Foreign Affairs Committee on April 27th, 2021

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would just begin by saying that a briefing note does not have a next breath. That would imply it was a conversation. I would also add that I receive briefing notes regularly for conversations that I have with diplomats and with officials from other governments, and I ignore some of the words, and I use some of the words and I make them my own words and use my own judgment based on that. I would expect any minister of foreign affairs of Canada—regardless of the party that they're from—to do the same.

I want to begin with some questions for Project Ploughshares.

First, I want to thank you, Project Ploughshares, which I have been associated with off and on for about 30 years, for your work on this file. Thank you for drawing attention which led to a suspension of permits, and thank you for your ongoing work and the consideration that I know went into the report that the officials prepared for the minister, which led to a cancellation of permits.

I think that shows that, while imperfect, something worked, at least in this case. What I'd like to know a little bit about is your methodology, how you get information, how you're on the ground—I know you're mostly in Waterloo—what you hear, how you're connected, and whether you can just give me a sense, not for a long time, but your methodology for intervening.

[Kelsey Gallagher]

I could probably speak to that. Tracking Canadian arms exports usually starts with government data, as it did in the case of Turkey. We saw that for annual exports to Turkey, there was really kind of a crescendo, starting with a trending up in 2016, and then we read between the lines in the kind of data that was being reported by Global Affairs Canada in the annual report on military exports.

From there, we look at other datasets. We would look at, for instance, StatsCan datasets to see with a greater sense of detail what exactly is being exported, and then we can look at the recipient and see what kind of weapons they're using, and if it's a component like a Wescam sensor, then we can see what kind of aircraft they have, and from there on make a determination as to where these sensors are going and what they're being used on. Then we pass that—in particular, in the case of Turkey, there was a large amount of open source data, a lot of images and videos posted on social media, most of which weren't used in our reporting. That showed us with a greater degree of certainty that indeed, Canadian sensors were being used by Turkish forces in more than one place.

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

Thank you.

Following up on your testimony, Mr. Gallagher, three or four times you inferred that there was political interference in the process. I am wondering whether you have proof of that or what proof you have that these decisions were not made totally objectively and with the information that was received through open sources and government sources, ultimately decisions that were made to both suspend and cancel permits?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

That claim was made in light of the nearly 1,000 pages of documents that have been published via this committee. With regard to the exemptions to the original suspension of October 2019, from those documents we can see that the export permits, in particular for the Wescam sensors but also for other Canadian weapons, were almost universally granted. I believe it was exception D that said that if there were going to be negative blowback bilaterally, then this should go forward. From our perspective, that's clouding the judgment of officials at Global Affairs Canada.

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

With all due respect, I don't see that as proof. I see that as indicating that something was said, something happened, and you've drawn the link between them, but do you actually have evidence that there was any political interference whatsoever?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

Overall, from the number of conversations going back and forth from Turkish to Canadian officials, arguing for the freeing up of these permits, including several memos to the Minister of Foreign Affairs , it was clear that a case was being made by Turkish officials to free up these permits.

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

I don't disagree with you that a case was being made. I also don't disagree with you that, in diplomatic relations, it's all about dialogue. It is about a constant conversation. That's what we have proof of, that there was a constant conversation.

Ms. Pytlak, as you are probably aware, Canada has expanded its definition of gender to include gender identity, gender expression, and perceived gender, when it comes to arms trade treaty issues.

Have other countries done that?

[Allison Pytlak]

It's really important to highlight that gender does not equal women, and women's issues alone. It has a much deeper, richer, and wider meaning than that. Different states are working with a broad definition. Gender-based violence and gender were the focus of the Fifth Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty. In the course of that meeting cycle, states parties, including Canada before it was a states party, engaged in a lot in discussion, working out what this concept means.

I have noted that—

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

Would it be fair to say Canada provided leadership on that topic?

[Allison Pytlak]

Not leadership quite yet. This was a bit before Canada came on board as a full states party, but it participated actively as a signatory.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Oliphant, we'll have to leave it there.

Mr. Bergeron, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I have two comments, Mr. Chair.

I want to start by thanking the witnesses for their extremely helpful and meaningful participation in the work of this committee.

I wanted to put my questions to my former colleague, Daniel Turp, who says that Canada has a double standard when it comes to arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Mr. Morantz brought up the fact that we asked Mr. Leuprecht a number of questions. I even asked him about this double standard. I was very surprised that he didn't seem to think that Canada had this type of policy. I would have liked Mr. Turp to elaborate on this issue.

I also want to follow up on Mr. Oliphant's question about Project Ploughshares' procedures. Committee witnesses have often said that Global Affairs Canada lacks sufficient resources to carry out the verifications properly. We found that few verifications are conducted, either before or after the fact. In contrast, Project Ploughshares, which has far fewer resources, can uncover extremely relevant information, such as the use of drones with Canadian remote sensing equipment in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

We should have been alerted to this situation. In December 2019, the United Nations panel of experts on Libya presented a report to the Security Council, which stated that Turkey had regularly supplied arms to parties involved in the conflict, including Canadian arms. This shows that Turkey has taken advantage of loopholes in the Canadian arms export system.

In light of this fairly harsh United Nations ruling, how can Global Affairs Canada continue to claim that Canada has one of the most stringent arms export control regimes in the world?

[Cesar Jaramillo]

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron. Please don't take this to mean we are praising our own work, but you make a very valid point.

If Project Ploughshares, or any other civil society organization, with a fraction of the resources the Canadian government has, were able to put this together, surely it is a reasonable assumption that the Canadian government would be able to do this with all of it's apparatus, resources, consulates, embassies, money, etc.

One has only to look at the sequence of events here. When civil society put out this information, the media caught onto it, and then the Canadian government issued the suspension. There is a bit of a causal relationship here, and again, one must ask, would Canada still be exporting weapons to Turkey had the government not been alerted about their use? Secondly, related to this, does the government need to be alerted externally about the use of the exports it is authorizing?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

If I may, I would just add that I believe past witnesses have brought this up, but, yes, building on what Canada has now, a good addition would be some regime of post-shipment verification. Other countries that have done this recently, I believe, are Germany and Switzerland, and they have found their arms being misused, including small arms, which frequently fall victim to diversion. This is something that Canada could, and we think that it should, look at implementing. It's not a radically new idea. We can talk to allies and figure out how they've implemented it and move forward with tracking Canadian weapons.

On top of that I would echo the sentiments of my colleague Cesar in saying that Global Affairs Canada should be more proactive.

Mr. Bergeron, you correctly bring up the report by the UN panel of experts on Libya and the situation in 2019. Why or how Canadian officials were not aware of that report and not aware of the fact that Turkey was sending TB2s to Libya in violation of the UN arms embargo is beyond us. On top of that, we now know as a result of these documents that have been released that Canadian officials knew these sensors were being used on TB2s at the time. Again, that's the Turkish drone. Officials really should have put two and two together and come to the conclusion that there was at least substantial risk that Wescam sensors were being diverted to Libya. However, they didn't and we would chalk this up to more of reactive approach rather than a proactive approach.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Unfortunately, I have only 30 seconds left. I'll ask my question a little later.

I'll ask Ms. Pytlak a very brief question.

Ms. Pytlak, one argument often put forward is that drones make it possible to carry out more surgical attacks—if I can put it that way—aimed at military targets while sparing civilian targets.

How credible is this argument, which seems to justify the sale of equipment to create drones after the fact?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Just a brief answer please.

[Allison Pytlak]

I know that is the idea of drones and drone technology, but I would say that it's not been the practice. If you look at civilian casualty reporting done, particularly by a group called Airwars, you'll see that the vast majority of casualties are actually civilians, and they attribute that to poor intelligence and poor targeting practices. As I was trying to illustrate in my example, sometimes you just see a military-age male and assume that it's the combatant whom you're looking for without going a little bit deeper and seeing if it's actually the target you want. As a result, there are a lot of unintended civilian casualties from drone strikes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron.

Now we will give the floor to Mr. Harris for the final intervention of six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

First of all, thank you to all of our witnesses today, including Dr. Turp who has now moved on.

Mr. Jaramillo or Mr. Gallagher, either one, can respond.

I'm a little bit confused and perhaps you can help me here. The assertion was made...and both of you have praised the government for cancelling permits to Turkey, but I'm not certain of the extent of that cancellation. Of course, we do know that they're going to be granting permits or are dealing with the assessment of permits on a case-by-case basis as cases go forward, so we'll deal with that later. That said, I'm concerned about what exactly was in fact cancelled, because in a briefing note prepared by Global Affairs Canada for Minister Champagne's discussion with the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs following the October 5, 2020, suspension of certain arms exports, it emphasizes that the decision affects “those export permits related to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh”, and that no other permits had been suspended. Only those related to Nagorno-Karabakh had been suspended on October 5.

Then the announcement made by Minister Garneau on April 12 indicates that on completion of the review, the minister announced the cancellation of the export permits to Turkey that had been suspended in the fall of 2020. That seems to me to indicate that the only permits that were actually cancelled were any ones having to do with Nagorno-Karabakh, and I think there was some indication in the documentation we've seen that there were applications under review, but not processed in relation to Nagorno-Karabakh. It seems to me that we may actually have a limited cancellation. Would you care to comment on that? Was that your conclusion as well?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

Yes, our assessment was that the cancellation covered 29 permits—that's what's been reported—and the permits covered two companies, the first being Wescam. The second company, to my knowledge, has not been named. Past that, many other weapons continue to be exported to Turkey. Some examples would be industrial goods for the production of bullets, and rocket motors for drones—which we don't have a lot of information on—and satellite parts produced by MDA in Canada. They're a controlled good. They're not weaponized, so they're obviously less of a concern, but they're a controlled good. There are a series of weapons and components that continue to be exported that were not covered by the cancellation.

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

That assessment of it being related to Nagorno-Karabakh may or may not be correct, is that what you're saying?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

Our interpretation was in concerned any of the those permits related to Wescam or that second company's products going to Turkey. It could be narrower, but that wasn't our reading.

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

Thank you.

My second question is related to the assessment in the Global Affairs Canada report that once the export permit is granted to Baykar, they take the Wescam product and attach it to a drone, whereupon it becomes a new good and is therefore not subject to the diversion rules. Is that your assessment, or is that a way of getting around the obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty?

[Kelsey Gallagher]

The way it works with diversion is that on the export permit, a consignee is listed alongside an end-user. These can sometimes be the same entity, for instance, the Turkish military or the Turkish air force. In the case of the permits you're referring to, the consignee was Baykar and the end-user was Turkey or some stripe of the Turkish security forces. In those instances, because the Wescam sensors, as per the final report's reading, were incorporated into a drone and therefore changed the nature of the weapon system, the end-use stopped with Baykar at that point. However, there were other permits in which the consignee and the end-user were the same entity, which was the Turkish security force, whether that be the police, the army, the navy, the air force or that sort of thing.