The term “crickets” is often used to mean absolute silence; no communication,no reply or reaction at all; no spoken or written response.
Court Painter has chosen blank canvases to represent the government’s silence.I hope you approve!
OTTAWA — Advocates for international law say Ottawa is letting Washington chip away at the global rules-based order by remaining silent a week into American sanctions against a Canadian jurist. On Aug. 20, the administration of U.S.
President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Kimberly Prost, a judge on the International Criminal Court who authorized a probe into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.
Ottawa has said nothing publicly about the move to date.
Mark Kersten, a University of the Fraser Valley professor who specializes in the ICC, said when the first Trump administration sanctioned two senior ICC officials from Africa in 2020, Canada issued a public statement saying that generally, ICC staff should not be sanctioned.
“This is about whether or not we believe that opposing sanctions against people who are trying to hold war criminals to account is something that we do, or whether we remain silent and do nothing,”
Kersten said the lack of Canada saying anything after one of its own citizens was sanctioned is “a foreign-policy failure.”
“It seems to me to be … upholding our principles and openly protecting our citizens from egregious sanctions is worth sacrificing at the altar of appeasing Donald Trump, at a time when we’re negotiating with him,”
“If we don’t do anything about this now, it won’t just be the ICC. We will normalize the use of coercive sanctions, not only against our citizens, but against people who have done exactly nothing wrong and who have dedicated their lives to serve others.”
Edited from a report by The Canadian Press that was first published Aug. 28, 2025.
