Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, thank you for joining us today.
Last month, the Liberal caucus overall supported the NDP motion for peace and justice for Palestine. That final motion reflected calls we'd heard from the Palestinian Canadian community for years about how Canada must stop arming Israel's siege of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank. In February, the Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to halt exports from the F-35 program because Israel was using those jets in the bombing of Gaza, but we haven't heard any indication that your government will follow suit.
In fact, the defence policy update, which we're discussing today, says, “We will think differently about how we procure with our allies”, but that seems to imply that we'll loosen that import arms control regime, especially when we're talking about U.S.-led initiatives like the joint fighter jet program.
Given that there's a great deal of military aid from the United States to Israel fuelling this attack on Gaza and this is quickly leading to what we feared—a larger regional war—do you believe the defence production sharing agreement between Canada and the United States should be updated to align better with the Arms Trade Treaty and include end-use assurances for international law violations?