Question Period Note: Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law)

Latest updates on the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law), a key part of Canada's autonomous sanctions regime.

• Autonomous sanctions are an important complement to Canada's comprehensive suite of foreign policy tools for maintaining and restoring international peace and security, and promoting respect for norms and values, including human rights.
• Canada is judicious in its approach about when it chooses to deploy sanctions, both against individuals and against states, and is committed to their effective and coordinated use when appropriate.
• Alongside Canada's Special Economic Measures Act, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act allows Canada to impose sanctions on individuals responsible for or complicit in human rights violations or significant corruption.
• In addition to the 70 individuals we have sanctioned under JVCFOA, Canada has imposed multiple rounds of sanctions under SEMA in response to state-driven violations of human rights, including against Belarus, Russia, China, and Nicaragua, over the past two years alone.
• The decision to use the JVCFOA or SEMA to apply sanctions is assessed on a case by case basis. We consider, among other factors, the involvement of the state, scale and scope of the human rights violations, alongside Canada's foreign policy interests and objectives.

The Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (JVCFOA) was adopted in October 2017. It allows Canada to impose sanctions against foreign nationals responsible for or complicit in gross violations of internationally-recognized human rights or acts of significant corruption. Importantly, its adoption also amended the Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) allowing Canada to impose state-focused sanctions on individuals and entities under that piece of legislation for human rights violations, acts of significant corruption and grave breaches of international peace and security.

Under the JVCFOA, Canadians are prohibited from dealing with the listed individuals. Listed individuals are also inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). Since 2017, Canada has listed 70 foreign nationals under the JVCFOA from Russia, Venezuela, South Sudan, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia.

Complementary to actions taken through the JVCFOA, Canada has imposed 11 rounds of important sanctions measures through the SEMA to address human rights violations, including in Nicaragua, Belarus, China, and Russia.

The JVCFOA and SEMA are scheduled for review by mid-October 2022.

Along with the U.S., Canada has been at the forefront of this type of human rights and corruption-focused sanctions legislation. In recent years, Canada has worked closely with the EU, U.K., and Australia on the development and adoption of their own such sanctions mechanisms, sharing our best practices and lessons learned. Elements of the tools adopted by those governments are modelled after Canada's SEMA and JVCFOA.

These similar, but distinct, sanctions mechanisms have allowed a core group of like-minded countries to collectively announce sanctions on specific issues or pertaining to significant international crises. As a result, over the last couple of years, Canada's sanctions announcements have typically been made in coordination with like-minded countries (e.g. Myanmar, Belarus, China, Russia, Nicaragua). Collective sanctions announcements have more weight and resonance with the parties being sanctioned and signals a deeper concern among the international community.

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