Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 10th, 2020

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fonseca.

Mr. Bergeron, you have the floor next and you have two and a half minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I will try to keep this short, Mr. Chair.

First, as for the cameras for the Turkish drones, I believe that the die is cast, in that some of us heard from the lips of the Turkish ambassador to Canada that Turkey has developed its own Turkish technology in manufacturing its drones. They now no longer need Canadian technology, which, actually, they probably copied.

I want to go back to a statement that Ms. Mason made in a brief submitted to the Senate committee examining bill C-47. She stressed the need to prevent abuses of commercial confidentiality.

One of the reasons that we are meeting is precisely that, at a hearing with officials from Global Affairs Canada, the answer to a number of the questions we asked was that they could not answer them, because of commercial confidentiality.

In your opinion, Ms. Mason, how can we get round this difficulty that we as parliamentarians are always faced with when the time comes to discuss these matters with representatives of Global Affairs Canada?

[Peggy Mason]

Thank you very much for that question.

This is another area, I regret to say, of abuse by Global Affairs, the abuse of the term “commercial confidentiality”. The OECD actually has a definition of commercial confidentiality and it is really narrowly construed to relate to factors to do with pricing and competitiveness of bids. Therefore, that should certainly not prevent the lion's share of the information being given to parliamentarians and to the public for that matter. That was used, of course, with Saudi Arabia. We weren't allowed to know anything. It wasn't just that it was commercial confidentiality, allegedly it was a term of the agreement.

One thing I want to note right now though that doesn't get enough attention is that, in the report lifting the export suspension, the latest report, the April 2020 report on Saudi Arabia, the minister had one good thing to say and that was that the renegotiated contract with Saudi Arabia removed the penalty. The word is “eliminated”. It eliminated the penalty if the export breaches the authorized use of the authorized end-user.

It also said that much more information could be given about the contract, so all in all you should be able to get a lot more information.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bergeron.

The final series of questions goes to Mr. Harris for two and half minutes.

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

First of all, I think you've all said you don't have a lot of faith in the assessment process carried out by Global Affairs Canada and also commented on the lack of transparency about who's doing it. We don't know even know how many resources are given to this task it seems. The solution proposed by Ms. Mason and the Rideau Institute is that there ought to be an independent agency to do these assessments.

Is that something we would be following in some other country's footsteps in doing, Ms. Mason, or would that be something where we would be breaking new ground, as we have done, of course, in other areas of international arms issues such as the landmines issue and others?

[Peggy Mason]

I haven't done an exhaustive review, but certainly I think it would be fair to say that among western countries this would be groundbreaking. This would be something where Canada would be leading the way in demonstrating that we don't just say we believe in a rules-based international order, but we actually implement and we put our money where our mouth is.

So far as I know it would be groundbreaking, but I want to emphasize that I did mention at the very end an interim step that the government can do immediately. If they say they are complying with international law and Canadian law, then they should have no problem with this. That is to add to the existing process the requirement for an independent expert legal opinion, and the question would be “Will this proposed export be in compliance with Canada's legal obligations under the ATT?”

That's something we could do immediately. That would be a start towards getting the idea that this has to be based on evidence and on expert legal opinion.

[Cesar Jaramillo]

If I may, I agree with Ms. Mason.

Also, in the interim, as I said earlier, our recommendation is that this very committee could establish a subcommittee to be apprised of these matters, because the risk assessment process is indeed flawed. It is reactive.

Mr. Fonseca, this is from September 22, in the Globe, “Canada accused of breaching obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty”. That was before the decision was made. Already in September this was in the media, which points to ad-hoc risk assessment.

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

I think my time is up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Yes. Thank you.

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

We would love to have another hour with you. We'll have to get you all back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Harris.

Colleagues, that brings us to the end of our meeting and almost to the end of this year in Parliament.

On our collective behalf, I would like to thank our witnesses for sharing their expertise and their insights with us this afternoon.

I would also like to thank our wonderful House of Commons team: our clerk, our analysts, our interpreters, our technicians and our pages.

To my fellow members on the committee and to our teams, thank you for your service and for your collaboration. I would like to wish you, your loved ones and all Canadians the very best for the holiday season. Happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas, happy Kwanza and, very importantly, a healthy, happy and successful new year.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.