OTTAWA – On top of sanctions and ongoing evacuations, Canada is also prepared to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Libya, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has told the UN Human Rights Council.
At a meeting Monday in Geneva, Cannon told council members that Canada was "concerned with the looming humanitarian disaster in Libya" and was ready to help but offered few details about what that assistance might look like.
He said Canada was "among the first" to call on the UN to refer the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court and that Canada has moved forward with sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council.
"We plan to go beyond the Security Council resolution," he added. "Canada will impose an asset freeze and a prohibition on financial transactions with the Libyan regime, its institutions and agencies and the Libyan Central Bank."
Canada announced a series of sanctions against the Libyan government Sunday night that include an arms embargo, a travel ban on Moammar Gadhafi and 15 of his associates, a freeze on assets as well as a ban on all financial transactions with the Libyan government.
The sanctions were announced amid reports that the dictator was planning to withdraw millions from Canadian banks.
Shortly after tabling documents in the House of Commons on Monday that would allow Canada to move forward with the sanctions, government House leader John Baird said Ottawa is aware of Libya’s financial dealings with Canadian institutions and that the actions taken by the government have effectively "blocked" them.
"Obviously, for operational reasons, I won’t go into specifics," he said.
About 70 Canadian companies – many of them in the oil and gas sector – have operations in Libya, including Suncor, Shell, Bombardier and Pure Technologies. Another, Montreal-based SNC Lavalin, is constructing a prison in Libya.
Baird said the sanctions won’t eliminate those commercial activities but that they will bar companies from engaging in financial transactions with the Libyan government and the central bank.
"We hope these measure are very time-limited and that the regime change occurs in very short order," he said. "What we don’t want is Canadian enterprises funnelling money to the regime in commercial transactions."
A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also confirmed that a C-17 military plane with about 33 Canadian evacuees on board landed in Malta Monday morning.
An estimated 2,000 civilians have died in Libya since the Gadhafi regime started cracking down on anti-government protests two weeks ago.
Thousands have fled the country and many are now stranded along the border with Egypt and Tunisia in what’s being described as a growing humanitarian crisis.
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