Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here and contributing to our work by clarifying various matters for us on how to proceed.
I particularly want to thank Mr. Maire for being here so late in the day and would ask him to thank his wife on our behalf for her understanding, cooperation and concern.
We have to make all sorts of attempts at squaring the circle insofar as we need to reconcile interests and goals that may appear divergent. On the one hand, we need to support a viable and substantial weapons industry that creates jobs and innovation. We therefore need to export weapons. On the other hand, we need to make sure that everything is consistent with our values.
And when we act on our values, we also need to realize that if we don't sell weapons to certain countries, other less scrupulous companies will fill the gap left by Canadian companies.
Not only that, but frequently, as time goes by, we come to the realization that today's friends can become tomorrow's enemies. I'm mentioning this in connection with the geopolitical issue that Ms. Fry mentioned a few moments ago.
We mustn't forget that the Americans armed the Mujahedin only to realize that they had armed the Taliban and al Qaeda against western countries. It's easy to end up in situations where, because of the involvement of other countries, we end up causing significant damage to allies. I'm thinking for example of France, which for many years sold Mirages and Exocet missiles to Argentina. The British Navy paid the price for that during the Falkland Islands war.
We find ourselves with an ally that can be, to say the least, unruly. Turkey is in fact becoming increasingly unstable and less and less reliable. Canada, among others, had been assured that the equipment would never end up anywhere than Syria. I'd like to add a footnote to what Ms. Fry said, when she pointed out that we were very happy to be able to rely on Turkey to fight the Daesh, but we weren't quite so happy when Turkey attacked our Kurdish allies, who are also fighting against the Daesh. Turkey is therefore becoming a progressively less reliable ally.
How then are we supposed to behave in what is, to say the least, a singular environment in which, as I was saying, we are trying in various ways to square the circle.