FAAE Committee Report

SUPPLEMENTARY OPINION OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF CANADA, THE BLOC QUÉBÉCOIS AND THE NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF CANADA

The Conservative, Bloc and New Democrat Members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development are pleased to submit the following evidence and recommendations to the Committee's report: Part II of a Study on the Aftershocks of the Covid-19 Pandemic—Confronting a Child Rights Crisis and Restoring Hope:

The Situation

In 1209, during the Battle of Béziers between Catholics and Cathars, some 20,000 people were killed. Many people who did not necessarily embrace the Cathar faith were indiscriminately massacred, supposedly to avoid letting possible heretics live. According to legend, the Catholic commander, Arnaud Amaury, declared: "Kill them all, God will know his own." They made the decision to condemn a large part of the population of Béziers, even Catholics, to death.

The idea that it is better to slaughter the innocent than to admit the possibility that the guilty will be spared is profoundly contrary to the values of any justice system worthy of the name. It is a spirit that rightly strikes us with horror. And yet, the federal government's response to the detention of Canadian citizens in camps in Northern Syria seems to be similar to this logic - to allow innocent young children to be held in intolerable conditions simply because of the complexity of sorting out the guilty from the innocent.

As part of its study of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children, this committee heard extensive testimony from human rights groups and others about the situation of Canadian children detained in Northern Syria. The committee, in choosing to include the children's component in this study, rather than considering it in a separate study, made a conscious decision to receive and report on this information. This supplementary report addresses that issue exclusively.

Before sharing what we have heard or stating our views on this situation, it is important to note that three parties, whose members make up a majority of the committee, signed this supplementary report. This is obviously unusual, as the conclusions of the majority of MPs on the committee should be reflected in the body of the report rather than in a supplementary opinion. The rules for committees allow even a minority of MPs on a committee considerable latitude to delay the work of the committee and possibly prevent the committee from reporting on an issue. Recognizing the importance of allowing the committee to report more fully on this issue, even if imperfectly, the majority of the committee decided to comment on this issue in this supplementary document.

As the committee's main report points out in part, several countries, including Canada, are facing a tragic and complex situation in northern Syria. Following the defeat of ISIS/Daesh, many people have been arrested. These included terrorist fighters who were members or sympathizers of ISIS/Daesh (including terrorist fighters from abroad), as well as their spouses and children. Distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty in this situation is complex. Those who travelled from Canada with the intention of joining and fighting for a terrorist organization clearly bear responsibility for their actions and should be held accountable. Conversely, their children clearly should not bear responsibility for their parents' actions. Spouses of ISIS/Daesh fighters may have been influenced or coerced to join their spouses and may also be victims of sexual or other forms of violence, but spouses of fighters may also have been willingly complicit in atrocities or other acts of violence.

The MPs preparing this supplementary report are not naive about the complexity of the different situations when innocent and guilty people are part of the same family. However, we maintain that the government has a responsibility to put in place mechanisms to protect the human rights of innocent children and other innocent Canadians who may be in these camps, while punishing the guilty. Canada cannot tolerate the indefinite detention of these children simply because of crimes committed by one or both parents. The government has a range of policy options to respond to this situation. It is crucial that any action taken has the effect of defending the rights and dignity of innocent children, rather than punishing them for the crimes of their parents. "Kill them all and God will know his own" is not an appropriate way to respond to the complexity of the situation.

What We Heard

We would like to draw the attention of the House to some of the comments made to the committee about the current situation in relation to the rights of Canadian children, in addition to what appears in the main body of the report. Numerous witnesses highlighted the dire conditions in which these innocent children find themselves, as well as the strong desire of the Kurdish authorities to facilitate their repatriation.

Ms. Farida Deif, Canada Director of Human Rights Watch, addressed the situation facing these children in her testimony. She told the committee that Canada "has not even helped to verify the citizenship of the more than 20 children born in Syria to Canadian parents, leaving them without an officially recognized nationality. When asked what grade she would give Canada for respecting human rights in relation to its citizens in northeastern Syria, Deif said, "I would not give it a passing grade since the government has not urgently repatriated its nationals. No working group has been established to study this issue. I don't know if the Prime Minister or the Minister of Foreign Affairs are getting regular updates on the health and well-being of these Canadians. "

On this point, Mathieu Paiement, another witness, told the committee: "In this emergency context, Germany and Finland repatriated 23 children just before Christmas, and in early 2021, France picked up seven children, citing humanitarian and health reasons. At this rate, within weeks, all the Canadian children trapped in the camps in northeastern Syria could have been repatriated."

Ms. Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, also spoke to this issue, and called for urgency in taking the appropriate action. She said, “[t]here is a solution, and we are seeing many states engage that solution by returning their nationals.” She expressed concerns with Canada’s current efforts on this front, and she “urge[d] the government and this parliamentary committee to focus its immediate attention on the need to ensure that Canada is a leader in this area, not a state that sits on a list of shame in the failure to return its women and children home.”

Paul Champ (attorney, Champ and Associates) argued that the Canadian government is obligated to repatriate Canadian detainees under domestic law. He told the committee: “Canadian government officials will disagree with my legal opinion [that] there's a duty on Canada to take action. They will say that the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] does not extend abroad and does not obligate the government to intervene to assist Canadians abroad in their efforts to leave a foreign country. In most contexts, I would agree with that, but I’ve been involved in other cases in which I’ve successfully compelled the Canadian government to return Canadian citizens to Canada when they were at risk of serious human rights abuse. That is the difference. Where Canada knows that a citizen abroad is at risk of a serious human rights abuse, such as torture or death, Canada can take measures. If it is within its power to diminish or alleviate that risk, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is triggered.” Mr. Champ went on to say that, because “the SDF says that they will only release these Canadian children if Canada agrees to return them, it is Canada that holds the keys to those prison camps.” 

In her testimony, Ms. Farida Deif pointed out what seems to explain Canada's casualness in this matter, and suggested a possible path forward. "I think the real obstacle is that the government does not want to repatriate adults. Indeed, by repatriating an orphan, they do not need to repatriate the adults who accompany him...Clearly, Canada has a strong judicial system in which those who may have committed crimes can be prosecuted here in Canada. As stated by the Special Rapporteur, there is clearly no way to do that in northeastern Syria right now. So we are asking that all Canadians be repatriated, not just children. We are asking that children certainly not be separated from their parents or guardians unless it is in the best interests of the child, that all of these people be repatriated, reintegrated and resettled in Canada, and that anyone who may have committed crimes be prosecuted. That is essentially what we are asking for. If other countries have done it, but Canada has not, it is simply because there was a political will in those other countries."

In their extensive report Bring Me Back to Canada, Human Rights Watch describes the situation in the prison camps: “In locked camps for women, girls, and younger boys, tents collapse in strong winds or flood with rain or sewage. Some women, including at least one Canadian, say they are on an ISIS ‘kill list’ for not supporting the group. Drinking water is often contaminated or in short supply. Latrines are overflowing, wild dogs scavenge mounds of garbage littering the grounds, and illnesses including viral infections are rampant. Medical care is grossly inadequate. The Kurdish Red Crescent reported that at least 517 people, 371 of them children, died in 2019, many from preventable diseases, in al-Hol—the larger of two camps for women and children, with about 65,000 detainees.” 

There can be little doubt based on the testimony that the lives of the Canadian children detained in these conditions are at a constant risk. Mr. Champ noted about children in these camps: “The UN has also reported that many of these children are dying. They are dying from malnutrition, as well as dehydration, diarrhea and hypoglycemia. Their daily lives could not be more desperate were it not also for the violence in these camps. Exploitation and abuse is rife. People are killed by gunfire almost daily.”

Justin Mohammed, Human Rights Law and Policy Campaigner for Amnesty International Canada, underscored that action on this issue needs to be undertaken in an equitable way. He told the committee that the Canadian government must ensure “that such action does not discriminate on the basis of gender, political views, or religion, and that it must respect the rights of the child and the principle of family unity.” 

Witnesses noted that the Government’s claim that it is not within their power to repatriate Canadians detained at the Al-Hol and Al-Roj camps is refuted both by the capacity of our allies to repatriate their citizens and by the repatriation of one five-year-old orphan, Amira, in the summer of 2020. On the subject of this repatriation, Mr. Mathieu Paiement stated: "We are really talking about 25 children. The government waited until they had proof that this child was an orphan. In fact, it repatriated the only orphan, as if she alone, because she had no parental support, deserved to be repatriated. However, the situation in the camps is so serious that all the other children should have been repatriated at the same time." Kurdish authorities want to facilitate repatriation and have worked with Canada and other allies on repatriation in the past.

Conservative, Bloc and NDP members of the committee are grateful to these witnesses for their work and their testimony. The committee did not hear from any witnesses who contradicted the testimony given, or who presented any defense of the government’s failure to protect the rights of these children. We share the concerns of witnesses that the government has abandoned previous commitments to always protect the rights of Canadians. The Prime Minister has previously said that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”. We note in particular in this respect these comments of Paul Champ:

“You can think of this another way. What if China said tomorrow that they would release the two Michaels, but only if Canada would agree to come and retrieve them? Do any of us here doubt that there would be wheels up on a CF plane to China within hours? However, these children have been waiting for years. Let's not forget that the two Michaels travelled to China as adults, knowingly. These children are innocent. They did not make the choice to travel to a war zone, yet it is in a war zone that they are trapped. They are completely innocent. Canada has the power to return them.”

Recommendations

In light of this testimony, we as the majority of the committee recommend that the government of Canada act immediately to facilitate the fast repatriation of Canadian children and any other innocent people facing arbitrary detention abroad, including in particular those in the Al-Hol and Roj camps in northeast Syria. Additionally, we recommend that the government of Canada immediately provide consular services to all Canadians detained in northeast Syria. Based on witness testimony and the experience of allies, the committee has no doubt that the government has the capacity to provide this support.

The current policy of leaving children in indefinite detention to punish them for the crimes of others, and to hide behind the complexity of sorting the innocent from the guilty in order to justify doing nothing for the innocent, is immoral and unCanadian. It is a profound betrayal of the commitment that every civilized nation makes to its citizens. The lives of these children are at risk every day they are in these camps, and the life of every child should be a priority for the government. Every child matters. “Kill them all and God will know his own” is not a civilized sentiment. It is time to end the current approach and put in place a policy to protect the rights of these innocent children.