Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Cesar. Thank you for having us today. Members of the committee, in recent years Canada has exported large volumes of Canadian-made L3Harris Wescam surveillance and target acquisition sensors to Turkey for use by the Turkish military. These sensors are primarily atta

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, that is our understanding. We can judge that by looking at the annual report on military exports tabled annually on May 31. The majority of exports to Turkey are under ECL group 2 category 2-15, which relates to optics, imagery and that sort of thing.

Foreign Affairs committee  They were widely reported to be. At least the drones they were used on were, because the majority of the reporting was on the drone, the Bayraktar TB2. The TB2s provided by Turkey to Azerbaijan were widely reported to be a game-changer. They have allowed Azeri forces to strike fa

Foreign Affairs committee  Just to add to that, I would agree. This is a case-by-case basis, but it is exported as a weapon and it certainly is a weapon. Once again, just to touch on a point I made earlier, this technology is critical for the recipient to be able to launch modern air strikes. Without the

Foreign Affairs committee  That's correct.

Foreign Affairs committee  Diversion isn't necessarily super uncommon, and it has negative impacts. The proliferation of weapons obviously has negative impacts and is a fuel for conflict. However, other countries, allies of Canada, have gone above and beyond to try to stem the threat of diversion. We've se

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Cesar. Thank you for having us today. Canada's recent cancellation of export permits for Wescam surveillance and targeting sensors to Turkey is a very positive move, consistent with domestic and international obligations, and it sets a concrete precedent applicable

Foreign Affairs committee  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 l

Foreign Affairs committee  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

Foreign Affairs committee  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 the

Foreign Affairs committee  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

Foreign Affairs committee  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. So

Foreign Affairs committee  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.

Foreign Affairs committee  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

Foreign Affairs committee  My colleagues are welcome to jump in here. An end-user certificate is implied to be the assurance. At the that there is perceived to be some risk, that could be mitigated by further assurances, verbal or written, whereby you go to the end-user—the consignee—and say that you want