NEWS, FEATURES, AND ANALYSIS INSIDE S INSIDDE ...blogger Raif Badawi sentenced in 2014 to 10 years...
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NEWS POLICY REVIEW NEWS FOREIGN AFFAIRS NEWS TRADE NEWS Q&A NEWS IMMIGRATION Saudi ambassador breaks silence Liberals’ expanded Colombia human rights report still falls short: Rights advocates Yazidi genocide moves onto McCallum’s plate BY MARCO VIGLIOTTI Critics are accusing the Liberal government of using ongoing public consultations on defence policy to obscure dissenting opinions and selectively choose responses that correspond with their views on the file. NDP defence critic Randall Garrison (Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, B.C.) said he fears the government is using this broad, poorly-defined consultation process to ensure the responses it receives are favourable to what it envisions for the future of Canadian defence policy. “They know what they already want to do and [with the consultations] you can pick selectively from what you’ve heard across the country if there isn’t any way to systemize the information,” he said in an interview. BY CHELSEA NASH In 2010, Turkish President (then prime minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto ahead of the G20 summit at around midnight, and was greeted by then- minister of state for foreign affairs Peter Kent, something Mr. Kent later recounted as a “nasty experience.” Before the president’s cavalcade could leave the airport for his downtown hotel, Mr. Kent, Conservative MP for Thornhill, Ont. was informed of a possible security threat that the RCMP was investigating. The party was instructed to wait in a secure room at the airport until the RCMP gave the all-clear. “For a short period of time, the president accepted our hospitality in the secure room at the airport, but then he became impatient, and angry, and accused me of trying to humiliate him and threw quite a tantrum,” Mr. Kent, who is the Conservative Party’s foreign affairs critic, told The Hill Times. BY PETER MAZEREEUW The Liberal government released its first take on an annual report on hu- man rights in Colombia last week, which included an expanded section on human rights issues in the country but still fell short of the expectations of labour and hu- man rights advocates. The report, which has been criticized every year since it was first released four years ago for failing allegedly to seriously examine any human rights concerns in Co- lombia, was delivered to the House on an adjournment tabling day on July 20, to the surprise of advocates accustomed to seeing the report tabled in May. BY PETER MAZEREEUW Saudi Arabia’s top official in Canada is defending his country’s human rights record and a controversial $15-billion sale of Canadian-made armoured vehicles to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, noting that despite “misleading information” in the media, he still believes the contract will bring the two countries closer. After a couple years under fire, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Canada, who rarely sits down for interviews with Canadian reporters, spoke exclusively with The Hill Times July 20 to weigh in on his country’s place in the headlines and his job, which he believes at least partly is to boost ties with Canada and change “some of the wrong or negative ideas about my country.” Saudi Arabia’s use of Islamic law, sharia, “needs a kind of special arrangement, different than other places,” said Naif Bin Bandir Alsudairy, after responding to concerns about the country’s justice system, which allows for public beheadings and saw blogger Raif Badawi sentenced in 2014 to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam (though, under Western political pressure, he’s only received 50 lashes). The ambassador acknowledged, though, that “we always review.” BY PETER MAZEREEUW The whirlwind parliamentary study of the plight ofYazidis and other vulnerable groups has finished, and the witnesses and committee members are looking to Immigration Minister John McCallum to make the next move. The emotional and often partisan study by the House Immigration Committee included calls from survivors of theYazidi genocide, community advocates, and opposition MPs for the government to take special action to help persecutedYazidis—a minority religious group targeted for genocide by ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh, and Islamic State)—in Iraq and the surrounding territories. Continued on page 6 Continued on page 7 Continued on page 13 Continued on page 3 Continued on page 4 Liberals’ defence consultations offer predictable results, questionable benefits, say critics MPs of all stripes decry Turkish government’s reaction to failed coup TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR, NO. 1358 CANADA’S POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT NEWSPAPER WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016 $5.00 EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL COVERAGE: NEWS, FEATURES, AND ANALYSIS INSIDE TRUMP PRESIDENCY? SCARY AS HELL, PREDICTS DYER P. 9 LEITCH’S TEAM P.17 PARDY: CANADA’S CONSULAR CONUNDRUM P.12 POLITICOS EMBRACE POKÉMON GO, WAYHOME P.2 ‘If there is some disagreement, I think we can discuss and find a solution for it,’ says Saudi Ambassador Naif Bin Bandir AlSudairy of the criticism of the deal to sell Canadian-made armoured vehicles to Saudi forces, in a July 20 interview at his embassy. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia S INSID D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D DE E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E Envoy defends arms deal, says media producing ‘misleading information.’
Transcript of NEWS, FEATURES, AND ANALYSIS INSIDE S INSIDDE ...blogger Raif Badawi sentenced in 2014 to 10 years...
NEWS POLICY REVIEW NEWS FOREIGN AFFAIRS
NEWS TRADE
NEWS Q&A
NEWS IMMIGRATION
Saudi ambassador breaks silence
Liberals’ expanded Colombia human rights report still falls short: Rights advocates
Yazidi genocide moves onto McCallum’s plate
BY MARCO VIGLIOTTI
Critics are accusing the Liberal government of using ongoing public consultations on defence policy to obscure dissenting opinions and selectively choose responses that correspond with their views on the fi le.
NDP defence critic Randall Garrison (Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, B.C.) said he fears the government is using this broad, poorly-defi ned consultation process to ensure the responses it receives are favourable to what it envisions for the future of Canadian defence policy.
“They know what they already want to do and [with the consultations] you can pick selectively from what you’ve heard across the country if there isn’t any way to systemize the information,” he said in an interview.
BY CHELSEA NASH
In 2010, Turkish President (then prime minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto ahead of the G20 summit at around midnight, and was greeted by then-minister of state for foreign affairs Peter Kent, something Mr. Kent later recounted as a “nasty experience.”
Before the president’s cavalcade could leave the airport for his downtown hotel, Mr. Kent, Conservative MP for Thornhill, Ont. was informed of a possible security threat that the RCMP was investigating. The party was instructed to wait in a secure room at the airport until the RCMP gave the all-clear.
“For a short period of time, the president accepted our hospitality in the secure room at the airport, but then he became impatient, and angry, and accused me of trying to humiliate him and threw quite a tantrum,” Mr. Kent, who is the Conservative Party’s foreign affairs critic, told The Hill Times.
BY PETER MAZEREEUW
The Liberal government released its fi rst take on an annual report on hu-man rights in Colombia last week, which included an expanded section on human rights issues in the country but still fell short of the expectations of labour and hu-man rights advocates.
The report, which has been criticized every year since it was fi rst released four years ago for failing allegedly to seriously examine any human rights concerns in Co-lombia, was delivered to the House on an adjournment tabling day on July 20, to the surprise of advocates accustomed to seeing the report tabled in May.
BY PETER MAZEREEUW
Saudi Arabia’s top offi cial in Canada is defending his country’s human rights record and a controversial $15-billion sale of Canadian-made armoured vehicles to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, noting that despite “misleading information” in the media, he still believes the contract will bring the two countries closer.
After a couple years under fi re, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Canada, who rarely
sits down for interviews with Canadian reporters, spoke exclusively with The Hill Times July 20 to weigh in on his country’s place in the headlines and his job, which he believes at least partly is to boost ties with Canada and change “some of the wrong or negative ideas about my country.”
Saudi Arabia’s use of Islamic law, sharia, “needs a kind of special arrangement, different than other places,” said Naif Bin Bandir Alsudairy, after responding to concerns about the country’s justice system, which allows for public beheadings and saw blogger Raif Badawi sentenced in 2014 to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam (though, under Western political pressure, he’s only received 50 lashes). The ambassador acknowledged, though, that “we always review.”
BY PETER MAZEREEUW
The whirlwind parliamentary study of the plight of Yazidis and other vulnerable groups has fi nished, and the witnesses and committee members are looking to Immigration Minister John McCallum to make the next move.
The emotional and often partisan study by the House Immigration Committee included calls from survivors of the Yazidi genocide, community advocates, and opposition MPs for the government to take special action to help persecuted Yazidis—a minority religious group targeted for genocide by ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh, and Islamic State)—in Iraq and the surrounding territories.
Continued on page 6
Continued on page 7
Continued on page 13 Continued on page 3 Continued on page 4
Liberals’ defence consultations offer predictable results, questionable benefi ts, say critics
MPs of all stripes decry Turkish government’s reaction to failed coup
TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR, NO. 1358 CANADA’S POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT NEWSPAPER WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016 $5.00
EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL COVERAGE: NEWS, FEATURES, AND ANALYSIS INSIDE
TRUMP PRESIDENCY?SCARY AS HELL,PREDICTS DYER P. 9
LEITCH’STEAMP. 17
PARDY:CANADA’SCONSULARCONUNDRUM P.12
POLITICOSEMBRACEPOKÉMON GO,WAYHOME P. 2
‘If there is some disagreement, I think we can discuss and fi nd a solution for it,’ says Saudi Ambassador Naif Bin Bandir AlSudairy of the criticism of the deal to sell Canadian-made armoured vehicles to Saudi forces, in a July 20 interview at his embassy. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia
S INSIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Envoy defends arms deal, says media producing ‘misleading information.’
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 20162FEATURE BUZZ
Pokémon Go, the augmented reality mo-bile game based on the hugely popular
fantasy series, has become an international phenomenon since its release earlier this month, drawing millions of users, includ-ing some Canadian politicians.
In the game, players can capture, battle, and train fi ctional Pokémon creatures, who appear on screens as if inhabiting real-world domains by using a device’s camera and GPS functions. The game has won plaudits from some for encouraging physical activity and interaction between players, as users must physically travel to obtain Pokémon or compete in virtual competitions.
But it has also become a source of controversy. Critics worry about Pokémon being placed in high-risk or extremely sensitives areas, and are voicing concerns that the game encourages trespassing on private property. The RCMP released a statement on its Twitter account warning Pokémon Go players to be mindful of their surroundings and follow all laws.
“A Pokemon on private property is NOT an invitation to enter. Respect others as you #CatchEmAll,” the agency wrote in a post.
As elsewhere, Pokémon fever appears to have spread to the Hill, with some Ca-nadian politicos taking to social media to share their experiences capturing the virtual denizens.
Chief among them, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel (Calgary Nose Hill, Alta.), who has been touting her skills as an ama-teur Pokémon trainer on Twitter.
In an interview with CTV News, up-loaded online on July 20, Ms. Rempel said she had caught 75 “different species” of Pokémon and was a Level 18 trainer —an impressive feat considering that the game was released on July 6 in the United States and July 17 in Canada. (Some Canadian players were able to access the game prior to its offi cial release in the country.)
When asked what her favourite character was, Ms. Rempel mentioned she had captured an Aerodactyl, one of the rarer Pokémon.
She also noted that numerous Pokémon were hanging around on Parliament Hill, proceeding to then capture one loiter-ing next to the Centennial Flame.
Other MPs are also having fun “interact-ing” with the virtual arrivals.
NDP MP Erin Weir (Regina-Lewvan, Sask.) tweeted some photos of himself greeting Pokémon that have cropped up in his riding. He posted a photo of himself posing next to a Cubone in a parking lot in Regina’s Cathedral neighbourhood and an-other one showing him with a Diglett in front of his constituency offi ce.
Conservative MP and leadership candi-date Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) can also be counted as a fan, posting a picture of himself attempting to catch a Bul-basaur while attending the U.S. Republican Party convention this past week in Cleveland.
Mr. Clement said he attended to repre-sent Canadian interests and in his capacity as deputy chairman of the International Democrat Union, a global alliance of centre-right political parties.
Meanwhile, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson was also recently spotted playing Pokémon Go at downtown’s Confederation Park, CFRA News reported.
One MP and potential party leader, though, jumped on the Pokémon bandwag-on in a more novel way.
Conservative leadership hopeful Max-ime Bernier (Beauce, Que.) playfully tweet-ed of photo himself studying the menu at a restaurant on Ottawa’s Sparks Street with the caption, “The legendary freedom Poké-mon is at the Ottawa Bier Market today. Will you be able to catch him? #cdnpoli.”
The photo also mimicked the gameplay style of Pokémon Go.
HEARD HILLONTHE
BY MARCO VIGLIOTTI
Canadian politicos try their hands as Pokémon
trainers, Trudeau announces Canadian olympic fl ag-bearer
Pakistan spreads sweetness with mango tasting
Peru honours air force members
Second Annual Defence and Security Summer Social
The Hill Times photographs by Sam Garcia
Photographs courtesy of Ulle Baum
Ripe mangoes imported from Pakistan for a special tasting at the high commissioner’s residence on July 22.
Mr. AlSaudairy tries some of the mango drink being offered.
Mr. Garcia with Peruvian Ambassador Marcela López Bravo.
General Carlos Chavez Cateriano, left, with Colonel Jose Antonio Garcia Morgan, and his spouse, Diana León Vasquez, at the reception on July 22 to mark Air Force Day in Peru.
Outgoing Korean Defence Attaché Colonel Jang Min Choi, Astrid Neuland, business development executive of Thales Canada, and Angela Son, the colonel’s spouse at the July 13 event.
Paul Fortin, director of business development for Borden Ladner Gervais's Asia Pacifi c Operations, raises a glass to celebrate the departing Korean couple.
André LaFrance, chief operations offi cer and co-founder of the ALRM Group, greets Mr. Choi.
Japanese Ambassador Kenjiro Monji, left, with Mr. Khan, Ms. Shaharudin, and Chinese Ambassador Luo Zhaohui.
Cheers! Mr. Khan, left, toasts with his guests, Malaysian High Commissioner Aminahtun Karim Shaharudin, second from left, and her spouse, far right, A.G. Shaharudin, and Global Affairs Canada's Rosaline Kwan.
Pakistani High Commissioner Tariq Azim Khan with Saudi Ambassador Naif Bin Bandir AlSudairy.
Continued on page 19
Canadian politicians are not immune to the spells of smash mobile hit Pokemon Go. NDP MP Erin Weir poses next to a Cubone in Regina’s Cathedral neighbourhood (left), while Conservative MP Michelle Rempel showcases her in-game avatar (right). Photographs courtesy of the Twitter accounts of Erin Weir and Michelle Rempel
3THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
NEWS Q&A
The ambassador, who also leads the Ottawa Diplomatic Association, said he expects to welcome the head of the Saudi Human Rights Commission to Canada next month to further explain the country’s views.
The following interview has been edited for length and style.
Why is Saudi Arabia an impor-tant ally for Canada?
“Well, because we share the same values, and of course Saudi Arabia and Canada want to see the world more safe and more stable.”
How do you think that close rela-tions with Saudi Arabia is going to help Canada to create more stable world?
“I think Canada is a very im-portant partner to Saudi Arabia and the G20, [and] United Na-tions. And Canada is very much involved in the region to bring security and stability in the whole region: in Iraq, Syria, all places that are not stable.
“So we believe that Canada can do a lot to help countries in the region to bring peace and security and stability.”
A lot of the discussion in Canada in relation to Saudi Arabia over the past year has had to do with the General Dynamics contract to sell LAV armoured vehicles to Saudi authorities. What do you want to say to people who criti-cize this deal and are concerned that Saudi authorities could use this equipment against civilians?
“I think misleading informa-tion has been put in the media.
“When we signed this contract, we thought this will strengthen the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Canada, and it will bring more co-operation. You know, more than 3,000 people are working on this contract in London, Ont., and more than 100 companies are doing some of the spare parts and manufacturing-related items.
“Usually when people have more business, more work togeth-er, they have more understanding. And they will be closer. So we still believe that this contract will bring the two countries closer. If there is some disagreement, I think we can discuss and fi nd a solution for it.”
What about the criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, the fact that there have been reports that equipment made in Canada and other Western countries has been used to perpetrate violence against civilians?
“I think this is not right. Saudi Arabia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. When you get the membership in this very important council, it gives you an indication that the Saudi authorities are complying with a high standard of human rights regulation. And Minister Dion, during his visit to Saudi Arabia last month, invited the president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission, Dr. Bandar bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, to visit Canada in the near future. And of course we will arrange a meeting with the media to explain how we think about human rights.”
During the time that this contro-versy in Canada over the arms sale has gone on, how would you describe your conversations with Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion?
“I think it’s very constructive. I always listen to him, and I always see him, and we continue our dia-logue over how to improve and to strengthen the relations between Saudi Arabia and Canada. And I really admire him.”
The embassy had been planning a cultural festival to take place in Ottawa this summer, but at the last minute it was delayed. Why was it delayed?
“Actually it was not delayed, it was rescheduled, because we thought that by rescheduling we could prepare the event in the right way. And we think that Canada is a very important coun-try, and if we want to do this kind of event we want it to be some-thing to be proud of. And another reason, also, we thought that 2017 is going to be a very important year for Ottawa, because of the celebration of the 150th anniver-sary of Confederation. This was a recommendation by high offi cials in the Ottawa mayor’s offi ce.”
Do you see it as being part of your job to improve the way regu-lar Canadians see Saudi Arabia, the way they think about it? If so, how is it that you have been try-ing to do that?
“Of course, no one is perfect. And our job is to work very hard to improve the relations and to change also some of the wrong or negative ideas about my country and about Saudis in general.
“But at the same time, we have to understand that Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Islamic world. Mecca and Medina, the two holy mosques, are in Saudi Arabia. Muslim people all around the world, over two billion Muslim people, they are facing Mecca fi ves times every day for praying. This gives you an indication of how important Saudi Arabia is, regardless of oil.
“We have over 30,000 students here in Canada, huge contracts with Canadian companies like General Dynamics, Manitoba Hydro, Bombardier, SNC Lavalin. Lately we just bought part of the Canadian Wheat Board. But put this all to the side, and see how important Saudi Arabia is for the Islamic world.”
Saudi Arabia has been helping to fund private Islamic schools in Canada for the past few years. Why are you doing that?
“Saudi Arabia is helping, it’s part of the plan to help Muslim people all over the world, not only in Canada.
“If we want to make any donation to any organization in Canada, we go and do it through the Canadian authorities.”
What do you see as being the Saudi Embassy’s role when it comes to interacting with Mus-lims in Canada?
“They are our brothers, Mus-lim brothers. You remember the event that we had for the Syrian refugees [where the Gulf Cooper-ation Council missions to Canada donated $31,000 to United Way Ottawa for its work resettling Syrian refugees]. Anything that will bring happiness to people, any kind of people. Of course Muslim and Arab people from our region, we care about. We try to be involved, and to help.”
A lot of the press in Canada about Saudi Arabia concerns the Saudi justice system. The case of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been in the headlines a lot. The restrictions on women and treatment of political dissidents are sore subjects in Canada. Do you expect that the Saudi govern-ment will change the way that it goes about dealing with women, dealing with political dissidents, the way it’s handing the Raif Badawi case? Or do you expect that it’s going to continue on the path that it has been?
“Let me ask you a question: do you think that Canada in the future, or any other country, if they have some kind of pressure from abroad, they will change their judi-cial system? Do you accept that?”
I suppose it depends on who the partner was and why.
“Same thing. Of course, we always review. And I think this question, you can address directly to Dr. Bandar bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, the president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission when he visits Canada, I think next month.”
Do you see Saudi Arabia as be-coming a more liberalized coun-try in the future in general?
“Saudi Arabia has a different perspective about liberal or not liberal. Saudi Arabia is based in Islamic sharia law. This needs a kind of special arrangement, dif-ferent than other places. Always, we need to see how the people, if they like the values, in any country.”
There were some pages from a 9/11 report commissioned in the United States that just recently were made public. There are reports that those documents show that the Saudi government was helping to fi nancially support mosques and other institutions in the United States that were spreading ideas of Islamic radicalism. Do you believe that that was the case? If so, is that still an issue?
“Nothing in those pages is against Saudi Arabia. I saw them. You know Mr. Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, the foreign affairs min-
ister of Saudi Arabia, made a very clear statement two days ago: he said we are very happy that they released these pages because this is proof that Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with 9/11.
“Even if 15 of these 19 people who attacked in 9/11 are from Saudi Arabia, 15 people or 100, or 200 people from a country of 30 million...Every society has fanati-cal, crazy people. We feel sorry, and we are very much concerned that we don’t see more crazy peo-ple in any society, in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. But this is human nature, that you have people who believe in violence. Muslim people, the word of Islam means peace. Saudi Arabia believes in peace, and we believe that we should solve all our problems between each other, between nations, by peace. Not by violence or war.”
What do you see as being your biggest priority for the next year as ambassador here?
“My job here has two parts: one part, to strengthen the rela-tions with our Canadian friends. The second part, to serve Saudi citizens who live here in Canada, students, businessmen, and tour-ists. We work very hard, we have a very big embassy, to reach out with our Canadian friends, to im-prove the relations, to have more in common. We exchange high offi cial visits.
“Next year, we will have a GCC strategic dialogue meet-ing here in Canada, hopefully in Ottawa, between the six GCC ministers and Minister Dion.”
[email protected]@PJMazereeuw
Saudi envoy defends arms deal, says media producing ‘misleading information’ ‘We still believe that this contract will bring the two countries closer,’ says Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, in a rare interview.
Continued from page 1
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Canada, Naif Bin Bandir Alsudairy, says he expects to welcome the head of the Saudi Human Rights Commission to Canada next month. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 20164NEWS IMMIGRATION
The Liberal-majority Immigra-tion Committee asked Mr. McCal-lum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) to “accelerate” asylum applications by Yazidis fl eeing the violence, and to “create and implement special measures to facilitate Canada’s response” in a letter sent through Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), the committee chair.
“We’re asking the government to use existing tools that are avail-able in order to fulfi ll what the United Nations has called for” for the Yazidi population, said Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos (London North Centre, Ont.), who tempo-rarily replaced Liberal MP Shaun Chen (Scarborough North, Ont.) on the committee during the study.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel (Calgary Nose Hill, Alta.), a committee member and her party’s immigration critic, sent her own letter to Mr. McCallum calling for the government to once again exempt Syrian and Iraqi refugees from an annual cap on privately-sponsored refugees coming into Canada, and to examine using a special sec-tion of the federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to bring asylum-seekers to Canada quicker.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Van-couver East, B.C.), a committee member and her party’s im-migration critic, sent her own letter to Mr. McCallum. Both Ms. Kwan and Ms. Rempel called on the minister to use that special provision in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, section 25, to immediately resettle vulner-able people to Canada, and to begin tracking refugees by ethnic-ity, religion, and sexual orienta-tion, so as to show how successful the government is at bringing in those under the greatest threat.
Mr. McCallum declined to be interviewed on the subject through spokesperson Félix Cor-riveau, who wrote in an emailed statement that “the minister’s schedule will not allow him to answer your questions.”
The committee will issue a formal report to the minister once Parliament resumes in the fall.
UN refugee agency, UN convention under fi re
The Liberal government faces numerous obstacles to the type of quick, large-scale action urged by the committee members and advocates for persecuted minority groups in the Middle East, South Sudan, Myanmar, and elsewhere.
For one, it has already run up a signifi cant bill during a defi cit year for its ongoing admission and resettlement of 25,000 gov-ernment-assisted Syrian refugees, and has committed nearly $1 billion to support those refugees
over six years. Mr. McCallum told Bloomberg
last week that his government was having trouble bringing in refugees fast enough to meet the demand of Canadians who wish to privately sponsor their resettlement. However, there was concern among the leaders of some of Canada’s largest cit-ies that they would not have the resources to deal with the large infl ux of Syrian refugees as the government hit the stride of its mass resettlement effort earlier this year.
The government faces a more technical barrier to the resettle-ment of Yazidis and other per-secuted groups. Many of those people are living in camps or other places of temporary refuge within the borders of their home country. Under the wording of the 1951 UN Refugee Conven-tion, upon which Canadian law is based, those people are not considered to be refugees as they have not left their country.
Canada currently relies upon the United Nations High Com-missioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s refugee agency, to help it select refugees for resettle-ment, and that agency does not have the mandate to deal with internally displaced people, David Manicom, the associate assistant deputy minister for Immigra-tion, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, told the committee.
Canada and the international community should look at re-opening the UN Refugee Conven-tion to address that issue, said Mr. Fragiskatos.
However, Mr. Manicom said doing so would be too risky, as some signatories to the conven-tion wish to narrow, not expand, their responsibility to refugees under that convention.
To bring in internally displaced people from hard-to-reach areas, the government may have to follow in the footsteps of Germany, which resettled more than a 1,000 per-secuted Yazidis following the ISIL attack in 2014 by working with third-party humanitarian groups instead, Mr. Manicom said.
Government offi cials are plan-ning a fact-fi nding mission to Erbil in northern Iraq for the fall, he said.
Ms. Rempel and some of the witnesses before the committee urged the government to allow third-party groups to recommend vulnerable people for resettle-ment in areas where Canada is not able to process applications.
Murad Ismael, an executive with the Yazidi advocacy group Yazda, criticized the UNHCR for what he said was discrimination against Yazidis who had made it to the refugee camps by local Muslim UNHCR employees.
The UNHCR did not respond to that allegation when reached by The Hill Times.
In years past, the government could bring internally displaced people who did not qualify as refugees to Canada using a pro-gram called the Source Country Class of Humanitarian-protected Persons Abroad.
However, that program was repealed after the government ran into political and logisti-
cal problems making use of the program, said Mr. Manicom. Controversy erupted each time a country was added to or removed to the list of “source countries” in which people were being perse-cuted, and the governments of those countries would not always co-operate with Canadian efforts to help resettle people after their country had been added to the list, he said.
Section 25Canada’s government should
use section 25 of the Immigra-tion and Refugee Protection Act to bring over thousands of the most vulnerable or traumatized internally displaced Yazidi people immediately, said Ms. Rempel, Ms. Kwan, and some of the committee witnesses, including Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who escaped from ISIL captivity and has toured the world alerting political leaders to the genocide facing her people.
Section 25 allows the federal immigration minister to provide a shortcut to permanent residency for people in special cases where he or she judges that “humanitarian and compassionate grounds” warrants it.
The government would be legally able to use Section 25 to resettle persecuted Yazidis from the Middle East, Mr. Manicom told the committee, adding that did not necessarily mean the government would or would not logistically be able to do so.
Section 25 has been used almost exclusively by the govern-ment in the past to give perma-nent resident status to people already in Canada who would otherwise be forced to leave the country, Mr. Manicom said.
Ms. Rempel and Ms. Kwan also called on the government to begin
tracking the ethnic, religious, and sexual orientation of refugees resettled in Canada, in order for the government to be able to gauge how many members of those vulnerable groups were being recommended by the UNHCR and successfully resettled in Canada.
The previous Conservative government had, for a period of a few months last year, ordered the IRCC to do just that, Mr. Manicom told the committee. However, there was no automated way to do so, and Canadian offi cials had to track those fi gures using written case notes. The department ceased to do so when the new government began its major effort to resettle Syrian refugees, he said.
Tracking the success of reset-tling people persecuted for reli-gious beliefs, ethnic origin, or sexu-al orientation is more diffi cult than it may seem, Mr. Manicom told the committee. People may fall into several categories for which they could be persecuted, and tracking all of those categories would not always paint an accurate picture of why a person was resettled, he said, using as an example a person who was gay but being persecuted for political expression.
Comprehensive tracking of all possible causes for persecution would also require more resourc-es, Mr. Manicom said.
[email protected]@PJMazereeuw
Yazidi genocide moves onto McCallum’s plate What happened and what comes next after the heated summer study on vulnerable people wraps up.
THE WEEK AHEAD: ELECTORAL REFORM COMMITTEE MEETS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27• The House Special Committee on Electoral Reform will
have its 10th meeting on this topic from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. in Centre Block, Room 237-C. It will hear from Henry Milner, a senior researcher and chair in electoral studies at the Université de Montréal; Alex Himelfarb, former clerk of the Privy Council, 2002-2006; and André Blais, political science professor at the Université de Montréal. This meeting will be televised.
• The House Special Committee on Electoral Reform will meet again from 2 to 4:30 p.m. in Centre Block, Room 237-C (to be televised). It will hear from the Institute for Research on Public Policy research director Leslie Seidle; University of Toronto professor emeritus Larry LeDuc; and Université du Québec à Montréal dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Law Hugo Cyr.
THURSDAY, JULY 28 • The House Special Committee on Electoral Reform
will meet from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. in Centre Block, Room 237-C (to be televised). It will hear from York University associate professor of political science Dennis Pilon; Queen’s University associate professor of political studies Jonathan Rose; and the president of the Institute on Governance Maryantonett Flumian.
• The House Government Operations and Estimates Committee will meet from 2 to 4 p.m. in Centre Block, Room 253-D (to be televised), for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation surrounding the Phoenix Payroll System. Witnesses, likely to include departmental offi cials, are to be confi rmed.
Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef, right, appearing before the House Special Electoral Reform Commit-tee July 6. This week the committee is hearing from several academics. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
Continued from page 1
Immigration Minister John McCallum and his cabinet colleagues are under pressure to repeat the government’s headline-grabbing Syrian refugee resettlement initiative for other persecuted groups, particularly Yazidis from northern Iraq. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
5THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
NEWS Q&A
BY PETER MAZEREEUW
“I cannot stop.”Nadia Murad looks tired,
sitting across the table with her co-campaigner and translator, Murad Ismael.
The Nobel Peace Prize nomi-nee is about 20 minutes into a July 21 interview at The Hill Times offi ce in Ottawa, another stop on her world tour of media outlets, national legislatures, and high political offi ces.
Two days before, Ms. Mu-rad, who is in her early 20s, sat before the House Immigration Committee and told yet another room full of strangers about the day armed members of ISIL (the militant group calling itself the Islamic State, and also known as ISIS and Daesh) came to her village in northern Iraq, gathered the residents together, executed the men—including six of her brothers—and assigned the young women, including herself, into sexual slavery. She watched their faces as Mr. Ismael translated the details of her rapes and beatings over several months of captivity in 2014 before she managed to escape her captors.
In The Hill Times offi ce, the soft-spoken Ms. Murad, who is being tailed by a documentary fi lm crew, is measured and un-fl inching as she describes the mo-tivation that has taken her around the world in the past eight months with Mr. Ismael and Yazda, an advocacy group for Yazidis, who were targeted by ISIL for what the UN and Canada’s government have called a genocide.
Yazidis are a Kurdish minority group who practice an ancient re-ligion that shares many elements with Christianity and Islam, but they are regarded as “infi dels” by the Islamist militants in Iraq.
Ms. Murad has testifi ed to the UN in Geneva and UN Security Council in New York, to the presi-dent of Egypt, to governments in more than a dozen countries, and to countless journalists since deciding to leave her temporary home as an asylum-seeker in Germany late last year.
The following interview has been edited for length and style.
You’ve told the story of your cap-tivity many times before, includ-ing to the Immigration Commit-tee in Canada’s Parliament. What happened between the time when you arrived in Germany and began your tour around the world
to tell your story. How did you decide to do this?
“When I was rescued from the enslavement under Daesh, there was no way for me to go and testify and talk about this.
“Then when I was at the camp, they came and said this program had been set up by the German government, and they were trying to take 1,000 Yazidi women and girls to Germany, and whoever was interested could go and regis-ter for that program.
“We were three sisters, and my brother told us, ‘It is very diffi cult to take care of all of you, I would like some of you to go. And once our conditions are better, you can come back.’
“In September, I came to Germany, and was resettled in Heilbronn with my sister and nine other Yazidi families.
“I felt homesick, and I felt very unhappy being in Germany at fi rst, and I told my brother that I wished to go back. My brother told me that it was better that I stayed there to receive [medical] treatment, and then come back.
“It was about the end of Octo-ber when they allowed me to go to school. And then in November a Yazidi activist approached me and asked me if I was willing to testify before the United Nations in Geneva. And I said, ‘Yes, I will do it.’
“After I went back to Germany after testifying, and they found the mass grave where my mother was killed. At that time I had a very diffi cult time, and I asked my family to go back. They told me, ‘Even if you come back, the mass grave is not accessible, and you cannot be there.’
“In December, a Yazidi who is working for Yazda called me and asked if I was going to testify before the UN Security Council.
“I’ve always, since I returned from captivity, taken every op-portunity to tell my story, even
when I was at the camp. Every time a newspaper or anyone ap-proached, I would tell them about what happened. I really wanted to tell the story to all the countries, but especially I wanted to tell the Muslim world, and the Arab world about this, because ISIS was telling us that they were com-mitting these crimes in the name of Islam. So I wanted to know from the Muslims themselves, whether Daesh was a Muslim group or was not.
“I came to the U.S. in Decem-ber 2015. And then in December 2015 I met with Murad for the fi rst time. I told my story, and then based on what I told him, he wrote my speech and the next day I presented before the Security Council.
“It was a surprise that my tes-timony was well received. It was not like what I did in Geneva. This testimony at the Security Coun-cil reached many places, and it received a lot of media atten-tion and international attention. After the testimony, I met with the foreign minister of the U.S. [John Kerry], I met with [White House National Security Adviser] Susan Rice at the White House. And then many more meetings became available.”
Seventeen countries so far, is that right?
“I have to count them…”[She smiles for a second, for
the only time during the inter-view, and lists off as many as she can with her interpreter. They settle on 16, then remember Swit-zerland.]
“Yes, 17 countries.”
What was going through your mind before you gave your speech to the UN Security Coun-cil in New York?
“The fi rst thing that went through my mind was, what was in my speech, and what was not
in my speech. Because I wanted to say everything that happened. I wanted them to know what was happening.”
Does it get any easier telling the story of the terrible things that happened to you and your family the more often that you do it?
“When I remember their faces, when they were committing crimes against us; when I remem-ber, not just raping us, but also insulting us and laughing at us as they were doing it;...when I talk, I imagine these crimes.
“In a way, I feel happy expos-ing these crimes and telling the world what happened. But at the same time, continuing to tell the story while things don’t get changed, it’s very painful. It’s very painful to talk about the girls in captivity, especially. And nobody has attempted to rescue them yet.”
Have there been any times during your travels when you’ve had doubts, or thought you wanted to be fi nished with it and return to Germany or somewhere else to call home?
“No.“I cannot stop, because even
if I stop, these crimes will not be stopped. And the sadness that I live and go through will not be over.”
Are you planning to continue...for how long, do you know?
“As long as justice is not estab-lished, especially for the women and girls, I will continue doing this.”
Of all of the governments you’ve spoken to in those 17 countries, and the UN, have you seen any meaningful action taken yet by any of them?
“There has been some good news. For example, the U.S. gov-ernment, the U.K. parliament, the
Canadian government, the United Nations, all of them have come out with a statement saying that what happened was a genocide against my people.”
What can a country as far away as Canada do to help the Yazidi people who are still in northern Iraq?
“We would like Canada to, just as they received the [Syrian] refugees, to receive also Yazidi refugees. Especially the victims, the direct victims: women, orphans, widows. All those who became enslaved. We would like them to give a quota, or to bring a number of these people in. We also would like Canada to play a role in recognizing the genocide and accountability, in the Inter-national Criminal Court. We also would like Canada to help with humanitarian aid.”
How did you fi rst come into con-tact with Conservative immigra-tion critic Michelle Rempel, with whom you held the press confer-ence in Ottawa on Tuesday?
“It happened about a month ago with [Conservative leader] Rona Ambrose, I was introduced with her team in New York. We were invited to come and speak when the resolution, the recogni-tion of the genocide was debated by the Canadian Parliament.”
Murad Ismael: “Nadia and I were supposed to come here for that debate, and we applied for Nadia’s visa. It took longer; we couldn’t come. But then this in-vitation came...and Michelle, she also offered to do a press confer-ence after we came here. But our fi rst contact in Canada was Ms. Rona Ambrose.”
What do you think will happen to the Yazidi people if the world doesn’t take more action?
“For us, for the Yazidis, what we see and what we feel is that days from now, there will be the second anniversary of the Yazidi genocide. We still have 3,200 women and children in captivity.
“They have not been helped. There has been no operation to rescue them.
“For the liberated areas of Sinjar, 35 mass graves have been found. They have not even been documented or investigated. There has been only some yellow tape around it.
“About 40 Yazidi temples were destroyed. And those who survived, those who escaped from captivity, the orphans, the widows who lost their husbands, there has been no help offered to them.
“There are epidemics and diseases, in thousands of cases, along the Yazidi camps. I would say that up to two-thirds of the Ya-zidi population is going through collective trauma.
“For a small community to suffer all this...if the international community doesn’t do anything for this small community, the Yazidi community will not exist. Our question is now whether the international community will do something. And the question that we ask is whether the Yazidis will exist or not?
“Despite all this, we still have hope. Every morning we wake up. On every hour, we count on the humanity that will not allow a peaceful community to suffer this.”
[email protected]@PJMazereeuw
Nadia Murad, voice of a genocide ‘As long as the justice is not established, especially for the women and girls, I will continue doing this,’ says this Yazidi woman who told MPs how she endured rape and abuse at the hands of ISIL in Iraq.
Nadia Murad, centre, urges Canada’s government to do more to help Yazidis suffering in camps for refugees and internally displaced people in the Middle East during a July 19 press conference with Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel, left. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 20166NEWS DEFENCE
He called parliamentary committees a more effective and transparent process to collect information and put forward recommendations, with meetings publicly televised and a report on the proceedings usually required.
Jordan Owens, spokesperson for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan (Vancouver South, B.C.), disputed these claims, saying the government is “committed to engaging with Canadians” on impactful decisions.
“Throughout the consultation process, we have encouraged Canadians to join the conversation and provide their feedback and views on the future of Canada’s defence policy,” she said in an emailed statement.
“We are particularly encouraged that MPs of all parties have been actively engaging with their constituents on the issues that matter to Canadians.”
The Liberal government launched public consultations on its promised review of national defence policy in April, with roundtable meetings with experts and key stakeholders scheduled in cities across the country. Parliamentarians were also urged to host town hall meetings with constituents.
The review website says it will chiefl y focus on the main challenges to Canada’s security, the role of the Canadian Armed Forces in addressing current threats and challenges; and the resources and capabilities needed to carry out the CAF mandate.
Feedback from the public will be accepted until the end of the month, with the new policy expected to be introduced sometime in 2017, according to National Defence.
The government has also said it has invited the Senate and House committees on national defence to study issues of relevance to the policy review.
However, Mr. Garrison raised concerns about the government’s failure to explain how the responses solicited from the consultations will be compiled and how it will inform the policy-making process.
“You need to have an explanation of how it will be used, how is it part of the decision-making. And we’ve never had that from the minister or anyone involved in the consultation process,” he said.
“So if you say you’re going to consult people, what are you going to do with that?”
Ms. Owens, though, said input from the consultation process and
conversations with experts and allies will “feed into the policy review process and be refl ected within the fi nal policy document,” which will then be approved by Cabinet before being publicly released.
Mr. Garrison also criticized the government for continuing to make big pronouncements about military commitments and defence policy prior to the completion of the review, which he argued raised serious questions about the usefulness of the process.
Most notably, the Liberals have committed to steady increases to the defence budget, increasing the size of the military and bolstering involvement in UN-led peacekeeping missions. They have also repeatedly promised to transform the military into a leaner and more agile organization, though have yet to provide details on what that would entail or how it would be accomplished.
Tony Battista, CEO of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, a security-focused think-tank, levelled similar criticisms, accusing the government of rushing to action before the conclusion of the consultation process.
“The government seems prepared to make policy announcements irrespective of the outcome of the...public consultation process,” he said in an interview.
Ms. Owens countered that the government has taken action on “a number of fi les that required our immediate attention.”
Mr. Battista argued that while public consultations can prove very useful, the process introduced by the government is “muddled” and confusing, citing issues with the invited presenters, location of roundtable discussions, and avenues for public feedback.
The process the Liberals used to recruit speakers is “opaque,” he said, with certain participants and groups brought in because of their expertise but others seemingly called upon to create the “appearance of a multitude of viewpoints irrespective of their...submissions.”
Mr. Battista also objected to the options available for participation outside of the roundtable discussions or MP-hosted town halls.
Those who wish to share their views electronically can do so through several discussion forums on the policy review website or anonymously via an online workbook.
No email address for the department is immediately provided, though one is made available on page 28 of the consultation document, Mr. Battista said, adding he’s unsure about how helpful or informative it will be.
Liberals report support for government at consultations
Dozens of Liberal MPs have held consultations on the defence policy review, with more scheduled over the next month. Conservative and NDP parliamentarians have also hosted consultations, as well as several community and advocacy groups. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has also hosted an event in her Victoria-area riding.
Two Liberal MPs who have held consultations say constituents appear to be largely supportive of the direction etched out by the Trudeau government on the defence fi le.
Karen McCrimmon (Kanata-Carleton, Ont.) and Anthony Rota (Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont.) both said that speakers at their consultations indicated support for strengthening Canada’s commitment to the United Nations and NATO; a larger role in peacekeeping missions; and streamlining the procurement process.
They also said that strong objections were not voiced to the Trudeau government’s decision to withdraw Canada from the air mission against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Rota, whose riding includes CFB North Bay, a military base that is the centre of NORAD operations in Canada, said that attendees urged the federal government to make smarter military purchases
instead of simply replacing aging equipment.
“Develop certain areas of speciality that work well within our geography, climate and our needs as a country,” he said of the response from the some 35 constituents at the event, hosted in North Bay.
“Let’s not limit ourselves to those niche areas, but really concentrate on them.”
He also said attendees called for longer-term military budgets free from political interference.
Mr. Rota said he has been in regular contact with Minister Sajjan about the local base since the Liberals assumed offi ce, and that he would follow-up with him to discuss the response from the event.
Ms. McCrimmon, a military veteran, said her constituents urged Canada to focus on preserving the peace, modernizing equipment, and protecting the country’s far north.
They also supported the need for a comprehensive review to ensure the country is focusing on current and future threats, she said.
“[We have to] make sure whatever we do is a refl ection is the current realities we are dealing with,” Ms. McCrimmon said, adding that constituents expressed confi dence in the ability to address military challenges through technological advancements.
Ms. McCrimmon’s riding, which covers a vast section of Ottawa’s far-west, is a technology hub, she noted.
Both MPs stressed the importance of reaching out to the public to discuss defence policy.
“I think we need to engage as many people as we can,” said Ms. McCrimmon.
The Conservatives, however, expressed skepticism that the consultations would wield any infl uence with the government.
Conservative defence critic James Bezan (Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman, Man.) said constituents he met with voiced concerns about the decision to pull out of the anti-ISIS mission and hints that the government would sign-on to additional peacekeeping missions in Africa and abroad.
Although the Liberals called for the consultations, he said there was little optimism that the responses would affect government policy.
“What I’m hearing is people are concerned that this is predetermined, that the government is going to go ahead and make decisions regardless of what may came through the policy review, or [that] the defence policy review...will support the things that they’re already doing,” Mr. Bezan said.
Conservative MP Arnold Viersen (Peace River-Westlock, Alta.) said he’s hosted fi ve consultations meetings across his sprawling northern Alberta riding, and while they were well-attended, he felt that it wasn’t “something necessarily people were interested in.”
While most attendees were well-informed, the overwhelming sentiment was that the consultations would have little impact on the development of the government’s defence policy, he added.
The Conservative Party has also launched its own parallel consultations on the defence policy review. Participants can submit feedback by responding to a 10-question form available on the party’s website.
[email protected] Hill Times
Liberals’ defence consultations offer predictable results, questionable benefi ts, say criticsOpposition MPs are accusing the government of using the consultation process as rubber stamp.
Continued from page 1
Conservative defence critic James Bezan (left) said voters he has spoken with expressed concerned that the Liberal government will ignore responses from the ongoing public consultations on defence policy that run counter to its stated views, while his NDP counterpart Randall Garrison (right) worries that the Trudeau government used the process to make it easier to selectively choose responses that suit their needs. Liberal MP Karen McCrimmon (centre), however, is expressing optimism about the consultations and applauds the government for engaging with Canadians. The Hill Times photographs by Jake Wright
7THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
NEWS FOREIGN AFFAIRS
He said he saw a “very less-than-gracious personality in the president on that occasion.”
“There is an arrogance that he displays when he defends some of these less-than-democratic moments in his country, both pre-coup and post-coup,” Mr. Kent said, while discussing the current and future relations between Turkey and Canada with The Hill Times last week, days after Turkey announced a three-month state of emergency.
With the recent arrest of a Turkish-Canadian citizen in Turkey, the post-coup-attempt activities of the Turkish government hit close to home for Canadians, and Members of Parliament of all political stripes are not holding back their criticism.
The Turkish government has been widely criticized by Western governments, including the European Union, which it wishes to join, for a crackdown after a failed coup by members of the military on July 15, which has targeted more than 60,000 people, including academics, judges, public servants, and journalists.
The president has mused about bringing back the death penalty, which Turkey scrapped in 2004 to help it join the European Union.
“I don’t think this is a partisan issue at all, but across parties, we should express at any opportunity to the president and to the representatives [of] Turkey in Canada, our concern over the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the obvious, serious encroachment of civil and human rights in the last week,” said Mr. Kent, speaking before the detainment of Calgary man Davud Hanci was reported.
Liberal MP Judy Sgro (Humber River-Black Creek, Ont.) told The Hill Times she was “alarmed” at the behaviour of the Turkish government in the aftermath of the attempted coup. NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière also expressed her displeasure to The Hill Times, and her party issued a statement on Monday saying New Democrats are “alarmed” at the situation unfolding in Turkey.
Ms. Sgro said that if President Erdogan continues with these methods, it will be “a very major impediment” to the future of Canada-Turkey relations.
Ms. Sgro, who chairs the Canada-Turkey Parliamentary Friendship Group, said she expected the Turkish government to be a “mature enough democracy” to have responded in a better, more measured way than it has. She said she is hearing
from many Turkish-Canadians and Canadians with Turkish background that they are fearful for their families still in Turkey.
She said what Canada needs to do now is “continue the conversation about the impact of their actions and what it can [mean] long term.” Canada should not overreact today, she said, but needs to carefully think through the steps needed to restore peace in Turkey, “so that we all can move forward to build a better world.”
When asked what she imagined these long-term impacts might look like, she said she didn’t want to suggest them, but continued to say “they can be very signifi cant if you’re talking about trade or our relationship overall, with NATO, and so on.”
Both Turkey and Canada are members of the NATO military alliance and the G20. The Conservative government had started exploratory talks with Turkey toward possibly negotiating a trade deal, but the talks have since fi zzled.
Turkish Ambassador to Canada Selçuk Ünal dismissed concerns about his country’s current state of emergency. He said the measures being taken are justifi ed because
they are in Turkey’s constitution, and that “we all have to really understand the seriousness of this attempted coup. It has been reported, but I don’t know if it is really well understood.”
“Because there were many civilians allegedly involved in this, or [who] aided these coup plotters, that was a necessity, as the government has announced, that there will be temporary restrictions on some government employees, or the ones in the state universities; that’s why that is the starting point,” he told The Hill Times in an interview Monday morning.
Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish imam who is in self-imposed exile from Turkey in Pennsylvania, has been accused by President Erdogan of instigating the coup attempt. Mr. Hanci has been accused of being affi liated with the Gülen movement. Mr. Gülen has denied involvement in the coup. Family and friends of Mr. Hanci say he’s innocent.
Turkey “would like to see more solidarity messages [from Canada], and of course regarding the elements of this group here, we would like to see more co-operation,” Mr. Ünal said.
The Canadian Press reported that Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion last week said: “About the Gulen movement...we have received requests before the coup and after from the government of Turkey about the movement that is existing in Canada, and we have asked for evidence because otherwise the Canadian justice system cannot address an issue on the basis of allegations.”
Mr. Kent said Turkey wants to be a member of the Western, democratic family. “But, the post-coup behaviour raises great concerns about President Erdogan’s commitment to rule of law, democratic process, and human rights.”
Turkey is an important ally, Ms. Sgro said, “and we would like them to continue to be just that, but that becomes more and more diffi cult every day they talk about rounding up thousands more innocent people without any evidence of any wrongdoing, and talking about introducing the death penalty.”
Mr. Dion issued a statement on July 20, the same day the Turkish government announced the state of emergency, that said Canada is very concerned with the reports of troubling behaviour of Mr. Erdogan’s government.
“The rule of law and respect for due process in the conduct of investigations are integral to the democratic principles that, last Friday night, prompted thousands of Turks to fl ood into the streets to protect. It is important that these same democratic principles and values guide the government’s actions in the coming months,” read the statement.
Additionally, Mr. Ünal was called in to Global Affairs to be questioned about the arrest of Mr. Hanci, according to a report from the Canadian Press.
“Human rights is something that Canada stands for, and so did Turkey, we thought,” said Ms. Sgro. “You’re not respecting human rights if you’re rounding up thousands of people, highly educated people, people in the judiciary, for heaven’s sake, and intimidating Canadians abroad,” she went on, referring to the recent detainment of Mr. Hanci.
“Anybody who didn’t have to same eye colour as the president appears to be being labelled a terrorist. I don’t think that’s the most productive way to handle these types of issues,” said Ms. Sgro.
[email protected]@chels_nash
MPs of all stripes decry Turkish government’s reaction to failed coupIf crackdown continues, it could be ‘a very major impediment’ to Canada-Turkey ties, says friendship group chair and Liberal MP Sgro.
Continued from page 1
Conservative foreign affairs critic Peter Kent, left, Liberal MP and chair of the Canada-Turkey Parliamentary Friendship Group Judy Sgro, and Turkish Ambassador Selçuk Ünal. Mr. Kent and Ms. Sgro suggest there could be consequences for the relationship between Canada and Turkey if what they described as the Turkish government’s post-coup pattern of intimidation continues. The Hill Times fi le photos
EDITORIAL REAL ESTATE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The British Columbia government’s decision to institute a 15 per cent
tax on foreign home buyers in the Vancouver region reads like smart politics.
Wealthy foreign buyers, largely from fast-growing markets in Asia, are the easiest of targets in the increasingly heated debate about soaring prices in the Lower Mainland. They are the safest to blame because they don’t live here and, as the narrative goes, are absentee owners who simply use their purchases to stash their immense wealth.
Their actual impact, however, is far more elusive, with successive studies failing to paint a clear picture.
Some blame foreigners for driving the surging prices; others dispute their impact.
It’s a compelling debate, but it’s a distraction.
The real issue at the heart of Canada’s real estate struggles is generational.
First-time buyers are increasingly struggling to fi nd that seemingly fabled reasonably priced starter home, as surging prices put home ownership out of reach for a generation incessantly lectured about its necessity. These pressures have also pushed rental prices skyward.
Older homeowners, who likely purchased their fi rst property decades ago when prices were lower and starting salaries more robust, are faring far better.
If they reside in a big city, the value of their home has likely skyrocketed in a trend that shows little sign of abating.
The average price of a house sold in Canada rose 13 per cent to a record high of $509,460 in May, despite unemployment sitting at nearly seven per cent. In the Vancouver region, the benchmark price of a detached home now sits at $1.4-million. The average price of a new house in the Greater Toronto Area has also soared above $1 million.
In an economic landscape marked by stagnant wages and sky-high real estate prices, seemingly detached from economic pressures, homeownership has become even more vital.
So what are governments left to do?Hike interest rates?Demand larger down payments?The federal government is
preaching caution, warning that any drastic change could seriously defl ate prices and erode the equity Canadians have built in their homes. Instead, the Liberals have promised to invest millions to bolster the stock of affordable housing units in the country.
It’s perhaps the safest route in a crisis with no good solutions.
An interest rate hike could have serious ramifi cations for overextended homeowners, among others. Remember, Canadians ended 2015 with a record-high debt burden, with households having more than $1.65 in debt for every dollar of annual disposable income, according to Statistics Canada.
Meanwhile, requiring larger down payments will only squeeze out Canadians who cannot afford to save such a large amount of money, especially cash-strapped prospective fi rst-time buyers.
With choices like that, don’t expect any easy solutions to this crisis.
Re: “Liberals promise plan to bolster emergency preparedness as extreme
weather events surge,” (The Hill Times, July 20, online). The report by offi ce of the parliamentary budget offi cer that Craig Stewart cited found sharp jumps in federal disaster payments. But Ontario barely ap-pears. Between 2005 and 2014, it received $9 per capita while Alberta received $427, Manitoba $598, and Saskatchewan $722.
Why does Ontario need relatively mini-mal assistance? The report stresses differ-ences in fl oodplain regulations. Ontario’s 70-year old Conservation Authorities Act re-quires land and water management integrat-ed on a watershed basis. For decades, the 36 watershed agencies have excluded develop-
ment from fl oodplains, managed watersheds to moderate fl oods, saved wetlands, planted trees, maintained strategically placed dams, monitored river fl ows, updated fl oodplain mapping, and reviewed development plans.
A lesson for climate change: don’t just boost disaster funding—minimize disasters by integrating land and water manage-ment. And by planning for 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050, switching subsi-dies from fossil fuel to green energy, setting a carbon fee, judging energy projects for emissions including downstream product use, and paying our carbon debt to the Global South. As soon as possible.
Elizabeth SnellGuelph, Ont.
Re: “Liberals promise plan to bolster emergency preparedness as extreme
weather events surge” (The Hill Times, July 20, online). Sadly, since the world has been fi ddling while Rome burns, bolstering emer-gency preparedness is now vital.
Ironically, the military contributes greatly to carbon emissions that cause climate instability and therefore creates further risk-multipliers around the world. The military is now contributing to the need for the military.
Wouldn’t it be a better idea to divert military resources from offensive action to emergency preparedness? At least we
would see some positive results: less war, less destruction, and maybe even decreased carbon emissions and better emergency services for the extreme weather events that are now inevitable.
However, increasing preparedness must not come at the expense of mitigation. It is crucial that we cease damaging the Earth’s climate systems. The quickest way to take the biggest bite out of the problem is with carbon pricing. The fairest, most effective, and quick-est way to price carbon is with a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend policy.
Cathy LacroixToronto, Ont.
A popular revolution against globalism is well underway globally and globalists
like George Soros with his political, fi nan-cial, and media-elite friends are not happy. Britain may well have struck the fi rst blow in a populist movement that could see more European Union members have their own referendums to leave, and the distinct possi-bility of the eventual unravelling of the EU.
The elitist overlords of the EU are dis-covering that taking away borders and su-perimposing manufactured civic identities over once-proud nations and cultures with their own rich and complex histories is not working and runs contrary to basic human psychology. The British rightly concluded that any economic advantages they enjoyed in the EU were more than offset by their loss of freedom and sovereignty, and that they were now at the mercy of unelectable and unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels.
The American version of Brexit is on clear display in the United States election campaign, with the surprising support for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The dis-
trust and contempt of ordinary Americans for the political establishment has never been greater.
The debate between elitism and popu-lism is not new to Canada, and was in fact what brought Preston Manning’s Reform Party to Ottawa in 1993.
Justin Trudeau is currently riding high in the polls but his decisions to ignore pub-lic opinion in fast-tracking Syrian refugees into the country, pulling our jets out of the fi ght against ISIS and opting for defi cit spending could come back to haunt him in the 2019 election if he continues to ignore the silent majority.
Jason Kenney was right with his con-gratulatory remark that Britain had chosen “hope over fear.” Tony Clement’s comment that Brexit was a “magnifi cent exercise in democracy” was timely and a reminder to the federal Liberals that ordinary citizens in Canada want a say in electoral reform through a referendum.
Gerald HallNanoose Bay, B.C.
No easy solution in housing crisis Don’t just boost disaster funding—minimize disasters
Divert military resources from offensive action to emergency preparedness
Globalists the big losers with Brexit
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 20168
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9THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
GLOBAL AFFAIRS U.S. ELECTION
LONDON, U.K.—Let us sup-pose that it is July 2017. Let
us suppose that Donald Trump, nominated as the Republican candidate for the United States presidency exactly a year ago, won the November election—quite narrowly, perhaps, but the polls are certainly suggesting that such a thing is possible. So he was inaugurated six months ago, and has started to put his cam-paign promises into effect.
We may also assume that the Republican Party retains control of both houses of Congress. If it doesn’t, then Trump’s ability to ex-ecute his plans would be seriously circumscribed, but the surge of support that gives Trump victory would probably also give the Re-publicans a win in some close Sen-ate races. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives, thanks to extensive gerrymander-ing, is practically fi reproof.
Trump’s three most disruptive campaign promises were also the
three that had the most appeal to his core voters, and he is imple-menting them fast. They are: a tariff on foreign imports of up to 45 per cent, an end to free trade deals, and tight curbs on immi-gration—especially the famous “wall” on the Mexican border
It won’t actually be a wall, of course. It will be the kind of high-tech barrier that countries build when they are really serious about closing a frontier. There will be a ditch about three metres deep and 10 metres wide extend-ing for 3,000 kilometres along the U.S.-Mexican border. It will have a three-metre-high razor-wire fence along the front edge of the ditch, facing Mexico, and another along the back edge.
The front fence has a high-voltage current running through it. The back fence carries the video and infra-red cameras and motion-sensors that detect attempts to cross the ditch, and the remotely
controlled machine-guns that re-spond to those attempts. There are also landmines down in the ditch. Why is it so lethal? Because long experience has shown that the only way to really close a border is to kill people who try to cross it.
The “wall” is not yet fi nished in July 2017, of course. It will take several years to complete, at a cost of $30 to $50 billion. Already, how-ever, there are daily deaths among the tens of thousands of Mexican protesters who gather at the con-struction sites, and a few among Mexican-American protesters on the other side of the fence as well.
The Mexican government, faced with economic disaster as the millions of manufacturing jobs created in Mexico to export back to the United States evapo-rate, has broken diplomatic rela-tions with Washington, as have several other Latin American nations. U.S. State Department experts are worried that a radical
nationalist regime may come to power in Mexico, but “establish-ment experts” are not welcome in the new White House.
Negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the U.S. and European Union have been broken off, and the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership will never be ratifi ed by Congress. The legislation for double-digit tariffs on foreign imports is still making its way through Congress, as is the bill to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (which is causing panic in Canada, about three-quarters of whose exports go to the United States).
The new laws will go through in the end, and the most important ca-sualty will be U.S.-China trade (as Trump fully intends it to be). China is already in a thinly disguised recession, and the impact of the new trade measures will turn it into a political crisis that threatens the survival of the Communist regime.
Beijing will certainly respond by pushing forward with the proposed Regional Comprehen-sive Economic Partnership, which would include 16 nations of the Asia-Pacifi c region but exclude the United States. However, it may also manufacture a military confrontation with the United States to distract popular discon-tent at home with a foreign threat. The dispute over the South China Sea would do nicely.
Japan, which is starting a ma-jor military build-up after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fi nally re-moved the anti-war Article 9 from the constitution in March 2017, will be at America’s side in this confrontation, but its European allies may not. Trump’s pro-Putin posture has not gone down well in the EU, which worries about Rus-sia’s intentions, and his demands that Europe’s NATO members pay more of the alliance’s costs have not helped either.
The European Union, still in shock after Britain’s Brexit vote in 2016, has been further shaken by the near-win of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right, anti-EU Na-tional Front, in the May run-off of the French presidential elections. The spectre of EU collapse comes nearer, and Europe has no time for America’s Asian quarrels.
In the United States, the econo-my is still chugging along despite the stock-market crash of Novem-ber 2016. Trump’s big increase in the military budget, his huge expansion of infrastructure spending (with borrowed money) and the rise in the minimum wage have kept the machine turning over for the time being. The effect of declaring a trade war on the rest of the world is not yet being felt at home, but it will be.
And it’s only July 2017. Trump still has another three and a half years in the White House.
Gwynne Dyer is a United Kingdom-based independent journalist.
The Hill Times
OTTAWA—Now that the dust has settled in Cleveland follow-
ing the United States Republican Party National Convention, it is
time for the world to start bracing for the all-too-frightening prospect of Donald Trump actually becom-ing the next American president.
For Mexicans, this means they should start setting aside some money now to build that wall Trump insists he will install once elected.
During his acceptance speech last Thursday, Trump also set his sights on the NATO alliance, par-ticularly those countries that do not spend the arbitrarily assigned two per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on military budgets.
Trump has bombastically stated that such shirkers would not automatically be guaranteed U.S. military protection should he be occupying the Oval Offi ce next January.
In particular, Trump singled out the Baltic states—Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania—by not-ing that he would examine their current military contributions to NATO before committing to their collective defence. Trump’s state-ments fl y in the face of Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which guarantees a collective defence against outside aggression for all member nations, with no caveats regarding individual defence spending.
Canada should be particularly alarmed at the very real possibil-ity that this blowhard buffoon could soon be elected as com-mander-in-chief of the world’s largest military machine.
At present, Canada would be considered one of the shirkers in the NATO club, as we spend only about one per cent of our GDP on the Canadian Armed Forces. To match Trump’s demands, Canada would need to double its defence budget from $20 billion to $40 billion annually. While this comes as welcome music to the ears of the war-mongering Colonel Blimp Brigade, right-thinking Canadians will realize that this would mean forfeiting $20 billion from other current government services.
The additional massive ex-penditure would also in no way make Canada any safer. We are
blessed by geography to be sur-rounded on three sides by natural ocean-sized moats. Our single land border is with the U.S. and, given the comparative military strengths, that boundary will remain unchallenged until such time as a future U.S. administra-tion chooses to adjust it.
Regarding the Baltic states, Canada should also heed what Trump is spouting. As part of NATO’s ongoing propaganda campaign to demonize Russia, it was decided to stage a pre-emp-tive deterrent in the Baltic states. Contrary to a prior agreement with post-Soviet Russia, wherein non-indigenous NATO troops would not be based east of the German border, Canada will be part of a four-nation force leading the deployment of combat troops in the Baltic region.
As a sop to the Russians, these soldiers will be patrolling the Baltic borders on a permanent, rotational basis.
Russia has rightly denounced this new deployment as an unnec-essary provocation, since, as full NATO members, Latvia, Lithu-ania, and Estonia are all guaran-teed collective defence in the case that Russia would be suicidal enough to violate their borders.
That was of course the case until The Donald boasted that, as president, his U.S. military would be checking out defence bud-get receipts before picking and choosing which NATO members to protect.
The 4,000 troops sent by NATO to the Baltic states have been described as a tripwire force, with keen-eyed tactical analysts predicting they would not last 60 hours in full combat with Vladi-mir Putin’s Legion of Doom. Un-der Article 5 of the NATO treaty, that 60-hour window should have been enough time for the Good Old U.S.A. to unleash a full-sized can of whoop-ass on these land-crazy Ruskies, and this would result in a glorious Hollywood ending.
In a Trump world, how-ever, these shirkers in the Baltic states—which now includes an under-spending Canadian mili-tary contingent—can bet that the U.S. cavalry will not be riding in to save the day.
These are going to be very interesting times indeed.
Scott Taylor is editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine.
[email protected] Hill Times
A glimpse of a Trump presidency
In a Trump world, Canada’s Baltic force less protected
Let’s suppose it’s July 2017 and Trump has won the U.S. election. The policy shockwaves are hitting Canada, China, the EU, and Mexico hard.
The U.S. cavalry will not be riding in to save the day if the countries Trump calls NATO freeloaders don’t pay.
INSIDE DEFENCE U.S. ELECTION
GWYNNE DYER
SCOTT TAYLOR
With Trump elected president, China may manufacture a military confrontation with the United States to distract popular discontent at home with a foreign threat, predicts Gwynne Dyer. Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 201610PLAIN SPEAK JUSTICE
The prime minister soon has another important choice to
make. Justice Thomas Cromwell will be stepping down from the Supreme Court of Canada on Sept. 1 and will need to be replaced. This will be Justin Trudeau’s fi rst appointment to the highest court in the land.
Cromwell’s seat on the court by convention is designated as an Atlantic Canadian place. Who from the region will replace him? Will Newfoundland and Labrador fi nally get a representative on the court?
Since Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949 they have never had anyone on the top bench in the land. Sixty-seven years as part of the country and no one from the Rock has been deemed as qualifi ed for the role. While this omission hasn’t led to rioting in the streets or the premier fl ying fl ags at half-mast, it still a source of frustration to many.
Blood started to boil again last week in the East when a headline from the Globe and Mail screamed out, “Newfoundland to remain without a judge on Su-preme Court.” If Newfoundland-ers still got physical copies of the Globe, as hard copies of the paper aren’t delivered there any longer, the province’s litter boxes would have been well lined.
The Globe reported that “the Liberals have decided no one from the province fi ts its qualifi cations for the country’s highest court – and a lack of bilingual candidates appears to be the stumbling block.” The paper referenced that the Justice department said at least one judge on a lower court is functionally bilingual and six others are taking French lessons. According to Globe justice correspondent Sean Fine, despite the prime minister setting up a committee to identify someone and the province publicly advocating for a Newfoundlander or Labradorian on the court, no one fi ts the bill.
The only on-record comment being made by the federal government to date is that no appointment process has been announced yet. That is tepid response for many in Newfoundland and Labrador who feel this is a matter of fairness. The fairness argument is not likely to win many supporters outside of the province who will argue that the bilingualism requirement is a simple fact of life when seeking a higher-level federal appointment, be that as a judge or as director in a federal department.
While it may be a fact of life, should bilingualism or a lack thereof be the make-or-break requirement to sit on the court? This is more problematic if used as a roadblock in era where simultaneous translation is readily available and used by the parliamentarians who make the laws.
Look, I am not looking to start a language or cultural war.
Lord knows I wish my French were better. But when it comes to putting judges on the Supreme Court I suspect I am not alone in hoping for the appointment of a jurist with signifi cant legal experience, sound judgment, and a long record of success in his or her profession. Integrity and respect from various elements of the legal community would also be part of the pedigree.
What percentage of Supreme Court matters are heard or administered in French? Is it so statistically signifi cant that it
would impair a justice lacking bilingual capacity? Hopefully, if in fact “no appointment process” is truly underway, these matters will get addressed. Language and its nuances are important, but they shouldn’t be non-negotiable when it comes to who sits in judgment of us.
Newfoundland and Labrador has many top justices with long and positive records. They should not be dismissed for consideration for a position on the Supreme Court of Canada because they are lacking bilingualism.
Despite a backlash evocative of those who defended the Jim
Crow-era United States South, Green Party members recently voted in favour of a resolution calling on Ottawa to stop subsi-dizing racist land covenants. In August the Greens will make a fi nal decision on whether they support the principles underlying a half-century old Supreme Court of Canada decision outlawing discriminatory land-use policies.
Green Party member Corey Levine has put forward a resolu-
tion calling on the party to pres-sure the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s charitable status. The Independent Jewish Voices Canada activist crafted a motion criticizing the JNF’s “discrimination against non-Jews in Israel through its bylaws which prohibit the lease or sale of its lands to non-Jews.”
In response to this exercise in party democracy, B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs asked their sup-porters to write party leader Eliza-beth May about the motion, which is seen by critics to be anti-Semitic. The Jewish Defence League of Canada, a far-right group, said it would protest at the party’s August convention in Ottawa.
Backlash aside, the Greens’ JNF resolution affi rms a principle enunciated by the Supreme Court 60 years ago. Into the 1950s, re-strictive land covenants in many exclusive neighbourhoods and communities across Canada made it impossible for Jews, blacks,
Chinese, aboriginals, and other non-“whites” to buy property.
In 1948 Annie Noble decided to sell a cottage in the exclusive Beach O’ Pines subdivision on Lake Huron to Bernie Wolf, who was Jew-ish. During the sale, Wolf’s lawyer realized that the original deed for the property contained the follow-ing clause: “The lands and premises herein described shall never be sold, assigned, transferred, leased, rented or in any manner whatso-ever alienated to, and shall never be occupied or used in any manner whatsoever by any person of the Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood, it being the intention and purpose of the Grantor, to restrict the ownership, use, occupation and enjoyment of the said recreational development, including the lands and premises herein described, to persons of the white or Caucasian race.”
Noble and Wolf tried to get the court to declare the restriction invalid but they were opposed by the Beach O’ Pines Protective As-sociation and both a Toronto court and the Ontario Court of Appeal refused to invalidate the racist covenant. But Noble and Wolf pursued the case, with assistance from the Canadian Jewish Con-gress, to the Supreme Court of Canada. In a 6-to-1 decision, the highest court reversed the lower courts’ rulings and allowed Wolf to purchase the property.
The publicity surrounding the case prompted Ontario to pass a law voiding racist land covenants and in 2009 the federal govern-ment defi ned the Noble et al. v. Alley Supreme Court case “an event of national historic signifi -
cance” in the battle, according to a local MP, “for human rights and against discrimination on racial and religious grounds in Canada.”
Six decades after the Supreme Court delivered a blow to racist property covenants, 62 per cent of Green members have voted for a resolution calling on Ottawa to end its support for a charity that discriminates in land use abroad. An owner of about 13 per cent of Israel’s land, JNF bylaws and lease documents contain a restric-tive covenant stating its property will not be leased to non-Jews. A 1998 United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights report found it systemati-cally discriminated against Pales-tinian citizens of Israel (Arab Is-raelis) who make up a fi fth of the population. According to the UN report, JNF lands are “chartered to benefi t Jews exclusively,” which has led to an “institutionalized form of discrimination.” Echoing the UN, a 2015 U.S. State Depart-ment report detailing “institution-
al and societal discrimination” in Israel says JNF “statutes prohibit sale or lease of land to non-Jews.”
The report notes that in re-sponse to a 2005 attorney general ruling, the Israeli government “agreed to compensate the JNF for any land it leased to an Arab by transferring an equal amount of land from the Israel Lands Ad-ministration to the JNF.” But that doesn’t change the fact that the JNF’s bylaws are discriminatory.
Yet JNF Canada, which raised $29 million in 2014, is a registered charity. As such, it can provide tax credits for donations, mean-ing that part of its budget effec-tively comes from public coffers.
The Green Party should ignore the right-wing backlash and up-hold the principle that discrimina-tory land-use policies are wrong.
Yves Engler is the author of eight books. His latest is Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation.
[email protected] Hill Times
Supreme Court, like Parliament, can accommodate unilingual members
Greens should vote to revoke Jewish National Fund charitable status
Language and its nuances are important, but they shouldn’t be non-negotiable when it comes to who sits in judgment of us.
Ottawa needs to stop subsidizing discriminatory land covenants.
OPINION GREEN PARTY CONVENTION
TIM POWERS
B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs asked their supporters to write Green Party leader Elizabeth May, pictured in June, about the motion seeking to revoke the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s charitable status, which is seen by critics to be anti-Semitic. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
YVES ENGLER
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have to make his fi rst appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada after Justice Thomas Cromwell steps down in September. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
11THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
NEED TO KNOW U.S. ELECTION
OTTAWA—For the fi rst time in many months, Hillary
Clinton’s election campaign was infused with a burst of energy as she introduced running mate Tim Kaine.
Standing behind the Virginia senator during an appearance in Florida, Clinton seemed ecstatic, even relieved, to have the personable, politically astute Kaine on her team as she readies for an electoral battle with no known parameters or guideposts.
If it weren’t enough to have a totally unpredictable and free-form Republican standard-bearer
in Donald Trump, the Democrats headed into their convention in Philadelphia under the shadow of an email scandal over anti-Bernie Sanders bias, searing internal divisions, and hints of a stunning international scandal involving alleged Russian skulduggery to help Trump.
In this unfolding political mine-fi eld, it’s easy to see why Clinton would be happy to have an expe-rienced, centrist vice-presidential candidate by her side.
A former Virgina governor and successful mayor, Kaine has never lost an election. As the son of an ironworker, a longtime civil rights lawyer, a fl uent Spanish speaker, and a staunch Catholic, he should help Clinton shore up support among African-Americans, Latinos, and swing-state voters.
While labelled boring by some, his fi rst speech in Miami on Saturday as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate was so compelling that commentators were wondering what he could possibly do for an encore in his address to the Democratic convention. In fact, Kaine may be a better campaigner than Clinton, which could in time raise questions of a different order.
The choice of a centrist over a leftist fi rebrand like Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren of course disappointed the Democrats’ burgeoning progressive wing, which was particularly concerned over Kaine’s past support for free-trade deals and his wobbly position on abortion rights.
But it’s obvious that the Clinton team made the calcula-tion that those on the left have no-where else to go and will realize that staying home on Nov. 8 risks helping put Trump in offi ce.
Before the vice-presidential pick, Sanders had already endorsed Clinton. And he recognizes that stopping Trump will in the end be the overriding goal of his party.
Of Kaine, Sanders told CNN: “Tim is an extremely bright guy, a very nice guy. Are his political views different than mine? Yes, they are. He is more conservative than I am.
“But compared to Donald Trump, a guy who rejects science, doesn’t even believe that climate change is real, let alone that we have to take bold action to transform our energy system, a Donald Trump who wants to give
hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top two-tenths of one per cent, a Donald Trump who goes around the country insulting Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women, veterans, and African-Americans. Trust me, on—on his worst, worst, worst day, Tim Kaine is 100 times better than Donald Trump will ever be.”
Clinton needs all the help she can get. The combination of her so far ho-hum performance and the widespread dislike and distrust of her among U.S. voters has against all reasonable expectations provided an opening for Trump’s unprecedented presidential quest.
Rather than the expected attempt by Trump at the Repub-lican convention to broaden his support with a dose of mod-eration, the billionaire developer reinforced his extremist appeals to Americans’ fears, frustrations, and resentments with a dark vi-sion of the U.S. in decline, threat-ened by immigrants, criminals, terrorists, and cheating foreign governments.
Trump’s depiction of himself in Cleveland as an authoritarian law-and-order candidate and a kind of American Caesar who
could instantly (and magically) fi x the economic, social, and crime problems facing the U.S. was a shocking affront to America’s democratic traditions.
And then there’s his nightmar-ish vision of a country where mil-lions of would-be immigrants are being rounded up and deported, where a wall is being built along the Mexican border, where no one from a country seen by Trump as compromised by terrorism (read Muslims) is allowed into the United States, where support for the U.S.’s allies hinges on their fi nancial contributions to NATO, where U.S. trading partners are held up for ransom, and where civil rights take a back seat to police enforcement.
Most stunning of all, however, is the way this is all being debat-ed in the U.S. on an equal footing with the Democrats’ proposals to broaden anti-trust laws, increase the minimum wage, ease univer-sity graduates’ debt burdens, and other more or less pragmatic, gradualist approaches.
And while some Republicans such as columnist George Will and Arizona Senator Jeff Flake have said they can’t stomach Trump, it’s disturbing in the ex-treme to see how many GOP fi g-ures have set aside their qualms and consciences in the name of power at any cost.
Les Whittington is an Ottawa journalist and a regular contribu-tor to The Hill Times.
[email protected] Hill Time
OTTAWA—Watching the Re-publican National Convention
from Canada was like gazing at the ominous distant mountains of Mordor from a peaceful round doorway in Hobbiton.
The brew of hate and fear woven into grim nationalist sentiments was so potent that it got many Canadian hobbits worrying that this sunny Shire might one day have to defend itself from a Donald Trump-led Washington. How to prepare?
It would be a good start to reject the idea that all Americans, especial-ly all Republicans, are soulless foes.
Though orcish talk domi-nated the Cleveland presidential convention, it was reassuring to note that not every Republican who fi lled the fl oor of delegates thought and behaved like one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s orcs.
Jim Wallis, who for decades has been a voice of Christian evangelical social justice for America’s poorest people, wrote in his blog that he was receiving messages from inside the Republican convention.
They came, he said, from “friends who are Christian, con-servative, and Republican—feel-ing almost distraught about all three of those core commitments. One friend wrote me to say, ‘I am close to losing it. The spirit is so angry and hateful here.’”
The real danger is that Trump-ism could easily and quietly slip across the border, because it al-ready has something of a foothold.
Canada, too, is at risk of hav-ing “politics treated as entertain-ment; cynicism about the political process and public institutions,” wrote the CBC’s Aaron Wherry.
He also included, “a diminished media industry challenged to hold politicians to account; a political system that seems unresponsive to the concerns of the public; a politi-cal culture that rewards polariza-tion and extremes [and] the spectre of exaggerated threats.”
Not exclusive to the Trump campaign, the politics of fear have to be challenged wherever they are found.
But it was an especially dark cloud that spread out from Cleve-land following the Republican convention. Trump’s reality-TV marketing genius felt poised to defeat the stiff and pedantically rational Hillary Clinton. Clin-ton’s inapproachability factor
remained stuck in the red zone. Even Michael Moore believed that Trump could win because Hillary Clinton could be beaten.
Back in Hobbiton, it seemed like a case of “Mount Doom, here we come”—until Tim Kaine showed up on Saturday, speaking the Span-ish he learned while volunteering with the Jesuits in Honduras.
As Hillary Clinton’s newly an-nounced running mate, Kaine did in his Miami speech what Clinton rarely accomplishes on her own. He got the crowd chanting, “Hill-ary! Hillary!”
So likeable is the senator from Virginia that, in a speech impressive for its comfortable and believable story telling, his good vibes quickly rubbed off on his ticket mate. Standing slightly behind him on his right, she even appeared to grow more relaxed and approachable as he spoke.
Clinton, in her introduction of Kaine, had to present him not only as an accomplished potential vice president but also as a man who could make a competent president. There may be more truth in that than even Clinton might care to admit.
Of course not every Democrat thinks that Kaine is the saviour of all things wholesome and civilized.
Two hours before Kaine gave his Miami speech the “Bernie Del-egates Network” began sending out emails, calling Kaine “a loyal servant of oligarchy.”
But anyone one who would take a gap year from Harvard law
school to teach trades like carpen-try and iron working in Honduras, as Kaine did, is a cut above the ordinary rich man’s lap dog.
Honduras is now one of the most dangerous countries in the world. When Kaine worked there in the 1980s it was caught up in the militarization fostered by the Ronald Reagan White House’s war against the neighbouring Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Today, more than 60 per cent of the population lives in poverty and violence reigns.
No, Kaine may not be the dream vice-president every Sanders supporter is looking for. Politically, he’s not Elizabeth War-ren, but he brings a sea change of approachability to the Demo-cratic ticket.
Hillary Clinton’s likeability reserve was running on near empty before Kaine arrived. Overnight it has improved to the degree that she
may now be able to beat the Trump brand of slick negative marketing.
Marketing almost always outsells rationality and logic. That is why we eat so much junk food and buy so many things we don’t need. But in politics, as elsewhere, marketing also has its limits. There are times when a crappy product can’t be sold, no matter how slick the marketing.
The likable and comfortable story telling in English and Span-ish that Tim Kaine has brought to the race can help overtake the mar-keting of Trump’s crappy product.
In the meantime Canadian hobbits have just cause to worry and hope—to worry that Trump might get elected, and to hope that he doesn’t.
Jim Creskey is the founding editor and the publisher of The Hill Times.
[email protected] Hill Times
Americans will fi nd out Nov. 8 what kind of country they have
A Tolkienesque look at the U.S. election
Clinton’s running-mate announcement gave her campaign a much-needed energy burst.
It felt like ‘Mount Doom, here we come,’ after last week’s Republican convention. But then there was a ray of sunlight.
OPINION TIM KAINE
JIM CRESKEY
LES WHITTINGTON
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine, pictured in June. Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Education
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 201612OPINION CONSULAR AFFAIRS
OTTAWA—When Khaled Al-Qazzaz decided in 2005 to
go back to Egypt with his wife, Sarah Attia, little did he antici-pate the dire circumstances he would encounter.
A few years later, Egypt elect-ed its fi rst democratic govern-ment in its history, highlighting a fi tting end to months of turmoil. Mr. Al-Qazzaz became a foreign policy adviser to the new presi-dent, Mohamed Morsi.
Morsi carried the hopes of millions of Canadians and others around the world that this lynch-pin country of the Middle East was leading the way for others in the region towards a brighter
future. The possibility of a Middle Eastern political “spring” was the hope of many.
The spring was a short one, as the newly elected government was overtaken by its own haste, inexperience, and expectations, generating conditions in which the military was able to return to power. Since then, the country is mired in an Egyptian winter of death, destruction, and decay.
President Morsi, along with many of his aides and support-ers including Mr. Al-Qazzaz, was detained. Mr. Morsi remains imprisoned.
Mr. Al-Qazzaz was imprisoned for more than 500 days, but ongo-ing international support and rep-resentation led to his release in January last year. Since then, he has been prevented from leaving Egypt and returning to Canada, where he is a landed immigrant.
Mr. Al-Qazzaz’s situation is not unique. There are tens of thousands of Canadian residents and citizens who return to their countries of birth for a variety of understandable reasons.
In recent weeks such Cana-dians have encountered serious diffi culties. In Bangladesh, a student from a Canadian univer-sity remains detained apparently
for being an innocent victim of a horrifi c murderous attack. A Canadian father has tried to hide in Iran in order to escape the consequences of abducting his four children. And a Canadian academic with Iranian citizenship is detained by security offi cials for unexplained reasons.
Unlike historical migra-tions to Canada that involved a one-way trip and the ending of familial and other connec-tions, people born abroad but living in Canada now have more chance to stay connected with their homelands. Other migra-tory countries face a similar situation. It is a common aspect of modern migration with, for many, a former life only several air-hours away, or seconds for direct communications.
Unfortunately, affected govern-ments have had trouble adjusting, and international law even more so, to these increasingly common aspects of international travel.
Many countries are not willing to accept Canada has a legitimate interest in ensuring such Cana-dians (or foreign-born residents) are treated in accordance with international norms and stan-dards. Equally troubling is that many countries are unwilling to
recognize the Canadian citizen-ship of those who hold it.
International law is weak to non-existent in this area. While there is an international conven-tion on the provision of consular services, its weak provisions offer very little comfort in many of these situations.
Equally, there are no spe-cifi c international agreements or understanding outside of broad international human rights law of the right of Canada and other migratory-destination countries to offer protection to persons who are not citizens.
Canada does not help itself in these matters. There is a reluc-tance to intervene in cases when a Canadian resident encounters serious diffi culty in a foreign country. Usually in response, min-isters and offi cials state: “There are limits to what any country can do for individuals who are not citizens of that country.” But they piously iterate that “the govern-ment continues to monitor the situation closely.”
In fact, there are no limits to what a country can try to do to assist such persons. Whether the other country will accept such efforts by Canada is an entirely separate issue; but not to try is
an abdication of an appropriate responsibility.
Complicating assistance in such cases is the continuing existence of the historical convention of “Crown prerogative.” It provides discretion to the government for the denial of assistance to even Canadian citizens in diffi culty overseas.
There were indications earlier this year that the Trudeau govern-ment might be willing to disavow the use of this discretion, but so far noth-ing specifi c has been announced.
The continued existence of this discretion undermines the ability of the government to provide con-sular services generally. It is par-ticularly ironic that the discretion continues even though Canadians specifi cally pay for such services to the tune of approximately $100 million annually. This is a serious anomaly since the government collects monies for a service it ad-mits to no compulsion to provide.
Gar Pardy is retired from the Canadian foreign service, where he was a director general of the consular affairs bureau, among other roles. His recently published book, Afterwords: From a Foreign Service Odyssey, is available from Amazon and Books on Beechwood.
[email protected] Hill Times
When a Canadian is not a CanadianCanada needs a better playbook to help residents and citizens in trouble abroad.
GAR PARDY
Clockwise from top: Canadian permanent resident Khaled Al-Qazzaz is living in Egypt with his wife and family because he has been barred from fl ying to Canada. Iranian-Canadian Saren Azer is wanted by Interpol for abducting his four Canadian-born children. Canadian academic Homa Hoodfar is detained in Iran under unknown charges. Photos courtesy of freekhaledalqazzaz.com, Interpol, and Amanda Ghahremani
Parliamentary Secretary to the Foreign Minister Omar Alghabra is the Trudeau government’s point man on consular affairs. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
13THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
NEWS TRADE
The annual report is the product of a treaty signed between Canada and Colom-bia in 2010 after human rights groups pro-tested the signing of a free trade agreement between the two countries, citing persistent human rights concerns in Colombia includ-ing violence against journalists, indigenous groups, labour activists, and others.
The treaty on the human rights reports, which at the time was the initiative of then-Liberal trade critic and current Treasury Board President Scott Brison (Kings-Hants, N.S.), requires each country to make public a report each year on “the effect of measures taken” under the trade agreement between the two on human rights.
For the fi rst time, the report this year included a lengthy outline of human rights issues in Colombia raised by groups who made submissions to or were consulted by the government, ranging from death threats made against indigenous and social justice activists to barriers to unionization and child labour.
However, the report concludes that “despite concerns raised regarding the human rights situation in Colombia, as in past years, it has not been possible to draw a direct link between the tariff reductions taken under the [Canada-Colombia free trade agreement] and human rights.”
By failing to make that leap, Canada has missed an opportunity to take a lead role in the world on the subject of human rights, said Mark Rowlinson, who works with the United Steelworkers Union in Canada.
“If we’re going to take a leadership role in being a voice for human rights in the world, it seems to be me these trade agreements are one of the very main levers that we have in order to set a standard for human rights,” he said.
The report also fell short by failing to include benchmarks for improvement of human rights in Colombia, he said.
‘First time’ report actually tackles rights: Amnesty
Under the Conservatives, critics accused the government of using a fairly narrow interpretation of what “the effect of measures taken” under the trade agreement meant, investigating only whether changes in import tariffs had had a direct impact on human right is Colombia. Each year, the report concluded that those changes had not, despite continuing human rights violations in the country that at times were allegedly linked to Canadian companies operating there.
This year’s report, the fi rst tabled by the Liberal government, made the same conclusion, though it did list many of the concerns raised around human rights in Colombia.
“This is a human rights report and for the fi rst time we’re seeing some content about human rights in Colombia,” said Kathy Price, a human rights campaigner for Amnesty International.
Reports from previous years did briefl y mention human rights concerns such as child labour, before noting that they pre-dated the trade agreement.
However, “the elephant in the room re-mains the issue of investment,” particularly in the resource-extraction sector, said Ms. Price.
The report was released weeks after a report by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and a pair of Colom-bian human rights organizations alleging that Toronto-based oil company Pacifi c Exploration & Production Corp. and its contractors in Colombia were involved in using pressure tactics, including the threat of termination, to discourage employees from unionizing.
Pacifi c Exploration “completely and categorically disagree[s] with the report’s fi ndings,” spokesperson Melissa Mackie wrote in an emailed statement.
The government report’s only men-tion of Pacifi c Exploration is a description of a greenhouse gas emissions reduction program the company implemented in partnership with Canada’s government.
The report acknowledges that the Canada-Colombia free trade deal, which was implemented in 2011, “provides greater stability and predictability for Canadian exporters, service providers, and investors,” particularly those in the mining, oil and gas, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors.
The report acknowledges concerns raised by groups such as the United
Steelworkers and Amnesty International about human rights violations connected to mining projects, often including indigenous people being forcibly cleared from land used for those projects by paramilitary groups.
The report also summarized efforts by the government and partners in the extractive industry to address and prevent human rights issues connected to the sector, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
However, the human rights concerns made in submissions to the government fall outside the scope of the report, it says, as they are connected to general economic trends or other factors that were not caused by the trade deal.
The narrow language of the treaty should either be expanded to allow for a more meaningful report, or the government should do a separate and more comprehensive assessment of its own on human rights in Colombia and table it during a session of Parliament, instead of “on a sleepy day in July when no one is really around in Ottawa,” said Mr. Rowlinson.
Trade committee has next moveAfter the treaty requiring the annual
report was signed in 2010, Mr. Brison told the CBC that the report would allow a parliamentary committee to examine the human rights situation in Colombia each year, including by calling witnesses to testify.
However, the House Trade Committee did so only once, in 2012.
This year’s report will be sent to the trade committee, Global Affairs Canada confi rmed, but as has always been the case, it will be up to the committee to decide whether to begin a study on it.
NDP MP Tracey Ramsey (Essex, Ont.), a committee member and her party’s trade critic, will press for the committee to un-dertake that study, according to an emailed statement from her offi ce.
Liberal MP Mark Eyking (Sydney, N.S.), the committee chair, said the committee would be busy going forward studying the CETA trade deal with the European Union and possibly something related to the Brexit, but that it would decide during a fall planning meeting whether to undertake a study on the Colombia report.
Liberals’ expanded Colombia human rights report still falls short: Rights advocatesUnscrutinized mining and oil investments remain the ‘elephant in the room’, says critic.
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Liberal MP Mark Eyking and other members of the House Trade Committee will have to decide whether to undertake a study of this year’s report on human rights in Colombia in the fall. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 201614OPINION FOREIGN AID REVIEW
To mark its 20th anniversary, artists from India to Nigeria
recently revamped the Spice Girls’ world-famous Wannabe video. What they “really, really want” this time around is an end to violence against women.
I really, really want that too.Because I know that our world
continues to be an unequal, dan-gerous, and even deadly place for women.
Women like Qandeel Baloch, a social media sensation in Paki-stan who was allegedly killed by her brother earlier this month out of a sick sense of honour. Women like Berta Cáceres, who was gunned down in her own home a few months back for leading her indigenous community in peace-
ful protests to defend their land. Women like Claudette Osborne, whose name didn’t even make the headlines when she went missing back in 2008, with news reports attributing her disappearance to her “lifestyle,” not to the pandemic of violence against Aboriginal women and girls in our country.
It is estimated that globally one out of three women will be physically or sexually assaulted in her lifetime. In some countries, rates of violence against women are so high that we have a term for it: femicide. Women around the world continue to be afraid to say no to sex, for fear of being shamed, beaten, or even killed.
Access to birth control is often limited, yet seeking an abortion is diffi cult, stigmatized, and expen-sive. And in some countries, like El Salvador, it is fl at out illegal—even to save a woman’s life. The world over, unsafe abortions kill as many 68,000 women a year. And if they survive back-alley abortions, women can end up criminalized, with up to a life sen-tence for exercising control over their own bodies. Like 21-year-old Isabel Hernandez, jailed for 30 years under El Salvador’s draco-nian anti-abortion law.
I know from my work that this violence is not only a major cause of death, ill health, and disabil-ity; it also blocks opportunities
for women and girls to escape poverty. It limits their control over their own bodies and the choices they can make. It impedes their access to education, making it harder to earn a living, become independent, and participate in public life.
But I also know Canada, led by a feminist prime minister, has an opportunity to become a global leader on women’s rights and gender equality, including by helping put an end to violence against women.
Canada is in the midst of reviewing its international as-sistance framework, with a view to putting women’s rights at the heart of our aid agenda. With de-cisive action and investment, Can-ada can become a frontrunner in pioneering a feminist approach to development, joining only a small handful of other countries that have pledged to take this on.
A feminist approach is fun-damentally new. It’s about being bold in our ambition to fi nally see real progress on women’s rights. It’s about rethinking how we work and whom we work with. It’s about walking the talk and ensuring that our fi nancial commitments match our level of ambition.
Global Affairs should seize this game-changing moment to scale up its commitment to wom-
en’s rights and gender equality. It can do so by ensuring that 20 per cent of Canadian aid dollars is dedicated to tackling the struc-tural causes of inequality and discrimination against women.
Looking beyond aid, Canada can use diplomacy to advance its feminist agenda and stop the rise of violence against women. As an example, it can call on the UN Se-curity Council to put in place an immediate embargo on the sale of arms to South Sudan, a country where women are already facing terrifyingly high levels of vio-lence and rape.
The government’s recent decision to reinstate funding for women’s rights organizations doing advocacy work here at home was a welcome relief, after years of defunding and intimida-tion. The logical next step would be to ensure that more of our aid dollars go to women’s rights organizations doing frontline work in the Global South, just like the feminist organizations in El Salvador that are mobiliz-ing to defeat a motion that would increase jail sentences for women like Isabel Hernandez.
An end to violence against women: isn’t that what we all re-ally, really want?
Julie Delahanty is the execu-tive director of Oxfam Canada.
The Hill Times
In the Canadian government’s current review of international
assistance, there is a great deal of discussion on the role that the private sector can play in global develop-ment. This review is taking place in the context of the United Nations’ recently launched Sustainable Development Goals, which correctly recognize that the private sector must be involved in order to create the meaningful economic and social development required to end poverty.
Of note for the government in this regard is whether our inter-national assistance should engage with Canadian mining companies. The previous Conservative govern-
ment undertook pilot projects that saw Canadian aid funding go to projects by non-governmental or-ganizations that also received con-tributions from Canadian mining companies. For example, in Ghana the Canadian government provided funding to a World University Service of Canada project that Rio Tinto contributed to as well.
These projects were controver-sial, to be sure. Many civil society organizations attacked them as Canadian aid money being spent on projects in the service of con-troversial companies.
However, seemingly lost in this debate was much discussion of the actual merits of any of the projects in question, and whether they were an effective use of scarce aid dollars. Their proponents largely seemed content that aid was involving the private sector at all, and the actual outcomes of the projects seemed of secondary concern. Their opponents, on the other hand, seemed unwilling to ever consider whether real de-velopment and poverty reduction could result from engaging with the mining sector.
It is time that Canada becomes more sophisticated in its aid work that partners with the mining sec-tor, and other parts of the private sector for that matter as well. We need to move past the question of whether or not Canadian aid
should work with private sector partners, to deciding under what conditions this should happen, and with which companies.
The question to be answered when a new project of any kind is proposed is whether it will lead to meaningful economic and social development as compared to other projects. Put another way: does this create the most impact per aid dollar?
In some cases this may mean that working with a Canadian min-ing company may actually result in an effective aid project. With mining historically contributing so little to real development in coun-tries in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, this actually means the opportunity to improve both gover-nance and the economic impacts of mining operations is large.
This also means that Canadian aid money could at times be used to work with non-Canadian com-panies, again, if it will lead to more meaningful development than other projects being considered by Global Affairs Canada. Doing so would also help ensure and signal that we are moving away from “tied aid” once and for all.
In other cases, however, work-ing with the mining sector may not be a suitable development strategy for particular countries. Other sectors and other companies will simply offer far greater opportuni-
ties to leverage the private sector for development. In these cases, no level of Canadian mining presence in the country should bias where our aid money goes.
What is particularly clear, though, is that Canadian interna-tional assistance should not be used for any sort of project that is basically a philanthropic commu-nity investment program. It is the responsibility of governments to provide infrastructure and public services, and neither Canadian mining companies, nor NGOs, should be taking that place.
Canadian mining companies do not have providing social services and building community centres as their core competency. Having a mining company donate to a local soccer league or open a health clinic is hardly harnessing the pri-vate sector for development.
Instead, if working with mining, Canadian aid should focus on how to leverage the most meaningful potential impacts of private sector activity, including skills training, technology transfer, local purchas-ing, and shared infrastructure. It is through these avenues that countries including South Korea and China leveraged incoming for-eign direct investment to develop,
and these examples provide more meaningful models of private sec-tor engagement to guide our aid.
In addition, Canada will be doing itself no favours by choosing mining companies as partners that engage in unethical behaviour such as tax evasion or those who refuse to adhere to the concept of free, prior, and informed consent.
No company is perfect, of course, and it can be very diffi cult to judge allegations against mining compa-nies for their actions in remote areas overseas. At the very least, how-ever, it seems reasonable to avoid working with companies that have consistently had allegations raised against them from credible observ-ers, when there is a large number to choose from that have never faced such consistent confl ict.
It’s time to raise the bar on how Canadian aid works with all parts of the private sector, and especially our mining sector. Our assistance should be guided by the goal of creating the most impact possible, and we need to chose our partners based on this above all else.
Jeff Geipel is the lead for Min-ing Shared Value, an initiative supported by Engineers Without Borders Canada.
The Hill Times
What we really, really want is an end to violence against women
If working with mining, Canadian aid needs to get more sophisticated
It’s not only a major cause of death, ill health, and disability; it also blocks opportunities for women and girls to escape poverty.
Rather than ask whether Canadian aid should work with the private sector, we need to decide under what conditions this should happen.
OPINION FOREIGN AID REVIEW
JEFF GEIPEL
JULIE DELAHANTY
International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, pictured in January, is reviewing Canada’s international assistance. It should be guided by the goal of creating the most impact possible, writes Jeff Geipel. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
15THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
ENVOYS
Irish Ambassador Ray Bassett is heading out after six years in his posting here in
Ottawa, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be back soon.
While Mr. Bassett is retiring from the foreign service after a career of over 40 years, he’s sticking around in the world of Canada-Ireland relations. He’s been asked to be a director for the D’Arcy McGee Institute, which promotes Irish-Canadian relations, and he also said he plans to stay involved with the Ireland Canada University Foundation, which fosters relationships between the two countries by offering scholarships and exchange programs.
He plans on travelling back and forth between Ireland and Canada to carry on with these roles, he told The Hill Times, but he also wants to ensure he gives his successor—Jim Kelly—some breathing room.
With friends and family in Canada, Mr. Bassett, like many Irish people, has many ties to Canada. Fostering diaspora relations is one way he was able to have a successful mandate, he said.
“When I came in, there was a lot of [people] in the government that their families had migrated generations ago from Ireland. At least I got a sympathetic ear, and I found access very easy and good, which a lot of people didn’t seem to do,” Mr. Bassett said.
When he fi rst arrived in 2010, he said his mandate was simple: Ireland was in dire fi nancial straits, and he needed to appeal to the government of Canada for support. His pleas did not fall on deaf ears.
“Canada was one of the most sympathetic countries in the world,” he said. “Particularly [the late Jim] Flaherty and [Jason] Kenney (Calgary Mindapore, Alta.). That ethnic link was a huge plus,” referring to the Irish background of both Conservative MPs. Mr. Bassett said Stephen Harper (Calgary Heritage, Alta.) and Mr. Flaherty were strong advocates for Ireland at the International Monetary Fund, and that Mr. Kenney worked hard to increase the number of Irish youth coming to Canada under the Working Holiday Program, which allows Irish citizens under 35 to work or vacation in Canada, and vice versa.
He said that the current government is probably “a better refl ection of real Canada” in terms of ethnic background, but that Irish roots can still be found.
Mr. Bassett is actually a friend of Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna’s (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) father, John McKenna. The two of them went to school together in Ireland, with Mr. McKenna a few years ahead of Mr. Bassett. But, Mr. McKenna is part of the Irish Canadian Club in Hamilton, where he lives, and so the two men met before Ms. McKenna even entered the Canadian political scene.
Speaking of Irish-Canadians, Canada’s ambassador to Ireland, Kevin Vickers, is of entirely Irish descent as well.
Mr. Bassett said when he fi rst arrived in Ottawa, he received a summons from the offi ce of the sergeant-at-arms.
“So I was summoned up to meet the
Queen’s representative for rooting out treason. He came in the room and said ‘we’re going to be friends.’ And you know the size of Kevin? And we’ve been friends for about six years,” he said. The pair used to get tea or a beer about once a month while they were both in Ottawa, and Mr. Bassett said he’ll certainly be seeing Mr. Vickers once he gets back to Dublin.
Of the kerfuffl e that Mr. Vickers was involved in, in which he manhandled a protester at a ceremony in Dublin last May, Mr. Bassett shrugged and said, “Kevin is Kevin. And we love him.”
He said Mr. Vickers is loved in Ireland, and that even the protester that Mr. Vickers tackled to the ground said he had no prob-lem with Mr. Vickers, whom Mr. Bassett referred to using his fi rst name.
“Kevin is very charming.”Mr. Bassett said he has worked with politi-
cians his entire life, and the secret to getting their attention and their ear is to go local.
“All politics is local,” he said. “So politicians and ministers tend to be much more amenable and accessible, if you go to their own area.”
He said he did a lot of travelling around the country during his six years here, visiting all 10 provinces. His favourite, however, is P.E.I. Perhaps it reminds him of home.
Mr. Bassett will also be passing on the position of dean of the European Group—which includes a broader range of countries than just the European Union—to Armenian Ambassador Armen Yeganian. The dean of the group is always the ambassador who has been posted here the longest.
If you want to wish Mr. Bassett farewell before he leaves Ottawa, you had better do
it before August 12. He’ll be stopping in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on his way back, where he’ll be staying for a few days to say goodbye to friends there as well.
[email protected]@chels_nash
DIPLOMATIC CIRCLESBY CHELSEA NASH
Outgoing Irish ambassador not done
with Canada yet Ray Bassett, Ireland’s outgoing ambassador, says to get the ear of the government, you’ve got to go local. The Hill Times photograph by Chelsea Nash
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BIOTECHNOLOGY & LIFE SCIENCES
POLICY BRIEFING
PUBLICATION DATE: September 7, 2016 BOOKING DEADLINE: September 2, 2016
In this public policy briefing, The Hill Times will explore federal efforts to encourage countries to allow grain
imports to contain trace amounts of genetically modified products not approved in the importing country.
Now that Health Canada has approved genetically modified salmon as safe for consumption, we’ll check in on the agriculture minister’s request that the House Agriculture Committee “explore what steps should be taken to best inform the public about new products involving genetically modified animals.”
We’ll also examine the implications of an out-of-court settlement earlier this year between an Ottawa hospital and a global firm on patenting human genes.
BE A PART OF THIS IMPORTANT POLICY BRIEFING.
The hill Times, Wednesday, JUly 27, 201616
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HTwork.caEngineers Canada provides national support and leadership to the engineering profession on behalf of its members, to promote and maintain the integrity, honour and interests of the profession.
CAREER OPPORTUNITY
PRACTICE LEAD, GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
Engineers Canada fosters a work environment that challenges and empowers employees, promotes learning, teamwork and innovation, and recognizes achievement. Employees aspire to a high-performance culture that is focused on results and combines collaboration and clear direction with scope for autonomy.
Engineers Canada invites applications for the position of Practice Lead, Government Relations. The Practice Lead, Government Relations conducts research, manages projects, monitors and reports on issues of concern, and develops the government relations portfolio. Further, the Practice Lead takes a collaborative approach to implementing actions and activities which promote positive image and outcomes for the profession.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES• Plansandmanagesgovernmentrelationsandpolitical
outreach strategy. • RaisestheprofileoftheengineeringprofessionwithMembers
of Parliament, government, and other stakeholders.• Conductsresearchanddraftsreportsongovernmentand
stakeholder activities.• Identifies,monitorsandevaluateslegislationandregulatory
developments regarding issues of concern to the profession.• Contributestothedevelopmentofdocuments,keymessaging,
letters, social media content, and other collateral required for government relations and public affairs activities.
• Plansandcoordinatesvariousgovernmentrelationsandpublic affairs meetings and events.
• Conductsresearch,managesprojects,anddevelopschargesfor committees and work groups related to this practice area and engages committees in achieving these charges.
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE• Universitydegreeinpoliticalscience,publicadministration,or
related discipline. • Fiveyearsofexperienceinapolicy-relatedpositioninthefederal
government, a government relations position in a professional association,orasimilarpositioninaconstituencyoffice.
• Experienceinidentifying,monitoringandevaluatinggovern-ment programs, projects, and services.
• Exceptionalinterpersonalskillswiththeabilitytobuildrelation-ships and communicate effectively with and influence others.
• Demonstratesorganizationalability,problem-solvingskills,and commitment to continuous improvement.
• Showsinitiativeandactsinaproactivemanner.• Teamplayerwithapositiveattitudeandsolutions-focused
orientation.• ProficientintheuseofMicrosoftOfficeapplicationsand
internet resources.• Proficientintheuseofprojectmanagementprinciples,
practices, and tools.• Experienceworkingwiththewidediversityofcultureswithin
the workforce and the community in general and a proven abilitytobuildcredibilityinternallyandexternally.
• FluencyinEnglishandFrenchisrequired.
Qualified candidates are invited to submit a cover letter and resume by email, no later than July 29, 2016 to [email protected].
Policy and Government Relations Communications Coordinator
Manager, Government Relations
Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) is the national policy, lobbying and promotional organization representing Canada’s farmers living on more than 12,500 dairy farms. We are currently seeking a Manager, Government Relations to join our team based in Ottawa.
As Manager, Government Relations, you will be accountable for organizing and providing comprehensive, timely and professional advice and support in government relations to members, senior management, staff and stakeholders across DFC. This includes the development and execution of Government Relations plans and tactics.
Reporting to the Director of Communications and Government Relations, you will:
• Advise on government relations strategy and tactics.
• Attend management and other meetings across DFC as required to keep abreast of issues that may have government relations-related implications. Develop a comprehensive understanding of DFC’s programs, objectives and issues in order to provide value added and relevant government relations advice and support.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify their government relations priorities and needs.
• Develop appropriate government relations strategies and plans that are aligned with the stakeholders’ needs and expectations.
• Monitor and analyse parliamentary and political developments, at the federal and provincial levels, that could potentially affect the interests of DFC and its members. Prepare regular reports on trends and developments for the Board of Directors and senior management.
• Develop and maintain appropriate on-going working relationships with staff in MP and Senators offices.
You’re an ideal candidate if you hold a degree in political science, public relations or other related field, combined with 5 to 10 years of professional experience in government relations, including experience on the Hill. Knowledge of the Canadian political system is a must, combined with excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, in French and English. As the in-house lobbyist, you must ensure DFC complies with the Lobbyist Code of Conduct and ensure all reporting requirements are met. You must also be client service oriented and able to handle multiple issues under time and resource pressures.
This is a full-time permanent position, which offers excellent benefits and a competitive salary. If you’re interested in joining the DFC team, please send your resume via e-mail to [email protected] prior to 4 p.m. on June 18, 2014.
We thank all candidates for their interest, however only selected candidates will be contacted.
We are currently seeking a Policy and Government Relations Communications Coordinator for a one-year term. Working out of our Ottawa office, the Coordinator is responsible for designing, reviewing, correcting and updating various policy and government relations materials. Artistic
flair, a keen eye and graphic design skills must be at the forefront when responding to in-house needs for communication materials. He/She also assists the Manager of Government Relations with the monitoring of parliamentary and political developments, lobby efforts and communications with politicians.
As such, while reporting to the Assistant Director of Policy Communications, you will:• Support the development and implementation of internal and external communications pertaining to
policy matters and government relations activities. This includes, but is not limited to: press releases, statements, blogs, backgrounders and factsheets;
• Keep abreast of all matters that may have communications-related implications for policy and government relations, as well as assisting with the on-going management of the Crisis Communication Protocol;
• Participating in the organization of events and preparation of related communication material;• Take the lead on graphic design activities, identify needs for visuals within policy and government
relations materials and ensure said needs are fulfilled;• Draft, edit or review articles, website content, presentations or other documents, ensuring content is
accurate, tone is consistent and messages are conveyed properly;• Provide overall support for DFC Communications activities as required.
This is a full-time position. Occasional travel and/or evenings and weekends may be required.
Anticipated start date: August 29, 2016.
The ideal candidate holds a degree in Communications, Public relations, Political science or other related field, combined with 3 to 5 years relevant experience. Proficiency in the development of visuals/graphic design is essential, along with advanced knowledge of software such as MS PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. He/She must be fluently bilingual, as you will be required to draft and proofread materials in both official languages. Knowledge of the Canadian political system and its actors is also necessary. Experience within the dairy industry and/or agriculture sector is an important asset.
Think you’re up to the challenge and want to join a dynamic team? Then please forward your resume and cover letter by e-mail to [email protected] prior to 16h00 on August 2nd, 2016.
We thank all candidates for their interest. However, only selected candidates will be contacted.
17THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
FEATURE POLITICAL STAFFERS
Conservative MP Kellie Leitch was fi rst to enter the Conser-
vative leadership race, having fi led her registration papers with the party on April 6, and the team of volunteers behind the former minister’s “exploratory commit-tee” so far include a number of well-known conservative cam-paign organizers.
“We’re getting very strong indications,” said Sander Grieve, co-chair of Ms. Leitch’s campaign exploratory committee, speaking with Hill Climbers last week.
“It’s not easy to raise this amount of money [to run a leader-ship campaign] but we’re having very good traction, we’re getting some great uptake of organizers, getting a campaign manager like Nick [Kouvalis] lined up is pretty extraordinary, to get a fundrais-ing chair with the credentials of Andy Pringle is pretty amazing,” he said.
Mr. Grieve said Ms. Leitch’s leadership exploratory commit-tee is helping to test the waters among party membership, raising money and selling memberships “to see if we could set up a win-ning campaign team.”
Ms. Leitch was elected as the MP for Simcoe-Grey, Ont. for the fi rst time in 2011 with roughly 49.4 per cent support and was re-elected last fall after garnering 46.6 per cent of the vote.
“The exploratory committee is due to report back to her and then we’ll see what she wants to do from there,” said Mr. Grieve, adding a fi nal announcement is likely in early fall.
Mr. Grieve has been a partner at Bennett Jones LLP in Toronto since early 2013, focused on pub-lic market fi nances, mergers, and acquisitions, and also teaches a course at Western University.
A former Hill staffer in the 1990s, Mr. Grieve has worked for then-Progressive Conservative
ministers Barbara McDougall and Michael Wilson, and in 1993 was the Eastern Ontario chair for Jean Charest’s bid to be-come leader of the Progressive Conservative party, and prime minister of Canada, following Brian Mulroney’s resignation. Ul-timately, Kim Campbell won that race while Mr. Charest was made deputy prime minister.
Mr. Grieve was also commu-nications director to Hugh Segal in 1998, when the now former Conservative senator made a bid for leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative party, ultimately losing to Joe Clark. He also previously did communica-tions and policy work for Con-servative fi nance minister Jim Flaherty during his 2002 cam-paign for Ontario PC leadership (which former premier Ernie Eves ultimately won).
Mr. Grieve is a former part-ner with Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP and said he fi rst met Ms. Leitch when both were study-ing for undergraduate degrees at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. During the 2015 campaign, he said he helped out Ms. Leitch as a volunteer, knocking on doors in her riding.
Dany Renauld is the other committee co-chair for Ms. Leitch’s leadership bid. Mr. Renauld is another former Cha-rest staffer and was previously vice-president for Quebec for the federal Progressive Conservative Party, which merged with the Ca-nadian Alliance Party in late 2003 to form today’s federal Conserva-tive Party. Mr. Renauld was also previously part of the team that supported Peter MacKay’s suc-cessful 2003 campaign to become leader of the Progressive Con-servative party. He is currently co-president of Quebec-based marketing and advertising fi rm, Brad.
Nick Kouvalis is volunteering as campaign manager for Ms. Leitch. Mr. Kouvalis is currently a principal at Campaign Research and is a well-known conservative campaigner.
Back in 2012, Campaign Re-search was censured by the Mar-keting Research and Intelligence Association over complaints over phone calls in the riding of Mont Royal, Que. which incorrectly implied now former Liberal MP Irwin Cotler was about to retire. Mr. Cotler did not run for re-elec-tion in 2015.
Mr. Kouvalis was chief strate-gist for John Tory’s 2014 Toronto mayoral campaign, and before that briefl y served as chief of staff to former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, after having served as Mr. Ford’s campaign manager during the 2010 Toronto mayoral race. He left that role in February 2011.
He’s campaigned for the Conservative Party federally, including helping out on the 2011 campaign and was campaign manager to former Conserva-tive candidate Rick Fuschi in Windsor-Tecumseh ahead of the 2006 federal election. Ultimately, former NDP MP Joe Comartin was re-elected. Mr. Kouvalis was also part of the 2013 provin-cial campaign team for Christy Clark’s B.C. Liberals.
Just over a week after Ms. Leitch registered to run as a Con-servative leadership candidate, Mr. Kouvalis was arrested and charged with drunk driving. He ultimately pled guilty after reach-ing a deal, which resulted in a fi ne of $1,690. The impaired driv-ing charge was also withdrawn as part of the deal. At the time, it was reported by multiple media outlets that Mr. Kouvalis had resigned as campaign manager for Ms. Leitch’s leadership bid as a result.
Mr. Kouvalis told Hill Climb-ers he took a roughly two-month leave from the campaign.
“It’s starting to look like we have the capacity to raise the funds and to sell membership for a full-on campaign and we’re all very excited about that,” said Mr. Kouvalis.
Conservative Party members will elect a new leader on May 27, 2017, and so far, along with Ms. Leitch, Conservative MPs Max-ime Bernier and Michael Chong are also offi cially in the race, with Conservative MPs Tony Clement and Deepak Obhrai also having offi cially announced their inten-tions to run for leadership.
Ms. Leitch represents an On-tario riding, similar to Mr. Chong and Mr. Clement, but asked about the crowded Ontario fi eld, Mr. Kouvalis said the exploratory committee is “very confi dent” overall and that “Ontario is going to be very strong for us,” not-ing that Ms. Leitch has “been an organizer in the party for over 30 years.”
“She grew up in Fort McMur-ray, [was] born in Manitoba, spent a lot of time down East going to school, she’s now in Simcoe-Grey [Ont.] and has been an organizer in Ontario for years—she’s got a
lot of reach, we’re feeling pretty good about that, we’re raising money from all parts of the coun-try,” he said, adding Ms. Leitch’s campaign already has about 300 people across the country inter-ested in helping out.
Mr. Grieve said in addition to her different regional roots, Ms. Leitch has roots in the medical community and through MBA connections, from studying a master of business administra-tion at Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., “so she crosses a lot of boundaries” and “draws on a lot of pools of people.”
“I expect it’ll get more interest-ing this fall as we roll out more details,” he said.
Andrew Pringle is fundraising chair for Ms. Leitch’s campaign. A former bond trader, Mr. Pringle is currently chair of the Toronto Police Services Board—which he’s been a member of since 2011—and is also chair of the Shaw Festival board of governors, chair of the Canadian Founda-tion for AIDS Research board of directors, and is a member of The Walrus’s board of directors.
Mr. Pringle is a former man-aging director and head of the global fi xed income department at RBC Capital Markets and from 2004 to 2008 was chair of the Ontario Progressive Conservative fund. He also previously served for a time as chief of staff to Mr. Tory as Ontario Progressive Conservative offi cial opposition leader after the 2007 provincial election.
Tannis Drysdale is lined up to serve as director of operations for the campaign, overseeing fi eld organizers. Ms. Drysdale has her own consulting fi rm and was most recently helping out conservatives in Manitoba, serving as director of operations for the Manitoba Progressive Conservative campaign ahead of the April 2016 provincial elec-tion. Ultimately, the PC party, led by Brian Pallister, was elected to government.
Before that, Ms. Drysdale was the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) director and northern Ontario organizer for Patrick Brown’s successful campaign to become Ontario Progressive Leader in 2015.
Mitch Wexler, a voter-data expert and a principal at Poli-train Consulting, is serving as a principal secretary for the cam-paign. A long-time conservative campaigner, Mr. Wexler has been actively involved with the Ontario PCs in the past, and has previ-
ously worked with Mr. Kouvalis overseeing data on Mr. Ford’s 2010 Toronto mayoral campaign, as well as on Mr. Tory’s 2014 may-oral campaign.
David Artemiw is director of policy and research to Ms. Leitch. He is a former Queen’s Park staffer, having started out work-ing in the PC offi cial opposition leader’s offi ce in 2005 as a policy adviser. He was part of the 2007 Ontario PC campaign team, and post-election, resumed working at the Ontario PC OLO as a senior adviser for legislative affairs and later became director of policy and research.
John Simcoe, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Toronto, is Ms. Leitch’s fi nancial agent. He’s also currently a chief fi nancial offi cer and vice chair of the Ontario PC Fund, according to his LinkedIn profi le. Fun fact: another John Simcoe, who was the fi rst Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, is the inspiration behind the name of Ms. Leitch’s federal riding of Simcoe-Grey, Ont.
Toronto lawyer Michael Wil-son, not the former minister, is part of Ms. Leitch’s exploratory committee, as is Michael Dia-mond, who previously worked on Rod Ford’s mayoral campaign in Toronto and with various pro-vincial progressive conservative parties and candidates, including in Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Ontario.
Jan Dymond, who’s currently vice president of public affairs for the Investment Funds Institute of Canada, is volunteering her time to Ms. Leitch’s leadership bid. Ms. Dymond was a political staffer in the 1980s, including working as a communications adviser to Ontario’s minister for citizenship and culture and before that in the Toronto ministerial offi ce of then Progressive Conservative federal employment and immigration minister Ron Atkey.
Andrew McGrath, former director of communications and issues management to Ms. Leitch as employment and social development and status of women minister, briefl y helped his former boss with media relations work for about a month starting in May ahead of the Conservative Party’s Vancouver convention at the end of the month.
Stephanie Gawur has also been helping out with event and communications work, and was by Ms. Leitch’s side during the party’s convention in May.
[email protected] Hill Times
The team behind Kellie Leitch’s leadership ‘exploratory committee’
HILL CLIMBERSBY LAURA RYCKEWAERT
Kellie Leitch has fi led her papers to run for Conservative Party leadership, and Hill Climbers has learned of a number of people behind her campaign.
Conservative MP Kellie Leitch addresses a crowd. Ms. Leitch is making a bid to become the next Conservative Party leader, which will be determined at the party’s national convention set for May 2017. The Hill Times Photograph by Jake Wright
Nick Kouvalis is campaign manager for Ms. Leitch’s leadership campaign. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn
Jan Dymond is part of the exploratory committee advising Ms. Leitch’s campaign. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn
Tannis Drysdale is lined up to serve as Ms. Leitch’s director of operations. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn
THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 201618FEATURE PARTIES
There was no shortage of beer, fries, or networking at Belgium’s national
day celebration on July 21 hosted by Belgian Ambassador Raoul Delcorde at his Rockcliffe home. And while beer and French fries might be what the country is known for (though the ambassador said we ought to be calling them Belgian fries), Mr. Delcorde was sure to point out in his remarks the other things that Belgium has contributed to the world. You know, like the multilateralism that occurs in its capital on a regular basis at the headquarters of the European Union and NATO.
“I hope that at the end of the day, you will not just remember my country for chocolate and diamonds, both of which are, of course, very precious,” Mr. Delcorde said, stressing that his country is also very advanced in both the petrochemical and satellite business.
But back to the beer and fries for a moment. You had your classic Belgian beers
available, being poured from bottles. Leffe Blonde and Duvel were the two drinks that Party Central chose for the evening. The frites were served in little paper trays bear-ing the colours of the Belgian fl ag, by a chip truck parked on the front lawn. In true European fashion, the fries were distrib-uted with sides of mayonnaise for dipping. André Plourde, dean of public affairs at Carleton University, said that fries and mayo were a bit of an acquired taste—but, of course, when in Rome, as they say.
While the fries were fi ne, those who were hoping for authentic Belgian frites would have been a smidge disappointed: they were compliments of McCain Foods, the Canadian frozen-food company (though it has operations in Belgium).
The rest of the food served that evening was of a Belgian theme, one of the servers told Party Central. You had your mussels, of course. Sushi, beef tartare, and goat cheese served on baby lettuce topped with basil were only some of the options on the menu. Guests were never left empty-handed, as the hors d’oeuvres were being offered by servers every few minutes.
That was likely helped by the fact that the guest list seemed to be kept relatively
small. It wasn’t a bad thing, either. The day in question was quite hot, and the back-yard of the Belgian residence not particu-larly large. Despite the small guest list, the event was very well attended by ambas-sadors, high commissioners, their spouses, and senior government offi cials. A few of the bureaucrats who had recently been ap-pointed heads of mission for Canada were in attendance.
Outgoing Chief of Protocol Angela Bog-dan was there to celebrate before her last day on the job last week. She is preparing to leave for her posting as consul general in Sydney, Australia, in less than three weeks.
Olivier Nicoloff, Canada’s newly an-nounced ambassador to Belgium, was present, and received well wishes from his counterpart Mr. Delcorde, and French Am-bassador Nicolas Chapuis, among others.
German Ambassador Werner Wnendt, Polish Ambassador Marcin Bosacki, Manfred Auster, minister-counsellor with the EU Delegation, and Armenian Ambas-sador Armen Yeganian made up just one of many groups mingling together over aperitifs. The new high commissioner of Sri Lanka, Ahmed Jawad, spent some time with Pakistani High Commissioner Tariq Azim Khan, and Burundian Chargé d’Affaires Emmanuel Niyonzima.
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Warm welcome for Bosnian foreign minister
The Hill Times
photographs by Sam
Garcia and Chelsea Nash
PARTY CENTRALB Y C H E L S E A N A S H
Small but mighty crowd at Belgian national day party
Belgian Ambassador Raoul Delcorde, left, wel-comes the ambassador of Angola, Edgar Martins, to his home. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia
Taipei Economic and Cultural Offi ce Representative Rong-chuan Wu with the Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Koviljka Spiric, at the reception hosted at the Bosnian Embassy on July 19.
Slovenian Ambassador Marjan Cencen, left, mingles with Peruvian Ambassador Marcela López Bravo, and Bosnian Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak.
Mr. Crnadak socializes with Armenian Ambassador Armen Yeganian and Austrian Ambassador Arno Riedel.
Ambassador of Panama Alberto Arosemena, left, shares a laugh with Ms. Spiric and her spouse, Goran Spiric.
Belgian Ambassador Raoul Delcorde talks with French Ambassador Nicolas Chapuis, as he welcomes him to his national day party on July 21.
Outgoing Chief of Protocol Angela Bogdan with Mr. Delcorde, EU Ambassador Marie-Anne Coninsx and her spouse, Kurt Schelter.
The chip truck parked outside the Belgian residence, cooking up fresh fries.
Fries served with mayo: a Belgian treat!
Mr. Delcorde delivers remarks to guests gathered in his backyard.
19THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
FEATURE BUZZ FEATURE EVENTS
Taking a break from catching Pokémon, Mr. Clement attended alternative rock mu-sic festival WayHome last weekend, where he took in some of the genre’s biggest acts.
Mr. Clement, known for being an alt-rock booster, wrote on Instagram that the highlights of the weekend-long event were performances by rockers Haim, electro-pop group Chvrches, and electronic musician Robert DeLong.
In a separate post, he also praised the performance by English indie-rock super-group The Last Shadow Puppets.
Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Ma-jor Lazer, and The Killers were among the most high-profi le names performing at the festival.
When an Instagram commenter asked about the overwhelmingly younger-tilt of event-goers, Mr. Clement, known for his eclectic personal style, replied that “mu-sic has no age limit.”
Now in its second year, WayHome is hosted at the Burl’s Creek Event Grounds in the community of Oro-Medonte, Ont. located immediately north of Barrie and a short drive south from the fringes of Mr. Clement’s cottage-country riding.
On Instagram, Mr. Clement wrote he lives about 40 minutes away from the festival.
The event was a major draw in its fi rst year, attracting some 35,000 attendees in 2015. This year’s festival drew about 40,000.
Mr. Clement, however, wasn’t the only politician spotted at the event.
A totem pole affi xed with the image of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) with dog ears and a snout grabbed the eyes of attendees.
Olympic fever hits the Hill
Prime Minister Trudeau revealed the athlete that will serve as Canada’s fl ag-bearer for the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics during an announcement on the front lawn of Parliament last Thursday.
Gold medal-winning gymnast Rosie MacLennan will hoist the nation’s fl ag and lead the Canadian olympic delegation during the opening festivities on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro.
Ms. MacLennan, 27, was the sole Cana-dian gold medal winner in the 2012 Olym-pics in London, where she took top prize in the trampoline competition.
Ms. MacLennan faced an uphill battle to qualify for this year’s Olympics after sus-taining a concussion ahead of last year’s Pan Am Games in Toronto.
Despite the injury, she still managed to emerge victorious at the event, picking up her second straight Pan Am gold.
She clinched a spot for Canada at the Olympics by fi nishing fourth at the 2015
world championships, and secured her spot on the Olympic roster by fi nishing fi rst at the Canada Cup in March.
“All of our extraordinary athletes em-body the motto of the Olympics—swifter, higher stronger,” Mr. Trudeau said during the event, the Canadian Press reported.
“Our fl ag-bearer certainly does, but I guess we’d put a particular emphasis on the higher for this particular athlete,” he said, referencing Ms. MacLennan’s abilities on the trampoline.
According to the Canadian Press, Mr. Trudeau is not expected to attend the opening ceremonies in Brazil, which has weathered heated criticism for its handling of prepara-tions for the Games, as concerns swirl about incomplete venues and infrastructure, security issues, pollution, government corruption and the spread of the Zika virus.
Numerous star athletes have pulled out of the event because of the harmful virus, which is spread by infected mosquitoes.
Tennis star Milos Raonic is the biggest Canadian name to pull out of the Olympics because of the illness. Its symptoms in-clude fevers, rashes, joint and muscle pain, and headaches.
But most worryingly is the effect on pregnant women.
Zika infection during pregnancy can cause several severe fetal brain defects, ac-cording to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tootoo returns to workIndependent MP Hunter Tootoo
(Nunavut) has completed his treatment for alcohol dependency and is ready to return to work, his offi ce has announced.
In a statement, Mr. Tootoo said he will host an open house discussion with con-stituents Wednesday morning in Iqaluit, where he will be “available to address their concerns, as I resume my duties as their Member of Parliament.”
A press conference will precede the event. Mr. Tootoo was elected as a Liberal in the
2015 election, and was later appointed minister for fi sheries and the Canadian Coast Guard.
He resigned from cabinet and left the Liberal caucus at the end of May to seek treatment for alcohol addiction.
The Hill Times reported that Mr. Tootoo attended the same treatment facility as late Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
Sun sets on Sunshine Girl in Ottawa
The Sunshine Girl will no longer grace the pages of the Ottawa Sun.
The newspaper will no longer feature a daily photo of a Sunshine Girl in its print edition starting this week, though it will continue to be available on its website, editor-in-chief Michelle Richardson said in a brief letter to readers.
“This is a change that refl ects the evolving interests of our readers and our desire to focus on our real strengths: local storytelling, in-depth sports coverage and no-holds-barred commentary,” she wrote.
The Sun will replace the Sunshine Girl with a daily “Spotlight on Sports” feature, which will highlight iconic sporting events and local athletes.
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 27U.S. Democratic Convention—Until July 28, Philadel-
phia, Pennsylvania. On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will be speaking. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton will speak. Hillary Clinton will speak about her vision for the country.
World Press Photo 16—Some of the best photojournal-ism in the world is on display at the The World Press Photo 16 exhibition at the Barney Danson Theatre at the Canadian War Museum, 1 Vimy Place, Ottawa until Aug. 17. Featur-ing 155 large-format photographs that depict everyday life and headline news from 2015. warmuseum.ca
UN Consultation on the International Assistance Review and Sustainable Development Goals—The United Nations Association in Canada, in partnership with UN-Habitat and UN-Women, is hosting one of a series of national youth consultations in Ottawa on July 27. These con-sultations are convening young leaders from across the country to hear their ideas about the work of the United Nations, Global Affairs Canada, and the role of youth in international development issues. Priority policy ideas emerging from discussions will be reported to Global Af-fairs Canada as part of its international assistance review consultations. For more information please contact: Elias León, 613-983 5366, [email protected]; or Adlai Salcedo, [email protected], 647-983 9768.
FRIDAY, AUG. 5Green Party of Canada Convention—The Green Party
meets for its convention Aug. 5-7. Delta City Centre Hotel, 101 Lyon St., Ottawa. This year’s keynote speaker, James Shaw, co-leader of the Green Party of New Zealand and Member of Parliament, will discuss New Zealand’s shift away from the fi rst-past-the-post electoral system to a system of proportional represen-tation. Other speakers include: Frank Graves, founder and president of EKOS Research Associates Inc.; David Coon, Green Party of New Brunswick MLA; Peter Bevan-Baker, Green Party of Prince Edward Island MLA; Green Party Leader Elizabeth May; Évelyne Huytebroeck, member of the Global Greens European Green Party Committee; Sonia Theroux, campaign manager for Campaign to Elect Jo-Ann Roberts, and former campaign manager for Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps. For additional information, please contact press secretary Dan Palmer, 613-614-4916.
Ship for World Youth Leaders Recruitment—This program will take 242 youth leaders from around the world on a three-month journey across the sea, including 11 Canadian youth between the ages of 18 and 30 and one national lead-er between the ages of 30 and 39. The voyage will depart in January 2017 aboard the Nippon Maru Japanese cruise ship and will include stops in Japan, Fiji, and New Zealand. The Canadian Ship for World Youth Alumni Association is organizing recruitment for Canadian delegates. The deadline for general participants is Sept. 1, and the deadline for the national leader is Aug. 15. The Embassy of Japan will be hosting an information session on Aug. 5, 5:30-6:30 p.m. 255 Sussex Dr., Ottawa. Reservation is required: https://shipforworldyouthinfo.eventbrite.ca. More information about the program: http://swycanada.org/
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9World Social Forum 2016—Downtown Montreal plays
host to this gathering, which bills itself as the largest gathering of civil society in the world. More than 50,000 people will be present and 1,500 activites offered, ac-cording to organizers (both online and in person). $40. Until Aug. 14. https://fsm2016.org/en/
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 24 Hastings Plowing Match and Farm Show—Wednes-
day, Aug. 24, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., 2431 Queensborough Rd., Queensborough, Ont. Hastings-Lennox and Addington, Ont.
THURSDAY, AUG. 25 Liberal Caucus Retreat—The Liberals will hold a
two-day caucus retreat Aug. 25-26 in Saguenay, Que. For more information, please call Liberal Party media relations at [email protected] or 613-627-2384.
SUNDAY, SEPT. 4G20 Leaders’ Summit—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
is expected to attend. Hangzhou, China. Sept. 4-5.
TUESDAY, SEPT. 13 Conservative Caucus Retreat—The Conservatives will
hold a two-day summer caucus retreat Sept. 13-14 in Halifax. For more information, contact Cory Hann, director of communications, Conservative Party of Canada at [email protected]
NDP Caucus Retreat—The NDP are gathering Sept. 13 to 15 in Montreal. Please call the NDP Media Cen-tre at 613-222-2351 or [email protected]
FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 Leap to Where? Elements of a Canadian Climate
Policy That Could Be Both Feasible and Enough: Thomas Homer-Dixon—Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.), Carleton University, River Build-ing Theatre (RB2200), 1125 Colonel By Dr., Ottawa. Registration: carleton.ca/fpa. For more information, call Cassie Hodgins, Carleton University, 613-520-2600 x 2995.
MONDAY, SEPT. 19 House Resumes Sitting—The House resumes sitting
on Sept. 19 at 11 a.m. after a 13-week break. The House adjourned June 17.
TUESDAY, SEPT. 20 Cabinet Meeting—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is
expected to hold a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 20 on the Hill. For more information, call the PMO Press Offi ce at (613) 957-5555.
2016 Canadian Inland Ports Conference—On Sept. 20-21, 2016, the Van Horne Institute will be hosting the 2016 Canadian Inland Ports Conference in Win-nipeg, Manitoba. This conference will bring together leading experts from around the world to discuss inland ports and their importance to their local, pro-vincial, and national economies. It will showcase fi ve of Canada’s Inland Ports located across Manitoba, Sas-katchewan, Alberta, and BC; as well as major Canadian ports, airports, and stakeholders. Early bird registra-tion before Aug. 22: $495. Registration after Aug. 22 $600. Please contact Bryndis Whitson at [email protected] or 403-220-2114 for more information. http://www.vanhorneinstitute.com/event/2016-canadi-an-inland-ports-conference/
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 21 Liberal Caucus Meeting—The Liberals will meet
in Room 237-C Centre Block on Parliament Hill. For more information, please call Liberal Party media rela-tions at [email protected] or 613-627-2384.
Conservative Caucus Meeting—The Conservatives will meet for their national caucus meeting. For more information, contact Cory Hann, director of commu-nications, Conservative Party of Canada at [email protected]
NDP Caucus Meeting—The NDP caucus will meet from 9:15 a.m.-11 a.m. in Room 112-N Centre Block, on Wednesday. Please call the NDP Media Centre at 613-222-2351 or [email protected]
THURSDAY, SEPT. 22TD Presents The Walrus Talks Arctic—The Walrus
Talks returns to the Canadian Museum of Nature (240 McLeod St., Ottawa) on Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. TD Presents The Walrus Talks Arctic features leading Canadians giving short, focused Walrus Talks exploring the issues and opportunities that make the North unique. Featuring ITK president Natan Obed, research scientist Jeffery M. Saarela, aboriginal languages and culture advocate Fibbie Tatti, and more. $12-$20. Full event details and tickets available online at thewalrus.ca/events
TUESDAY, SEPT. 27Senate Resumes Sitting—The Senate is expected
to resume sitting on Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. The Senate adjourned June 22.
The Parliamentary Calendar is a free listing. Send in your political, cultural, diplomatic, or governmental event in a paragraph with all the relevant details under the subject line ‘Parliamentary Calendar’ to [email protected] by Wednesday at noon before the Monday paper or by Friday at noon for the Wednesday paper. We can’t guarantee inclusion of every event, but we will defi nitely do our best.
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HEARD HILLONTHE
BY MARCO VIGLIOTTI
Clement goes WayHomeHillary Clinton to speak Thursday at Democratic convention
Parliamentary Calendar
Presumptive U.S. Democrat-ic presiden-tial nominee Hillary Clinton, pictured speak-ing in Canada in 2014. The Hill Times pho-tograph by Jake Wright
Continued from page 2
Rosie MacLennan waves the Canadian fl ag on Parliament Hill after she was introduced as the country’s fl ag-bearer for the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games. Photo courtesy of the Twit-ter account of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
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Communicate with those most responsible for Canada’s public policy decisions.
In our Energy Policy Briefi ng, The Hill Times examines the latest on the proposed Pacifi c North West
LNG pipeline in British Columbia and uncovers the behind-the-scenes politics. We explore how Canada can transition its entire energy infrastructure to renewables by 2050 if it starts now. We take a good look at the International Renewable Energy Agency’s recent report on the renewable energy sector worldwide and what it means for Canada, and we offer up the latest on the Policy Horizons Canada report on Canada’s status as an “energy superpower.” We also review FedNor’s recent investment of $2.7-million to create a renewable-energy micro-grid development company aimed at providing energy solutions in remote First Nations communities.
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PUBLICATION DATE: August 15, 2016
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