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Robert Walker
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Robert Walker
2015-06-16 11:06
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the committee for this opportunity to share my perspectives on disruptive technologies.
These are rooted in my 38-year career, first as a scientist, and then as an executive of science and technology organizations and programs that, in one way or another, have been intimately connected to matters of defence, national security and public safety.
Ladies and gentlemen, the early indicators of disruptive potential of technologies often appear long before the disruption occurs, though history shows we often miss these indicators for many reasons. I'll use some anecdotes to make this point.
As a young researcher at one of Canada's defence labs in the early 1980s, I was introduced to a somewhat clunky but fascinating new communications tool called “electronic mail”, or what we had started to call “email”, when our defence labs gained access to an emerging concept being pioneered by the U.S. military, called ARPANET. We immediately had a new, real-time method of collaborating with our Canadian and U.S. defence researchers. Our mindset towards collaboration changed quickly.
In the early 1990s, under a defence program I was managing at the time, we were approached by a group of engineers looking to spin out of Nortel. They had what appeared to be an effective and affordable way of encrypting email. This seemed like a great idea with a potential future market if email were to gain wide use. We agreed to help. The company was formed. Its name is Entrust, now recognized as a world leader in information security technologies.
In the late 1990s, as the ARPANET had moved into civilian mainstream, now known as the Internet, we began to be concerned that as the military became more dependent on information and communication technologies, it would be vulnerable to potential adversaries' disruption of these systems. We formed a group to begin researching information security, including the potential of information warfare and how to defend against it.
In 2008 the world witnessed the first use of cyberwarfare during the Russia-Georgia war. The world had been disrupted.
Here's a second example. In the mid-1990s our defence scientists were examining the potential to bring together two space-based technologies. First, what were the military and civil implications of the U.S. military agreeing to make available for civil use the signals from its newly operational space-based global positioning system? What if low-cost GPS receivers were available commercially? The second was the potential military and civil applications for high-resolution imaging obtained from space-based systems, such as Canada's then recently launched RADARSAT. What if these massive digital images of any location in the world could be made available to users in real time?
Now, couple this with the real-time accuracy of GPS location information and we have enormous potential. We thought these could be game-changers, but we were daunted by the challenges to commoditize them. A decade later, companies such as Apple and Google had made low-cost accessibility to these integrated technologies ubiquitous. The world had been disrupted.
On September 11, 2001, we all watched in horror as the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington unfolded before a global audience. Terrorists had used existing technology—civilian aircraft—in an unconventional way to a massively disruptive effect. Were the warning signals there in advance? Arguably, our cultural bias that suicide was unacceptable, no matter what the commitment to a cause may be, made it difficult to contemplate such a scenario. The month following, the world was introduced to the spectre of biological terrorism when laboratory-engineered anthrax spores were sent to individuals using the U.S. postal system as the delivery mechanism.
What's my point in reciting these incidents? Yes, both were cases of innovative application of existing technologies. However, the real disruptions have been in the way governments and societies have responded to these events through the implementation of new and more stringent security legislation and measures.
Let's look at some of the key issues that are before Parliament legislators and regulators today. In the late 1940s, the oil and gas industry had proven a new and innovative technology, called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Over the past 15 years it has been applied on large commercial scale to shale-oil and gas deposits.
What's the disruptive effect? Arguably the most significant is that within the coming decade, the U.S. is forecast to go from being a net energy importer to being a net energy exporter. The geopolitical implications are far-reaching. In Canada, we are presently dealing with the economic implications of a dramatic drop in the price of oil, tied in part to a global oversupply enabled by fracking. The world has been disrupted.
Now I suggest that the most disruptive technology that the world is experiencing today is social networking. This is profoundly changing the way that people interact. There are many upsides. There are also new ethical, security, and safety implications to which governments, legislators, regulators, and security organizations are scrambling to respond. Cyberbullying, identity theft, and ISIS recruitment of Canadians via social networks are examples of hot topics.
The world needs new technology to address many of the grand challenges facing humankind in the 21st century: climate change, population health, energy security, food supply, and urbanization. We can expect that technological solutions to these grand challenges will be disruptive to markets and to society, just as the consequences of humankind's inability to find technological solutions will most assuredly be disruptive to our current way of life.
However, I contend that the public's acceptance of new technology is taking on some troubling dynamics. The public's perception of the risk to society of new technology is being confounded by the inability to communicate in simple terms and build broad public trust in the answer to one question: what does the science say regarding risk? Regulators are frequently faced with public backlash, in effect that the risk is not acceptable, and in fact, that no risk is acceptable. Genetically modified foods, deep geological repositories for radiological materials, pipeline safety, windmill siting, and child vaccinations are each important case studies of how the public perceives and ultimately accepts or rejects risk, despite the significant benefits that these technologies will otherwise bring to society, the environment, and the planet.
The world will surprise us; of this, I'm sure. Many of these surprises will be rooted in the disruptive consequences of new technology or the innovative application of existing technology. Business will be on the front line, both in creating the conditions for disruption that leads to competitive advantage in the marketplace and in responding to others' competitive advantage. There is much that governments can do and must do to help the business sector in this regard.
On the other hand, governments will be on the front line when it comes to addressing the social, ethical, economic, safety, and security disruptions that occur from technological innovation. Efforts to forecast the potential disruptive effect of technologies on markets and society are important. There is much at stake.
Now I contend that to effectively address these challenges requires vigorous engagements of government and science and of the public and science. It's difficult to find a grand challenge facing Parliament that does not have a significant science component. Parliament needs to be a customer of science advice. New mechanisms have been put in place to address this gap—the Council of Canadian Academies, and the Science, Technology and Innovation Council, to name some—and more needs to be done.
One example of “more” is the government's initiative under way to transform Canada's largest science and technology complex located two hours up the Ottawa River at Chalk River into a multi-mission, national laboratory under private sector management. The government-owned, contractor-operated model has been proven to work very well in the U.S. and U.K.
What does this big idea offer by way of potential? It offers relevant and timely science advice and technology innovation for governments to help them understand future disruptive technologies and to address public safety, security, and health needs; the potential to be a key player in meeting the G-7 goal to decarbonize economies; commercialization support for small to large companies seeking to build competitive advantage through technology; and access by academic and industry researchers to large publicly funded science infrastructure. It's a big idea whose time has come.
Thank you.
Dai Nguyen Van
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Dai Nguyen Van
2015-05-14 13:13
My name is Nguyen Van Dai, a human rights lawyer from Hanoi, Vietnam.
First of all, I would like to thank the Canadian parliamentary committee on human rights for giving me the opportunity to represent the Brotherhood for Democracy and other civil society organizations in Vietnam. I will talk to you on the status of human rights in Vietnam. Then I will have a few recommendations.
The human rights situation in Vietnam in recent times has improved slightly, but the improvement was not coming from the goodwill of the government. The improvement was due to the pressure from the international community and the growth of civil society organizations in Vietnam.
ln the period from 2006 to 2012, each year Vietnamese authorities arrested, tried, and imprisoned 10 to 40 people. The reason for those arrests is that they wanted to use freedom of speech and freedom of the press to express their political views through international websites, blogs, and Facebook. Some arrests were due to partisan political organization activities. Currently Vietnam is still holding about 120 political prisoners and 60 imprisoned religious minorities in the central highlands.
ln the last two years, with the explosive growth of information technology, blogs, and social networking sites, Vietnam people, mostly young people, have access to the Internet and social networking sites. More than 30 million people in Vietnam use the Internet every day. According to Facebook, more than 20 million people in Vietnam have an account on Facebook. This makes the Vietnam government lose control over information distribution.
Human rights activists and social and community networks have been able to create waves of public opinion. Combined with the street protests, these waves have forced the government to change unfair and unjustified policy.
Before 2013, the government could arrest anyone it wanted, but international pressure and international integration do not allow it to continue to do so. To cope with the growth of democratic movements and human rights activists in Vietnam, the government has changed the method of repression. It used violence to attack those who are active. In 2013 and 2014, each year there were at least 10 cases. The activists who were attacked suffered injuries. ln addition to physical assault of activists, security threw dirty things into houses, destroying the meetings of activists.
For those activists who have to rent rooms or houses, security pressured the landlords to cancel their lease contracts. lt forced human rights activists to move house every two or three months.
I will speak of impeding freedom of movement within the country. Every time when there are marches or international delegations to Hanoi, hundreds of activists will be stopped at home. The government deploys dozens of security police, local civil defence agents, and neighbourhood women's league members to prevent them from leaving their homes. They cannot leave their homes to go to attend the events or to meet with international delegations.
Speaking of harassment, these pupils, college students participating in the movement, are summoned by security for questioning and often threatened. Security also pressures the school to threaten expulsion. Security also meets and threatens the parents of pupils and students.
The activists are regularly summoned by security or even kidnapped when they try to leave their homes.
On the right to work, most human rights activists in Vietnam do not have the opportunity to work for a living. If they lease a business venue, security threatens the landlord about renting. If they are employed, after a few months security will force the employers to fire them.
On obstructing the rights to travel abroad, in 2014 and the early months of 2015, there were nearly 100 human rights activists who had been banned from going overseas and their passports were seized. lt can be safely said that 100% of human rights activists in Vietnam will be deprived of any chance of going abroad.
My recommendations are that the human rights committee of Parliament, the Canadian government, use economic relations and political diplomacy with Vietnam to pressure the Vietnamese government to respect human rights.
The Canadian Parliament should recommend to the Canadian embassy in Hanoi to organize regular contacts, meetings, and discussions with representatives of civil society organizations in Vietnam.
The Canadian Parliament, the Canadian government, needs to establish funds to support civil society organizations in Vietnam, because when civil society organizations in Vietnam grow, they can be a new force powerful enough to improve the human rights situation in Vietnam.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to my presentation.
Mike Melnik
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Mike Melnik
2015-05-07 11:31
Thank you for the question. I'm glad Dr. Tufts is here to talk more about the scientific side. I'd like to just address the promotional side of recreational fishing.
That $3 million that we receive in kind from the media—and we're talking CTV, national media, local media, radio, television, print, social media—is generated by our association on a $50,000 budget. We do it all. I joke about it every spring; I get on my hands and knees and I beg the radio stations, the TV networks, magazines, Sun Media, Postmedia, to please give us some ink, some air time to promote recreational fishing.
We're happy to do it. We believe in promoting recreational fishing. But I think it would be nice to see some government funding to promote recreational fishing, whether it's through our association or on your own, through the DFO or through tourism, whatever the department may be. I don't think we do a great job of that in this country.
We need to tell more stories like the one you just told about the picture on your BlackBerry, the personal stories about how fishing has affected us positively, not just economically, not just because of dollars and cents but because of that family connection. I remember taking my three kids fishing for the first time. I didn't do any fishing. I was untangling lines and putting worms on hooks and taking fish off. But man, we had a blast. Those memories are things that will last forever and ever. But people don't think of fishing as the number one thing to do when they're looking at the options. I think we need to do a better job of promoting it.
Mark Lagon
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Mark Lagon
2015-05-05 13:16
Mr. Chairman, honourable Vice-Chair, committee members, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today about human rights in Iran.
Let me start by first commending the Government of Canada, which year after year has been a leader in the UN General Assembly in denouncing the systematic abuses that the Iranian regime commits against its own citizens. Freedom House applauds that effort, and we pledge to work with the Canadian government, as ever, on that.
We're at a different juncture from that we experienced two years ago. International engagement on Iran's nuclear program has given hope to Iranians that they might emerge from decades-long isolation imposed on them by their own government.
Dialogue and diplomacy should always be welcomed, but they aren't ends in themselves. The talks with Iran have unfortunately coincided with deprioritizing and delinking human rights from the global agenda, when they should instead advance the concerns of the Iranian people and ensure that the world share concerning the regime's repression of its citizens.
Two years ago, in a tense environment, Iranians were deciding whether to vote in another deeply flawed election in their own country. In a courageous move, many returned to the polls in an attempt to shed an increasingly repressive eight years under the Ahmadinejad administration and to help avert the spectre of conflict between their country and the West. Some Iranian pragmatist described the choice as one of “the best of the worst” among eight candidates approved by senior clerics.
Hassan Rouhani, the self-proclaimed moderate aligned with leading reformists and supporters of human rights, was elected promising to remove restrictions on speech, advance women's rights, and release dozens of political prisoners. Eighteen months later, Rouhani's campaign promises haven't materialized. Despite the president's rhetoric and some superficial steps, he hasn't delivered on his vows of reform, and the administration is focused almost entirely on the nuclear negotiations.
The country's hardliners have deepened repression. The human rights situation has deteriorated further, whether with respect to gender equality, increasing imprisonment and execution of political opponents, as my colleague here has noted, or crackdowns on freedom of expression and religion.
Iranians continue to demand gender equality but have instead seen further deterioration. Vicious acid attacks against women have gone unpunished, and pending legislation restricts the hours during which women are allowed to work and creates a hierarchy for public sector hiring that would marginalize women, particularly those who aren't married. Other bills would empower employers and members of the religious militia to enforce the government's conservative dress code for women, curb the use of modern contraceptives, outlaw voluntary sterilization, and dismantle state-funded family planning programs.
Since 2013, authorities have banned women from 77 fields of study, effectively reversing hard-earned educational achievements. Another law, passed over the fervent objection of Iran's human rights community, effectively legalizes forced marriage by allowing men to marry girls as young as nine, provided that they are adopted daughters or step-daughters.
Iranian women are banned from watching public sporting events and have campaigned for years against this discriminatory policy. In a sign that international pressure works, warnings by international sporting authorities that would refuse Iran hosting privileges have led officials to signal a possible change. Pressure like that works.
In this context, in an especially ill-informed move on April 10, UN members elected Iran to the board of UN Women, a public embarrassment to the body's efforts to advance women's empowerment.
A second and increasingly blatant violation of human rights is the staggeringly high execution rate. Iran is second only to China in the number of executions it carries out, and that's not per capita, but just as an absolute matter. It leads the world in juvenile executions. Let's look at a comparison. As my colleague noted here, Iran reached its highest level in 12 years last year, with 753 individuals put to death, 53 of whom were publicly executed and 14 of whom were juveniles. Think about this in comparison. Saudi Arabia, which is not attractive in its own record on executions, executed 90 in the last year. The execution rate is even higher—it seems to be 20% higher—in the current calendar year.
Iran holds at least 1,150 political prisoners, with likely far more, given many Iranian families' fear of government reprisals if they come forward. Some of these political prisoners are held in solitary confinement in facilities outside the purview of Iran's formal prison authority. The 2009 presidential candidates and leaders of the green movement remain under house arrest without charge for a fourth year in a row. Just this morning, prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi was arrested for alleged national security crimes as punishment for her peaceful activism in support of abolishing the death penalty.
Iran's media and online environment are among the most repressive in the world. This is a focus of Freedom House work. In 2014, seven newspapers and magazines were shut down, and blogs and news websites were subject to state censorship and filtering. At least 44 Iranian journalists were imprisoned. Of course, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian was among them. He's been in prison for nine months under espionage charges.
Iran's conservative Press Supervisory Board recently banned a popular women's magazine that had received a new licence from the Rouhani government after years of being shuttered under the previous government. What was the violation? It was publishing views on the cohabitation of unmarried adults and access to public sporting events by women. How dare they?
Among 65 nations that are studied in Freedom House's Freedom on the Net report, Iran is ranked at the very bottom. Authorities restrict online access to information through control of Internet infrastructure, extensive website filtering, rampant surveillance, and systematic arrests. Millions of websites, including Facebook and Twitter, remain blocked for Iranian citizens.
Last fall, Iran's Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of 30-year old blogger Soheil Arabi for a Facebook post deemed insulting to religious sanctities. Other online offenders were sentenced to between seven and twenty years for blogging, for a technology website, for contributing to a Sufi website, and for a Facebook post deemed blasphemous to the regime.
Religious freedom is also under serious and continued threat. Bahá'ís, Christian converts, Sunnis, and Sufis continue to be targeted and dozens put in prison.
Academic freedom is limited, especially for Bahá'ís and women, but President Rouhani has taken some positive steps to ease repression on university campuses. In 2014, about a dozen student associations were allowed to renew their work after being forcibly shut down under the previous administration, while several new groups have been recently granted permits to operate. However, real reform is unlikely, as the Minister for Science, Research, and Technology, who had lifted restrictions, was impeached by the parliament.
Independent labour unions continue to be banned, and those who participate in protests are fired or summoned to court. At least 230 people were arrested in peaceful labour protests over the last year, and nearly 1,000 were fired in February 2015 for participating in labour protests. Five labour leaders were arrested on the eve of International Workers' Day.
Unfortunately, it appears that these crackdowns will continue. The parliament has introduced new legislation that would further restrict Iranians' rights to expression and association and would enable regime conservatives to control the country's civic and political space ahead of Assembly of Experts and parliamentary elections next year. These measures would bring political parties, journalists, and NGOs firmly under the control of commissions and councils dominated by the hardline authorities and would outlaw any activity that the regime considers harmful to its interests
Indeed elections, which are used in Iran to legitimate theocratic rule, rarely change the country's political reality. They rarely do because unelected institutions—the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, and increasingly the judiciary and security services—effectively have a veto over decisions of elected institutions.
While Khamenei may wish to be viewed as an overarching supreme guide, he is in reality a micro-manager over an expanding web of committees and councils and various organs and branches of the government. Khamenei's appointees control, oversee, and influence socio-cultural, foreign, and economic policy and ensure that policy making is in line with the leader's views and that no centre of power gains more influence than the leader.
Similarly, the country's electoral system is designed to ensure that candidate selection and the entire electoral process are carried out under the authority of the Supreme Leader and not the Ministry of Interior. All candidates for high public office are heavily vetted by the Guardian Council on the basis of subjective criteria and non-transparent procedures. In practice, this means that public officials and political hopefuls are accountable primarily to the Supreme Leader and only secondarily to the electorate.
Iranians have repeatedly attempted to achieve reform through the ballot box and through peaceful protests, but two decades of experience have proven that it will be far more difficult and costly, if not impossible, to achieve it without international support. At this critical juncture, the world must not turn its back on Iran's people's aspirations for democratic reform. Governments engaging with Iran should make clear to Iranian authorities that attention to human rights won't take a back seat to the pursuit of strategic and security co-operation.
Leading human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh said recently, in April, that with regard to the nuclear negotiations, “To think that reaching an international consensus [on nuclear talks] will by itself lead to an opening in the domestic scene...is a mistake”.
Freedom House looks forward to supporting a Canadian-sponsored resolution again in the UN General Assembly. That General Assembly action should urge the Secretary-General to take additional steps to strengthen his office's engagement with Iran. In particular, Freedom House recommends that the Secretary-General appoint a special adviser on Iran, similar to the one Kofi Annan appointed on Burma since 1995 to provide political guidance to Burmese authorities. This would provide access to the country by the UN special rapporteur on Iran and for other special procedures of the UN and would push for full co-operation by the Iranian government with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Further recommendations are as follows.
We hope that Canada will work in conjunction with the United States and Sweden at the UN Human Rights Council next March to build a stronger resolution than what already exists, that passed in 2011 on the human rights situation in Iran.
The mandate of the special rapporteur needs to be given more heft. The rapporteur's access to Iran should be a priority of international diplomacy, and countries with significant populations of Iranian refugees should allow access to their territories by the rapporteur.
As a final recommendation, I want to emphasize that Iranian officials responsible for human rights abuses should be held accountable with targeted sanctions. Even if comprehensive sanctions are lifted in the context of diplomacy on nuclear capabilities, those targeted sanctions would place effective pressure and stigma on those responsible for violating the basic dignity of women and men in Iran. We hope that Canada will join the United States and the EU in applying asset freezes and visa bans on Iranian officials responsible for abuses.
To close, the human rights situation in Iran is abysmal. Canada has been a leader in calling attention to that point. Your annual accountability week at the subcommittee is part of that leadership effort. Human rights respecting nations of both the global north and the global south need to show their solidarity with ordinary Iranians subject to repression by the government. A focus on nuclear talks and understandings doesn't justify sweeping acute human rights abuses under the rug.
Thank you very much.
View Pierre Nantel Profile
NDP (QC)
Lorraine Hébert
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Lorraine Hébert
2015-05-04 17:15
We are suggesting both. Television networks are still more mainstream than social media. We need a combination of mainstream media and social media creating the buzz. We have to create some buzz.
Natalie Linklater
View Natalie Linklater Profile
Natalie Linklater
2015-04-23 11:41
A couple of other really simple initiatives that we've implemented.... We try to break barriers and stereotypes of what younger girls or even current girls think engineering and science is. We have a strong history of female leaders in science and engineering, so a really easy thing to do using social media, which really grabs the younger girls as well as the university-age girls, is to take a picture from the Internet, which I Google, of past female scientists or engineers. We use an inspiring quote and we send that out on Twitter and Facebook as well as within a newsletter.
Examples of people we've used are Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Jane Goodall. These are just a few examples. It's really easy to put a different face onto what science and engineering could be.
We also maintain a blog. All our authors are current students. Another way of changing the face and increasing the visibility of females who are currently studying STEM is putting a picture of them at the bottom of the blog. It seems really simple, but it makes a difference. You get to see a person. You get to know what their interests are, what they're studying, and the wide array of people in our membership. It really makes me happy to see the variety of girls studying in the STEM fields.
Diem Do
View Diem Do Profile
Diem Do
2015-04-21 13:05
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of Parliament, and ladies and gentlemen.
First, I would like to thank the Subcommittee on International Human Rights for holding this meeting and for giving me the opportunity to speak about the human rights situation in Vietnam.
At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Canada graciously received many Vietnamese refugees and provided them with a new home. For this kindness and generosity, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of you.
April 30 will mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. We must examine how 40 years of Communist rule has affected the people of Vietnam. As of 1975, the Communist Party of Vietnam established one of the most repressive and corrupt regimes in our history. Immediately after taking control of South Vietnam, the Communist Party sent hundreds of thousands of people into prison camps, where thousands died from torture, starvation, disease, and exhaustion from extreme labour.
From 1975 and well into the 1990s, their reign of terror drove many people into a mass exodus from Vietnam. Of those who tried to escape by boat, many perished at sea or fell victim to pirates, including hundreds of women and young girls who were raped or kidnapped. But perhaps the most glaring aspect of their 40-year rule is their abysmal human rights record.
For today's meeting I would like to offer my presentation on five key areas.
The first is freedom of expression and information. In Vietnam the state controls all print and broadcast media. Foreign news and television shows are censored before they reach the Vietnamese audience. The government silences critics through police intimidation, harassment, arrest, court convictions, and severe prison sentences. According to the Reporters Without Borders 2015 press freedom index, Vietnam ranked 175th out of 180 countries.
In September 2013 the government passed Decree 72, giving the state sweeping powers to restrict speech on Internet blogs and social media. In January 2014 they passed Decree 174, putting in place harsh penalties for social media and Internet users who voice anti-state “propaganda” or “reactionary ideologies”. The government also uses DDoS attacks to shut down opposition websites and spyware and malware to hack into activists' computers. According to Freedom House, they also employ thousands of “public opinion shapers” who spread favourable state propaganda on the Internet.
The top two recommendations for Vietnam from the UN universal periodic review in February of last year were, one, to create conditions favourable to the realization of freedom of opinion, expression, and association, and two, to ensure that freedom of expression was protected, both offline and online, to enable unrestricted access and use of the Internet and to allow bloggers, journalists, and other Internet users and NGOs to promote and protect human rights.
The second area is freedom of assembly and association. The Government of Vietnam bans all political parties, labour unions, and human rights organizations independent of the government or the Communist Party. The authorities require official approval for public gatherings and refuse to grant permission for meetings, marches, or protests they deem unacceptable.
In recent years, numerous protests have broken out over land confiscation by corrupt officials, over poor labour conditions and inadequate labour policy, and over territorial disputes with China. In response, state security forces regularly crack down on people participating in these protests, and many activists were either detained or sentenced to up to seven years in prison.
The third area is freedom of religion or belief. Although religious freedom is protected under the Vietnamese constitution, there are, however, many related decrees placing significant limitations on religious freedom. Most recently, Decree 92 was passed in January 2013, further extending the government's control on religious groups.
All religious groups in Vietnam are required to join a party-controlled organization called Vietnam Fatherland Front. Those who fail to do so are often arrested or harassed. Religious groups most often targeted by the government include the Cao Dai church, the Hoa Hao Buddhist church, independent Protestant house churches, the Catholic Redemptorists, and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
Vietnam’s current situation can be best captured in the report of the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief after his visit to Vietnam in July of last year. Mr. Heiner Bielefeldt wrote in his summary:
Whereas religious life and religious diversity are a reality in Viet Nam today, autonomy and activities of independent religious or belief communities, that is, unrecognized communities, remain restricted and unsafe, with the rights to freedom of religion or belief of such communities grossly violated in the face of constant surveillance, intimidation, harassment and persecution.
Area number four concerns political rights. Vietnam is a one-party state in which the Communist Party of Vietnam has a firm monopoly over political power. This monopoly is guaranteed in article 4 of the recently amended 2013 constitution, which states that the Communist Party of Vietnam is the sole force leading the state and society. As mentioned above, all opposition parties are banned and severely persecuted.
Members of Vietnam’s National Assembly, which is the legislature, are elected in general elections; however, all candidates are vetted by the Communist Party-controlled Vietnam Fatherland Front. This earned Vietnam a Freedom House political rights score of seven in 2015, with one being the best and seven being the worst. As a result, the party controls all branches of the government. According to Freedom House, “Party membership is widely viewed as a means to business and societal connections, and corruption and nepotism among party members are a continuing problem.”
In Transparency International’s 2014 corruption perceptions index, Vietnam ranked 119 out of 175.
Despite many challenges, human rights defenders, democracy activists, intellectuals, and increasingly even some former high-ranking Communist officials, have openly called for political reform and better respect for human rights. Still, the government has responded with more arrests, harassment, and intimidation, a repression that many international organizations have labelled as the worst over the last 20 years.
The fifth and last area is the rule of law. Instead of the rule of law, the Vietnamese government has relied on the “rule by law” approach, applying sweeping national security provisions to suppress basic rights. To curtail freedom of speech, activists are charged with vaguely worded articles in the penal code, such as article 88, conducting propaganda against the state; article 79, subversion of the people's administration; and article 258, misuse of democratic freedoms to attack state interests and the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens.
In addition, Vietnam’s judiciary is under the control of the Communist Party, and in politically motivated cases, trials are often conducted hastily and routinely lack the impartiality required by international law.
Vietnamese law also authorizes administrative detention without trial, deeming peaceful dissidence as a threat to national security and placing many under house arrest. To avoid international criticism, authorities have sometimes applied non-political charges, such as tax evasion, to jail high-profile activists.
As an example, in the 2014 “Human Rights and Democracy” report, the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office classified Vietnam as a country of concern, with the following observation:
There is a lack of transparency and accountability throughout the legal system. We are concerned that the state uses the courts to punish dissidents by prosecuting them on unrelated matters. For example, in the case of Le Quoc Quan, whose sentence to 30 months in prison for tax evasion was upheld in February [2014], the UK assessed that he was imprisoned for voicing his opinions on religion, corruption and land reform, and that his trial was unfair.
In conclusion, to protect human rights and ultimately to support democracy in Vietnam, I would like to make the following four recommendations. The first is to call for the release of political prisoners. I urge that the Government of Canada join the UN 2014 universal periodic review in calling on the Vietnamese government to immediately release all political prisoners held and those held for peaceful expression or religious beliefs. It is estimated that there are currently hundreds of political prisoners in Vietnam.
The second recommendation is for outreach to civil society. The Canadian embassy in Vietnam should meet with and support independent grassroots organizations, especially those advocating for social reform, legal reform, and human rights. In addition, engaging with human rights defenders and the relatives of those in prison would be very helpful.
The third recommendation is to focus on legal reform. The Government of Canada can insist that the Government of Vietnam abolish articles 79, 88, and 258 of the penal code and administrative decrees 72, 92, and 174. Canadian embassy officials should request to attend political trials and insist that the Government of Vietnam respect the rights to assemble, to exercise free speech, and to form civic organizations.
The fourth and last recommendation is to integrate human rights into the overall bilateral relationship. The Government of Canada can incorporate legal reform and Internet freedom into the agenda for promoting higher education and trade with Vietnam, develop a road map linking human rights improvements with closer economic and security ties, and continue to raise human rights during all parliamentary and executive branch visits to Vietnam.
Ladies and gentlemen, for many years the international community, especially the Canadian government and people, have been supporting human rights in Vietnam, and we thank you for all you have done. We believe that a free and democratic Vietnam, where human rights are respected, is in the best interest of the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
We ask for your support in bringing human rights and freedom to our country, so that Vietnam can become a reliable and strong partner for a safe and prosperous Southeast Asia.
Thank you again for having me here today.
View Tyrone Benskin Profile
NDP (QC)
We're also hearing testimony on the human rights issues due to the political situation in North Korea, for example. One of the things that has been mentioned numerous times is getting information to the people. In North Korea, information is trickling in on thumb drives and things of this nature to the people. It's building that encouragement.
You've talked about the trade end of discussions in terms of attaching human rights issues to trade agreements, which we agree with 100%.
How do we get alternative information to the people? You mentioned that the government has clamped down on bloggers, Internet access, and that type of thing. How would we get information to the people for them to be able to use it?
Diem Do
View Diem Do Profile
Diem Do
2015-04-21 13:57
The Internet.... In fact, part of the reason why the situation in Vietnam has been changing over the last 10 years is because of the proliferation of Internet use in Vietnam. Right now in Vietnam, out of 90 million people, there are about 40 million Internet users, people who have access to the Internet. Twenty-five million people have a Facebook account. That's a very high number for a country like Vietnam.
The government did try, has been trying, and is still trying to exert control over the Internet. Back in 2009, they actually shut down Facebook for a few months. But then when the young people protested so much, they had to bring it back up again. So the Internet is still a powerful tool for us to get information into Vietnam. Of course, they put up firewalls and they try to put in different kinds of blocks, but if there's a block, people will find a way to circumvent it. People have been circumventing it. Because of the Internet, information has been getting out there. People have access to information through non-traditional channels.
In my testimony, I did make a recommendation about pushing forward to guarantee Internet freedom in Vietnam, to support Internet freedom in Vietnam. Pressuring the government into respecting the Internet for Vietnam would go a long way in helping to get information out.
Christine Duhaime
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Christine Duhaime
2015-03-31 8:52
Good morning and thank you. I have some brief comments and then I'll be happy to take your questions.
I'm going to start my comments where the deputy minister left off when he testified before you a couple of days ago, talking about the FATF. The FATF, as he described to you, is the policy-setting body that mandates policy that countries around the world implement in terms of their national laws to follow anti-money laundering. There are two other parts of that, one of which he discussed, which is counterterrorist financing, and the third part is sanctions law. I bring that to your attention because that's the regime we look at when we think about terrorist financing and the two pieces especially, which are sanctions law, i.e., sanctions avoidance if we're not complying with it, and terrorist financing. Those are the three pillars from which we gauge whether or not financial crimes are being committed in terms of compliance.
The FATF has done a fairly comprehensive job of policy setting for the first one, anti-money laundering policy. There are issues with respect to its ability in providing leadership, guidance, and policy on a responsive level on the other two, namely, counterterrorist financing and sanctions law. I do not know why that is the case, but the evidence is fairly strong that there are counterterrorist financing issues and sanctions compliance issues in this country and around the world. I would go so far as to say that those two regimes, those two pillars, are broken and we need to find solutions to rectify the situation. The reality is that there would not be an Islamic State today or other terrorist activities to the extent that we see growing if our counterterrorist financing laws and our sanctions laws were complied with around the world.
I'd like to make a quick note about digital terrorist financing, as I think this plays into one of the issues we are facing, which is that we have not kept pace with counterterrorism laws. Terrorist financing is not static. One of the issues with the FATF is that for whatever reason, it has not kept pace with counterterrorism. One of the issues with the digital financing regime is that entities like the Islamic State are quite versatile on social media. Not only do they fundraise on that platform, but they upload lots of their propaganda. The more they upload propaganda of horrific acts, the more they get funding around the world for their activities. It's quite a vicious circle and it's quite important that we come up to speed with what the digital financing regime is like and get a grip on that.
For example, the Islamic State uses Twitter quite a lot, but they use other platforms such as JustPaste.it and Ask.fm. Sometimes when we ask law enforcement and counterterrorism officials about those social media sites, they don't have a clue what we're talking about. I think it's important that we understand what Ask.fm is, how it works, what JustPaste.it is, and how organizations like ISIS use them to fund their terrorist activities in this country and elsewhere.
I point that issue out specifically to mention the fact that ISIS has been around for two years now in digital terrorism, and digital terrorist financing for as long, and yet in this country we don't have a digital terrorism strategy or a counter-strategy, and we certainly don't have one with respect to digital counterterrorism.
Let me talk briefly about the enforcement piece because it's an important piece of the puzzle with respect to reporting entities and law enforcement in this country.
In the past couple of years, the enforcement globally has followed the same path as the FATF. By that I mean we are quite strong on anti-money laundering law compliance and enforcement globally, but in this country much less so when it comes to counterterrorist financing and sanctions law. In this country we rarely enforce, investigate, undertake compliance reviews and prosecute for sanctions and counterterrorist financing. By contrast, in the United States they have an exceedingly strong sanctions regime and they enforce it strictly. There's no reason that we can't do the same here.
In terms of solutions, let me say that in my experience there is a great need for dialogue between the public and the private sectors. I hear all the time from both sides which I represent that there is a gap in information sharing. They each want to know what the other is doing. They each want to have more information. They are each vitally interested in combatting terrorism in whatever way they can, but they're lacking a dialogue. They're lacking the tools. They're lacking the communication.
My suggestion is that Canada take a leadership role in counterterrorist financing and sanctions, and that it contemplate putting together some sort of a centre of excellence for us to bring together all of these parties and assure that they have the dialogue that they say they need to counter terrorist financing in Canada and abroad.
Thank you.
Amit Kumar
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Amit Kumar
2015-03-31 9:07
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me to discuss terrorist financing in Canada and abroad. In my time today, I will highlight certain key threats that Canada and the rest of the world face as regards terrorist financing. I will outline a few steps that the Government of Canada, in cooperation with its international partners, can take to help mitigate these threats.
As the juggernaut of ISIS rolls on unabated, and as al Qaeda and its affiliates across the world show renewed vigour, terrorist financing threats are on the rise. ISIS is flush with funds, and its reliance on criminal methods and donations from rich individuals to fund its operations has become all too obvious. Simultaneously, the heightened activity of al Qaeda affiliates like Boko Haram and AQAP, as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban, all of whom are well financed thanks to their exploitation of criminal sources of money and misuse of charitable organizations alike, is causing great concern to the democratic denizens of Canada and the international community.
A key factor that allows the aforementioned terrorist organizations to thrive is their ability to launder the proceeds of their criminal activities towards terrorist financing ends and purposes. Often in concert with criminal organizations, as well as on their own, these terrorist groups have been able to finesse the craft of money laundering in order to disguise the sources of their income from the ultimate destination that this income is bound for, and that is towards perpetrating terrorist acts, setting up and administering new affiliates and cells, and the training, recruitment, and online radicalization of terrorists.
An alarming trend is the global nature of the movement of terrorist funds, which not only tends to misuse the international financial system, but also makes it very difficult to trace these funds and to prosecute and convict those engaging in the nefarious acts of perpetrating, financing, and facilitating the terrorism that we in the civilized world all love to hate.
Given the seemingly intractable task and mission of stemming the flow of terrorist funds and their use to launch terrorist attacks, what can Canada along with the global community do to mitigate the terrorist financing threat?
First, it's important to recognize that terrorists succeed by moving men, money, materiel, and messages across the world. Hence, a broader and more expansive scope of material support to include men, money, materiel, and messages should be adopted by the comity of nations in order to make more informed and effective choices in exercising the countering of financing of terrorism tools of sanctions, investigations and enforcement, regulations, and outreach.
Second, given the free movement of money, men, materiel, and messages in this day and age of the internet, ISIS, al Qaeda, and their acolytes are not limiting their theatres of operation and fundraising activities only to Iraq, Syria, and the broader Middle East, but they are also extending them to north Africa, west Africa, southwest Asia, south Asia, Europe, etc. ISIS-inspired attacks in Paris, Ottawa, and Oklahoma are a case in point. So is the heinous attack by French citizen Mehdi Nemmouche in Brussels, Belgium, as is the combined training activities of Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and ISIS in Mauritania. Foreign terrorist fighters may perpetrate terrorist acts not only in their home countries; therefore, any counterterrorist finance strategy should not limit itself to Iraq, Syria, and immediate neighbours, as has been the wont of the international community for the past year or so.
Third, given the serious online radicalization, fundraising, and recruitment threat that ISIS presents, it's imperative to work with social media companies to take down incendiary videos and websites that train impressionable persons in bomb making, invite radical thoughts and beliefs, and lionize those who commit atrocious terrorist acts. Present efforts under way to bring in legislation in Canada to address this issue are a step in the right direction. Of course, it is hoped that these legislative initiatives will balance the needs of security with those of free speech and the privacy concerns of citizens.
Fourth, while there has been a lot of debate in the past several years about the functioning and effectiveness of FINTRAC—and by all accounts its performance has considerably improved—not much has been spoken of in terms of the dire need for two-way information sharing between law enforcement agencies and FINTRAC. This two-way information sharing would further improve the effectiveness of FINTRAC and the quality of its financial intelligence products.
Fifth, while targeted sanctions against the al Qaeda and Taliban regimes by the UN are a noteworthy name and shame deterrence phenomenon, and the capacity-building initiatives of the UN Security Council resolution 1373 regime have gained high praise, their effectiveness of implementation, as well as their impact at stemming terrorist financing have yet to be assessed. The Government of Canada, which is actively engaged in funding and facilitating the countering the financing of terrorism capacity-building programs through the UN and its agencies, may like to request information from both the al Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team and the counterterrorism executive directorate with regard to the effectiveness of implementation and the impacts of UNSCR 1267 and UNSCR 1373, respectively.
It is hoped that these thoughts and recommendations will help the committee in its examination of terrorist financing in Canada and abroad going forward.
In closing, thank you, Mr. Chair and members, for this opportunity to discuss this issue. I welcome your questions.
Bill Tupman
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Bill Tupman
2015-03-31 9:12
Thank you, Chair.
The first point I'd make is that if you really want a longer presentation from me, I did a lecture tour of Australia a couple of years ago and you can see a YouTube video of my doing a 40-minute presentation, with jokes, on the mix of terrorist financing, but I'm going to spare you the jokes and the 40 minutes. For the sake of the interpreters, I'm going to try to make six or seven quick points.
The first point is that my present interest is the increasing overlap between terrorism and organized crime, that they are engaged in very similar sorts of activities, that they are both networked and organized as networks rather than as Weberian pyramids, and that they are primarily cellular.
My second point is that we need to remember that most terrorist operations now are self-financed. The cell finds its own financing for the particular operation. There is seed core financing for what we might call spectaculars, and for setting up an organization for the purposes of recruitment. If we're going to talk about terrorist financing, we need to recognize those differences.
My third point is that states are back as terrorist financers. There was a period when it appeared that we were dealing with organizations that were non-state actors. As things have changed over the past five years, increasingly the big organizations are being funded by states. I'm not going to name them because I don't know whether I'm under the Chatham House Rule or whatever, but they're fairly widely known, and if you're going to stop terrorist financing you need to address the question of those states.
My fourth point mirrors something one of the earlier speakers said. We're dealing with a series of new technologies. Social media represents one of those technologies, but we also need to remember there are alternative forms of payment, such as bitcoin, and there are all sorts of money substitutes used in games, like Second Life. An awful lot of attention by the security services is focused in the wrong place. We don't need gathering of general social media. The bad guys have now gone to Tor; they've gone to the deep web where the pedophiles are and where all sorts of dissidents hang out. We need to know a lot more about how to investigate what's going on there.
My fifth point is that again over the last five years we've seen the rise of the terrorist accountant. It sounds like a contradiction in terms. Accountants are supposed to be terribly dull people and terribly worthy, but accountants are now very important in assessing businesses for the tax or extortion they're going to pay to the terrorist organization. We need to remember that not just banks lend money, but also accountancy firms and firms of solicitors. We need to pay more attention to the accountancy profession.
My sixth point again mirrors something somebody else has said. The most important thing is better trained investigators. We have enough laws. We don't need more laws; we need more competent investigators to produce evidence and prosecute. One of the big traces you need to follow is, who is now dealing with the suspicious activity records? Is anything being done with them? Are they genuinely being analyzed, or are they just piling up on a computer somewhere?
My seventh point is that we should remember the objective of countering terrorist financing is the same as the objective of all counterterrorism. It must reduce the number of terrorists.
If we use blunt instruments that hit non-terrorist targets that hit spectators, we will end up increasing the number of terrorists.
My final point is the Islamic State point. The Islamic State since it captured Mosul has access to large funds and doesn't really need to raise a lot of money elsewhere, but it's also able to sell oil. We need to know where that oil is going, we need to track it, and we need to make sure the money is not getting back to them.
Those are my eight points. Thank you very much for listening. I will enjoy taking questions.
View Andrew Saxton Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you.
You talked about digital financing. Could you expand on that? What role do Bitcoin and crowdsourcing, for example, play in this?
Christine Duhaime
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Christine Duhaime
2015-03-31 9:29
FINTRAC said it has no evidence that Bitcoin has played any role whatsoever in terrorist financing, and the U.S. government said the same about eight months ago. I don't know if that has changed recently.
With respect to digital finance, what's happening is that Twitter, for example.... There will be thousands upon thousands of requests from ISIS people requesting people all over the world to send money to them through PayPal, or through some other means digitally. The danger there is that it's immediate. It's from me to you. No one really knows how that transaction has taken place other than it can be global and is fairly quick. It's a small number, so it doesn't fit within the typologies that we have typically assessed to counterterrorist financing. We're not searching for it at the big banks, because we're not required to under anti-money laundering laws.
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