Senator Woo: Your speech is very timely given that we’ve just received the response from the foreign minister on the sanctions from the Magnitsky study, one of the findings of which you may recall is that the efficacy of our sanctions regime, particularly autonomous sanctions, including Magnitsky and some of the others you have described, have not been proven. We’re not clear that sanctions actually make a difference, based on the objectives that were set for sanctions — changing behaviour and so on.

I’m very supportive of the idea of war reparations along the lines of what happened after the Second World War. I’m not so sure about your proposal.

I’ll give you a preamble before I ask my question, but it sounds to me that while we talk about the importance of upholding international law, what you’re proposing essentially is executive power to override accepted international law, which strikes me as undermining a principled stand on the importance of upholding international law.

The reality of central bank assets is that most of them — about 70% — are held in U.S. dollars, maybe 20% to 30% in euros, the balance in Japanese yen and perhaps a few other small currencies, and a small amount in gold, which means that most of the foreign assets of any central bank will be held in the United States.

That gives me pause when you talk about how we should set the example. Not for us, because there really are very few central bank assets held in Canada. It gives me pause as to what kind of message and lesson, to use your term, we are passing to the United States, which has used its power to seize central bank assets in ways that are perhaps less edifying than you would present.

The Iraq example is not particularly encouraging when you think about how subsequent events in Iraq have unfolded and how the money could have been used for reconstruction. The example of Afghanistan is particularly discouraging, because the assets of the bank have been seized essentially to pay Americans off for the World Trade Center.

What leads you to think that this example, which really will be mostly for the Americans, will be used in a way that, in fact, respects international law and which promotes peace and comity in our world rather than more conflict?

Senator Omidvar: Thank you, Senator Woo. I’m trying to locate the question. Forgive me for trying to locate it.

Your first question is whether this is against international norms. I’m simply going to repeat what people far wiser than me have said. Again, Laurence Tribe, a well-known U.S. constitutional lawyer, said that Russia cannot hide behind international norms when it is breaking every one of them itself.

On the question that we are doing this so that the U.S. will follow, we all know that the U.S. system is “executive-order-happy,” if I may use that term. They tend to use it at many times.

Our proposal is different because even if it is executive action that generates the seizure of assets, it has to be grounded in the conditions of SEMA — the Special Economic Measures Act; those two conditions have to be met. There has to be a breach of international peace and security, and there have to be gross human rights violations.

The proposal that is being considered in the U.S. actually mirrors this proposal and anchors executive action — seizure of state assets — in domestic law. We’re a step ahead of them, if I may say, because that is precisely what we are doing. It is not cowboy, willy-nilly executive action. It is executive action based on certain conditions and criteria.

I hope I located your question.