Absolutely. Thank you again for that relevant question.
The first thing to say is that is not just the Arms Trade Treaty. You're absolutely right that Canada is a party to the international Arms Trade Treaty, and that comes with legal obligations. However, there are also domestic export controls that Canada needs to abide by when it makes its export decisions.
The demonstrable reality right now is that the majority of Canadian arms exports are going to authoritarian regimes and questionable recipients. That is true today, that was true last year, and that was true the year before, the year before and the year before that. More than half of Canadian arms exports are going to questionable recipients and have been misused. They go to questionable recipients such as Saudi Arabia and have been misused, such as in the case of Turkey, where Canada has authorized the export of drone-mounted targeting technology produced by L3Harris WESCAM, despite the fact that Turkey has misused it in Iraq and in Syria and has shipped it to Libya and, despite a UN arms embargo, has diverted it to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and to its ally Azerbaijan, which has been accused of committing abuses during the course of that conflict.
Once again, it is nuance. There is every need to maintain a healthy and reliable industrial base here in Canada, but the fact that the authorization of arms exports to questionable recipients is required to maintain it should really be a cause for concern and for pause.