That's a difficult question to answer in the absence of getting access to the primary documents or talking to the people who were directly involved in this.
Let's remember that if we look at the specific technology that the Canadian companies.... It's very important to recognize that this is not an issue of Canadian companies violating export permits or doing anything illegal. This is the end-user side of the problem. Technology in the world diffuses regardless of export controls. The surveillance and targeting technology—which is the key issue here—and the process by which it's diffused, of course it can can be diffused by simply taking a Canadian product, in this case, and putting it in a Turkish drone and selling it to Azerbaijan. It can also be re-engineered very easily.
In my view, in terms of your point about Azerbaijan and the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, there are two things to be considered here. One is that Azerbaijan has oil and thus it had more wealth to be able to deal with expanding its military capabilities. Armenia seized Nagorno-Karabakh back in 1991-92 and I don't recall the Government of Canada ever saying anything about it. The Azerbaijan Republic, which was part of its territory as successor to the Soviet Union, was simply prone and could do nothing about it. The negotiations failed. It was obvious that, down the road, this was going to occur.
I don't think the Canadian government—Global Affairs, National Defence or ISED—or any other Canadian institutions involved in this could see through a crystal ball that this was going to happen. That's the issue here. We can't predict this.