OTTAWA - Canadian energy giant Suncor will continue to operate in Syria, even as the European Union tightened the economic screws Thursday and a top United Nations official said the country was now in a state of civil war.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is sticking to the position that Suncor should be exempt from Canadian sanctions on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which is increasingly isolated due to its violent crackdown against an eight-month, pro-democracy uprising that's left more than 4,000 dead.
Baird told a House of Commons committee Thursday that Suncor could continue its natural gas generation because it creates much-needed electricity for the Syrian people.
"If they ceased activities there, you'd have literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity, and that would be bad for the civilian population," Baird told the foreign affairs committee.
His comments came as the European Union imposed additional sanctions Thursday, and as Syria's opposition called a general strike inside the country.
The EU action follows similar, recent punitive actions by the Arab League and Turkey, aimed at punishing Syria's already struggling economy.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, told reporters Thursday that with greater numbers of military personnel continuing to defect, Syria has entered a state of civil war.
"As soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms -- I said this in August before the Security Council -- that there's going to be a civil war," Pillay said in Geneva. "And at the moment that's how I am characterizing this."
The death toll for the revolt now stands at 4,000, but she said incoming information indicates, "it's much more than that."
In Ottawa, NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere pressed Baird during the committee hearing on whether the Assad regime gained some financial benefit from Suncor's continued Syrian operations.
"We understand that it does provide electricity," said Laverdiere. "But it does also provide revenues to a regime that is using this revenue to hurt the civilian population, and you don't know what is the kind of revenue this operation provides to the Syrian regime."
Baird replied, "there's no doubt it provides some revenue."
Suncor operates a $1.2-billion natural-gas project, in partnership with a state-owned Syrian company.
"Do you know how much revenue the partnership brings to the Assad regime?" Laverdiere asked.
"I can't speak dollar amounts," Baird replied.
Baird said he had no problem with Suncor having to shut down its operations in Libya earlier this year because their oil production was for export, which benefited the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.
He said he'd be willing to revisit Suncor's current status in Syria if the situation on the ground warranted.
"If, at any time, we thought it would be in the best interests of the situation, the best interests of the Syrian people, we would of course take the action," the minister told the committee.
"We thought nothing of it in Libya, shutting them down completely. I think they're still shut down. They haven't been able to get online, but that was the best decision that we had."
