Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: May I ask a question of Senator Downe?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: I ask for another five minutes.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Therefore, honourable senators, in amendment, I move:

That Bill C-70 be not now read a third time, but that it be amended,

(a)in clause 53,

(i)on page 26, by replacing line 28 with the following:

“rection or for the benefit of a for-”,

(ii)on page 28, by replacing lines 8 and 9 with the following:

“outside Canada, at the direction or for the benefit of a foreign entity or a terrorist group, in-”,

(iii)on page 29,

(A)by replacing line 11 with the following:

“rection or for the benefit of a for-”,

(B)by replacing lines 27 and 28 with the following:

“who, at the direction or for the benefit of a foreign entity, knowingly engages in surrepti-”,

(iv)on page 30, by replacing line 14 with the following:

“who, at the direction of a foreign”;

(b)in clause 113, on page 75, by replacing lines 5 and 6 with the following:

“person undertakes to carry out, under the direction of a foreign principal, any of the follow-”.

Honourable colleagues, I thank you for your attention. I hope you will you support my amendment.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Honourable senators, let me start by thanking my friend Senator Dean for his wise stewardship of the bill and my friend Senator Dagenais for allowing me to sit in on meetings of the Standing Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs during the pre-study as an observer.

Colleagues, earlier today you will have received notice that I will move an amendment to Bill C-70 to remove the phrase “in association with” from the bill. Before I do so, let me take a few minutes to explain why I think it is necessary.

There are six references to that phrase in both Part 2 and Part 4 of the bill. For example, the words “in association with” are part of the definition of “arrangements” in the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act. The act requires persons to register and provide information:

. . . in relation to arrangements entered into with foreign states or powers and their proxies under which persons undertake to carry out certain activities in relation to political or governmental processes in Canada.

It defines “arrangement” as, “. . . under which a person undertakes to carry out, under the direction of or in association with a foreign principal . . . .”

We have received clarification from officials that “arrangements” include not only formal contracts but other kinds of agreements that are less explicit. Here is what an official from Public Safety Canada said:

An arrangement wouldn’t need to be a written contract. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be spelled out on paper. It can be a verbal understanding. Ultimately, it would be up to the commissioner, based on the facts available to them, to determine whether there was an understanding, an arrangement, an agreement to conduct these influence activities. It’s purposely drafted in a way to not limit it to just that one contract that says I will pay you X to do Y.

In other words, the concept of “arrangement” is already very elastic. This is as it should be since we already have a Registry of Lobbyists that would require anyone who formally represents a foreign power to register under that measure. The new foreign influence transparency registry would close loopholes in the Registry of Lobbyists both by expanding the scope of covered activities and by using a broad definition of “arrangements.”

What, then, is the point of adding the phrase “in association with” to this definition of “arrangements”? Where does the phrase come from anyway? It turns out that this phrase is taken from the Criminal Code and pertains to the commission of offence for criminal organizations.

In the code, 467.12(1) says:

Every person who commits an indictable offence under this or any other Act of Parliament for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal organization is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

There is some jurisprudence around the term “in association with.” In R. v. Ruzic, 2001, the Supreme Court explained that there is an implicit requirement that the accused committed the predicate offence with the intent to do so for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a group they knew had the composition of a criminal organization.

In R. v. Venneri, 2012, the Supreme Court highlighted the underlying principles behind the terms “in association with,” “benefit” and “at the direction of.” The court says the terms have a shared purpose:

Their common objective is to suppress organized crime. To this end, they especially target offences that are connected to the activities of criminal organizations and advance their interests.

Those rulings refer to the suppression of organized crime and the activities of criminal organizations. The proposed foreign influence transparency and accountability act, or FITAA, however, is not a registry of organized crime and criminal organizations. It is a transparency registry intended to encourage persons and organizations lobbying on behalf of a foreign principal to be transparent about their activities. Those activities are not illegal; they are certainly not criminal. The FITAA registry, after all, is not meant to be a blacklist; rather, it is a whitelist. In fact, one of the features of Bill C-70 is that anyone who is in compliance with the registry can legitimately carry out the political interference activities listed in Part 2 of Bill C-70.

The words “in association with” may have some utility in the prosecution of individuals involved in criminal gangs, but it is not helpful for the purposes of FITAA. On the contrary, the use of that criterion will force the commissioner to look for a foreign influence analogue to organized crime.

How will they do that? I believe it will boil down to the views expressed by the person suspected of being “in association with,” even if the point of the registry is not about screening for good or bad points of view. This has already been seen to be a problem in criminal cases where offences using the “in association with” term have allowed conduct to be criminalized that only has a tenuous connection to a criminal organization.

Take the case study of co-called malign foreign influence that was highlighted in the Minister of Public Safety’s consultation paper on the registry that we now have in Bill C-70. It paints a scenario whereby a Canadian academic is asked by an individual employed by a foreign government to write an op-ed opposing a position taken by the federal government without disclosing the foreign actor’s request to do so. This example sent shivers down my spine. It suggests that Canadians who have interactions with foreign governments are servile dupes who have no capacity for individual judgment or agency. How do we know that the Canadian did not already share the views of the foreign government or if they may have, in fact, influenced the foreign agent rather than the other way around?

The reality is that the commissioner of the registry will be hard pressed to determine if there was any direction from the foreign agent to the academic. The commissioner might have information about contact between the agent and the academic, but in the absence of information about direction, they will have to guess if the academic was “in association with” the foreign agent.

The likely starting point for such an assessment will be the views expressed by the academic. The government is passing the buck to the commissioner to determine how to define a vague and problematic term, and is counting upon the courts to fix any excess.

However, we should not go down this road in the first place by inviting the commissioner to perform such a task, and we can do so by removing the words “in association with” as part of the definition of “arrangements” with a foreign principal.

Honourable colleagues, if you think this is a marginal case study, let me give you an example that is closer to home.

When MPs and senators travel to another country as part of an interparliamentary association, they invariably meet with foreign principals who will bend the ears of their Canadian counterparts on policy issues that are important to them. Very often, Canadian parliamentarians will return to Ottawa and pass along those messages to the responsible minister, a senior bureaucrat or the party caucus. I have heard Hill colleagues advocate for lower cheese tariffs after a visit to the U.K.; a change in wine import quotas after visiting Wellington; the need to invest in liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export facilities after going to Berlin; or a plea to support Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly after a sponsored trip to Taiwan. Are the MPs and senators “in association with” the foreign power, and do they have to register with the FITAA registry? After all, they are members of an association that explicitly seeks to influence and be influenced by their counterparts.

Perhaps you agree with the policy proposals advocated by the Brits, the Germans, the Kiwis and the Taiwanese, and are therefore inclined to discount the need for registration, but what if a parliamentary delegation came back from Beijing and advocated for more flights between China and Canada? What if they lobbied for Canada to not follow the lead of the United States in imposing massive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs? Would those examples make you more inclined to insist on registration?

On the face of the bill, MPs and senators are not exempt from registration under FITAA. Perhaps the commissioner will issue a ruling to give all of us a pass, but what about our staffers?

What about the numerous — hundreds — bilateral and multilateral business associations in Canada that do very similar work as our interparliamentary associations, and that regularly meet with foreign officials to hear their views on policy issues that affect bilateral relations? Will members of the Canada-EU, Canada-Japan, Canada-U.S. or Canada-Africa business associations and councils have to register if they trigger any of the three criteria under FITAA simply because they are “in association with” the foreign power?

Just last week, the Business Council of Canada sent a letter to the Prime Minister warning that Canada faces “diplomatic isolation” in NATO if it doesn’t meet its defence spending target of 2%. I presume that Mr. Hyder, the CEO of the Business Council of Canada, believes we will face diplomatic isolation because he has had conversations with leaders of NATO governments who have told him as much. I am sure Mr. Hyder is not “directed by” those governments to lobby Ottawa, but can it not be said that he and his organization are “in association with” NATO governments in conveying such a message?

What about the hundreds of cultural, clan and civil society organizations in Canada that have intrinsic links with foreign governments and which might, from time to time, engage with public officials? Let me be clear: If any such groups have an “arrangement” or are acting “at the direction of” a foreign power, they should register, but in the absence of meeting such tests, does it make sense to use the woollier concept of “in association with” to force them to register?

You might think that it isn’t a big deal if parliamentarians, business associations and cultural and civil society groups have to register. So what if the term “in association with” captures a very broad swath of individuals and groups? But bear in mind that the phrase “in association with” also appears in Part 2 of the bill that deals with political interference for which the consequences are not trivial at all. The use of “in association with” could ensnare Canadians in criminal cases related to political interference because of their views or connections, with the threat of a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

The open-ended nature of the phrase “in association with” will incline the commissioner and investigators to look at the backgrounds and views expressed by suspected agents as a proxy for being “in association.” Even if they do not specifically go in that direction, there will be public pressure upon them, including snitching and rumour mills, to make judgments about who should be required to register based upon the views they hold and the groups they associate with.

That is how McCarthyism started.

If you have any doubt this will happen, I offer myself as a case study. Yesterday, I learned that the Chinese Canadian Concern Group on the Chinese Communist Party’s Human Rights Violations has written to the Commissioner of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference to question my loyalty and that of our former colleague Senator Victor Oh. To be specific, the concern group has urged the commissioner to review my participation in the commission by “. . . taking into consideration his past comments and associations.”

I suppose I should thank the Concern Group for providing me with such an egregious and timely example of stigmatization based on my “past comments and associations.” You can be sure that if Bill C-70 is passed, they and others will use the phrase “in association with” to stigmatize many other Canadians who have much fewer protections than I have. Indeed, they have already recklessly named other Chinese Canadians in the letter and cast them as possible foreign agents with zero evidence.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator MacDonald, will you take a question?

Senator MacDonald: I’m shocked, Senator Woo, that you want to bring up a question.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Will Senator Cotter take another question?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Thank you, Senator Gold, for your exposition. I think you have made a good case for the bill, and I intend to support it. However, I was struck by a comment in the middle of your speech, and I would like to ask you about it.

You referred to the lack of consensus among practitioners around the issue of irremediability and cited that as a reason for the three-year delay. Is it the government’s view that at the end of three years, the psychiatric community will come to a view on irremediability and therefore remove that impediment to the implementation of MAID MD-SUMC?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Would the Honourable Senator MacDonald take a question?

Senator MacDonald: Certainly.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Are we finished with the point of privilege?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Omidvar, would you take a question?

Senator Omidvar: Definitely. Thank you, senator.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: My question is for the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.

Senator Mockler, on June 13, this chamber referred Bill C-234 to the National Finance Committee for study on the subject of matter of that bill. My understanding is that the steering committee of your committee has chosen to not accede to the request of the chamber.

Could you explain the reasons why it has done so?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: I’m happy to oblige, Senator Bellemare. Thank you for your speech.

To what extent would you make the deliberations of this proposed monetary policy committee public, particularly the minutes of their meetings and the detailed discussions that reveal the thinking of the members? As you know, in the Federal Reserve System there’s always a lot of speculation about the different governors of the Federal Reserve System and the positions they take. I’m not sure how beneficial that is and how much more transparent that makes the American system. What is your proposal for this approach that you’re suggesting?

Senator Bellemare: Thank you for the question, senator.

[Translation]

I’ll answer in French if I may.

I’m not sure the monetary policy committee should be televised, but it will produce a report, just like the one in New Zealand. I really like the New Zealand committee’s report, because it specifies who said what, which makes the outcome of the vote clearer.

In Western Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute created its own version of a monetary policy committee consisting of about 12 experts who discuss what they would do and then vote. Every member’s name is associated with their views. That beauty of that is that it results in a moderate, prudent monetary policy.

Senators may not be aware that, in the 1980s, when interest rates were very high, Canada had one of the most restrictive monetary policies in the world. Right now, given the current rate of inflation, Canada’s monetary policy is very restrictive. Leaving out the effects of mortgage rates and rent, we’re not far from our 2.6% target.

There was a time when the inflation rate target was between 1% and 3%, with some flexibility. Right now, the combination of a restrictive environment and rapid interest rate hikes means that many investments are not being made. We are not accelerating our transition to a green economy.

We can’t get that time back. We can’t get that lost prosperity back. We can’t make up for investments that weren’t made. That’s why the members of the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy found that Canada’s per capita GDP wasn’t really up compared to other countries.

I know this is a difficult subject, but my bill has no financial implications because these experts will not be paid.

When I was appointed to the Economic Council of Canada, I was not paid. I did that work for six years. It took up a lot of my time, but I was very happy to be a member. In this case, I think there will be a lot of experts from different backgrounds and it won’t turn into a free-for-all — Earlier, I gave an interview on the radio and I was asked, “Don’t you think there will be bickering?” I said, “No, there will be votes and a result.”

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: I rise on a point of order.

Your Honour, in the same way that you have admonished us at the start of the new session to watch our comportment, to watch our decorum and to watch our words, I would like to raise a profound issue I have with the use of a term that undermines the meaning of our institution, which is not captured in our Rules of the Senate of Canada or in the Parliament of Canada Act, and which is fundamentally deeply insulting to many senators. This is the idea that there is such a thing as an official opposition.

We heard this phrase used three times during Question Period, just a few minutes ago — once by Senator Plett and twice by Senator Housakos — and it is intended, with no justification, to give the impression that there is a small group of senators here who are more worthy than the rest of us.

I will point out that there is the use of the “official opposition” in the House of Commons, but it is not used in the Parliament of Canada Act for the Senate or in the Rules of the Senate of Canada, and the fact that it is not used in the same way in the Senate should tell us something about what it means to be the opposition in this chamber.

In a more independent, less partisan chamber, all of us should have the same rights and privileges, and we should not be second-class citizens in the way that is implied by the term “official opposition.”

So all of the questioning, Your Honour, around whether some of our colleagues who have been appointed to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, are worthy to be there because they are not part of the so-called official opposition is an insult to those members.

Your Honour, I would ask that if honourable colleagues Senators Plett and Housakos choose not to withdraw those comments from Hansard, that you provide us with some clarification on the use of this term.

Thank you.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Honourable senators, I would like to add my voice to the second reading debate on Bill C-234. Let me first thank the sponsor, Senator Wells, for making the case for this bill, and the critic, Senator Dalphond, for his insightful critique.

I would have preferred to take some time to digest Senator Dalphond’s speech before delivering my own, but I know that there is some pressure to send this bill to committee tonight, along with a group of Senate public bills.

I would also like to thank the many Canadians who have written to senators to voice their views on this bill, especially Canadian farmers who are very much the subject of Bill C-234. I join with my colleagues in expressing my gratitude to and admiration for all who work in the agriculture and agri-food sector, which not only puts food on our tables but also generates enormous wealth for our country and is a vital part of Canada’s historical and cultural identity.

But farmers are not the only subject of the bill, and it would be a mistake for us to frame the policy question before us as one that is purely about the welfare of farmers. If it were simply about the welfare of farmers, the case for supporting the bill would be strong. It is important to recognize, however, that the bill is as much about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting our international commitments as it is about the price of natural gas and propane on farms. After all, colleagues, we are discussing amendments to the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, which this chamber passed in 2018. This is not, in fact, a bill on farm support.

I should not have to remind colleagues about the existential threat to Canadians and, indeed, to all of God’s creatures from global warming due to the centuries-long increase in greenhouse gases, principally from industrialized countries.

A recent article in the journal Nature points out that a warm, dry spring has meant an early start to the fire season in Canada with the area burned so far — more than 4 million hectares of forest — already exceeding the amount razed during the entire 2021 extreme fire season.

This bill is an interesting case study in public policy analysis because of the different policy objectives that are implicated in Bill C-234 and the choice of public policy tools that one could apply to address market failures, such as greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions, on the one hand, and the volatility of farm income and commodity prices on the other.

I commend this bill to students of public policy and law because it has a richness in helping them think about how to design sound public policy for conflicting objectives including, in this case, the dual problem of GHG emissions and volatility in farm incomes.

On the face of it, the bill seeks to expand the exemptions to farm fuel carbon pricing to include natural gas and propane for a period of at least eight years. In practice, however, what the bill does is remove a carefully designed market price signal for farmers to use less natural gas and propane in order to reduce GHG emissions.

The argument in favour of the exemption is the relative paucity of alternatives to natural gas and propane for the heating of farm buildings, especially grain dryers. Proponents of the bill have taken the most direct route to addressing this problem, which is to expand the exemptions. However, the most direct route may not be the best one, especially when there are conflicting policy objectives and if the direct solution, such as what Bill C-234 is proposing, undermines the mechanism behind the original policy.

In this case, the original policy of a charge on covered fuels is to induce a change in behaviour on the part of users, as well as to stimulate innovation towards the use of energy sources that are less polluting. Furthermore, the use of a price signal, such as a fuel charge, is technology-agnostic and transparent, as opposed to command-and-control type regulations that tend to encourage evasion and which allow for a non-transparent pass-through of price increases and markups.

To the extent that we agree on the need to incentivize investments in lower-carbon farming methods, the better solution to the problem of limited energy options for crop drying is not an exemption for those energy sources, but one which provides relief for farmers while preserving a price incentive to reduce the use of natural gas and propane and for investment in technologies that facilitate this change.

This is, in fact, what the government has already put in place by way of a refundable tax credit which aims to return fuel charge proceeds directly to farming businesses in backstop jurisdictions, recognizing that many farmers use natural gas and propane in their operations. This measure does not reimburse farmers for exactly the amount incurred on natural gas and propane, since that would undo the whole point of a fuel charge on those fuels in the first place. Instead, it reimburses farms according to size as a proxy for the amount of natural gas and propane used. It does so while maintaining the price signal to encourage farms to reduce their use of those fuels.

Again, that is a sensible approach that tries to preserve two potentially conflicting policy objectives: creating a price incentive to reduce the use of GHG-intensive fuels and addressing the current lack of alternative energy sources for grain drying and the like. Even if the wholesale shift to lower-carbon-emitting energy sources, such as biomass, is not possible for some farming operations, the existence of a price signal will create the incentive for farmers to invest in energy-saving measures related to building design, insulation and the use of higher-efficiency furnaces, which Senator Dalphond touched on nicely.

Perhaps farmers are already making these investments. That would be terrific. And perhaps a price incentive will not be sufficient for them to make major energy-efficiency investments, but you can be sure that an exemption for eight years would encourage procrastination and delay. You can be just as sure that when the eight years are up, the temptation for farmers to seek an extension to the exemption will be as great as the political pressure to accede to it.

Proponents of the bill tend to frame it in the context of the price and income volatility that farmers face that makes a fuel charge on natural gas and propane even more difficult for them to manage. As the argument goes, farmers are price takers for the commodities sold on the world market, and therefore they cannot pass on higher input costs, such as a surcharge on fuel. But it is important to remember that price and income instability is a structural challenge in Canadian farming and that policy-makers working with farmers have, over the years, designed many assistance programs to assess those structural challenges.

The best of those programs seek to reduce business risk and stabilize incomes without reducing competition, distorting production, discouraging innovation and penalizing consumers. One example is a program to advance payment to farmers through interest-free loans that help them optimize the timing of delivery to take advantage of the best prices without incurring a financial penalty.

Colleagues, if our concern is a new kind of price volatility and income instability problem in the farming sector, the solution is not to tamper with a carbon-pricing scheme, which distorts that policy objective, but to look at broader business-risk-management programs that are specific to the problem. That is, of course, a basic rule in the design of good public policy, but it is often neglected by lawmakers who are more interested in the politics of a quick fix and the emotive appeal of helping farmers.

An argument has been advanced that the exemption of natural gas and propane will allow farms to use those savings to invest in green technology. I don’t accept that argument, because money is fungible and any savings can be used for a variety of purposes, only one of which is an investment in green technology. In any case, the exemption of natural gas and propane from the fuel charge removes the price incentive to invest in those alternatives; indeed, with the increase in the carbon price to $170 per tonne by 2030, that incentive becomes stronger over time.

Even if you are of the view that the price right now is not sufficient to stimulate investment in lower-carbon-emissions production methods, there is the option of direct support to farmers, such as the Agricultural Green Technology Program currently offered by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

In any case, the suggestion that natural gas and propane fuel charges under the GHG pollution-pricing scheme will be debilitating for farmers is misleading. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada conducted an analysis of the cost of drying grains based on data from provincial governments and other sources. That analysis highlights that the contribution of the federal carbon price to the cost of drying grain in 2019 ranged from between 0.05% to 0.38% of an average farm’s net operating costs, equivalent to $210 to $774 that year.

The reason why those numbers are so small is because grain-drying costs make up a very small percentage of farm operating expenses. Assuming no carbon price, the figure, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, is 0.4% in Alberta, 1.7% in Saskatchewan and 1.2% in Manitoba.

Another way to look at this issue is to consider the price of natural gas relative to grain and oilseed prices. If you look at a 20-year time series of natural gas prices and compare them with the price of grains, what you will find is a steadily declining ratio between the two. Looking back 20 years, and taking 2007 as the year when the ratio between natural gas prices and grain prices is one, you will see that the ratio was as high as 2.6 in 2003. By March 2023, this year, the ratio had fallen to just 0.5%. The same is true of oilseeds.

In other words, the cost of natural gas relative to the prices of grains and oilseeds has declined massively over the last 20 years.

There are a number of other problems with Bill C-234, some of which likely derive from the fact that private members’ bills do not have the benefit of the legal drafting finesse of the Department of Justice or the oversight of central agencies and other government departments in avoiding loopholes and unintended consequences. Senator Dalphond has touched upon a number of them already. I will just point out one more, which is in the definition of “farm buildings.” There could be some ambiguity as to what constitutes “farm buildings,” particularly when farms use a common source of heating — natural gas, for example — for the barn, the dryer and the family home, and the complications arise in separating which parts of the costs are allocated to farming operations versus the maintenance of a family home.

Colleagues, Bill C-234 would mean that virtually all on-farm fuels are not subject to a carbon price. That is a massive exemption for a policy tool that works best when exemptions are kept to a minimum. Such a sweeping carve-out for farming simply puts a bigger onus on the rest of the Canadian economy to find reductions in their carbon emissions in order to reach our goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

To summarize, what we are debating today is not whether we should provide relief to farmers who rely upon natural gas and propane for on-farm activities such as the drying of grain. The question, rather, is the best mix of policy instruments to address this challenge, recognizing that there are other policy objectives that have to be considered at the same time. The government has acknowledged this challenge facing farmers and responded with Bill C-8 in December 2021, with the tax credit to return fuel charges to farming businesses in backstop jurisdictions, which both Senator Dalphond and I have discussed.

As legislators, we should not be looking for the easiest solution to a problem, but, rather, the best solution. If we agree that greenhouse gas pollution pricing is a valid policy response to the problem of global warming and if our goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is valid, we should do everything we can to preserve the integrity of that policy.

Along with Senator Dalphond, I cannot help but suspect that the most ardent advocates of Bill C-234 do not share that commitment and that they would be happy for all GHG pricing, especially in backstop jurisdictions, to be eliminated altogether. I would not be surprised if the passing of this bill emboldens critics of carbon pricing to push for wider exemptions. In any case, other carbon-intensive industries that have abatement challenges would surely be in a position to argue for so-called “equitable” treatment if the entire agricultural sector is exempt from carbon pricing on essentially all on-farm fuels because of Bill C-234.

This bill, therefore, is not only a suboptimal way to address a legitimate problem faced by some farmers; it is also a dangerous precedent that could undermine Canada’s commitment to reducing GHGs and achieving our collective goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Thank you.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Gold, last week, the Minister for Security in the United Kingdom announced that after an investigation of the so-called police stations in the U.K., no illegal activity was found at any of these stations.

When will the RCMP and the Minister of Public Safety in Canada do the same for the investigations that are ongoing with the so-called police stations in Canada, particularly in Montreal?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Honourable senators, given Senator Boehm’s admonition, I’ve decided to speak now rather than next week. As a result, my comments may be less organized than I would like them to be.

I have no disagreement with the chair’s summary and I want to thank him, Deputy Chair Senator Harder and all my colleagues for the excellent work that we did on this report.

Colleagues, the report was very much about the machinery and mechanics of our sanctions regime and how we could make it better. It included questions of administration, clarity of sanctions tools, coordination with allies, reporting, as well as consideration of unintended consequences.

We spent much less time, though, on the question of efficacy, which is to say, “Do sanctions work?” On this, the closest that we came to a conclusion is, “It’s difficult to say.” That is in the official press statement.

When it comes to the traditional criteria for measuring the success of sanctions — i.e., change of behaviour or deterrence of such bad behaviour in the future — I did not hear a single witness say unequivocally that sanctions have been successful. On the other hand, we did hear that sanctions may be considered successful based on a number of other criteria that are non‑traditional. These include the desire to punish, the need to show solidarity with allies and the need to appeal to public sentiment.

Unfortunately, these other criteria are not the ones that we officially cite as reasons to have sanctions in the first place. Perhaps these new criteria are, in fact, the reasons for Canada to have sanctions — but if that is the case, let’s be honest in saying so.

The reason I raise this issue is because, of late, we have become the world champions in autonomous sanctions and perhaps have forgotten, as Senator Boehm has rightly pointed out, that sanctions are one among a number of diplomatic tools that we have to address difficult international problems and, indeed, that sanctions may not even be the best tool for a particular problem.

You know the old saying about the tendency to use the tool you have in front of you to deal with a problem. If you have a sledgehammer, that is what you will use; however, it’s not clear that a sledgehammer is the best tool, indeed.

Ultimately, sanctions are a form of economic coercion, and we take great umbrage, of course, when economic coercion is directed at us.

The proliferation of the use of sanctions, the widespread use of sanctions, the increasing tendency and preference to use sanctions, the finessing and the extension of different types of sanctions, while possibly necessary, is ultimately a statement on the failure of diplomacy. I’m not sure this is a gold medal situation.

This is a real concern because we’re actually going around the world talking about how we are the world champion in autonomous sanctions. When we say this, I don’t know which of the new criteria we’re using to give ourselves this award. Is it that we get a gold medal because of our solidarity with allies in imposing sanctions? Is it that we get a gold medal because we are the best at punishing people? Is it that we get a gold medal because we are the best at the political appeal of sanctions, the populist instinct for wanting to do something about a difficult situation? I don’t know, but I am pretty sure that we do not yet have the evidence that the traditional criteria — change of behaviour and deterrence — have been met in awarding ourselves any top prize.

Honourable senators, this problem is compounded by the issue of inconsistency in the application of autonomous sanctions, which, by the way, is one of the findings in our report but probably one that will not be given very much attention. It is important, though, because inconsistency in the application of autonomous sanctions is not just a trivial case of “whataboutism,” but it fundamentally undermines the slender moral authority on which we have to impose sanctions in the first place. It is a recommendation, and I do hope we pay attention to it.

Sanctions have real and long-term consequences for affected countries, even when they are attempts at targeting just the bad guys. They are difficult to unwind once they are applied, which is why I so much agree with one of the recommendations around the sunset clause for autonomous sanctions. This too is an important finding of the report, and I hope it gets serious attention.

To conclude, honourable senators, this report was a very useful exercise in our statutory review of the Sergei Magnitsky Law. I hope the government will take it seriously. When we come around to the next five-year review or — in the case of Senator Boehm’s suggestion — the next ten-year review, I hope that we will be able to say with some satisfaction that we’ve actually reduced our use of sanctions and that we’ve become smarter in the use of ongoing sanctions, not because we are turning our backs on injustices in the world but because we have found a better way to address them. Thank you.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Gold, you have just heard Senator Housakos make a grave and baseless allegation against Chinese Canadians in Montreal who are associated with certain community organizations. He was referring, of course, to Minister Mendicino’s declaration that all of the so-called Chinese police stations in the country have been shut down, including one alleged to have been located at the Service a la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal and another at Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud in Brossard.

Senator Gold, what evidence did police find to substantiate the claim that there were Chinese police stations in Montreal? What illegal activities have been stopped?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Gold, you have just heard Senator Housakos make a grave and baseless allegation against Chinese Canadians in Montreal who are associated with certain community organizations. He was referring, of course, to Minister Mendicino’s declaration that all of the so-called Chinese police stations in the country have been shut down, including one alleged to have been located at the Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal and another at Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud in Brossard.

Senator Gold, what evidence did police find to substantiate the claim that there were Chinese police stations in Montreal? What illegal activities have been stopped?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Gold, the media reports to which Senator Plett and Senator Housakos referred are based entirely on anonymous, unverified sources who are selectively leaking what appears to be classified information. I would point out that senior officials, when asked to comment on this kind of information, have described it as “not truth,” “incomplete” and “rumours.”

The government has gone ahead with the appointment of a special rapporteur, but what is the government doing to investigate not just who broke the law by leaking classified material, but also into the broader effort by elements in and around the intelligence establishment who are using clandestine methods to spread unverified information that subverts our political system and stigmatizes many Chinese Canadians?

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Honourable senators, 100 years ago, in this chamber, senators voted to adopt the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923. This piece of legislation is better known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, because it effectively prohibited the entry of ethnic Chinese to Canada for 24 years. I am launching an inquiry to call attention to this stain on our institution and to the profound hurt that it caused the Chinese Canadian community. I invite all senators to contribute to the inquiry, which has two other parts to it — the celebration of contributions that Chinese Canadians have made to the country, and a reflection on contemporary forms of prejudice and exclusion faced by Canadians of Asian descent.

On June 23, Senator Oh and I will be hosting an event in the Senate of Canada with Action Chinese Canadians Together to remember the Chinese Exclusion Act and to pledge an end to all forms of exclusion of Chinese and other Asian Canadians. We have invited the Government of Canada to announce on that day the commissioning of a centenary plaque that we hope will find a permanent home in the Parliament of Canada. The ignominy of Chinese exclusion began here in Parliament, and it is here in Parliament that the ignominy should be undone.

I feel a special responsibility for remembering the hundredth anniversary, because I’m a senator from the province that was most ardently in favour of Chinese exclusion. Odious speeches in favour of the act were made in this chamber, and they were made by my predecessors — senators representing British Columbia.

As the first Chinese Canadian senator from B.C., I have a special duty to disavow their legacy and to remind my fellow British Columbians of a dark past. Here is a sample of the ignorance and prejudice that was uttered in our chamber. On the question of whether wives of Chinese already in Canada should be exempted from the act, one B.C. senator said:

If you are going to open the door and allow wives to come in, you might as well give British Columbia to the Chinese. We have enough Orientals in our Province now. When I say that there are 2,000 business licenses taken out in the city of Vancouver alone by Orientals, you will realize that. The Chinese have gone into every business that you can name, and I think there are even one or two lawyers.

And this is from another of my B.C. predecessors:

. . . out of a population of less than half a million we have 30,000 Chinese. . . . They are of no use to us; we will never assimilate them, we will never make Canadians out of them. You might far better introduce men more nearly akin to the race to which we belong. The mind of the Chinaman is absolutely different from the mind of the ordinary white mind. You cannot in any possible way find out just how the Chinese mind works. It is very true that in a way the Chinese are good citizens. They make good domestic servants and faithful workers, but they will never help us to build up a Canada of which we will be proud.

Some of you may be thinking that the Canadian government has already come to terms with the Chinese Exclusion Act with the issuance of an apology by former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2006. In fact, that apology was for the head tax, and it glossed over the Chinese Exclusion Act, which the former Prime Minister simply expressed sorrow over. The lesser emphasis placed on the Exclusion Act is, I think, due to a misunderstanding about the significance of that legislation.

The Exclusion Act is often thought of as a kind of victimless crime in the sense that we will never know the names of the Chinese excluded from Canada because they did not even have the chance to try to enter the country. It is unlike the head tax, which affected real people who had certificates to prove they had paid this unjust levy, and for which a small number received compensation following the 2006 apology.

The idea of a victimless crime, however, is a misreading of history, because there were, in fact, many victims. They were the Chinese Canadians already in the country who were subjected to humiliation because of a law that essentially said that people of their sort were not welcome in a place that they had already inhabited for decades. The fact that the act came into effect on Dominion Day added insult to injury. For that reason, many Chinese Canadians at the time took to calling July 1 “Humiliation Day.”

The humiliation went beyond the fact that their kith and kin were not allowed in the country. The act also required that every Chinese person already in Canada had to register within 12 months of its coming into force. Failure to do so could result in a fine, jail, or both. Even after registration, Chinese Canadians faced ongoing harassment from enforcement officers who questioned the veracity of the information provided by registrants.

The practical effect of the Exclusion Act in Canada, therefore, is that it was a “registry of unwanted foreigners.” Do you wonder why so many Chinese Canadians today are wary of efforts to again register those who are already in the country but who are deemed to have the wrong connections or backgrounds? Look no further than the dark history of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In fact, the Chinese community at the time had a different name for this bill. It was called the “Cruelty Act.”

On July 1, 2023, the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver will officially open its doors with an exhibition entitled, “The Paper Trail,” which will be about the impact of the “Cruelty Act” on Chinese Canadians. One of the exhibits will be the lyrics of a song written 100 years ago lamenting the “Cruelty Act.” It was, in fact, the winning entry in a contest organized by the community to raise awareness and mobilize action. Here are the opening lines, loosely translated from the original Taishan dialect.

The First of July is just ahead,

Our hearts are filled with mortal dread.

Because of a law that ignites a fire,

That will sever compatriots caught in its ire.

I would sing this song for you, but the music is lost — and you don’t want to hear me sing anyway. We have therefore commissioned a young Chinese Canadian composer to write a fresh score for the lyrics, and our goal is for the song to be sung in this chamber on June 23.

Apart from the fact that this institution made the act possible, I hardly need remind honourable senators that our building is a former railway station and part of the railway line that Chinese labourers were brought into this country to build, under the most difficult of circumstances. A solemn ceremony here in this very building would provide a measure of, well, cleansing.

There’s much more to be said about the “Cruelty Act” and its long-term impact on Chinese Canadians and Canadian society, but I must move on to the rest of my inquiry, the second part of which is to celebrate the accomplishments of Chinese Canadians since the repeal of the act in 1947. That was also the year when Chinese and South Asians were given the right to vote in a federal election, made possible in part by the hundreds of Chinese who volunteered to fight for Canada in the Second World War, even though they were not recognized as citizens.

This aspect of the inquiry is, in some ways, the easy part because it’s so obvious that Chinese and other Asian Canadians have achieved great success in many fields and have contributed richly to Canada. But it is also the most difficult part because I cannot possibly do justice to the multitudes of Chinese Canadians who deserve to be recognized. Perhaps I can leave the job of naming some of these individuals to those of you who will speak to this inquiry and who might want to single out some members of your community for recognition.

What I will do instead is to point out that, in spite of all their accomplishments, Chinese Canadians are severely under-represented in positions of leadership across Canada’s mainstream institutions, including the federal civil service, the courts, public and corporate boards, arts, university and hospital administration and, not least, Parliament and the ranks of cabinet ministers.

For example, a 2019 study of the largest organizations in eight major sectors in the GTA — the Greater Toronto Area — found that Chinese Canadians who represent 11% of the population in the region account for only 2% of leadership positions. The representation of Chinese Canadian women in these positions is even lower — at just 1%.

This is a bit of a puzzle because Chinese Canadians are not generally lumped in with other equity-seeking groups, and there’s a general assumption that the community is doing just fine on most economic and social indicators. I think the answer to this puzzle lies in the community itself, as well as outside of it.

Many Chinese immigrant families prioritize diligence and keeping their heads down, rather than seeking to challenge the establishment and assuming leadership roles. A common saying among Chinese immigrant families is, “We are guests in this country,” which is, in a sense, a sentiment of humility and respect but also one that was cultivated by a history of discrimination and exclusion.

Chinese Canadians are no longer guests in this country, regardless of when they arrived. They should neither think of themselves as guests nor be treated as such. No one has the right to tell us to go back to the country we came from — not even the former chief of staff to the Prime Minister who said that to me because he did not like my views.

That brings me to the third part of the inquiry: Seventy-five years after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, there are still forms of exclusion in Canadian society. We know that to be true for Indigenous people and racialized groups across the country. In matters of systemic discrimination, allyship among Indigenous and visible minority groups is vital, even if the histories and needs of different communities are not the same.

Chinese Canadians face at least three kinds of modern exclusion. The first is old-fashioned racism, not unlike the sort that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act 100 years ago. This is the impulse behind many of the unprovoked attacks on Asian Canadians in recent years. The number of unreconstructed racists is probably small, but they are aided and abetted by seemingly respectable folks who nevertheless feed racial animus by insinuating generalizations about Chinese people in Canada and the ills that they are alleged to have brought to society — for example, money laundering, unaffordable housing and the epidemic of opioid deaths.

The second form of exclusion is a function of long-held stereotypes about Chinese Canadians and what they are good for or good at. Yes, the Chinese are super at math and engineering. They make great doctors and lawyers. They are amazing musicians and generally good citizens. But are they suitable for leadership positions? I have already said that this is a problem that Chinese Canadians must confront in terms of their self-perception and personal aspirations, but it is also an issue for our establishment institutions to reflect on.

The third exclusion is the most insidious because it is an exclusion that seeks to divide the Chinese community into those who are acceptable and those who are not. An acceptable Chinese Canadian is one who conforms to a certain view of the world, disavows affiliations with individuals and groups that are blackballed for political reasons, and publicly voices opposition to what has been deemed as the all-encompassing menace that is the People’s Republic of China. Not conforming to these canons is seen as suspicious at best or, more ominously, as a litmus test of disloyalty and malfeasance against Canada.

This is the kind of exclusion that celebrates Chinese Canadians if they vote the right way in an election but who are deemed to have been swayed by sinister forces if they didn’t.

It is the kind of exclusion that questions the motives of Chinese community groups who bought PPE — personal protective equipment — in large quantities to send to China during the early days of COVID, and then questions them again when they brought large quantities of PPE from China to distribute in Canada when we were experiencing a spike in infections.

It is the kind of exclusion that assumes every workplace infraction in the technology sector is an instance of espionage, that frames collaborations between Canadian and Chinese scientists as intrinsically suspect and that calls on Chinese Canadian researchers to turn their backs on long-standing partnerships in the mainland.

Each of these exclusions has a justification that one can be sympathetic to, but the sum of these attitudes and actions is stigmatization, demoralization and alienation — just like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 100 years ago.

I know the Chinese community is not homogeneous and that Chinese Canadians occupy views on all parts of the political spectrum, as well as on a variety of geopolitical issues. That is a strength of the community that should be celebrated. We must not, however — and here I am speaking to Chinese Canadians — allow this diversity to be used as a form of internal segregation, not least by members of the community itself. I hope the one hundredth anniversary is an opportunity for Chinese Canadians of all stripes to reflect on the collective experience of their forebears during the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act and to work together to prevent modern forms of exclusion from dividing the community.

As for this chamber, I hope the inquiry is a reminder of how wrong the Parliament of Canada was 100 years ago and how easy it was to get it so wrong. There were no recorded votes against the bill and, by all accounts, public opinion was massively in favour of it. Once it became accepted wisdom that Chinese people were a threat to Canada, passing this and other laws to counter the threat became only too easy. Let’s make sure history does not repeat itself.

Honourable colleagues, I hope you will consider speaking to this inquiry, and I look forward to your interventions. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Omidvar, debate adjourned.)