Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino speaks to reporters ahead of a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Humanitarian and development groups are expected to testify Wednesday as the House justice committee examines a bill that would amend the Criminal Code to allow aid workers to operate in Taliban-held Afghanistan. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
OTTAWA – Humanitarian and development groups say Canada’s vague terror laws have forced them to find loopholes in the Criminal Code for aid workers to operate in Taliban-held Afghanistan, as MPs consider amendments to the law.
“Every organization has a different risk appetite,” World Vision Canada’s policy director Martin Fischer told the House justice committee Wednesday.
Canada is far behind its allies in making changes so that citizens can deliver aid in Afghanistan without falling afoul of terrorism laws.
Charities say Global Affairs Canada warned them a year ago that purchasing goods or hiring locals would involve paying taxes to the Taliban and put them at risk of prosecution for financially supporting a terror group.
The Liberals have tabled a bill that would enact a system in which groups can apply for exemptions, unlike numerous allies who have issued blanket exemptions. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told the committee on Monday that kind of statutory carve-out would risk terror groups abusing the process.
Yet Doctors Without Borders revealed Wednesday that they’ve already been operating in Afghanistan using Canadian donations, believing that international humanitarian law covers the work they’re doing.
“It is possible to do this, and a lot of other organizations and states behind those organizations are moving in that direction,” said the group’s Canadian executive director, Joseph Belliveau.
His group says the system the proposed Bill C-41 will delay the delivery of aid and that it’s already likely to lead to staff switching jobs.
“Staff “¦ will be deterred from wanting to continue to work with the organization because they don’t know where their personal data will be stored, used, and for what purposes.”
Islamic Relief said they diverted donations from Britain to pay the Taliban taxes, so that Canadian donations did not end up in those coffers.
“We figured out and calculated what the taxes were, and it was around three per cent,” said Usama Khan, the Canadian branch’s CEO.
Fischer said World Vision Canada felt compelled to drop tools because it couldn’t find workarounds.
“So we halted both public as well as privately funded activities in Afghanistan,” he told MPs.
Jessica Davis, an analyst specializing in terrorism financing, said charities are trying to navigate an anti-terrorism regime that is far less transparent than peer countries.
“Our process for listing terrorist entities is broken. It’s not transparent. There is no identifiable methodology that Public Safety Canada uses to nominate groups to that list,” she told MPs.
Davis, who leads Insight Threat Intelligence, said Global Affairs Canada should create a public listing of countries with areas under the control of terrorist groups, so aid organizations know whether they will need a waiver.
She said issuing exemptions would let Ottawa calibrate aid workers’ access to different regions, allowing them to scale back humanitarian groups’ ability to pay Taliban taxes if the group tried to operate outside Afghanistan.
“I can almost guarantee you that there is money and aid going to the Taliban, because that’s how they operate. So it’s really about striking the balance between how much we think is appropriate,” Davis said.
In Washington, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction testified Wednesday that non-governmental organizations risk the Taliban freezing their bank accounts or closing their offices if they don’t divert money to the terror group.
“The Taliban generate income from U.S. aid by imposing customs charges on shipments coming into the country and charging taxes and fees directly on NGOs,” read speaking notes prepared for John Sopko.
The Taliban has also forced NGOs to purchase services from the terror group, such as car rentals.
He said the regime is “diverting funds away from groups the Taliban considers hostile “¦ for instance, by redirecting international educational and humanitarian funding away from the ethnic minority known as Hazaras.”
Meanwhile in Ottawa, Leah West, a Carleton University national security law professor, said the bill inappropriately asks aid organizations to determine whether a group is a terrorist entity.
“You’re asking a humanitarian organization to apply contested facts to our Criminal Code definition “¦ which is a challenging process, even for the RCMP,” she testified.
Doctors Without Borders said that puts their staff at risk, because they’d be perceived as working in conjunction with Ottawa.
“We are neutral and impartial and through that authorization process we would appear as an agent of a country,” said the organization’s legal director, Claude Maon.
Both Davis and West urged MPs to change the language in the proposed bill that would bar exemptions for anyone who “has any links to a terrorist group,” saying that could be applied to aid workers who negotiate access to areas held by terrorists.
Bureaucrats also told MPs on Monday that a blanket exemption in the Criminal Code could apply only to humanitarian work such as medical services, but not to development projects such as running a school.
Multiple witnesses and MPs suggested Wednesday that Ottawa should pursue both a blanket exemption for humanitarian groups and a waiver system for development groups.
Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe said his committee is prone to filibustering, and urged aid groups to specify what would be acceptable legislation in the likely event that the bill is held up by disagreements over policy or partisan bickering.
Davis said the government could leave the specifics of implementation up to regulations that can be updated quicker than tabling legislation.
In a written brief, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group argued Canada should get at the root of the problem by narrowing the scope of its terrorism laws.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2023.
