Thank you very much.

Thank you for the invitation to be here, and thank you very much to Melissa Lantsman for sponsoring this piece of legislation.

If all the world is a stage, terrorism is theatre—horrific violence choreographed to terrorize a global audience. Of the vast array of asymmetrical terrorist tactics, hostage-taking is one of the most terrifying and heartbreaking. The wrongful holding of individuals to inflict harm or seek gain is not a new phenomenon. The biblical commandment of “do not steal” was understood by rabbinic scholars over 2,000 years ago to refer to the prohibition against kidnapping.

Hostage-taking is not just about the individual seized and the agony they suffer. In stealing a person, you take their family hostage and you take their people and country hostage. When a Canadian is wrongfully held by a malign state or non-state actor simply for being Canadian, it is Canada itself being held hostage, with the incarcerated person essentially acting as a surrogate for our country. We are living in an era in which hostage-taking and arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations constitute a growing threat to individuals, entire countries and the international order.

I have noticed that Canada's default position is often that a new legislative idea is unnecessary and that current laws do enough on their own, but bad actors constantly adjust and enhance their practices. Countries must therefore be nimble, creative, bold and principled in countering evolving threats. When it comes to hostage-taking specifically—a cost-effective weapon used by state and non-state actors to inflict extreme and disproportionate harm—it behooves our lawmakers to explore every possible tool to assist in repatriating the unwilling ambassadors who represent us in the dungeons of our adversaries and prevent this fate from befalling other Canadians.

At its very foundation, Bill C-353 was created to help Canada fulfill its fundamental responsibility to protect its people and uphold the value of its citizenship. The Australian Senate recently held hearings on the issue of hostage-taking and wrongful detention, and this very bill was discussed and lauded as a template for a similar Australian initiative. Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was one of the witnesses who testified in Australia. She spent 804 days in the Iranian prison system, having received a 10-year sentence for espionage, which was denounced as baseless by the Australian government. She was released in a diplomatic deal negotiated by the Australian government in 2020, which saw Thailand release three Iranians convicted of terrorism offences in exchange for her freedom.

I want to share with you a message from Dr. Moore-Gilbert, the director of the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance: “We applaud and congratulate the Government of Canada for taking the initiative in spearheading the 2021 Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations. We would note however that, in spite of Canada’s stated aim of leveraging the Declaration to push for impactful multilateral efforts at disincentivising the practice, very little discernible progress has been made toward this particular goal. The proposed Bill C-353 recognises that difficult decisions must be made to impose genuine costs on non-state actor hostage-takers and governments which arbitrarily detain Canadian citizens for diplomatic leverage. By explicitly setting out the tools through which the Canadian government is empowered to punish and deter hostage-takers and perpetrators of arbitrary detention, Bill C-353 provides decision-makers with a positive mandate to disincentivise the practice from occurring in the future and to achieve a semblance of justice for victims.”

I look forward to a fulsome discussion with members of this committee on the need to redouble our government's efforts to protect Canadians. I encourage you to direct some questions to my esteemed colleague Haras Rafiq, who is a board member of Secure Canada and a British counter-extremism expert. He is here beside me to join today's discussion and situate hostage-taking within the extremism and terrorism framework.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge Danny Eisen, the co-founder of Secure Canada. He has been at the centre of our organization's work on this file.

Secure Canada is an organization dedicated to combatting terrorism, extremism and other national security threats. We fully endorse Bill C-353 as sober, targeted legislation that is consistent with Canada's obligations under international law to take further action domestically to address the threat of hostage-taking and arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations.

Thank you.