Madam Speaker, today marks the International Day of Peace. Canada often holds itself out as a peacemaker. However, if we truly want peace, we need to stop the proliferation of arms, particularly in areas troubled by unrest, in war-torn countries where human rights mean nothing.
However, Canada's recent track record in this respect is rather troubling. Many Canadians would be troubled to learn that in the last 10 years Canadian arms exports have nearly doubled. Moreover, Canada is the second most important arms exporter in the Middle East after the United States. Therefore, we are certainly heavily involved there.
Yes, Canada is now the second-biggest exporter of arms to the Middle East, after the United States. No one would certainly describe the Middle East as a calm, stable region.
Our arms used to be exported mainly to NATO countries. Now they often go to countries whose human rights records are questionable, to say the least. Saudi Arabia is the second-biggest buyer of Canadian arms and the second-biggest export destination for our weapons.
I am always troubled to see this kind of behaviour from a government that calls itself feminist, and I am not alone. Canadians do not support this.
The government has said that it has good measures in place to control its arms exports, and that it already has strong regulations. However, again, if we look at Saudi Arabia, the regulations state that we should not export arms to a country if there is reasonable doubt and risk that these arms will be used to commit human rights abuses. Although there is ample evidence for that being currently the case, the government is blind to it. Certainly, there is an investigation, but the Saudis have admitted that they want to repress people. The government is not only blind but seemingly deaf, on top of blind.
In August we learned that Canada watered down its own criteria for arms exports to countries with bad human rights records, and the government did this after pledging that Canada would accede to the Arms Trade Treaty, and after saying at that time that it would respect both the spirit and the letter of the treaty. Typically, the Liberals say that but do quite the opposite by watering down our criteria.
The best way to illustrate what I am talking about is to look at the number of export permit applications. Canada is exporting more and more to countries that do not respect human rights. How many of these export permit applications is Canada rejecting?
L'Actualité investigated and found that, of the 7,310 export permit applications submitted, only 10 were rejected. Ten. That says it all.
Most of our exports go to Saudi Arabia, which has been mentioned, China, Algeria, and other countries. That is why the government's decision to finally sign the Arms Trade Treaty gave people so much hope. This is something people have been calling for for years. We know that the Conservatives, for reasons that make no sense to most observers, steadfastly refused to sign the treaty. The NDP felt certain that the government would finally do something and that Canada would join the Arms Trade Treaty. Unfortunately, in typical Liberal fashion, the government has introduced a bill to implement the treaty. I know a lot of people were very anxious to see this bill.
This is another example of a typical Liberal bill. In other words, it is all talk and no action, nothing but a hollow shell.
First, the bill does not address at all the issue of our exports to the U.S., which is half of our exports. Therefore, all of these exports will continue to fall outside the scope of this law and outside the scope of the treaty. This in itself, to start with, is a breach of articles 1, 2, and 5 of the Arms Trade Treaty, so one of the first things we are doing is breaching three of the key articles of the treaty. It does matter beyond breaching the articles of the treaty. First, there is the matter of transparency. When we get the annual reports on arms exports—and I hope we will get them sooner and that they will be clearer, more transparent, and understandable—half of our exports remain unreported. Is that transparent? I am listening to my colleagues here, and they do not think it is.
Also, when we talk about meeting the letter and spirit of the ATT, it means that arms or armament parts can be exported from Canada to the U.S. and then exported elsewhere. President Obama put a ban on exporting arms from the U.S. to Nigeria because of human rights concerns. President Trump made a deal—the art of the deal—with Nigerian authorities and lifted this ban, and now the U.S. is exporting planes and armaments to Nigeria made of components coming from which country, do members think? They come from Canada. It would be important to cover our exports to Canada.
The government will probably say that it is too difficult to do, because half of our exports go to the United States, and yet other countries manage to do it, including Australia and even Great Britain, one of our NATO partners. They have systems in place to track exports to the U.S.
We cannot say that we will respect the spirit and the letter of the treaty, and then violate specific articles or disregard the spirit and the letter of the treaty because it is too difficult. It has to be one or the other. Canada either complies with the treaty or it does not. Obviously, the government has no intention of complying with it.
Another huge problem is that the bill does not say anything about the assessment criteria that will be used for exports. That is rather strange, for this kind of bill.
That is a huge problem.
One expert asked me, after looking at the bill, where the meat is. The meat will be in regulations. The concrete criteria to oversee arms exports will be put in those regulations, regulations that do not have to be debated in the House, that will not be discussed among representatives of Canadians across the country, regulations that can be changed at any time by the current government or any subsequent government. This is very weak.
This is just smoke and mirrors.
On top of all that, there is another problem. In the briefing documents we received from Global Affairs Canada, it says that the regulations will set out the criteria the minister will take into account before issuing export permits.
We already have criteria in place that the minister must take into account when evaluating export permits and as a result we are selling arms to Saudi Arabia. The Arms Trade Treaty makes no mention of the criteria that must be taken into account. It talks about obligations and specific and serious restrictions. It provides a clear limit. Such and such is prohibited, the other is allowed. However, in the departmental information it says “must take into account”.
Obviously, this will be clarified in the regulations, the very regulations that no one in the House can debate. What is more, those regulations will be drafted behind closed doors.
There is another problem. Actually, there are quite a few, so I have to choose which ones to mention. According to the information in the briefing note provided by Global Affairs Canada, the Department of National Defence will have its own system for implementing the legislation or the treaty. I do not get it. The left hand will do one thing and the right hand will do another.
How does that work?
Is there a chance that this creates some sort of loophole?
How will this work?
As far as I can tell, there is no plan here.
What the government is basically telling Canadians and the world is to just trust them. However, in matters of disarmament, I am sorry to say that I do not think the Liberal government can be trusted.
The NDP have tried to enhance transparency and oversight. We tried to create a committee that would, on an ongoing basis, study this issue of arms exports. This is something that Canadians care about. What did the Liberals say? It is no surprise that they said no.
When we asked the government to show the same kind of courage Canada has shown with regard to land mines and participate in the efforts of over 120 countries in the UN to work on nuclear disarmament, it said that maybe it would not work and that it was too difficult, as if it could not walk and chew gum at the same time.
Let us come back to Saudi Arabia. We are selling arms to a country that abuses human rights, despite our feminist foreign policy. The minister first told us that we could not do anything because it was a done deal. I happen to disagree with this, because a minister can suspend an export permit. We then learned that he signed the export permits after he and the Prime Minister had told us that it was a done deal. As I said, Canada should only export arms to a country if there is no reasonable risk that these arms will be used against civilians or to commit war crimes.
The Liberal government is not even respecting that. How can we trust the regulations it will put in someday once the bill passes, or how it is going to respect those regulations?
Again, with respect to Saudi Arabia, when I asked the government yesterday about the arms deal with Saudi Arabia, I was basically told that the government had asked the Saudis to respect human rights. While I am very pleased that the government did that, I am somewhat skeptical about the efficiency of the manoeuvre.
Nonetheless, we are going to support this bill because we have been asking for a bill on this issue for such a long time. We really want to see Canada truly accede to and abide by the Arms Trade Treaty.
I hope that the government will show good faith and agree to make amendments in committee. That is why we are going to vote in favour of this bill. However, this so-called implementation bill must be improved because right now it is not very effective. Canada and the entire world expect nothing less.
I said at the beginning of my speech that today is International Peace Day. We know that the illicit and irresponsible transfer of conventional weapons is a major cause of suffering in the world because it leads to all kinds of violence.
We want to put an end to that through the Arms Trade Treaty. We want to put and end to situations where companies based in Canada or third countries can sell weapons to South Sudan. We want to put an end to situations where Canada officially laments the tragedy in Yemen, which is currently experiencing a major humanitarian crisis, but continues to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, which leads the very coalition alleged to be committing war crimes in that country.
We need to clean up our arms export system, and unfortunately, this bill does not do that.