Foreign Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2021

[Bruce Christie]

Sandra, can I turn it to you, or Andrew?

[Sandra McCardell, Assistant Deputy Minister, Europe, Arctic, Middle East and Maghreb, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Sure. I'd be happy to add my view on that.

Mr. Chair, the member of the committee is right to raise the issue of the border skirmishes in July. The department was aware of those skirmishes that took place and, tragically, resulted in the death of 16 people.

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

Thank you for that.

Why didn't that make it into the briefing note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs for his meeting on September 17?

To me, it seems like a glaring omission from this briefing note that there was zero mention of the clashes in the Caucasus.

[Sandra McCardell]

Mr. Chair, the clashes that took place in July 2020 did take place against a backdrop of rising and falling tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which have lasted for many years. This particular flare-up in July, while of concern, did not at that time appear to be taking on what we would see down the road, a few months later, as a very significant outbreak of violence and conflict between the two sides.

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

With respect, my view is that it's an astounding omission. I will just leave it at that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Chong, thank you very much.

The next round of questions goes to Mr. Oliphant again.

You have five minutes, please.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to begin by thanking the analysts, Ms. Goody and Mr. Siekierski, for their briefing notes for today's meeting.

The notes were really exceptional. I think the work you put into them helped me understand. I have been following arms permits for a couple of years now, and your work was really good. I am going to send it to officials to read, because I really do think it's a fine outline of the history.

My first question is this: Is Turkey an ally of Canada?

[Bruce Christie]

Yes. Turkey is an important bilateral and strategic partner of Canada and, as I mentioned earlier, a valued NATO partner.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

As such, we are engaged with them in the fight against Daesh. We're engaged with them in other areas. We raise concerns, say, about Russian aggression in Ukraine, with them as an ally. Am I correct on that?

[Bruce Christie]

Yes, that is correct.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

It would not be unusual to have arms export permits for an ally that we would have strong concerns about...with any ally, to make sure that the end use was consistent with what it was meant to be. That would be a normal procedure that Canada would engage in with companies in Canada that do this sort of business.

[Bruce Christie]

Yes, that's exactly how we would engage in those types of discussions.

As I mentioned earlier, and maybe I will reiterate it as it relates to your particular question, as part of the export permit application process we seek assurances on the end-user and the end use. The end-user is the consignee in the other country, in this case Turkey. What's very challenging to do, and beyond the legal extent of our Export and Import Permits Act, is that there's a time lag between when technology or a good is exported from a Canadian company to Turkey and when it's actually used. They could be stored in warehouses for years, for example. It would be very challenging for us down the road to make a determination as to, in this case, the technologies that were...for which we found credible evidence that were used, to determine how that relates back to a particular export permit application.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

We attempt to be vigilant on that. We work with other allies. We get information from NGOs. We do our own intelligence-gathering to attempt to keep as current as possible.

I see you're nodding, so I will accept that as “yes”.

With respect to Turkey, however, we began to perceive a problem. Minister Freeland, when she was minister of foreign affairs, opened the door to that problem. We now see in our briefing notes that since that time in October 2019, we have had concerns about Turkey even as an ally. We have put them on notice, in layperson's terminology, in a number of ways, including finally Minister Champagne acting very urgently upon evidence in October and November of last year with respect to these particular pieces of equipment. Is that a fair characterization of it?

[Bruce Christie]

Yes, it is.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Right now the minister had several options with respect to the suspension of the permits. It's a five-year period, I understand, for a permit. They were suspended. He could have reinstated them. He could have amended them. He chose to cancel them. That is a fairly strong action, I would understand.

[Bruce Christie]

That is correct. After we conducted the review of Turkish export permits over the last four months of 2020, we provided a series of options to Minister Garneau for his consideration. He could have cancelled the permits, as he did. He could have continued the suspension of those permits while we continued our due diligence to determine the validity of the end-use assurances, or he could have cancelled them and reinstated them under separate conditions.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

However, he chose to cancel them. He did something else as well, and I understand that he also has signalled to Turkey, as an ally and NATO partner, that we wanted to engage with it in a discussion to rebuild the confidence we needed to have before we could go back to a presumption of good faith. Right now, we have a presumption of denial, and we've asked Turkey to engage in a dialogue to re-prove that it will act in good faith.

Am I correct on that?

[Bruce Christie]

Yes, that is correct.

Minister Garneau, in his discussion with his Turkish counterpart yesterday morning, before the announcement was made, expressed his intention to instruct his officials to initiate a dialogue with Turkey to build some kind of a dialogue mechanism to increase our level of assurance that there's more validity, or a higher degree of assurance, in the end-use and end-user statements.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I want to thank Mr. Christie for his ongoing work. This is tough work, so thank you for doing what you do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much.

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

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

In the same spirit, and if I follow the logic you have just suggested, it is even more important to demand more solid assurances from our ally Turkey. Previously, when we asked them for specifics, we were provided with none. Furthermore, to follow Mr. Oliphant's line of questioning, I believe that we can say that our ally Turkey has turned its weapons, possibly designed using Canadian technology, against another ally that was helping us to fight against Daesh. Of course, I am talking about the Kurds in northwestern Syria.

In that context, Mr. Chair, when the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, with the advice of his officials, decided to suspend arms export permits to Saudi Arabia, he told us about the establishment of an expert committee. However, last October, when officials from Global Affairs Canada appeared before the committee, we were told that the make-up of the group of experts still had to be defined.

In his presentation, Mr. Christie told us that external people were often consulted. I assume that this committee of experts should also be consulted. That said, who can we be consulting when there has been so much delay in establishing a committee of experts set up precisely to advise the department in this regard?

[Bruce Christie]

In terms of whom we consult with in relation to the relevant permits in the Nagorno-Karabakh region that were suspended by Minister Champagne last October, through our own deliberations, we consult with Canadian companies. We consult with our other like-minded partners.

Since we signed-on to the Arms Trade Treaty, we do a regular benchmarking of how Canada implements the criteria or our obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty against other countries. We find, through those deliberations, that we're very closely aligned with the majority of our European counterparts, for example. They're all slightly different.

In terms of your reference to the creation of an Arms Trade Treaty advisory panel, yes, Minister Champagne announced the creation of this panel last April. We have been working, in consultations with others, to determine the terms of reference, the mandate and the composition of the membership of the panel. The panel, as recommended, would be composed of academia and private sector representatives, as well as non-governmental organizations. Their role would be to advise Canada, not just on how we're implementing the Arms Trade Treaty but also on how to continue to benchmark that. As for when that will be announced, hopefully it will be soon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Christie, I'm sorry, but we'll have to leave it there.

I am sorry, Mr. Bergeron, but your time is up.

We'll now begin the final round of questions.

Mr. Harris, please go ahead, for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to add to what Mr. Chong had to say earlier about of Global Affairs' knowledge of what was going on in Nagorno-Karabakh in relation to what was already available or known, and first of all, to point out that the knowledge of the sensors.... In the government's own report, released yesterday, it does indicate that Baykar's product catalogue lists the Canadian sensors as the exclusive sensor technology for Baykar's UAV. This leads to the conclusion that Canadian sensors have most likely been deployed on Baykar's TB2 UAV. That was sort of there on the public record for some time, so I don't know why the confusion would exist in the government's mind about that.

Also, in June and July—this is from the government's own report, on page 5—there were media reports in Turkey that Azerbaijan was buying these drones from Turkey and also that the Turkish defence industry's president said that Turkey “will always back Azerbaijan with its UAVs, ammunition, missiles and electronic warfare systems”. Now, I note that this is in the government report, which is fine, and I'm glad that they made that available, but this and other information as well would have been available to the government in July.

I don't have very much time, Chair, for a further question-and-answer at this point because of the two and a half minutes, but I will take some of my time to move a motion:

That the committee render public the documents provided to date by Global Affairs Canada, pursuant to the order for the production of papers adopted on October 29, 2020; and reserves the right to be granted unfettered access to the unredacted documents upon request to officials at Global Affairs Canada in accordance with the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Harris, thank you very much.

The motion is in order, in that it matches the subject matter currently under discussion.

I invite colleagues for a discussion and debate on the motion using the virtual “raise hand” feature, please. I believe that all of us are virtually connected today, so if colleagues wish to speak to the motion, please signal that by using the virtual “raise hand” feature.

Ms. Sahota, I see your hand raised. You are first in line. Go ahead, please.