Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 10th, 2020

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I would like your expert opinion on this. How much of a game-changer were these drone systems in the recent conflict in the Caucasus? Were they a minor player in what happened, or did they create a significant change in the balance of power in the region?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

They were widely reported to be. At least the drones they were used on were, because the majority of the reporting was on the drone, the Bayraktar TB2. The TB2s provided by Turkey to Azerbaijan were widely reported to be a game-changer. They have allowed Azeri forces to strike farther than they could very quickly, and Armenian forces, to my reading, didn't really have much of a chance to defend against them. From the outset this created a shift in the conflict.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Mason, do you have a comment, a view or an expert opinion on these drones in the recent conflict?

[Peggy Mason]

I would just echo what has been said by Project Ploughshares representatives.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chong.

The next round goes to Dr. Fry, again for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much.

I must say that all of your reports are very detailed. They speak about legal obligations, especially when we look at Turkey, which continues to divert arms sales, and it is prohibited from doing this. I am not trying to say that Canada has nothing to do with it, but what's the role of those NATO countries that continue to allow Turkey to violate the ATT? Do you believe—somebody who knows the innards of this thing, like Ms. Mason, can tell us—that Canada is not able to do anything because the other NATO members, and you mentioned the U.K. and the U.S.A., are putting pressure on them to keep the status quo and to okay the violations for various geopolitical reasons?

Can somebody answer that for me? It's a loaded question. I don't know the answer because none of us knows what's going on here, but can you tell me something, Ms. Mason, about how that would work internally to NATO? Then Mr. Jaramillo can respond.

[Peggy Mason]

Thank you very much.

First of all, I don't know of any such pressure, but the far more important point is that it's entirely beside the point. Canada has legal obligations, which it freely entered into, with respect to the Arms Trade Treaty. It also has obligations that have been imposed by the UN Security Council when we're talking about arms embargoes. It is the responsibility of the Canadian government to adhere to and fully implement Canadian law. As a practical point, NATO countries are all over the map with respect to Turkey, but the main point is that each country has the sovereign obligation to fully implement its obligations under its national law and international law. There's no way you can excuse it or say, “Somebody pressured me to not follow Canadian law.”

[Cesar Jaramillo]

Thank you, Dr. Fry. That's an excellent question.

We often hear from NATO members, not just in this instance but in general, about the need to maintain military interoperability. That is often giving us a blanket reason for these dubious transactions, but as Ms. Mason said, that is no excuse whatsoever for failing to uphold the law. The Arms Trade Treaty and domestic Canadian law make no exemptions for military interoperability or for any other reasons. Canada is obligated to uphold the law, as are other countries that may also be encouraging behaviour. The poor behaviour of other states does not excuse Canadian poor behaviour, to put it another way.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you.

You talked about the need to amend domestic law with regard to the ATT. What are the amendments you think we should be making? I thought the law was specific already in keeping with the ATT, but should our domestic law be amended even further? How do we keep domestic politics out of it?

Again, one knows what happens at question period when somebody gets up and asks the question and everything becomes a political minefield and the waters get muddied as opposed to our looking clearly at our legislation and at our obligations. When you look at Bill C-47, how do we amend that? Should it be amended? What are the next steps we should take to ensure...?

You talked about an arm's-length watchdog group that is going to be clear in terms of its legal obligations, its legal arm's length, etc., and that is something that could happen. How do you escape that political minefield that occurs in the House of Commons when you take this to the House, you look at voting and then everyone plays games with it? What can one do? I am asking this question not because I'm being partisan at all, but because I do not want Canada to have its name muddied internationally with our not living up to our obligations. What should domestic legislation look like?

[Peggy Mason]

Thank you.

The first part of your question was with respect to comments that had been made. They were made by Justin Mohammed at Amnesty International, specifically about the fact that Bill C-47 to allow Canada to accede to the Arms Trade Treaty actually did not implement all of the obligations of the Arms Trade Treaty. I would like to turn it to him to answer that part.

With respect to the arm's-length agency, I'm making a radical proposal here in traditional terms.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Yes, I know.

[Peggy Mason]

It's not actually radical when you consider the kind of world we live in now with the kinds of challenges and the kind of “new think” we need. It's not actually that radical at all. It's just radical for the old-time diplomacy at Global Affairs.

If an independent agency has the final decision-making, then parliamentarians wouldn't be implicated in it. The report would go to Parliament and they could debate the report. They could debate whether or not there should be new legislation and so on, but the individual decisions would be made by the independent agency.

An example, if you recall way back to the 1980s, would be the tainted tuna scandal, which led to the minister losing any right to overrule the findings of inspectors. Ultimately, that led to taking things like food safety out of Agriculture Canada, which was promoting food, and putting it into a separate discrete agency—the Canada Food Inspection Agency—which has that mandate.

That was done in 1997. It's not that we can't do these kinds of things. It's just that with diplomacy, sometimes in those areas these things are made to seem more difficult than they actually are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Ms. Mason, I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dr. Fry.

The floor is now yours for six minutes, Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I am going to continue in the same vein, Mr. Chair.

We have certainly seen that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has significant powers, even though those powers are clearly delineated. We have seen that the minister was actually looking to be not the only one with the monkey on his back, so to speak.

We saw it in the lifting of the moratorium on arms sales to Saudi Arabia when, right in the middle of the lockdown caused by the pandemic, the Minister made that decision, which came as a surprise to basically everyone.

I took the opportunity to communicate with the Minister and he told me that he had received a relatively independent report that showed that we could move forward. So I asked to see that report. To my great surprise, it was an internal Department of Global Affairs report, clearly designed to support and legitimize the lifting of the moratorium.

The report described human rights abuses, but argued that, basically, the abuses were inadequately documented. We have heard that argument a lot in recent weeks from Global Affairs Canada, and we are sick of it.

The minister added that, apparently, he had surrounded himself with a kind of committee of the wise, to advise him in these kinds of circumstances. Personally, I have seen not the slightest trace of this committee of the wise. Did I miss an episode?

Are you—I am talking to all the witnesses—aware of this so-called committee of the wise that is giving the Minister information and advice about the decisions he has to make on Canada's arm sales?

[Cesar Jaramillo]

Thank you for the question.

If I may address it briefly, we were taken aback by the lifting of the moratorium to Saudi Arabia, even if it was along the pattern of “no matter what” in terms of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Like you said, it was a decision taken in the middle of a pandemic. It was taken nearly two years after the brutal assassination of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi authorities at the consulate in Istanbul. It was taken shortly before Canada joined the United Nations Security Council to appeal for a ceasefire and shortly before Canada lost its bid for a seat at the United Nations Security Council. Taken together, there is something to be said about the rationale for this ill-advised decision when the risk of exports to Saudi Arabia are clear and present.

I would echo the words of Ms. Mason earlier, when she said these arms exports seem to be a deal no matter what, whereby every possible red flag has been raised and the government consistently continues determined to honour this ill-fated deal.

[Peggy Mason]

I wonder if I could jump in, too, on a couple of things.

Reference was made to wise men. That's an announcement that the minister made that he was going to establish a group of independent experts who would advise, but that hasn't been done yet.

A reference has also been made to what kind of an investigation actually goes on. I think we should look at the Turkish example, where, within weeks, The Globe and Mail got an independent reporter on the ground to go and take pictures in Armenia of the equipment in question, demonstrating clearly that it was Canadian Wescam technology. When Global Affairs was asked if they had sent anybody, they hadn't. Then they were asked if they were going to send anybody to check it out, and they wouldn't commit to it.

The reports say that they don't have any evidence or that there hasn't been any evidence on the ground that they could find, but so far as we can tell, they don't even make an effort to find that evidence. They certainly don't accept the documented evidence presented by international organizations like Amnesty International, Oxfam and so on.

[Justin Mohammed]

If I might just add one further comment on the question of the final report that is being raised, I think it's important to recognize, first, that as a matter of Canadian law, the discretion around the analysis that's to be conducted—if you look at section 7 of the Export and Import Permits Act—does leave that with the minister. The idea of having some kind of committee advise the minister may be academically interesting, but we have no details about what the minister intends to do with that information and how exactly it will intersect with his obligation under the terms of the EIPA, the Canadian legislation.

The second thing to mention about the final report is that this is our first insight into the substantial risk test, which is something that my colleague had mentioned. I would encourage committee members to have a look at the annex to that report because it does talk about how Canada is to interpret it. That's our first indication as to how officials are interpreting the question of substantial risk. If you look to the annex of that report, you'll notice that there are entire sections that are blacked out and that we don't have any more understanding about how exactly the government intends to use this criteria. As my colleague has already pointed out, the final report itself has many troubling references to the notion of repeated use. That is not the risk analysis that is envisioned by the ATT or, for that matter, by the EIPA in Canadian law.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bergeron.

The final series in this round goes to Mr. Harris, again, for six minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to our witnesses for your evidence on this very crucial topic. We have, of course, the obligations under the ATT and obligations under the legislation, and as has been pointed out, there are some differences. There's something I'd like to ask, though, before I get to that.

We're talking here, in the case of Turkey, about drones and drone technology. We know that we don't need to see, by your own analysis, patterns of violations to establish a substantial risk, just a substantial risk itself. Does the drone technology per se involve a substantial risk of violations of international human rights obligations, or obligations under the treaty? I invite you all to have a quick yes or no on that because I think that in some cases it's regarded as being a violation. It's surely the case with Libya, where it's an embargo situation—yes, of course—but does that have to be assessed on a country by country basis, or does it have to have serious end-user requirements or knowledge before it can be assessed?

Perhaps we'll start with Amnesty International.

[Justin Mohammed]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Harris. My colleagues, I think, from Project Ploughshares and potentially Rideau Institute will have more to say.

One thing I would just mention that's important in that connection, particularly in the Turkish context, is article 7(7) of the ATT, which talks about the notion that even after an export has been granted, the state party should then continually renew the information as more of it comes out. I think that's one of the useful pieces that would come in, in the Turkish context.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

That's a subsequent question that I want to get into. That is part of the requirements of the ATT but it's not a part of Canadian law, so I think that's something important.

To Project Ploughshares, would your representatives tell us whether you think the drone technology itself is.... Obviously it's subject to significant human rights violations, but would you consider it to be a weapon that particularly exposes substantial risk?

[Cesar Jaramillo]

Yes, it is, with the caveat that exports need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The technology alone paints part of the picture, but you need to look at the nature of the recipient and any related precedents that would paint the full picture around risk.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

[Kelsey Gallagher]

Just to add to that, I would agree. This is a case-by-case basis, but it is exported as a weapon and it certainly is a weapon.

Once again, just to touch on a point I made earlier, this technology is critical for the recipient to be able to launch modern air strikes. Without these, the drones that Turkey was using in Libya, in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Syria and in Iraq, would be incapable of launching modern air strikes as we know them.

Not only are these exported as weapons but they should be seen as proper weapons due to the capabilities that they bring to the table.