Hon. Peter Harder: Honourable senators, I do not expect to speak for long. I wish to put on the record a couple of comments and concerns that I raised in committee.

I do not want to hold up the consideration of this bill that Senator Dasko has been sponsoring so ably for the last number of months. I thank her for her speech. I thank her for her conduct of this bill in committee.

I raise two concerns.

One is the unintended consequences issue, which the senator was kind enough to reference as well. Part of my unintended consequences concern speaks to the broader issue of sanctions policy, as it is being administered by our like-minded countries. By the way, like you — because it was unanimous — I supported the SEMA bill and the amendments that were brought forward in the process that Senator Dasko referenced.

But I do believe it is worthy of this chamber and other bodies that examine the policy issues attendant to sanctions policy to ask ourselves whether the existing sanctions policy is working the way we intended.

Essentially, we’re dealing with sanctions against China, Russia and Iran. I won’t speak in detail on any of them, except to suggest that what has happened has not been the path forward that we would have wished in developing the sanctions policies.

In fact, I would commend to you a book by Edward Fishman, who was the designer of the policy of the White House for the sanctions regime, the so-called economic sanctions, and who has, on reflection, spoken to the unintended consequences and suggested that we probably overstated what we could do and that, as a result of what we have done, there are alternative mechanisms of the sanctioned regimes to expand their ability to act in ways that are not as subject to oversight as, in fact, the existing regime would have allowed.

Unintended consequences are something we need to be very attentive to, particularly when we are dealing with a sanctions policy against which there has not been a lot of experience.

Leave that aside. My other concern — and, frankly, my stronger concern — is the one that the senator was kind enough to reference at the end.

I could say I would associate myself with the comments made by the press secretary of the minister; I am anxious that the bill be reviewed. But, colleagues, frankly, I am uncomfortable with foreign policy matters as important as sanctions policy not coming from the government itself but from private members’ business.

The SEMA regime, we certainly debated it. There had been private members’ bills dealing with the sanctions regime. Ultimately, it was a government bill.

While this is a so-called tweak of the SEMA bill, we would be the first jurisdiction to, in a sense, exercise this degree of bypassing judicial processes that I would be more comfortable if they were actually ones that the government embraced.

The senator has spoken about this just being another tool in the tool box. What happens, though, of course, is once the tool is in the tool box, you get all kinds of third parties suggesting to the government to use the tool in its tool box, even if it didn’t ask for the tool.

I understand the reluctance of governments to commit to supporting a particular bill, even one whose objective they can share. I think we should reflect at least on whether or not we should be moving forward with bills that impose on the Royal Prerogative of the Crown for foreign policy and foreign relations the way this bill does.

I raise these concerns. I expect that this bill will move forward as it should, but I wanted to be on the record for these two issues.