Thank you very much for inviting me here today.

Canada needs an independent, impartial Canadian arms export control agency. Since I became president of the Rideau Institute in June 2014, we have been tracking the long and sordid saga of our continuing arms exports to Saudi Arabia, no matter what.

These exports have continued despite heinous internal repression in the Saudi kingdom, state-planned assassinations potentially reaching onto Canadian territory and, the ultimate black eye, a UN human rights expert report explicitly naming and shaming arms exporters, including Canada, Iran and the U.K. for “helping to perpetuate the conflict” in Yemen and the almost incalculable human suffering it has engendered.

Alas, there is much more.

As you have heard, Project Ploughshares has exhaustively documented evidence of Canadian drone technology exported to Turkey being used in conflicts in Libya, Syria and Iraq. The allegations of Turkey transferring this equipment to armed groups in Libya, contrary to a decade-long UN Security Council-imposed mandatory arms embargo, are particularly shocking.

Then there is Nagorno-Karabakh.

We have seen a cynical pattern of Global Affairs suspending new export permits under the glare of media scrutiny, announcing an internal investigation and then lifting the suspension when the media hype dies down, all the while in most cases continuing the actual exports anyway under existing permits.

The Global Affairs report justifying the lifting of the latest Saudi arms permit suspension even argued that despite repeated calls by UN experts for all countries to cease their arms exports, Canadian arms were somehow not implicated. This in turn led to the UN expert group in their next report, the September 2020 one, to explicitly name Canada. Never, as a former ambassador, did I ever imagine seeing the name of Canada in such a report.

I ask the question: What is the point of Global Affairs investigating itself?

There is an obvious conflict of interest, because Global Affairs Canada is pursuing two contradictory policy objectives: enabling sales of weapons to foreign buyers on the one hand, and adhering to international and national obligations designed to protect human rights and international security that require strict limits on those sales on the other. In addition, when the minister announces an investigation by Global Affairs, he or she is really asking officials to determine whether they gave him or her bad advice the first time round. How likely are they to do that?

The new regulatory framework in place that allowed Canada to accede to the Arms Trade Treaty puts hard legal limits on the discretion of the minister to approve exports, but the problem is not these provisions as written. The problem is the law as applied or, more accurately, as not applied.

How can the Government of Canada be compelled to act in accordance with Canadian law? Currently, the only recourse citizens have, aside from the court of public opinion, is to take the Government of Canada to the Federal Court, but such legal proceedings are lengthy and expensive and necessarily after the fact. That is why we need a new independent agency to impartially administer our arms exports in full accordance with Canadian and international law.

The arguments in favour include no conflict of interest on the part of the administrators between trade promotion and respecting human rights UN arms embargoes and other Canadian legal obligations; officials not being asked to review their own past recommendations; and independent, expert legal opinion based on all available evidence, together with other requisite expertise guiding the decisions. Also, a House of Commons committee could be mandated to provide parliamentary oversight, as recommended by Project Ploughshares here today. The ultimate benefit for elected officials is that of taking the domestic politics out of the equation.

In the meantime, there are two immediate steps that Global Affairs can take to improve its current dismal record. One, begin consultations on the creation of an arms-length advisory panel as promised in April 2020 and, two, mandate an independent expert legal opinion on compliance with Canada's international legal obligations as an integral part of the current Global Affairs export permit application process.

Thank you very much.

Transcript

Discussions (0)