Hon. Donna Dasko: Senator Gold, public opinion research commissioned by Senator Omidvar and myself and released this week finds that Canadians strongly support seizing the Canadian-held assets of those Russian officials who are waging war in Ukraine and those Iranian officials who are violating human rights in Iran, and then using these seized assets to assist victims.

In fact, in June of this year, as you know, senator, Bill C-19 enhanced two of Canada’s sanction regimes, the Sergei Magnitsky Law and the Special Economic Measures Act, to go beyond freezing the assets of corrupt foreign officials in order to permit confiscating and redirecting those assets.

My questions are as follows, and I’d like to focus on how these tools are currently being used, particularly against the Russian perpetrators: Is the government using these new tools? What efforts are being made? What steps are being taken? And what plans are developing to repurpose these assets, for example, in possible reparations to Ukraine?

Thank you.