I have a couple of recommendations. One is that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has to clearly instruct his civil service that Canada's obligations under international law have to be kept foremost. They must be given a robust interpretation, consistent with 30 years of Canadian foreign policy in pursuit of a meaningful arms trade treaty, so ministerial instruction that the Arms Trade Treaty comes first.
I would also strongly endorse Ambassador Mason's recommendation that an independent agency be built to remove this conflict of interest from these civil servants who try very hard and are not successful in balancing these goals.
I think it's really important that we develop expertise, not only in the Caucasus, but also in these new weapon systems and the considerable impact and difficulties they will raise in the years and decades ahead. These Wescam targeting systems are among the very best in the world. They are the only ones that are not made in the United States or Israel that a country like Turkey has access to. They are really, really good, and they are the heart of these drone systems.
These drone systems are proliferating. We've seen them in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Libya, in Yemen. Wescam sells these targeting systems to Saudi Arabia, so it's possible that they are being used in Yemen.
We have a proliferation issue here, and Canada is at the heart of it, because these extraordinary systems are being built in Ontario.
The foreign ministry has to get on top of this and has to have experts in weapons systems in the region. It has to have people on the ground. We have to do this properly, because otherwise, we will be contributing to suffering and destabilization.