when we talk about how far we've taken this claim, I have filed with your committee a chronology of 73 different exchanges of correspondence going all the way from the Prime Minister to various ministers of the Crown. We exchanged correspondence back and forth73 times, and we finally say that we cannot do anything further under the international protocol or anything further under the human rights centre. As I said, this has now become a matter for our political agenda.

I'll just finish up, Mr. Chairman, by referring to our submission on this thing. I would bring to the attention of your committee, Mr. Chairman, that if the Canadian government were to pay this claim, it would not necessarily come out of the taxpayers' pockets. There is a system that I'm sure you're familiar with. It's called claim-over, which means that if Canada paid it, they could claim against Japan. We're suggesting that is essential, firstly because Canada ignored this claim for so long, and secondly because of the age of these Hong Kong veterans and their widows. We can't afford to wait until Canada puts a claim against Japan because that would take quite a long time.

I would point out that there is, however, a precedent. I'm sure many of you have read in the media about the Asian comfort women. What is happening under that claim now is a claim-over by the Korean government. The Korean government has already collected moneys from Japan. Where the moneys were not sufficient, they have made payments to their comfort women and are claiming over against Japan through the International Court of Justice in the Hague for the balance owing to their comfort women. So it's not something new.

Finally, we've attempted to make the case that there's at least an interim obligation on the Canadian government. I'll be repeating myself a bit, but, first, it's a failure to protect the rights of the Far East POWs; and second, there is the advanced age of these veterans. There are a number of justifications.

The Canadian government was responsible for sending these troops, and a source as prominent as Sir Winston Churchill is on record as saying that they could not reinforce this garrison, that these people would either be killed or captured.

Second, the Canadian government did not completely ignore their rights in the peace treaty.

Third, the Canadian government has ignored its responsibility under the international covenant to which we were a signatory. If you read that covenant, it's quite clear that what it really says is that any Canadian who has a claim in this case against Japan has a claimant's right to the protection of his own rights by his own government, and that was never provided.

I have one or two points about the two addenda that I have filed, because this may come up later. I must say at this point, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, that I spoke with Mr. David Nicholson, the deputy minister of veterans affairs, as recently as yesterday. He left me with the understanding that there is much in this claim that he fully supports. If it is the wish of the committee, he certainly would wish to be called to explain the position of the department, which appears to be fully in support of what we're doing here. Mr. Nicholson gave me the opportunity and the permission to make that statement before your committee today.

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Getting on to the question of whether or not compensation is paid for disability, I hate to raise this again, but if you go back in the correspondence, many times officials from Veterans Affairs - even as lately as in the correspondence from the Hon. Mr. Rock - said these veterans are already getting disability. What we're saying is that compensation for disability really has nothing to do with the claim for slave labour.

We have quoted in here the war claims commission of 1952, and I referred earlier to where they said specifically that if any funds are paid to these people for maltreatment - and I included in there compensation for slave labour - it will not affect their right to pension as Canadian soldiers.

The second addendum deals with the Geneva Convention itself, because again there is some - how shall I say this, Mr. Chairman? - question about the Geneva Conventions. They started in 1907, of course, and they've carried on, but basically the reading we get of them is that, first, no prisoners may be employed on work for which they are physically unsuited - and that's never been denied in Geneva at all. Yet they took people who were nearly dead - and both of my delegation who were there can tell you that - and forced them to work, and some of them died on the job.

Second, the work must have no connection with the operations of war. Well, it did, of course. They worked for Mitsubishi. They worked in the shipyards. They worked in the coal mines.

Third, it's forbidden to employ prisoners on unhealthy or dangerous work. These people can tell you that there certainly was a lot of dangerous work involved.

Fourth, if they are forced into this labour, they are entitled to a rate of pay to be fixed in an agreement between the belligerents. It was not possible to make an agreement between the belligerents. Japan was on one side and we were on the other and Argentina couldn't get anywhere in trying to even get Japan to admit that they were to abide by the Geneva Convention. So what happens then? There is a provision in the act that says that if no arrangement can be made with the belligerents, the detaining power must pass legislation to provide for this payment after it's all over.

Well, what happened? We know what happened in the 1950s. Japan was broke. They were in the reconstruction period. When we went to Geneva in 1987, Japan was one of the most wealthy countries in the world, and we felt Japan should look at this claim. They did not, however. They opposed it and the Canadian government opposed it.

We have had nine years of...I won't say it's frustration. It's been very interesting, but we've had nine years to bring this to this point. Japan is not going to do anything about it, that's for sure. The international tribunals have all said basically the same thing to us. The first one said it could not deal with compensation. The second tribunal apologized and said we must seek domestic remedies.

So, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, here we are. We're bringing this matter before a parliamentary committee, and I want to thank the chairman, all of those in the steering committee, and all those who made the decision to bring us here today.

I said at the start that I make no apology for the length of the submission. I took the point, Mr. Chairman, that this is the first time we have been before an official Canadian body. Given that opportunity, we have filed everything. If anybody wants to refer to it, we believe it is all there.

Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chadderton. Perhaps before I turn it over to the committee members - we have several who would like to ask questions - I might just do a quick resumé to make sure we understand the thrust of your argument.

Let me put it this way. The first principle is that the slave labour claims you are making are based upon the Geneva Convention and therefore are valid both in domestic and international law. They are separate from any other compensation that veterans have received for other forms of compensation for the war. I think everyone on the committee perfectly understands that basic principle.

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The second principle, which I suppose might be more troublesome - and the lawyer may wish to address this at some point - would be the question raised in Mr. Rock's letter: did the 1952 treaty with Japan constitute a complete release by Canada of all claims it might have against Japan, which might then affect the claim you mentioned later?

Third, I understand that your position is that Canada itself failed to take proper steps to protect the position of the vets, both through Argentina in respect of the convention during the war, and then subsequent thereto such that there is a claim under the optional protocol before the United Nations committee against Canada itself because of its delinquent acts and failure to protect the position of its own citizens. The latter would only be claimable under the convention because we have signed the optional protocol, if I understand the legal position correctly.

Fourth, if Canada were to make a payment, even if the 1952 treaty constitutes a release, it could claim against Japan in any event along the analysis of the Korean claim and on the basis that these are war crimes and therefore come outside the normal sorts of release types of compensation concepts in international law or domestic law. By that I mean that they transcend them. We've heard about war crimes before, so I think the members of the committee would understand that principle.

Fifth, I would suggest that you are suggesting to the committee that even if all of these legal claims fail, there is a political obligation to make an ex gratia payment along the lines of that of the Canadian Japanese war transportees - if we can use that word - and the thalidomide case that you refer to in your documents.

Mr. Chadderton: Mr. Chairman, that's a tremendous summary of exactly the position we're taking before this committee. I believe Mr. Forbes might address the question of whether or not the signing of the peace treaty represents a complete release. Certainly my interpretation of what we heard in Geneva was that it does not.

So I'll ask Mr. Forbes to address that.

Mr. Forbes: Mr. Chairman, if I might address the question of the peace treaty, I would refer the committee to pages 22 to 27 of our submission for a far more detailed explanation. In brief, however, what we are suggesting is that the contraventions of the Geneva Convention that these men suffered equate to grave breaches as provided under article 130 of the convention. The key element of the question of release is found under article 131, which indicates:

I would make one other comment, Mr. Chairman, and it has to do with something I believe you and other members of the committee would be familiar with. The international principle of jus cogens is an international principle that, in brief, concludes by suggesting that there are certain laws - and the Geneva Convention is one of those laws - that supersede all other domestic laws and that supersede waivers, releases and opting-out provisions where the Geneva Convention is not in effect abided by. That is discussed in some detail in our submission on pages 26 and 27.

I would just conclude by saying, Mr. Chairman, that the essence of our brief on the question of the peace treaty is that the Canadian government failed to protect the interests of the POWs and in effect released interests that they had no right to release.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

I have Monsieur Bergeron, Mr. Penson, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Assadourian.

[Translation]

Mr. Bergeron (Verchères): Anyone who is the least bit familiar with the history of the Second World War knows how Canadian and British soldiers stationed in Hong Kong were treated. The Canadian War Museum has an exhibit that deals specifically with Hong Kong prisoners of war.

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I must say that your presentation and the short video we have seen help make all of the impressions and knowledge that we had about what happened, much more tangible and concrete. We are at the very least overwhelmed by what we have heard. I fully understand your claim, and I am not only very sensitive to it, but I also sympathize with it.

I do however have a rather technical question. You initially addressed your claim to the United Nations which, directed you to the Canadian government, and then you addressed your claim to it.

After approaching the Canadian government, you wrote a letter on May 7th signed byMr. Chadderton and addressed to the Honourable David Collenette in which you say, and I quote:

If you agree from the outset that it is not up to the Canadian government to pursue this matter any further, what do you specifically expect from this committee? You know that this committee has no jurisdiction as such over foreign affairs. We only have limited powers to make recommendations and to control government activities. Therefore, I would like to know what exactly you expect to gain from your appearance before this committee.

Would you like us to urge the government, despite what you said in your letter toMr. Collenette, so that it pursues the matter further? That is my first question.

My second question is simpler and shorter. What would happen if Canada were to pay the compensation you were requesting and subsequently submit a claim to Japan? As the Chairman pointed out, we could expect a legal battle as to whether the terms of the 1952 Treaty are the final terms of the agreement between Canada and Japan or whether war crime accusations go beyond the agreement signed by Canada and Japan in 1952. That whole issue remains.

If Canada were to pay compensation and then claim it from Japan, would there be precedents, with respect to Japan or other countries, that it could use to submit such a claim to the Japanese government?

[English]

Mr. Chadderton: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I readily agree that my correspondence with the Hon. David Collenette could be misunderstood. What I was trying to say to the Minister of National Defence and Veterans Affairs at that time was that we saw no point in continuing to write letters to the Prime Minister or to the PMO's office or to any other minister of government, even the Hon. Secretary of State for Veterans. We had exhausted all of those.

That's why I filed the somewhat extensive record of correspondence with my submission. I was really saying that there was no point in our writing back to the Prime Minister or to Mr. Rock or to anybody else. The only forum we could see that could look at this would be a standing committee of the House of Commons. And we would expect a standing committee of the House of Commons to examine this whole issue.

Bear in mind that originally we had asked Mr. Rock to set up some kind of a legal forum, because it's partly legal. You have to understand the Geneva Convention, the peace treaty and the optional protocol. When Mr. Rock refused the legal forum, we said, all right, we really have to put this on the political agenda.

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Let me point out, sir, that this is the first time. We could have put this on a political agenda years ago. The media has been pressing us to do that. We said no. We said we had to deal with the United Nations first.

When it was bounced back to the Canadian government, then we had to deal with the Prime Minister. It went from the Prime Minister to the Minister of Justice, but at that time we had exhausted all the possibilities for writing to and corresponding with Canadian government officials, so we said it had to go to a parliamentary committee.

I regret that there was some misunderstanding about that, but that's what it is.

And what do we expect? Mr. Chairman, in the fifty years I've been around, I've been before many parliamentary committees, somewhere close to fifty. And I have been amazed sometimes at the power that a parliamentary committee really does have if it seizes an issue, studies it, examines it, researches it and then says, listen, these people were correct, we have to do something about this.

So we're expecting - and asking - this parliamentary committee to make a report.

The second question was about precedent. I mentioned one that we know of. We have been watching the claim of the Asian comfort women very closely. As you know, they were prostitutes from some of the Asian countries, mostly from Korea. They did get a lump sum settlement from Japan. The Korean government was not satisfied with that. They did what's called a claim-over, and they are now preparing a claim before the International Court of Justice to ask it to proceed against Japan for compensation for the Korean comfort women.

That is the only precedent that we know of, but I'm sure there are others.

Thank you.

Mr. Bergeron: Merci.

The Chairman: Mr. Penson.

Mr. Penson (Peace River): Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I welcome the group to our committee today and I thank you for bringing this to the attention of the standing committee. I certainly have some sympathy for your cause, particularly after I looked at the list of what you've filed. You've documented that you've been working on this for some eleven years with government.

I can understand that it must be frustrating in the extreme, especially when you have a lot of members who are getting older. The group of veterans and widows tends to age and their numbers are going to get smaller.

It just seems to me that we're dealing with a set of extraordinary circumstances here. It is not a normal situation of war at all, and it seems to me that the Canadian government does have a moral responsibility, whether we can reclaim this money or not, to look after your group.

I've just sort of pencilled in what I thought might be the total amount of the claim. Have you worked it out in terms of what it would cost the Canadian government? I'm sorry, I came in late for your presentation so I might have missed that already.

Mr. Forbes: Mr. Chairman, if you refer to page 44, the claim is outlined in some detail.

Briefly, though, it is based on the premise that these men were in prison for a period of44 months or 1,330 days. Based on actuarial study, which has been accepted in Geneva, asMr. Chadderton was suggesting, we are looking for $18 per diem for this period. The totals would reflect a payment of $23,940 per POW or widow, and the total claim would be $20,349,000.

Mr. Penson: I guess I had already come to the same conclusion, but I didn't realize that it was in your -

The Chairman: You brought your calculator and you actually worked it out.

Mr. Penson: It just seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that we do have a responsibility here, and I would like to see us take this case further.

A number of questions already asked have clarified a couple of things that I was also interested in. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Penson.

Mr. Jackson, sir.

Mr. Jackson (Bruce - Grey): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank Mr. Chadderton and his delegation for being here today.

I have a couple of questions. First, were the Americans compensated, and how did they handle that particular situation?

I'll give you the second question as well. I think Mr. Bergeron referred to it, and you handled it to some degree when you spoke about the comfort women. I want to know if there are any other precedents of prisoners in any of the great wars who were compensated for slave labour, whether it's the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, or what have you.

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Mr. Chadderton: First I must refer to Germany. German assets were seized in Canada and they were used to pay maltreatment and restitution claims. In addition to that, the West German government made a commitment to pay something like $52 billion in claims, and after unification the East German government came in on that claim. That has been going on consistently through Geneva and through the International Red Cross. So the first country that really has paid and is continuing to pay claims is Germany.

About other claims for maltreatment or slave labour - let's leave it at slave labour, if I may - the American veterans' organizations joined with us in this claim in Geneva. That has a rather interesting background. At one of the presentations in Geneva the Sub-commission on Human Rights came back to us and said we would get a lot further if we were making a claim of a general nature. So I suppose by accident I became president of the international association, which represented The Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. They joined in this claim with us.

Having joined in this claim with us, of course they also had to accept the consequences. The consequences were that the Committee on Human Rights said there are many arguments in favour of this but they could not pay compensation. That ended it there.

We in Canada went under this international covenant. In the United States they could not do that because the United States is not a signatory to the international covenant. The claim has probably died on the vine, insofar as the American veterans are concerned. They've been turned down in Geneva and there's no further place they can go.

About The Netherlands, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, they have now taken the course of attempting to sue Japan in the Japanese courts. We opted not to become involved in that because when we talked to the international lawyers they said we were just wasting our time.

Maybe I could ask Brian Forbes to add a bit to that.

Mr. Forbes: Mr. Chairman, I am sure it will not be surprising to this committee that the experience in the Japanese courts over the last many years has been that they are not prepared to recognize the grave violations of the Geneva Convention and all the misdeeds and the atrocities committed in World War II. It was the advice of our group to the POWs that we not proceed to the Japanese courts. If we feel our court system in Canada is slow and laborious, the Japanese court system is three or four times as bad. There are just too many political and legal obstacles there to make that a worthwhile pursuit.

The Chairman: Have the courts generally denied standing for any of these claims, or do they actually take them on and then just allow them to go on for years and years?

Mr. Forbes: They seem to get lost in the system, Mr. Chairman, although there is a question of standing, of course, and a question of limitation. It's a mind-boggling exercise.

The Chairman: Mr. Assadourian.

Mr. Assadourian (Don Valley North): Thank you very much. It's a very moving presentation. You're an old hand in this presentation. You did a fantastic job and you have given us many questions to ask.

I have two questions. The second one was asked by my colleague Mr. Jackson.

The other question is to Mr. Roger Cyr. You mentioned, sir, that you worked in a shipyard in Japan.

Mr. Cyr: That's right.

Mr. Assadourian: You also mentioned the company is still operating.

Mr. Cyr: As far as I know.

Mr. Assadourian: Have you made any claim against the company on your own, separately from the general claims here?

Mr. Cyr: No.

Mr. Assadourian: Why not?

Mr. Cyr: I think it's all wrapped up in our submission. I would like Mr. Forbes to pick up this particular question.

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Mr. Forbes: It's an interesting question, but it does get tied into the same analysis, which is that you'd have to bring a court action in Japan against a private company that had existed during World War II. The chances of success, quite frankly, are so minimal that we felt it was not in the best interest of our group to pursue that particular avenue. It's an interesting question, though.

Mr. Assadourian: The point I want to make, Mr. Chairman, is if that company has a branch in Canada, certainly you can go to the company in this country with the Canadian laws. I sued a Canadian Pacific hotel for three hours' pay, at $1.25 an hour, in 1971-72. After six months back and forth, I won the case. I got paid $7.30, with my transportation, vacation pay and everything else.

I'm sure the Canadian courts will be looking after your case, because if it was slave work for the government, that government makes... The company operates here; it is a Japanese company. Can you maybe put a lien on it? I don't know what authorities can do. I personally think it's worth while to pursue the case independent of the general case, which I totally agree with.

See what happens to it. They have the embassy here. We have the system. If the company operates here, why not?

Mr. Cyr: I think, sir, there's an interesting point that has to be made here. Of all the Canadians who were sent to Japan to work - they were farmed out in different camps - actually there are few of us who worked for any given Japanese company. I happen to have worked for two Japanese companies, but hundreds of my comrades worked for other companies. It would be a mind-boggling exercise to trace all of these companies. There may be 150 or more involved. That just was not an option as far as my -

Mr. Assadourian: I don't think you have to trace them. Just take the matter on your own. You, Roger Cyr, sue this company for back pay. There's nothing wrong with that.

The Chairman: Not everyone is willing to spend four years for $7, Mr. Assadourian. Your tenacity is admirable, but the economics of your exercise don't make a lot of sense, if I may say that.

Mr. Assadourian: It's a matter of principle, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Mr. Cyr, for instance, would get about $1,000 and have to spend about $1 million to get it. I can understand his reticence.

Mr. Assadourian: He has to be paid. We don't run a slave shop in this country. We don't allow slave shops to be run in the Japanese country on Canadian citizens. That's the point I want to make. It doesn't matter if it's $1 or $1 million. It doesn't matter. The principle is there.

Mr. Chadderton: I just want to reply to this. This was an option that we had under consideration as early as 1980, when we saw these Japanese companies exporting goods to Canada. We knew what their financial situation was.

When we went to Japan in 1984 - and I was part of that delegation, and it's mentioned in our submission - before we went, we asked the Canadian ambassador in Tokyo if he could make arrangements for us to meet with the responsible officials in the Japanese government. This was one of the points we wanted to discuss. It's been brought out in our brief, and there's no question about it.

The Canadian ambassador, Mr. Barry Steers, took us to one side and said, gentlemen, there's no way I can make any arrangements for you to deal with any Japanese government or any Japanese civilian official; you just can't do it, because you're going to injure trade relations with Japan.

So we came back, and we said that rather than try to sue individual companies - and there were 62 of them involved, if I remember rightly - we took another look at the law, and we said that this is what the Human Rights Commission is all about. That's why we went there. Maybe we were wrong, but I would like to bring it out again that the Human Rights Commission didn't turn us down, they simply said that they can't deal with compensation.

Then we went to the lesser body, the Human Right Committee, and they said that you have to look for a domestic remedy at home. That's why we're here now. So it is not that we did not consider taking a claim in front of the firms in Japan or the Canadian branches of firms in Japan; we said international law is much stronger than the law of equity. We relied on the Geneva Convention, sir, and that's exactly where we are now. Thank you.

I think Mr. Forbes can add to that.

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Mr. Forbes: Mr. Chairman, it's an interesting subject. I'm sure you appreciate the legal niceties of the matter. I think, Mr. Assadourian, the point we'd like to make is that we opted for what we might define as a kind of class action, recognizing that individuals trying to sue many different companies over the period would be very difficult. Your point is well taken, though.

The other issue I would raise, as Mr. Chadderton has pointed out, is that when we took this matter to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 1987, had the Canadian government supported the claim in 1987, it's my humble judgment that we would have won.

The Human Rights Commission was vulnerable to the client. They wanted to do something with the claim. The political pressures that were brought to bear, by both the Japanese and others, in effect subverted the claim. That, quite frankly, was one of the most humiliating exercises as a Canadian - to be in that forum and not have your own government support the claim. I would just leave that with the committee.

The Chairman: Mr. Loney.

Mr. Loney (Edmonton North): Mr. Chairman, my question is not directly related to compensation, but one seeking information. In 1945, when the Hong Kong prisoners were released, how many prisoners were unaccounted for and - if I can believe some of the rumours that I've heard since 1946 - are still unaccounted for? Do you have any estimate of a number?

Mr. Chadderton: I don't believe there are any who are unaccounted for. Approximately 235 or thereabouts were taken prisoner, were registered with the International Red Cross, and died in the prison camps or in the work camps. But there were none unaccounted for.

There were also about 250 who were killed in the battle, and there may have been some missing in action, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has some pretty accurate records. They have dug up - sorry about the gory details - what was left of bodies that had been burned and they were able to identify I think all of them; none missing.

Mr. Loney: Thank you.

The Chairman: Maybe I could ask a technical question of Mr. Forbes, just so we have a better understanding of what took place in Geneva. As I understand it, you had two claims going in Geneva - one against Japan under the normal procedures, and one against Canada itself under the optional protocol. Did you pursue these both at once, or did you pursue them subsequently? It sounds as if you pursued them subsequently. In either case, as I understand, one of your problems in Geneva was that the committee doesn't have authority to award compensation. It can declare that there has been a breach of human rights, but it can't actually say well, okay, we're going to give a quantum of damages for it.

So in that circumstance, if the Canadian government didn't support you in 1987, in the end does that really change your position? Even if you had succeeded there, you wouldn't have got award of damages. You just would have had the moral comfort of a statement by the Geneva commission that your human rights had been violated, if I understand it.

Mr. Forbes: Let me answer that directly, Mr. Chairman, because under the resolution1503 procedure, which is what we utilized in 1987, it was not our expectation necessarily that the Human Rights Commission would be able to award compensation. But in working with other NGOs and noted international jurists such as Dr. John Humphrey, it was quite clear that if we could get a citation out of the Human Rights Commission indicating that Japan had effectively committed consistent and systematic violations of human rights, which is that jurisdiction.... There is a philosophy in Geneva called the organization of shame. Once a country is cited under this particular resolution, it is often the case that a resolution will flow and that compensation will be paid.

So there was a very subtle remedy that we were looking for there. We were looking in effect to educate world opinion, and we were looking for support from other governments, other allied governments, other NGOs, which we got a great deal of, I might say.

The fact I raised earlier that the Canadian government failed to support this claim was extremely significant, because the political environment of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva made it very clear: if Canada failed to support it, then why are these POWs in this international forum?

To answer your first question, we did in effect initiate a claim in 1987 under resolution 1503 against Japan. Once a ruling was reached in 1991, wherein jurisdiction was a problem, we then proceeded under the optional protocol of the international covenant in 1993 against Canada on the basis that it had failed to protect the interest of the POWs.

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The Chairman: Thank you very much.

This is certainly grist for lawyers' mills, isn't it, Mr. Chadderton? Being one of the profession, I have to say thank you for giving us such interesting international precedents to consider, but I'm sorry you had to be the ones to suffer through this mill.

I don't see any other questions being asked, and so I would like, on behalf of the committee once again, to thank you for coming. Thank you for the comprehensive nature of your documentation and your explanation to us. I think we understand the nature of the problem.

I think I understand from your answer to Mr. Bergeron that what you would look for is a recommendation from this committee. I will take this to our procedures subcommittee - of which Mr. Bergeron and Mr. Mills, who is not here, and some of our other members are members - to see what other persons we might think it appropriate to hear from. You mentioned the deputy minister. There's Mr. Rock himself. There are various other persons from whom the members of the committee might want to get further clarification, from the government's prospective.

Given our other work - we have a lot on our plate at the moment - we might not be able to do that before Christmas. But I think it would be the view of the committee that we would like to proceed with this matter as quickly as possible, if I understand the position of the members here. So if you leave it with us, we will pursue it, and we will certainly get back to you. If we need any further clarification, we will certainly correspond with you. I'm sure you'll be willing to come back before us again if it's necessary, but I hope that won't be necessary.

I'd like to thank you, Commodore Birchall and Mr. Cyr. Mr. Chadderton, thank you very much, sir.

Mr. Chadderton: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have just one final comment. It's been mentioned a number of times that we have been to Geneva; we have tried various other avenues. We like to pride ourselves on the fact, though, that we have played by the rules. We feel that the final rule we came up against was the political agenda, and that's why we brought it to a parliamentary committee of the House. Thank you, sir.

The Chairman: The committee is adjourned until 3:15 this afternoon. Thank you very much.

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