Foreign Affairs committee  I think the answer is, yes, that they should know the buyer as best they can. They should also ensure they are truthful in all of their applications to Global Affairs and are fully complying with the“aftercare” specifications, if I can call them that.

Foreign Affairs committee  In terms of the metrics, I know that in the previous panel there had been a discussion around the rejections. Where our head is at is a bit more on the processing times and the service standards, because even if you're late but still with a favourable decision, you still run into

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, I would say it's qualified support for there being an external review of the system as a whole, but, again, the big qualification is that we'd want to see the terms of reference, the composition and the specific mandate of it. We're not in the market for a photo op or talki

Foreign Affairs committee  I think to the point about transparency that you've heard from other witnesses, I can't give you a perfect answer as to what's going on, because we don't actually know what's going on. We can speculate that additional criteria have been applied through the ATT and that innate cau

Foreign Affairs committee  I think the observations you listed are the right ones. It is a competitive landscape. Yes, there will be companies that offer unique products and services, but there will always be a degree of substitutability for a large number of things. At the end of the day, if the buyer can

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have to hand the rankings of how we stack up. I would just say anecdotally that when our members are talking to us, we certainly hear vis-à-vis the United States that our system is less timely with the turnarounds, and that's the market that our companies would tend to be

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. Companies should be transparent and accurate to the fullest extent in their applications and engagements with government regulators across the board.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are two suggestions that I would have. One is, informally, we would encourage departmental officials to be able to engage with companies. There can be sufficient caveats in place that no one is going to be bound by anything said in one phone call. I think things could be co

Foreign Affairs committee  There are a lot of details that would have to be worked out. Essentially, if a triage system were introduced, it would focus on companies that are reapplying for an existing permit, where there are no changes in context around that application. Hopefully, that would have an expe

Foreign Affairs committee  That would be the main criterion. There might be others once we get into it. We do want to be reasonable about this. If there is a change in context, we would say that it would probably not fit that triage circumstance. We want to be fair and recognize that there are a number o

Foreign Affairs committee  Companies will have a diligence process, yes, of some kind. This is where, again, providing more specific criteria would help companies with that due diligence process. For example, when we talk about the substantial risk of gender-based violence, what is the government looking f

Foreign Affairs committee  I would encourage people, as a general matter, to never put their heads in the sand on these issues. What that looks like in specific circumstances, I think, will vary. As for what went on in Turkey, I've not made a comment on L3Harris Wescam's approach there.

Foreign Affairs committee  Given that the export permit is the last stage in the process, typically that means the company would already have a contract in place with its buyer. The contract, as contracts will, specifies a deadline and a time for when the goods and services will be delivered. Simply put, i

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm not sitting in the minister's office, so I can't claim to speak for them. The sense we have, as outside observers, is that what happened with Saudi Arabia several years ago was one factor, in terms of increasing an added element of caution into the system, and caution means

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have particular regional breakdowns. The numbers you heard from the previous panel are aligned with what we have internally, with about a little over 60,000 people who are in the defence and security industry, and with over half of this being exported. In some ways, it'