To take a quick step back in terms of the timeline, in October 2019 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, after Turkey's incursion into northeastern Syria, suspended the issuance of new permits to Turkey until such time that we, the department, working with our like-minded partners, could determine whether our concerns that the exports of Canadian technology being used in northeastern Syria could further destabilize the region.
Further to that review, during which time no new export permits were permitted, in April of last year the Minister of Foreign Affairs resumed the export of military items to Turkey but under new criteria under which all permit applications would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Essentially, what came into effect in April 2020 was a presumptive denial policy. We advised Canadian exporters of military items and technology that they should assume that their permit application would be denied unless they could present exceptional circumstances, which were not limited to, but mostly based on, NATO co-operation programs. Those would be the exceptional circumstances.