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Listening in to the thinkers working and speaking at the University of Alberta. There’s no shortage of great minds to pick with 400 undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in 18 faculties across five campuses.
00;00;02;02 - 00;00;05;06
Speaker 1
Okay. Next.
00;00;05;08 - 00;00;13;04
Speaker 1
Everybody's coming in. We got a pile online. It's great.
00;00;13;06 - 00;00;31;06
Speaker 1
Okay. Amazing. Well, we'll just start. I'll start and welcome everyone. And, And then we'll get the work out started.
00;00;31;08 - 00;01;01;07
Speaker 1
Well, we'll have lots of food to eat for those of us that are here. That's okay. I brought takeaway containers to right here. Got you centered and your best angle. Yeah. All right. Well, welcome, folks online and folks in person. Just want to welcome you on behalf of the John Humphrey Center for Peace and Human Rights. We're super excited to have our guest, John Packer, here with us.
00;01;01;09 - 00;01;21;06
Speaker 1
We were just talking yesterday. Have known John over the years, many years, but we've never met in person until recently in Winnipeg. And we've seen each other three times since, which is strange, which is beautiful. This is the nice to get to know John. And so thanks for coming. But the John Humphrys center, I just want to, you know, first acknowledge this beautiful this view that we have.
00;01;21;07 - 00;01;42;06
Speaker 1
I know folks online you can't see but 12th floor of the Henry Marshall Tory building overlooking is so incredibly beautiful. But it does remind me of those folks that have been displaced from this territory. So the Papas Chase First Nation, you know, used to used to roam and farm or, you know, harvest these lands. And it was a really sacred space.
00;01;42;06 - 00;02;04;18
Speaker 1
There's actually a there's known to be a mass grave site just further down the white mud in terms of Papa Nation. There's a there's a film called Reconciliation by Jamie Borg. He's from Buffalo Lake Métis settlements. And his family was part of that Papa Chase that was, you know, pushed out, forcefully displaced. And that's one nation that never really got recognition.
00;02;04;20 - 00;02;26;08
Speaker 1
And they own a gas station on the south side of Edmonton. But I think it's really important as we do this work, and we're going to be talking about transnational repression today, that we we, we understand that oppression and the genocide that exists right here in our own lands and how that plays out, how that I was I was telling Dominic this morning that I just got back from Thompson, Manitoba.
00;02;26;12 - 00;02;51;09
Speaker 1
And, you know, just when you think, you know, things in this world and experienced them. But Thompson, Manitoba, I think was one of my most difficult trips on the heart that I've had, I think in my life, even though I've traveled internationally in that because we were working to, they asked us to come up and do training on advocacy using human rights mechanisms and the health care system.
00;02;51;09 - 00;03;15;20
Speaker 1
You're invited up by an indigenous doctor and an indigenous nurse and nurse and some indigenous advocates, and to be sitting in a room with 15 cohorts in the team and five of them moms who've lost children to negligence, racism in the health care system over the last six months, one guy, his brother, you know, in really bad condition due to his experience in the health system.
00;03;15;20 - 00;03;43;29
Speaker 1
And it just was really heavy and really heartbreaking. And just, you know, when we're thinking about the land in this place, we've all been blessed. We've all been so blessed to have the opportunities to, you know, myself being in this, this, this, this building again and taking me back to doing my master's of political science here, and how lucky and privileged and how fortunate been able to to grow and be a part of this land and this territory in treaty six.
00;03;43;29 - 00;04;09;06
Speaker 1
So just I just want to ground this there in the John Humphrey Center is really about an organization working to kind of shine light on those difficult truths. And we just really appreciate the space and appreciate all of you. So I wanted to invite my colleague Philip from the Interface Center to bring a few words. She is like a core partner of the John Humphrey Center from the interface, and we've been working for years together, trying to build bridges.
00;04;09;06 - 00;04;35;29
Speaker 1
And and this year we're really excited because we're going to get to do this piece builder program again in this piece builder program was something we designed number many years ago where we create these spaces where young people, when I say young people, it's usually like in their early 20s, are coming together across faith backgrounds and really going out to the goodwill or the synagogues and engaging in conversations, difficult conversations that really look at social cohesion as a focus.
00;04;35;29 - 00;04;45;09
Speaker 1
So I just want to neta and, and I've asked her to say a few words and then we'll introduce John.
00;04;45;11 - 00;05;07;01
Speaker 2
Thank you Renee. And if I'm going to say something personal first, my mother was born two blocks away from here, and her parents came up from from the States in 1895 when there was not there wasn't in Alberta, the Dominion of Canada was welcoming homesteaders and giving away land basically free. And I can guarantee you that as white Europeans, they never thought for one second about who might have been here before then.
00;05;07;03 - 00;05;38;05
Speaker 2
I'm sure that was not in their consciousness, but also I'm ever mindful of that. So good morning. I am executive director of the Edmonton Interfaith Center for Education and Action. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we are very proud of our long standing and ongoing partnership with the John Humphrys, enter the city's foremost human rights organization. For all these years, we have been working side by side with different focus but similar goals to promote the reality that pluralism and diversity are among our greatest strengths and must be embraced.
00;05;38;09 - 00;06;01;04
Speaker 2
The Edmonton Interface Center approaches is through one aspect of our complex identities voting, religious literacy. The more we know about each other, the more we will respect, understand and experience true harmony. We learn about each other from each other. With half our board of directors having been born outside of Canada, we are well placed to appreciate the tensions of which Professor Packer will speak.
00;06;01;11 - 00;06;21;08
Speaker 2
Sadly, our work and that of the John Humphrey Center are needed now more than ever, to a degree that many of us could not have foreseen 30 years ago. And maybe that's just as well to many leaders, both political and religious, are deliberately dividing us for their own goals, sowing fear, scapegoating the other. Solidarity and awareness are needed.
00;06;21;10 - 00;06;39;25
Speaker 2
In February, we held an inaugural interfaith breakfast attended by 130 guests. The theme belonging in the Time of Uncertainty reflected the concerns we are facing to continue to demonstrate that we all belong. So thank you.
00;06;39;27 - 00;06;56;09
Speaker 1
Thank you so much. All right. We have some new newcomers coming in. So with that, no further ado, I will welcome John Packer from the University of Ottawa. I know John was the director of the Human Rights Research Education Center for decades.
00;06;56;09 - 00;06;56;25
Speaker 2
12.
00;06;56;28 - 00;07;14;03
Speaker 1
12 years. Okay. 12 years. One of the and I know I have been making an indelible impact in Ottawa, but also just the his braveness, his boldness to speak out on issues that I think a lot of folks aren't talking about and just your international experience. So I'm just super grateful for you taking the time to be here.
00;07;14;03 - 00;07;33;07
Speaker 1
I know it's summertime, the academic crowd is a bit lower, but we have a crew online and just welcome you all. And John will talk and then we'll open up and we'll have space for dialog and questions folks online. I just have you all muted so that we don't have background noise. But as soon as we start the discussion we'll open up and we'll go from there.
00;07;33;08 - 00;07;38;26
Speaker 1
So with that no further ado. Here we go.
00;07;38;29 - 00;07;51;07
Speaker 3
Thank you so much, Renee. And thank you also for behalf of the Interfaith Center for those remarks, which I think are also.
00;07;51;09 - 00;08;18;22
Speaker 3
Good for all of us to think about where we came from, where we're going with our relationship. So first of all, I'll introduce myself a little bit more in a moment. But a couple perfect preliminary remarks. This is my second time at the University of Alberta. I was here 44 years ago when I was 21 years old, as a student in a debating competition, Western Canadian debating competition.
00;08;18;22 - 00;08;43;25
Speaker 3
So I barely remember it. And I can tell you that it's always remarkable to me the speed of development, the increase in the size of the city, the communities, the diversity and so forth. I'm originally from Winnipeg, born and raised in Winnipeg. My parents were immigrants. Like many parents, many of my peers, and had problems similar kind of perceptions at the time.
00;08;43;28 - 00;09;10;08
Speaker 3
And my parents actually emigrated from India. But my parents were British and they after they were part of the Indian Army and stayed in the India after independence in Kenya in 1950. And my father thought he was coming as part of the colonial British Empire, that he could just call me candidate discovered he couldn't. It was a whole kind of moment of realization and they ended up.
00;09;10;15 - 00;09;36;06
Speaker 3
He later joined the went to Vancouver and they later joined the Canadian Army and ended up in Shilo, Manitoba, a Canadian Armed Forces base. And then as the 50s changed and opportunities increased to the city, Winnipeg, and that's where they established a family. But even in Winnipeg, I mean, first of all, when I was a kid, Winnipeg was the fourth largest city in Canada, larger than Edmonton and Calgary.
00;09;36;07 - 00;10;00;19
Speaker 3
Calgary was small place, if you might remember. When I was a kid driving through a child, you would go past on the Trans-Canada highway and it was somewhere further away. It's not how it is anymore, but the diversity of the character of the communities in the populations also change substantially. Winnipeg, as you may know, have substantial, particularly East European immigration.
00;10;00;19 - 00;10;23;08
Speaker 3
And so I grew up, you know, eating Polish and Ukrainian food and Icelandic food and but also the idea of belonging. People had to forge that. But I will say with regard to indigenous peoples, not what we called them at the time. You know, in our Constitution we call them Aboriginal. But at the time when I was a kid, we didn't call them that either.
00;10;23;12 - 00;10;42;20
Speaker 3
They were Indians. And and you may also know, in Canadian law we still use this term. So it was a visible reality that there was a deep divide. And that divide was not only a kind of we they.
00;10;42;22 - 00;11;06;25
Speaker 3
That was also cultural. It was also helpfully one of the unequal opportunity of poverty. We didn't have a lot of poverty, but poverty amongst the indigenous people was visible. And you may know, I'm not sure what the population ratio is in Alberta, but in Manitoba there's substantial percentage of the populations indigenous. And so it's also kind of hard to ignore.
00;11;06;28 - 00;11;39;17
Speaker 3
But we did. And that's something I want to just underline, is that it was routine to ignore it. Actually somehow we mentally just shifted it out of our minds. And and I think this is relevant to the conversation we'll have today because it's something about relationships in the world. When I was a child, it was very clear that many, many people, as I mentioned, East Europeans had come fleeing their countries of origin and telecommunications was such that it was quite difficult to maintain contacts.
00;11;39;19 - 00;12;02;21
Speaker 3
My family scheduled one phone call a year. We had to schedule it. You had to book it to speak with relatives in England and Australia. So younger people might not realize. But that's how it was. You registered, booked and reserved a single phone call for a limited amount of time. By the way, those were carried through both in Australia and in the UK at the time.
00;12;02;29 - 00;12;32;15
Speaker 3
Actually, until not too many decades ago, almost no one had a unique telephone line. So you had party lines and things. You had no privacy in those communications, and you basically had the opportunity to say a few words. Hi. You know, we love you. That was for that. My mother had worked in Burma before, during the war, and she had been part of a women's Auxiliary Service, Burma and developed close relations with many Burmese women.
00;12;32;15 - 00;13;00;19
Speaker 3
And she was able for some time to write letters. But then that because that's how communications were letters, you waited for weeks or months for the letters and and then under the what became known as the Bamboo Curtain under post-independence regimes. And that became impossible to so simply communication ceased and you had to kind of imagine you had to imagine about people and relationships.
00;13;00;22 - 00;13;29;22
Speaker 3
And I want to underline that, because notwithstanding the difficulties in communications and the distances which underlined a kind of conceptual of us and them and where we were, they were over there. We were over here. In fact, we were already living in worlds, a world which was interdependent. But we had not fully realized the degrees of interdependence. And that existed in certain domains, particularly security domains.
00;13;29;24 - 00;13;56;28
Speaker 3
But today we live in a hyper complex, interdependent world. And these ideas, I'll come back to it later. About over there and over here are misconceptions of our actual experience today. Today we're connected online, but connected online. You know, through these little devices, we can be simultaneously connected anywhere in the world. In fact, I have posted this question to a number of people.
00;13;56;28 - 00;14;19;00
Speaker 3
No one's really giving me a good answer. But for example, yesterday I had a meeting online with people in five different countries about a situation in a sixth different country. And we met through this somehow. And my question is, where did we meet? Where where was it? I was here, they were in five other countries. You talked about a six.
00;14;19;01 - 00;14;47;03
Speaker 3
I don't quite know the technology, how it was routed, who controlled it. I'm assuming there were multiple connections and I don't know who was secretly watching or listening and so forth, but it was simultaneous. So this fundamental conception of us and them, we and they over there, over here, is today a false, imagined conception. We are simultaneously we are now like literally living in one world.
00;14;47;03 - 00;15;17;13
Speaker 3
And this doesn't extend to very simple things such as climate change, pandemics, cryptocurrency. What is a cryptocurrency? Where does that fit in the Westphalian paradigm? So but these are very real, very powerful, very influential. So that's a kind of remark. A couple other remarks. I had the pleasure of meeting John Humphrey a number of times. So for those of you who don't know, John Humphrey was he was a Canadian.
00;15;17;16 - 00;15;37;29
Speaker 3
And after the Second World War, he was one of the early employees of the United Nations. And so some of you probably know the stories, but others who don't know it. And he was hired as the first director of the Directorate of Human Rights, as it was called in the United Nations at the time, under the UN charter, the Economic and Social Council.
00;15;38;02 - 00;16;09;14
Speaker 3
It establishes a commission, one of the charter based commissions on human rights. And that commission became famous because, among other things, it turned almost immediately to elaborate the Universal Declaration of Rights. So we famously see photo of Eleanor Roosevelt unfurling a big print of the big Universal Declaration rights. And there was a half dozen or so very well-known people involved for France who later became a Nobel laureate and so forth, who are attributed as being the principal drafters at the Universal Declaration rights.
00;16;09;15 - 00;16;48;18
Speaker 3
But I can tell you, because I've been a UN staff member for many, many years and others to governmental. But you can imagine there are these kind of quiet, no name civil servants who actually carry the bag and hold the pen and do all the drafting. And that was a guy named John African, John Peters, Humphrey's Humphrey. And so he is actually the person who held the pen listening to all the discussions from Eleanor Roosevelt, in any case, and others and, and put together the actual text of the University of Michigan rights, which went through variations and then was adopted at the UN General Assembly.
00;16;48;21 - 00;17;11;04
Speaker 3
By the way, just for those who sometimes get this wrong, nobody signed the Universal Declaration, right? So this is a legal point I had to make. It was a resolution. It was adopted by a single vote. There were some abstentions, but it was never voted upon. And it might surprise you to know that Canada at the time, in the different drafts of it, voted consistently against it.
00;17;11;05 - 00;17;21;13
Speaker 3
And it was only in the last final text that can devote in favor, which was, of course.
00;17;21;16 - 00;17;46;18
Speaker 3
Mr. Pearson, who later became the foreign minister. So and they were very worried at the time because what was prevalent at the time was a very big divide. We and they which was the pulled one, it had emerged on Somalia after the Second World War. So there's a big division between the Warsaw Pact as it became and the NATO pact, where you could just say the protagonists of USA and Soviet Union.
00;17;46;20 - 00;18;18;09
Speaker 3
And there were a lot of concerns also ideologically that to, for example, exceeds to ideas of respect for economic, social and cultural rights or group rights, that this would undermine fundamental ideological ideas, particularly in the West. And that's why, after the university declaration was adopted, it does include most of those things. They couldn't agree on a treaty. And what happened after that was 20 years of elaborating what became two covenants, a covenant on civil and political rights and a covenant economic, social and cultural rights.
00;18;18;09 - 00;18;47;28
Speaker 3
And those became associated with the two political divides in the world for probably the next 30 or 40 years, until the world comes in rates in 1993. But I want to say that John Humphrey was one of the people, because it's not a common thing. I discovered, to my chagrin, was a person who absolutely believe in the idea that we could not only stop future wars, but that we could actually find way more on a global level.
00;18;47;28 - 00;19;10;00
Speaker 3
We could live together in conditions of more trust and confidence and well-being. Well-Being, which is a key term in the UN charter, article 55. No one talks about it, but it's actually well-being is a legal obligation of states. And and John Humphrey, after he retired, he continued to come. He set up something in Canada which exists now through an NGO called Equitas.
00;19;10;00 - 00;19;29;28
Speaker 3
But it was the Canadian Human Rights Education Foundation for many decades. They ran a summer school at Prince Edward Island and then in Montreal, training NGOs, others around the world. And he used to come to the UN, to the commission rights, which used to be just once a year because things were slow and the diplomats needed their holidays and their time.
00;19;29;28 - 00;19;52;20
Speaker 3
But we used to meet for six weeks every year on February, March, and he would come and he would accompany some NGOs and some students. He taught at McGill Law School for a number of years, and just promoted this idea based on a single conviction that we could actually address these problems, that we were not subject by nature or by our own shortcomings, to be subjected to war and perpetuity and so forth.
00;19;52;20 - 00;20;01;08
Speaker 3
So I'm glad that you're named after the John Humphrey. I don't know if you have any other connection, but he was a gentle and.
00;20;01;10 - 00;20;48;27
Speaker 3
Self-effacing man with a remarkable background and a great example and a great Canadian. Okay. So we're talking about transnational repression in the global context. And transnational oppression, I'll just quickly say is now has become a term of art in the last really recent time, five years, probably or less. But it's not like it's new. And I mentioned the other day yesterday that, for example, famously, Karl Marx was pursued by Prussian agents in 1840, in London, because he was writing pamphlets in German, sent back to Prussia to foment purposefully rebellion.
00;20;48;28 - 00;21;21;16
Speaker 3
And and of course, that was considered a threat by the Prussian state. And and so they went after him not only to spy upon him, but to actually suppress the production. And he had to he had to he feared for his own safety. He had to protect against these interferences. So that's, you know, 100 and almost 200 years ago, and not by contemporary technological means, but what it was an example of is what transnational repression exactly is.
00;21;21;16 - 00;21;46;08
Speaker 3
There is no legal definition of transnational repression is becoming a kind of political art of term, that term of art. But essentially it's when a foreign state meaning a state and I here I would qualify. It's not just to say a state. I'll come back to that in a moment. But principally, foreign government reaches beyond its territorial and personal jurisdiction.
00;21;46;08 - 00;22;15;11
Speaker 3
So the state, as you may know, is in the definition of the state. It has. It's partly comprised by a permanent population and a defined territory or roughly defined territory. And and the state has jurisdiction, has lawful authority over that population and also territory. So right now, if anyone here is not a Canadian citizen, you are not under the jurisdiction of Canada on the base of personal relationship.
00;22;15;13 - 00;22;37;13
Speaker 3
You're under the jurisdiction of the state territorial. You're within the territorial boundaries of the state. But for example, I am also a dual national, a whole British nationality, and anywhere growing in the world. I'm also subject to personal jurisdiction of the state of the United Kingdom. So here, as I'm standing here, I can't think of the things that I might be subject to, but I can tell you some that are typical.
00;22;37;14 - 00;22;57;20
Speaker 3
For example, increasingly the number of countries in the world, Canada include. It requires that nationals must submit their income tax on the basis of world earnings so they don't care where you are. They don't care where their income is derived. If you are a national Canada, you are subject to submit. At least it doesn't mean you're subject to the taxation because there are tax treaties.
00;22;57;21 - 00;23;15;03
Speaker 3
There are all sorts of things. It used to be the Americans were the unique ones in that world. You're an American, you better pay taxes and they don't care where you earn it from. It's even a prominent un because it's the only country in the world that does not allow an exemption from taxation for its nationals in the UN, which is a matter of diplomatic law.
00;23;15;06 - 00;23;35;11
Speaker 3
But as a result, many countries have followed that. So Canada now requires and for lots of reasons of complexity and criminality and all sorts of things. But that's an example of personal jurisdiction that could apply to other things. For example, when you, as a Canadian, travel abroad, it might surprise you that there are certain things you, by law are not allowed to do.
00;23;35;17 - 00;24;00;15
Speaker 3
You're not allowed to trafficking children, for example. Maybe that's not something you're likely to do, but you just better know you're not allowed to do it under Canadian law, whatever the law is in the country of origin, Canadians under criminal law cannot involve in, for example, certain international criminal conduct, which would include things like child sex, trade and things like that.
00;24;00;17 - 00;24;28;29
Speaker 3
So this idea where the government itself now is acting extraterritorial, so outside of its territorial jurisdiction, but also not only with the guard to its nationals, but with regard to anyone, anywhere so universally. So, for example, China's security law applies universally. So it applies to me right now. I'm not a Chinese national. I'm obviously not in China, but right now.
00;24;29;01 - 00;24;56;02
Speaker 3
And anything I say, maybe subject to the Chinese security law and it is. So this is a reason to be concerned about certain things. But where the state not only projects that it kind of irrigates to itself such a reach, but its actual conduct and practices, then pursue that beyond the state, beyond its jurisdictional entitlements and beyond the traditional international.
00;24;56;06 - 00;25;24;24
Speaker 3
So traditional international artwork or classical international law would apply to diplomatic relations. So states exchange persons send envoys beyond their territory. They're obviously their nationals, not the nationals in other state. And they make agreements with foreign receiving states. But they may also do something called diplomatic protection, which is where state says we will also confer a kind of act of protection on a national abroad for other activities.
00;25;24;24 - 00;25;45;26
Speaker 3
And a state is unlimited in doing that. They can. But it's also not a right. It's a sorry, it's not at the individual. Right. So if I'm abroad, I don't have a right to Canada protecting me in, let's say, I don't know, Botswana. It's a prerogative state to protect. Historically this comes from trade arrangements, commerce, song and others.
00;25;45;28 - 00;26;14;08
Speaker 3
Sometimes they had activities that were very important. And you wanted to promote trade. Sometimes the state would confer degrees of protection on their nationals abroad for such purposes. So that's diplomatic law regulates that. But we're not talking about diplomatic law here. We're talking about the state. Because what's key to transnational repression is the repression. The state is seeking not to facilitate good relations, exchanges and so forth.
00;26;14;09 - 00;26;39;03
Speaker 3
The state is seeking to repress. And I'll define that a little bit more in a moment. The conduct of actors. And it's one thing to repress within your territorial jurisdiction. And with regard to your nationals, it's another thing to seek to repress anywhere in the world and within the territory of other states, including through means which would be otherwise unlawful in those states.
00;26;39;06 - 00;27;10;09
Speaker 3
So this is a part of the definition. Sometimes people say it's politically motivated, but here we're going to put science, political studies, laboratory politics in this regard can pretty much be anything. It's essentially anything contrary to the desire, interest or policy of the state, whatever that is. Arts, culture, sports, really anything. The other thing I want to say about this, I said, I already said, I'll query a little bit about the state or the government.
00;27;10;10 - 00;27;33;02
Speaker 3
We're now living in an era and it's not also new, I mean, but it's become more and more acute. I would say some people talk about things like state capture, so who is the state? So we have our formalities. We have our new governor general. I think today was, if I'm not mistaken, Louise Arbor took up a.
00;27;33;05 - 00;27;55;27
Speaker 3
What's the word? I can't think of the right word, not installed. But instead she took up her position as governor general. And there was a formality to that position. We have, of course, our head of government, the prime minister. We have governments and counsel, federal, provincial and so forth. And that's that's the government which forms part of the state.
00;27;55;29 - 00;28;21;10
Speaker 3
But what we're seeing more and more is that there are actors who are proxies of the government or are so close and having effective influence and control that really queries who is the government. And this is, again, not new historically, you know, in Canada, the Hudson's Bay company, for example, if we think 400 years ago, East India Company, the Dutch East India Company.
00;28;21;10 - 00;28;49;25
Speaker 3
So that idea of the closeness of a corporate interest, private interests and the state and effectively usurping state authority for private interests, that's not new. But now it's become quite remarkably complex and integrated. So we think about the tech brothers, the tech pros in Washington and and we think about Palantir in the UK, the whole Mandelson inquiry now, which is covered up and control.
00;28;49;27 - 00;29;13;06
Speaker 3
Who is acting for whom and where is this in the state. So they usurped the instruments of the state for private interests. And that includes security mechanisms, including instruments of repression. So I want to just broaden the idea from what it's often talked about is the state. I want to think about what do we mean by that and how far does it go.
00;29;13;08 - 00;29;39;09
Speaker 3
So you can already see this idea of transnational repression is very large if you start to reflect upon it almost unlimited. The essence of the repression is to silence, to intimidate, silence to constrain by almost any means. I'll count some of them, but it's an almost unlimited means. And that goes to all, all ends, including the taking of life assassinations.
00;29;39;11 - 00;29;58;08
Speaker 3
So and we've had it happening in Canada, which is shocking to many people, and we still don't have satisfactory outcomes. So, for example, a couple of years ago in Surrey, BC, a Khalistan nationalist Punjabi.
00;29;58;10 - 00;30;41;07
Speaker 3
Sikh leader who's committed to an independent Punjab, what they call Khalistan advocating for this and by means which may be legitimately questioned between states, also uses of violence, for example, political violence. But he was in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd, assassinated by almost certainly agents of the Indian state in Canada. And to my knowledge, still, there has been no justice return in terms of our stations or criminal charges against individuals.
00;30;41;09 - 00;31;06;26
Speaker 3
So in many other parts of the world, this has become fairly are more common. But let's let me just go over a few things about who we're talking about, both as those at risk, particularly in those who are perpetrators. And and then maybe some of the means. So who's at risk potentially anyone. And I'll even go back to my own case in a moment.
00;31;06;28 - 00;31;11;13
Speaker 3
But typically dissidents.
00;31;11;15 - 00;31;45;07
Speaker 3
Particular kinds of dissidents, those who would be political opponents, political opposition, political party opposition, so many countries forbid certain political movements, ideologies, actors. If you're part of those, then you're not only excluded politically, but you may be criminalized. So under Saddam Hussein and the bath party in Iraq, for example, the Dawa Party, the communists, various parties were were not only illegal, but criminalized and subject to the death penalty, by the way.
00;31;45;09 - 00;32;15;03
Speaker 3
So this is also true for many other states still today. So political, political opposition or dissidents are core human rights defenders, peacemakers, human rights defenders can apply to an extremely broad swath of people women's rights activists, labor leaders in different countries of the world. These different categories have higher or lower risk for many, many years. The riskiest place to be if you were a labor leader was Columbia.
00;32;15;09 - 00;32;47;06
Speaker 3
Labor leaders were on a on an almost daily basis, killed on a weekly basis. Multiple killings. Peacemakers, peace builders are trying to kind of address the sources and the perpetuation and the investments in conflict, democracy and rule of law advocates, anti-corruption advocates, environmentalists. And we look at places like Nigeria and the the the Delta with oil largely is extracted.
00;32;47;07 - 00;33;19;22
Speaker 3
Many of the local people who are simply environmentalists trying to protect their environment, which they live, were obviously agitating for political change. They became opposition. They became targeted, including a assassinations, ethnic and minority leaders, many of them indigenous peoples here in Canada. Also journalists, journalists as such are a very common target of such moods of repression because they are purveyors and amplifiers of the acts of others.
00;33;19;22 - 00;33;52;20
Speaker 3
And there are also instruments of truth sayers, but they contribute to the clarification of things in the public domain. And a lot of that is subject to repression, because those in authority don't don't want it to be shared public servants who might surprise you. But a lot of public servants, if people stand up in their public authority, in their authority, and to administer the law fairly or to do whatever they're supposed to do, and they don't bend to the will of power, then they may be also subject to instruments of repression.
00;33;52;20 - 00;34;24;19
Speaker 3
So public servants, individually and number, had to flee their countries of origin because they were associated with, you know, opposition. I would more broadly say people who resist and people who rebel, which is a pretty darn large swath of people in the world. And this brings us to the question of who are the perpetrators, basically authoritarian, autocratic actors who try to reduce or eliminate opposition.
00;34;24;21 - 00;34;57;20
Speaker 3
They don't want resistance. They want compliance, they want servile populations, and they want to be able to essentially dictate. We're seeing a lot of itself at the border right now. There are different moons. So in there are those in the last few years, particularly led by an NGO in the US called freedom House, which has about five years ago started publishing, maintaining a database of individual cases that they would examine, investigating, examined.
00;34;57;23 - 00;35;27;15
Speaker 3
They now have about almost 1500 cases in their database, so corroborated with a high degree of certainty in terms of what they're alleging to have happened within this, I can tell you that in as little as the last four years, four years ago, they had 38 countries as perpetrator states. So that's about one quarter of the world's one, one fifth of the world's countries.
00;35;27;18 - 00;35;55;13
Speaker 3
And now, as of earlier this year, January, they now say 54 states. So that's more than a quarter of the world states significant increase. But acting now in more than 100 states, 107 states as 193 states. Members of the UN, as you may know so well, over half the states in the world are subject to cases that have been established.
00;35;55;16 - 00;36;29;08
Speaker 3
There are five states that are responsible for 80% of these cases, and the one at the top of the list by far is China, which has really institutionalized and has a public policy, governmental policy on of transnational oppression, which we can talk about. The other states are Russia, Turkey, particularly if you include the attacks on the goodness movement, Iran and Rwanda.
00;36;29;11 - 00;37;05;26
Speaker 3
But there are others. So in Canada, for example, you might not know, but we were subject to forms of transnational repression by Saudi Arabia. And and there are many other examples I mentioned. Again, this is not just the state, it's the state through certain proxies or allies. So it's not so simple as saying, for example, in the case of the Indian agents of their security service, it appears to have been actual members of the service, but it may not have been and it may have been persons contracted.
00;37;05;28 - 00;37;12;13
Speaker 3
So I mean, legally they would still be agents, but they're not, for example.
00;37;12;15 - 00;37;45;09
Speaker 3
Government staff, corporations, which are maybe instruments of the state, certain countries, for example, China, my understanding is no corporate board now exists. Absent CCP member. Maybe I'm wrong about that. My understanding is that it's virtually impossible to have a significant corporate body absent the CCP member. So there is no such thing as an independent, a purely independent actor anymore.
00;37;45;12 - 00;37;49;26
Speaker 3
And that's true of other countries to.
00;37;49;28 - 00;38;15;12
Speaker 3
And what's what we see. I'll talk about trends in a moment, but we see that this, this, the numbers and the breadth is certainly augmenting rapidly. And there are reasons for that. What are the means? I've already mentioned assassinations, but other common means are forms like renditions. You might know of the Hussain Julio case, a Canadian of weaker origin from Toronto.
00;38;15;14 - 00;38;34;16
Speaker 3
I think he was 16 years a Canadian citizen, is family in Toronto and he was in I think it was on or now can't recall. I think it was started and China and he entered as a Canadian. So he was the only as a Canadian. But China identified him. China didn't recognize from China's perspective, he was a Chinese person.
00;38;34;16 - 00;38;55;07
Speaker 3
He remains a Chinese person under the Chinese person. So they did not respect his change of nationality, which is, by the way, a right under the university Declaration of Rights. You have a right to seek. You don't have a right to another nationality, but you have a right to seek it. And he sought it and obtained it. So in the international, he is also a Canadian or became a Canadian.
00;38;55;09 - 00;39;33;24
Speaker 3
And anyway, he was the Chinese requested his that he be arrested and returned to China, which he did. Which which they did. And he has me and our government has under the pre under the Harper government, it was regularly referenced in exchanges with China, but under the Tudor government they stopped asking. And actually when we had the three, when we had the two Michaels and the three M's, as we call it, case, you might remember Dominic Barton, who was the Qantas ambassador, had a McKinsey, which had 50% of their business in China.
00;39;33;27 - 00;39;57;13
Speaker 3
He actually claimed he had never heard of Hussain Joel. And then he then he said, oh yeah, isn't that Chinese guy with some China? No, no, he's a Canadian citizen. And I would only just say I don't think dominated by a stupid guy. So I think this reflects something serious about Canadian public policy. So renditions, deportations, detentions, effects on family members.
00;39;57;13 - 00;40;09;04
Speaker 3
So a lot of the transnational repression is not carried out against the individual targeted, but against their interests and their.
00;40;09;06 - 00;40;27;19
Speaker 3
Associates and family members. So there's and there are there's an argument here about not just guilt by association, to use that phrase, but the the form of repression is effective by threatening not me, but threatening my family, my relations, my interests.
00;40;27;22 - 00;40;53;09
Speaker 3
Contemporary transnational repression. Although, as I say, I mean the Prussians did this to Karl Marx. Surveillance. Well, now we live in a world with amazing abilities to survey. And I guess I should have put this in a box or throwing it out or something. So it's probably surveyed right now. I can tell you, by the way, a lot of diplomatic cause now when you go to headquarters or various meetings, they have boxes, you can have meetings.
00;40;53;12 - 00;41;24;21
Speaker 3
They put them in what they called sound boxes. And so they don't meet with any open telecommunications and more. Because this is so it's becoming ubiquitous. It's not it's not we're not imagining it. This is really happening. Cyber attacks are very common, including major attacks on reputations. So there's one technique which is proved to be very effective is the destruction of people's reputations through attribution of pornographic conduct, for example.
00;41;24;22 - 00;41;48;15
Speaker 3
So China has done this quite a lot of women. Women are particularly vulnerable to this. So you saw a woman who might have been just even a friend of someone who is associated with suddenly appears in their social media feeds with associated very active pornographic activity, very hard to get rid of it, very hard to dispel it. I mean, it's really awful.
00;41;48;16 - 00;42;25;24
Speaker 3
And you can imagine within certain cultural contexts what a powerful effect that is. All sorts of disruptions on ordinary life activities. Identify identity documents, financial interests, bank accounts, status questions, certification, your professional, your. Suddenly you'll discover that your degrees you are into some university no longer can be found or they're no longer. They've been wiped from the record of having earned it all sorts of things like this.
00;42;25;27 - 00;42;49;19
Speaker 3
Administrative forms of of repression, for example, withholding a passports, not renewing them, visas. I mentioned also bank accounts, work permits. Again, not just you, but it might be your family or someone else. So you might think you've got a brother, you haven't seen it 20 years. And suddenly they discover they're not getting renewal of a business visa somewhere.
00;42;49;19 - 00;43;24;26
Speaker 3
And it turns out that's what has happened. And all sorts of harassments, everything from direct phone calls and direct activities, physical surveillance of private homes I'm talking about here in Canada. And I mean, this is so you may have probably heard of if you don't know more about foreign police stations that are undeclared, but also through the use of infiltration techniques.
00;43;24;26 - 00;43;59;18
Speaker 3
So, for example, professors, students, university research arrangements will be infiltrated by agents of the state who then use those relationships to not just survey, but also to influence and sometimes threaten. As part of that, there have been renditions affected, people have been brought in to meetings and then actually kidnaped and taken away. You may know that, for example, in Canada there are people I live in Ottawa, and I know that there are persons in Ottawa who are subject to bounties.
00;43;59;20 - 00;44;35;08
Speaker 3
For bounties. So yeah, there's almost no limit, almost no limit to the means of this kind of activity. Okay. What are the trends in this? Well, one of the first trend that won't surprise you is the world has been on for many years now, a trend of diminishment of democracies and increase of the top proces. So the first problem is that there are simply more and more states that are autocratic and are not just prone to, but adopt these techniques in the normal forms of their politics, repression, their repressive societies.
00;44;35;10 - 00;45;06;02
Speaker 3
These states are also getting richer. And in addition, they are increasingly actively cooperating. So they're not one on one. They are talking to each other. And the technology of this has diminished the cost and extended the reach. So a poor state which might not have diplomatic representation and so forth, but through telecommunications, through cooperation techniques they've learned are now able to extend and project the repression abroad.
00;45;06;02 - 00;45;29;28
Speaker 3
And I'll give you a personal example of case I had I mentioned yesterday, that's when they said I was director of human rights for a number of years at the University of Ottawa, and one, one day, about a year, a year and a half ago, a gentleman came to my office and he was well dressed and so forth, and he knocked on the door and he was a bit agitated, and he asked if he said, I need some help, I'm in trouble.
00;45;29;28 - 00;45;50;00
Speaker 3
Can you help me? And so first of all, I said, we're an academic center. You know, we did. This is not what we do exactly. But how can I help? You know, what are you asking? So he was businessmen from Tunisia, and he said, so I'm here in Ottawa. I've been in Toronto, Montreal, elsewhere, and my passport is soon to expire.
00;45;50;00 - 00;46;12;05
Speaker 3
So I went to the I came to Ottawa, to the Tunisian embassy in the to renew through the consular services my passport. They took the passport. Two days later he gets called back to them and not about renewing his passport, but they wanted to talk to him and and they said, we see on your social media you've been criticizing the president, Tunisia and the Tunisian state.
00;46;12;11 - 00;46;35;13
Speaker 3
So first of all, pretty shocked that it would check in on this. But they said straight to him, we will not renew the passport unless you remove these and stop criticizing. He was not happy about that. And they said, well, if you don't do that, we know where your family members live. We will act against your business in Tunisia, basically will make it impossible for you to conduct your business and your family members penalty.
00;46;35;15 - 00;46;46;14
Speaker 3
So he came, said, what do I do? And I don't know what he does. I don't know what the answer is to that.
00;46;46;16 - 00;47;25;00
Speaker 3
Do I call the CMB? What is the RCMP going to do? They're not going to arrest the Tunisian. So there are in the worst case, there could be persona non grata. Whatever this kind of things diplomatically, this isn't going to help him personally. It's not going to solve this problem. So just to say that it's not a powerful big state, but they have adopted clearly a fairly simple and quite effective means of extending repression beyond their state, in this case to a national but in Canada, and has effects on Canada, radius, business partners, and whomever.
00;47;25;03 - 00;47;46;12
Speaker 3
A lot of the attack presses in the corporation are now operating through multilateral arrangements. So not just saying like bricks and all the rest of it, but on a bilateral basis. So it's very well known, for example, renditions of riggers from Thailand not too long ago or from Vietnam relations to relations China, Vietnam, China, Thailand and so forth.
00;47;46;14 - 00;48;14;04
Speaker 3
China is based on the stance. So Russia, Belarus, I mean, we could go through them. There are lots of these kind of relations very clearly for purposes, they find it in their shared common interests to participate in joint operations of repression transnational outside their frontiers. The second thing I want to identify is a real problem, and this is the heart of what I'm concerned about in Canada, is a vulnerability of open societies.
00;48;14;07 - 00;48;44;01
Speaker 3
So the problem with an open society is that we're open. It's the definition of our society. And so what we're finding is that transnational repression is has identified the vulnerabilities and is weaponizing these vulnerabilities. And this creates a dilemma because the means of responding to it implies certain securitization of of otherwise open spaces. But if you don't, then you are simply vulnerable.
00;48;44;02 - 00;48;53;18
Speaker 3
These are being used by bad actors or whatever you want to call them. So this includes our media. This includes.
00;48;53;20 - 00;48;59;17
Speaker 3
For example, our elections. It includes.
00;48;59;20 - 00;49;20;21
Speaker 3
Academic bodies, includes their civil servants. It's relatively not difficult to become a Canadian citizen. I mean, a lot of refugees were talent and it's way more difficult. But relatively speaking, you know, I mean, I lived in Switzerland for many years and it takes you 10 to 12 years minimum to become a Swiss national. And by the way, it has to be approved at a commune level.
00;49;20;21 - 00;49;43;20
Speaker 3
It's not even at a state or a canton, a level. So not not so easy. Canada has always been open to and relatively receptive of immigration. We talked about our own families and so forth and even inviting it, and so it's not too difficult. I've had many students that came as foreign students and they stayed on, were to couple years, got permanent residency and got citizenship a couple of years after that.
00;49;43;22 - 00;50;08;20
Speaker 3
You know, not that difficult in terms of a passage, but that's also not a difficult route for means of infiltration. So persons who come I'll give you an example. In the 1980s. So I worked for the UN in the early 1980s, in the 80s and 90s. But I investigate serious violations in rights by, among others, Iraq under the Baathist regime, Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
00;50;08;20 - 00;50;51;20
Speaker 3
What you should not you know, a lot of people would look pejoratively at Iraq, a middle eastern country. I know people have very simplistic ideas, Arab muslin and with pejorative connotations, underdeveloped, barbaric or whatever requisite cradle of civilization, highly educated, 98% literate, society, all rich, computerized. So Iraq in terms of numbers of doctors and engineers, really impressive, by the way, pretty high standards under the Baathist of status of women.
00;50;51;22 - 00;51;42;19
Speaker 3
And they might surprise you, but rather than speaking it was they but they also were hyper authoritarian and they did not tolerate any opposition. So Iraq had the highest percentage of foreign students in the Arab world studying abroad because they had the money in the means and intellectual capacity. But you could not get a scholarship and you could not be abroad unless you accepted baths, party surveillance, membership, and every single Iraqi student abroad had to report there was a parliamentary commission done by the British Parliament on this in the 1980s, because it became so bad in terms of basically, they had enough complaints by Iraqi students and all sorts of deleterious activity connected with it.
00;51;42;21 - 00;52;28;15
Speaker 3
So but in Canada, come back to Canada, we do things which sound very sensible. For example, if we have a Department of Trade that wants to enhance trade with China, probably a good idea to have people who know something about China, probably Mandarin speakers and so forth. Well, when it makes sense, if we had some new Canadians of Chinese origin as those staff members who happen to earn a PhD in, you know, hydrocarbon trade and or our, for example, during the pandemic, our relationships with, for example.
00;52;28;17 - 00;52;53;28
Speaker 3
Research labs and so forth. Again, kind of naively is Canada. We think, oh, well, great. The Chinese have some great scientists and great relationships, and we're not paying attention to what the role of the the People's Liberation Army is or what the relationship. And we kind of ignored in the US because, you know, in the US, there's almost no research done that's not somehow connected to the Defense Department or, you know, I taught for a year in Boston.
00;52;53;28 - 00;53;29;29
Speaker 3
It was quite surprising to me that the physical presence of military and defense establishment in ordinary American universities are just pervasive because they have enormous amount of money. And now it's getting bigger. Right? So we kind of okay. Is that a terrible thing? Well, if you're not paying attention, it's one thing to have such persons who are not subject to these kind of influences, but if they are subject to these influences, and I'm not saying these are people who had Mel intention, but they may be instrumental ized for those purposes.
00;53;30;02 - 00;53;48;20
Speaker 3
So this is a question of that you have to think about. And it's a dilemma for the society because you cannot prejudice preclude, for example, a person of Chinese origin from having a job in this of service. You can't do that. So now you have to think, okay, what are we doing? I can tell you practices of many organizations.
00;53;48;20 - 00;54;13;10
Speaker 3
Amnesty international, for example, I was the director of an intergovernmental organization in the OSCE organization for Security Cooperation in Europe. We we had certain practices where, for example, we tried never to have a Russian or an American in our unit because these were conflictual elements. But we were always not just sure about who exactly they worked with or their relations, but we were also concerned about perceptual issues.
00;54;13;10 - 00;54;34;29
Speaker 3
So, for example, we never had a Hungarian work on on Darian, minority issues in Central Europe because if their name was whatever the Hungarian name, no matter what their politics were, as soon as they went anywhere, all the other people would immediately rack to them as Hungarian. And the fact is, they do have belongings and histories and families and so on.
00;54;35;01 - 00;54;58;27
Speaker 3
So there are certain ways in which many countries, for example, a lot of Eastern European countries and others do not allow a dual national to be head of state or head of government or head of foreign affairs or certain institutional positions. This came up in Canada. You might remember when Stephen Harper was criticizing Stéphane Dion because his mother is French, of dual national France.
00;54;58;27 - 00;55;24;00
Speaker 3
He's got a Pierre de Terre, Paris, so he must be somehow untrustworthy. But it raises a kind of fair question, because there are these complex issues, not just about allegiance or, let's say, the bad intention of an individual, but they're subject to possible instrumental. And we can't. We would be stupid to to pose our eyes to the potential of these kind of influences.
00;55;24;01 - 00;55;55;11
Speaker 3
So the open society is a problem in this regard. I'm not I'm totally in favor of the open city, but we probably have to scrutinize to be more careful. The Academy is particularly subject to this, so professors, research grants, partnerships, students increasingly who controls journals, who funds and controls conferences. All of this is now a problem. The third trend to look at is the promo mobility.
00;55;55;12 - 00;56;32;06
Speaker 3
I already mentioned the way in which we move around the world in control over ID documents, passports, visas, but also for security purposes. So, for example, the role of Interpol, which has now been instrumental by foreign transnational repression, repressive states. So we've had, for example, very famous case in Ottawa with which we've worked, a woman from who is part of the human rights defender in Russia, fled Russia, came to Canada, Russia slapped her with a criminal charge, tried in absentia.
00;56;32;09 - 00;56;56;00
Speaker 3
And then when Canada did a search on her with regard to conferring on her protect status in Canada, it came up that she's a criminal from Russia, and they were not going to give her protection and even send her back. And this became a very public case. And and a lot of people intervened. And then the government changed the position.
00;56;56;00 - 00;57;26;07
Speaker 3
But this is not a rare case. So it's one of the instruments that's used is slapping criminal charges on persons that are completely bogus charges. But they know that this now makes it very possible for these people to travel, to get status abroad and so forth. Outsourcing. Another problem we do. So I don't know if you've tried to get a visa in certain places, but by the way, can people are trying to come to I have a person hoping to come and study with me.
00;57;26;07 - 00;57;49;19
Speaker 3
She's just got a big award. I won't say from which country, but from a country in the South which is associated with transnational repression. But where does she apply for a visa? She does not apply to Canada. She applies to Canada through an outsourced company, which is an Indian company functioning. And I forget where it's at the south southern India.
00;57;49;19 - 00;57;56;04
Speaker 3
And I think the office she has to apply to is in Manila.
00;57;56;07 - 00;58;17;01
Speaker 3
These are private firms in foreign countries delivering sovereign functions, Canadian sovereign functions. This is your team now. And by the way, if you tried to get a passport, you pay a lot more money for a passport. Because some years ago our Canadian government said, you know what? Consular affairs. That's expensive. Why should ordinary Canadians that are on travel abroad?
00;58;17;01 - 00;58;34;25
Speaker 3
I think this was under Harper a little bit upset about. So they now charge a lot more cost you like 160 bucks to get a passport. And so that money goes into a fund. Canada has a consulate services fund derived from all this income to cover our costs. So it's not even a cost argument, is what I'm saying.
00;58;34;25 - 00;58;47;26
Speaker 3
That fund is now hundreds of millions. There could be well over half a billion. I'm sure it is. Why are we held sourcing a sovereign act to an Indian company functioning out of Manila?
00;58;47;29 - 00;59;16;06
Speaker 3
But that's a vulnerability, right? A couple more things I'll go through. Telecommunications is a big one. We do live by these little devices and we can't afford them. It's almost impossible. You may know that Canadian pension plan services, old age service increasingly are now requiring that you have smartphone. There's a lot of people older generations don't have smartphones, can't afford smartphones, don't know how to use smartphones.
00;59;16;06 - 00;59;48;19
Speaker 3
But we are. So this is if you look at the United Kingdom right now, you know, Palantir has got contracts with the National Health Services contracts. It's quite shocking level of interposition and at risk. So telecommunications, media, data surveillance infrastructure systems, for example, just a week ago it was reported a Chinese person in the United Kingdom was subject to or was felt threatened, subject to something.
00;59;48;19 - 01;00;19;11
Speaker 3
And the person called police service in Cornwall, Southwestern and England and exaggerated. He was there with his family. His English wasn't that good. So they said, would it help if you spoke with someone in Mandarin? He said yes. So they got a mandarin speaker online. The Mandarin person then started admonishing him for impugning the reputation of the Chinese state, and this person then turns out to be the official interpreter for some UK police services.
01;00;19;13 - 01;00;44;04
Speaker 3
On a large contract, something like 130,000 pounds annual salary paid for by the British government, and they did not convey his complaint to the police service. So this raises a question what are these services doing? Right. But that's simple service. That's police servicing. That's the infrastructure of the state. I'm not. There's also the physical infrastructure of the state water systems.
01;00;44;07 - 01;01;14;29
Speaker 3
Air systems and so forth. There's repression and cultural grounds. You may know that there were threats against. Now I forget the name of it in Toronto, but two weeks ago, it's a not theater performance group, does dance, and I can't remember the name of the group at the moment. But there were threats against of of bombs or insecurity, and they canceled all the concerts.
01;01;15;02 - 01;01;48;18
Speaker 3
And that's because the group, which was I think, associated with Gong, is an enemy of the Chinese state. So this is but this is a Toronto. Canadians freely should be able to go see a concert. Right. How is this subjected to this kind of interference? So I could go on. But this this form of engagement, a lot of the three persons and technology in communications and what we know in our media is now become a huge, huge issue.
01;01;48;20 - 01;02;18;05
Speaker 3
Okay. I want to just remark a few things and then we can. Oh, I forgot to mention. Yeah, kind of obvious one money, money. So a lot of the repressive states used to be poor or limited. They're not poor anymore. So they're rich and they have money. And so problems of bribery, compromising politicians. There have been several cases in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, now US and elsewhere.
01;02;18;07 - 01;02;48;20
Speaker 3
There's some questions about Canadians and politicians and others, but who actually they're serving and who's paying for their their campaigns, who's controlling them. And that might not be through states, but state agents, through corporations and others that they have business partnerships with. But there's a lot of money in this now to buy influence. And so that's another, I would say, vulnerability with our kind of market systems.
01;02;48;23 - 01;03;13;07
Speaker 3
And interestingly, our government has not wanted to count down on this with regard to political activity because they don't want political party scrutiny and so forth. There's a there's a very big problem here about our own politicians having a degree. We saw that through the foreign interference inquiry. They don't really want to subject themselves to a strong, for example.
01;03;13;09 - 01;03;42;15
Speaker 3
Public interest political party arrangement. They want to control it themselves for whichever purpose they want. Well, that means they perpetuate the vulnerability. Yeah. So a few things I want to say about conceptually, if already referenced this, the world has changed tremendously. And this Westphalian paradigm of the state coinciding nation territory. By the way, that's a basically it's an 18th century European idea.
01;03;42;17 - 01;04;09;27
Speaker 3
The state is an older idea, territory population with the idea of nation, one nation. That's that's a blip in history. As some people have said, it's very active one. It's a very real one. But I would suggest to you, we have to rethink this basic, fundamental idea, this single idea of the state being bounded by territory. Geography. For example, geography is important when Canada is not going to not be located north of the United States of America.
01;04;09;27 - 01;04;36;05
Speaker 3
We're not going to escape that. But, you know, in, for example, an information economy, a technology economy, we don't necessarily have to be have our wagon hitched to the US for for example, for natural resources. Canada remains overwhelmingly a huge of wood and a carrier of water or draw of water is the phrase was, yes, we're still largely that kind of economy.
01;04;36;05 - 01;05;19;14
Speaker 3
But you may also know that the biggest elements of our economy are housing, building management. We count a lot of things, administration and accounting. And so there's and increasingly information technologies and so forth will be the basis of well-being and wealth and so forth. This is not dependent upon geography until until Hong Kong was basically, let me say, changed, absorbed within in China, contrary to the agreement with the United Kingdom, two places in the world, Hong Kong and London, was was a physical location of 50% of all financial transactions.
01;05;19;16 - 01;05;49;08
Speaker 3
And that's the world in which we live in 50% of all financial translation in two places. So it's not about physical geography anymore. We are. We can press a button and transfer the complete wealth that far exceeds the wealth of entire countries in seconds through telecommunications. That's not moving bullion on a ship. So we have to rethink the ideas of geography and specifically the Westphalian idea.
01;05;49;15 - 01;06;20;10
Speaker 3
The state is increasingly becoming weak. If you look at the Global Fragility Index, which is followed, about two two thirds of the world states are now in the failed, failing, fragile category. More than half of the world states there are many states are not able to affect the classic state risk. They cannot actually control their frontiers. They cannot actually control, particularly against this kind of transnational repression activity.
01;06;20;11 - 01;06;58;15
Speaker 3
They can't do it. They don't have the means. Last year, last September, I was asked by the Organization of American States to advise them on conduct of elections in conflict situations. But we did a survey of member states on, among other things, their own fragility for electoral integrity. And 90% of OAS states reported that they have been victims of all sorts of interferences, including one third of them subjected their members to deepfakes that attack the integrity of the individual, for example, commissioners of elections, and so forth.
01;06;58;16 - 01;07;24;13
Speaker 3
Now, just imagine in the U.S., we're talking about a lot of microstates, little Caribbean states. They have absolutely no technical or other means to protect against this. So how sovereign is that state? How effective is it? And it's not at all. So I don't want surprise you that a couple of narco traffickers took over some states. Dominica in the Caribbean.
01;07;24;16 - 01;07;55;19
Speaker 3
Also a West African state, Guinea-Bissau, was basically taken over by narco traffickers in conjunction with transnational corporate basic criminal actors. So our idea of the state is simply not coherent with the actual challenges we're facing. And transnational repression kind of highlights that, that the fact is that we live with these kind of multiple relationships. In Canada, we have 4 million dual nationals.
01;07;55;26 - 01;08;21;29
Speaker 3
I'm one of them, 4 million. We're actually not sure, but we think it's at least 4 million. That's 4 million people, particularly subject to influences of states that may have Billington and the majority of states acquiring freedom House. There's only about ten full democracies left them out of 195. So we need to realize this vulnerability is not marginal.
01;08;21;29 - 01;08;46;13
Speaker 3
It's not something in the future. It's here now and it's substantial. So I think I'll end there. I'll just not end untimely, depressed, depressing way saying that there. I will just say that there are things to be done about this. And my view is that the first thing is that Canada needs to get our heads out of the sand.
01;08;46;14 - 01;09;03;10
Speaker 3
We need to realize that that this is the world in which we live. I mean, Carney said, we really shouldn't live in the world. We shouldn't govern the world that we wish it to be. We have to live in the world the way it is. Okay. The way it is is it's really dangerous and it's really and we are very vulnerable.
01;09;03;17 - 01;09;25;03
Speaker 3
That means we need to develop our services. We do not have services. We don't have an integrated service that deals. If you are subject to a transnational oppression Act, it's not clear who you call. They know assigned someone in the RCMP, but the RCMP won't know what to say about a lot of these activities. So there is increasing cooperation between many states.
01;09;25;03 - 01;09;56;14
Speaker 3
And actually there are efforts in the European Union in particular, but also the Council of Europe at a multilateral level, even even new conventions being elaborated to see how states cooperate. But I think here in Canada. The first thing we need to do, our Prime Minister, needs to, within the Privy Council, appoint a full time person. This is an urgent matter of national interest, national security, of integrity of our democracy, a societal character.
01;09;56;17 - 01;10;21;06
Speaker 3
And so we need someone who drives this at a political level. We need, in my view, and I've recommended this to the Foreign Affairs Committee in parliament, the Subcommittee on Human Rights. We also need an inter-ministerial working group because this is not one ministerial responsibility. It's transversal. It's many ministries involved. It's a very contacts. And government doesn't work very well at the transversal level.
01;10;21;07 - 01;10;47;13
Speaker 3
So we need we need one way to do that is create a ministerial working group. I think we need to establish an expert scientific body that looks at this really has research competencies, but also has expert experts who can think about ideas of how to counter. We're going to we are behind the curve. We need to get ahead of the curve.
01;10;47;15 - 01;11;15;14
Speaker 3
At the moment. You know chess is catching up to the curve are not good. But unless we really bring the best minds that capabilities together, we're not going to, you know, the perpetrators will stay ahead of us. We need training across all of the relevant public services to be aware of. Local police stations have no idea what to do about this guy thing, and I and I have some other recommendations for intergovernmental cooperation.
01;11;15;15 - 01;11;34;19
Speaker 3
I also suggest, because I think it's this big of a deal, I think we might even want to talk about a royal commission or some kind of national commission. This is not something that's going to go away. It's not going to get smaller. And and I think we really need the attention of the country. We need to consult the country.
01;11;34;20 - 01;12;00;23
Speaker 3
We live in a hyper diverse society. Now, I don't know how Edmonton is, but Toronto is identified as one of the most diverse places in the world. Half of the population of Toronto, born in a foreign country, 400 languages spoken every day in Toronto. Their relationships where money goes with all sorts of things happen. So we need we need to focus broadly on that.
01;12;00;23 - 01;12;14;08
Speaker 3
And I think maybe we need a royal commission. Thank you for giving me the attention. I've spoken quite long, but I'm happy to respond to any questions.
01;12;14;10 - 01;12;24;11
Speaker 1
Thank you for that, John. I'm going to unmute. If there's anybody online that has questions, you can feel free.
01;12;24;14 - 01;12;52;07
Speaker 1
I also was totally negligent in not acknowledging Dominic Clement for hosting us today, the Department of Sociology. So thank you so much. I sat down and like, oh my gosh, okay, so does anybody have questions? I mean, okay, Katie is ready to go. And then I'm just going to get the chat open okay. So anybody online just feel free to put up your hand or put it in the chat and we'll watch and then.
01;12;52;08 - 01;12;57;08
Speaker 1
But let's go with Katie first. I know I have a ton of questions.
01;12;57;10 - 01;13;07;16
Speaker 3
Yeah. I should also say thank you for I get this is in large measure a giant sociological question, I think.
01;13;07;18 - 01;13;14;02
Speaker 4
Thank you for taking the time.
01;13;14;05 - 01;13;22;14
Speaker 4
Those recommendations that are there other countries who have taken on?
01;13;22;16 - 01;14;00;11
Speaker 3
Yeah. So mainly Europeans are ahead of this. And in certain measure, many people are, you know, unless it affects some kind of closer more substantially. Of course, there's a tendency the politics is always behind the need for does matter. And it's also a matter of crime. You know, the criminals tend to be right. The inventiveness of but particularly after, not just after the aggression by Russia in Ukraine in 2022, but under Putin, the repression had been mounting for many years.
01;14;00;12 - 01;14;36;28
Speaker 3
But as of then, when they brought in more draconian laws, hundreds of thousands. I'm not sure how many are West, but I think more than half a million Russians. But a lot, a lot of the almost all the human rights defenders and so forth fled the country. And and they have been pursued and but well before then, we already knew about, for example, the assassination attempts, the, you know, we know words like nova and so forth because of the transnational repression aimed at political opposition abroad, the Russian security services are notorious.
01;14;37;01 - 01;14;59;29
Speaker 3
And in many countries, and in ways that many of us are not aware of. And even not too long ago, last year, the deal was made under Trump to return some Russians. But one of the senior most persons in the Russian, I forget his name. I was colonel in the equivalent of the the security services, not the equivalent of the security services.
01;14;59;29 - 01;15;22;16
Speaker 3
But he had been involved in an actual assassination attempt in a park in Berlin. So, I mean, this is, you know, a little bit the stories of, of of spy novels or something. It's all really real. Yeah. So Europeans are ahead of the curve, not ahead of the curve. They're trying to act on it. And we are really.
01;15;22;18 - 01;15;24;16
Speaker 1
Go ahead Jasmine.
01;15;24;18 - 01;15;29;29
Speaker 4
We'll fix.
01;15;30;01 - 01;15;56;13
Speaker 4
I'm going to give that just Jennifer. She'll said if you look at the history of Canada, going back to the finance, there's been a lot of attention on minorities who are perceived to be disloyal. Yeah, right. I the whole trope of, you know, to tease which this discussion.