Foreign Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Provide a brief answer, please, Mr. Christie.

[Bruce Christie]

Through the review of export permits to Turkey that was released by the minister yesterday, we found credible evidence that Canadian military technologies were used in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Diotte.

The next round goes to Mr. Fonseca for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Christie, it's good to see you again.

In your opening remarks, you mentioned that Minister Garneau announced yesterday the cancellation of the export permits to Turkey that were suspended in the fall of 2020 following concerns related to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Can you provide this committee with more background on this announcement? Explain what elements guided that decision [Technical difficulty--Editor] went through that process.

[Bruce Christie]

Mr. Chair, over the duration of four months during which the department conducted the review of export permits to Turkey.... I should start by saying that we didn't only review the permits that were suspended in October of last year by Minister Champagne. Those were the permits that were suspended because they were relevant to the conflict that started in the fall of last year in Nagorno-Karabakh. All permit applications during the review were looked at.

First of all, we held consultations across the range of federal government departments, as I mentioned in my opening remarks. The Turkish permit review was conducted in collaboration with the Department of National Defence, but we also collaborated with other federal government departments and agencies, for example, the Communications Security Establishment when required. We looked at the final report of the panel of experts on Libya. We looked at some of the media reporting that had come out during the conflict, including the video footage that was produced that showed one of the Turkish UAVs, or drones, was downed in the region and video footage was taken. We analyzed that video footage as well.

We spoke to the Canadian companies who were responsible for the export of those technologies. We also assessed all of that information against the Arms Trade Treaty criteria that I mentioned earlier. We also talked to our like-minded partners. We also reached out to the Turkish government and the Armenian government to help us conduct a review. Unfortunately, they did not provide information that helped us in the minister's final determination. Of course, we also looked at the reports provided by Project Ploughshares in making a final recommendation to the minister.

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

Thank you for that. It sounds like the review was very thorough and comprehensive.

Can you now explain Canada's evolving policy with regard to these controlled exports to Turkey over the last number of years? It sounds like there has been quite an evolution to where we are today.

[Bruce Christie]

Mr. Chair, yes, there has been an evolution since.... As I mentioned earlier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs suspended permits to Turkey back in October 2019, following Turkey's military incursion into Syria.

In April 2020, our export permit policy to Turkey evolved further. We only approved permit applications for military or strategic goods on a case-by-case basis and only if they fit into the exceptions essentially related to NATO co-operation programs.

As I mentioned, in October of last year, the Minister of Foreign Affairs then suspended permits to Turkey relevant to the Nagorno-Karabakh region that flared up in September of last year. During that time, no export permits to Turkey were issued. Further to an assessment of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh as a result, the suspended permits were cancelled by Minister Garneau yesterday. Those permits are no longer valid. The companies have been advised, and the export permits have been cancelled in our system.

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

My next question is somewhat perplexing for many people.

How can Global Affairs Canada be objective when you're responsible for promoting business opportunities—as you said, some $3 billion plus—for Canadian defence companies while ensuring the protection of human rights? Can you explain how you manage that difficult situation?

[Bruce Christie]

It has become increasingly challenging for us to balance Canadian export interests in military goods and technologies, as well as continuing to apply a rigorous risk-assessment framework using the criteria laid out in the Arms Trade Treaty to determine if a potential export of a Canadian military or strategic good could lead to any of the negative consequences in the Arms Trade Treaty that I referred to earlier, i.e., a risk that it would result in a violation of human rights, including serious acts of gender-based violence.

What we do to try to manage those two components of Canada's interests, both as an exporting nation and to ensure that we can continue to approach these export permits with a consistent, rigorous risk-assessment approach, if you will, is that we have regular dialogues through our various industry working groups. We speak to the companies themselves on a regular basis. We speak to the industry associations. We're in constant communication with companies to determine any additional information that we need to help make a determination as to whether that export permit should be approved.

At the same time, we've been trying to work with Canadian companies over the past two years to get them to be more compliant with the Arms Trade Treaty criteria and to work with us in more of a partnership to ensure that we can process export permit applications in a more timely and predictable manner. We also—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Christie, I'm sorry to interrupt. We'll have to leave it there in the interests of time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Fonseca.

The floor now goes to Mr. Bergeron for six minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us, Mr. Christie. My thanks to all your colleagues who are also here to help us with the work of our committee.

It is no secret that a number of people are hailing the decision announced yesterday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nevertheless, it must be said that many human lives were likely lost in coming to that decision. Alarm bells were certainly ringing. There is an Arabic proverb, I am told, saying that when something happens to us once, it's not our fault, when it happens to us twice, it may be a coincidence, but when it happens three times, it is our fault.

In the case before us, you yourself pointed out that, in 2019, questions had been raised following Turkey's incursion into northern Syria. In December 2019, the United Nations panel of experts on Libya submitted a report to the UN Security Council. The report indicated that Turkey and others had routinely supplied arms to the parties to the conflict in Libya, sometimes blatantly and with little effort to disguise the source.

Then came the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Meanwhile, Canada had approved the export of equipment, some of which, as we know, was used to manufacture drones. They were used not only in Libya but also in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and possibly in northern Syria. After at least two alarm bells, we approved, a little casually, I would say, the export of that equipment to Turkey.

Is that not a high price to pay?

[Bruce Christie]

Let me start by addressing the situation in Syria. As I mentioned, in October of 2019, as you say, we suspended permit applications following Turkey's military incursion into southeastern Syria. Further to our review of the situation, a determination was made in concert with our partners and our allies that the Turkish incursion into Syria did not destabilize the region. In fact, they went in with a view to protecting Turkish interests and not create human rights violations.

However, when we assessed the permit applications and whether they had contributed, we didn't look at whether human rights violations had been impacted in the region. We looked at whether the Canadian technology contributed to any human rights violations, or any violations of international humanitarian law. In the Export and Import Permits Act and the Arms Trade Treaty criteria that are now enshrined in the act, we do not have the legal right to look into human rights violations writ large. We look at whether human rights violations were caused as a result of the Canadian export of military technologies.

In the case of Libya, first of all, recognizing Turkey as a NATO partner, we were aware that Turkey was dealing with some very serious defence and security issues in that entire region, including in Libya and Syria. At the time, we determined through this review that was released yesterday that there may have been credible evidence as well that the Canadian technology that you're referring to—the sensors, the cameras—were used in that region as well, but prior to that we had no evidence that any Canadian military exports, or any technology exports, were being used for offensive purposes in Libya or in violation of our Arms Trade Treaty criteria.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

As Mr. Fonseca mentioned, you emphasized in your presentation that you have to look out for Canadian commercial interests above all. But at a meeting with Canadian parliamentarians, a Turkish diplomat posted to Ottawa freely admitted that Turkey no longer really needed that equipment, meaning the WESCAM technology made by L3Harris in Burlington, Ontario, because it was manufacturing its own products at home, probably by copying Canadian technology.

By trying to look out for Canadian commercial interests, have we not actually damaged them, in the sense that a country has simply copied the technology and assembled its own weapons using it?

[Bruce Christie]

Mr. Chair, the member raises a very interesting point, in that in October last year, when former minister Champagne instructed us to suspend the export permits relative to the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the vast majority of those permits were related to the sensors or cameras that were being exported to be affixed to the Turkish drones. At the time, through our deliberations with Turkey, we tried to reach out to help the Turkish government provide additional information to the Canadian government to determine whether or not Canadian technologies were being used in that region against the end use and end-user assurances that the government had been provided by the government of Turkey, but unfortunately, as I mentioned, the Turkish government did not provide us with any additional information.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Christie.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bergeron.

We'll have to leave it there.

The floor now goes to Mr. Harris for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'm very interested, Mr. Christie, in your comments about the department's apparent lack of knowledge that these Wescam sensors were being used in the Bayraktar TB2s, because it seems to be common, open-source knowledge that these drones were built and designed around the Wescam sensors. Can you tell us more about that?

[Bruce Christie]

When these allegations came forward from various sources—the media, the Project Ploughshares report and through other information sources—Minister Champagne instructed us to suspend those permits while we did a review of the allegations.

I'd have to say, looking back at the conflict, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been ongoing for a number of years, but was dormant for several of those years. It wasn't until September 25 of last year when the fighting resumed in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.... Literally days later, we met with Minister Champagne, who instructed us to suspend those relevant permits, so I would say it was a question of days before the minister took action.

In fairness, as I said, the conflict and the fighting in that region had been dormant for several years. It erupted rather quickly, so there was no evidence prior to that that our technologies being exported to Turkey were being used.

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

That's not consistent, sir, with the memorandum for action approved and signed on behalf of the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs on September 2, which recommends approval of a blacked-out number of applications for permits and which talks about the various precedents referred to in the May 2 memorandum, noting that the Turkish-built drones using L3Harris Wescam optical systems were the key to the Turkish air campaign in the Syrian region.

There is also a reference to how, since that approval was granted back in 2013, we have included the L3Harris export permits application, which are listed in annex A. Since that approval was granted, Turkey has continued its military engagement in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and it took a strong stance in favour of Azerbaijan during recent fighting. It also suggests other activities in the Mediterranean, all of which could increase the risk of the drones being used in conflict, so I'm a little concerned about your saying that you had no knowledge, (a) that there were Wescam sensors in these drones, and (b) that this activity was likely to lead to the use of these drones in conflict.

[Bruce Christie]

Mr. Chair, I might turn to my colleague Ms. Anand for any clarification on this point.

At the time we were making our determinations and recommendations to the minister based on the intelligence we had at our disposal then and on the end-use assurances provided to us by the Turkish government. In other words, the Turkish government assured us that it would not be using these Canadian sensors, those technologies, for offensive purposes. We knew they were being used in the drones being built in Turkey, but we had no evidence that their use contravened our commitment under the Arms Trade Treaty.

Ms. Anand, do you have anything else to add to my answer?

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

Perhaps we could leave it there for now, because I do have a number of other questions.

You mentioned that the only exception seemed to be for NATO-based operations—this was after April 2—and you were not notifying the public of the full exceptions that the NATO operations were part of. We see, in the same memorandum I'm referring to, that there are at least six exceptions noted, five more in addition to the NATO operations, so I don't think you're giving us the complete story here, Mr. Christie, if you're limiting your exception to the NATO operations. Is that correct?

[Bruce Christie]

At the time, Mr. Chair, the approval for use of Canadian technologies, as I said earlier, was being assessed on a case-by-case basis. The exceptions we looked at were if they were used for exceptional circumstances and not limited to NATO co-operation programs. The permit application could also have been approved to promote Canada's humanitarian interests in the region, but also in co-operation with allies in the region. Since those permits have been cancelled by Minister Garneau, the exceptional circumstances had been further refined to refer only to NATO co-operation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Christie, and Mr. Harris.

We'll go into our second round of questions now. These are five-minute allotments, for the first two anyway.

Leading us off will be Mr. Chong.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing.

Mr. Christie, you said something to Mr. Harris that I found surprising. You said that the conflict had been dormant for many years and it wasn't until September 25 of last year that the conflict re-erupted after years of dormancy.

However, last summer, in July, there were clashes taking place between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In fact, if you do a simple Google search, there were literally hundreds of news articles reporting these clashes. The conflict made its way into mainstream western publications such as Forbes and The New York Times, so I'm surprised that the department wouldn't be aware of these clashes that were taking place last July in the Caucasus.

The other thing I'm surprised about is that the reports on the clashes also included lots of reporting on the use of drone technology in these clashes. In fact, for example—just one example of many articles—in Forbes magazine, David Hambling reported on July 17 that Turkish Bayraktar drones were being used in the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan that summer, last summer. Therefore, I'm surprised that the department wasn't aware of these clashes.

I was particularly surprised, when I was reviewing the documents from the department, that in the briefing note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about his meeting with his Turkish counterpart on September 17, there is zero mention of the clashes in the Caucasus that involved Turkey. It was widely reported that Turkey and Azerbaijan had been participating and co-operating in these clashes. There had been large-scale joint military exercises between Turkey and Azerbaijan, yet in this briefing note, again, there is zero mention of the clashes in the Caucasus.

The bottom of the document is dated September 14, and it was for a meeting that was to take place on September 17 between Minister Champagne and his Turkish counterpart. There are references to the conflict in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece. There's mention of many other issues in the region, but no mention of the clashes in the Caucasus.

Was the department aware in September of the July clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan?

[Bruce Christie]

I'm going to refer the question to my geographic colleagues. Maybe they can provide more of an explanation of the nuances between what I said about the battles or conflict resuming on September 25 versus the clashes that took place, as you point out, during the previous summer.

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

Yes, I'd be interested to hear. Was the department aware of the clashes in July?