Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development

Comité permanent des affaires étrangères et du développement international

For immediate release

Ottawa, June 21, 2021 -

Today, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development presented a report to the House of Commons entitled Assessing Risk, Preventing Diversion and Increasing Transparency: Strengthening Canada’s Arms Export Controls in a Volatile World.

The report is the result of the Committee’s study of Canada’s arms export permit system, which was undertaken in the wake of allegations that Canadian technology – specifically, sensors approved for export to Turkey and equipped on Turkish-made drones – was transferred to Azerbaijan and used in combat operations in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Using this case study, the Committee considered the ways in which Canada’s system for assessing risk in the export of military goods and technology could be strengthened, while also enhancing that system’s transparency and predictability.

As the first of its eight recommendations, the Committee believes that the “foremost consideration informing the Government of Canada’s arms export policy, including the assessment of risk, should be Canada’s domestic and international legal obligations, and that those obligations should be applied universally and consistently in all decisions about permit applications.”

The Committee is also recommending that, “in any cases where civil society and independent experts have raised credible concerns about the misuse of Canadian technology with respect to the arms export permits regime, the Government of Canada take immediate action to understand and investigate those concerns.” If an investigation revealed that “there is substantial risk that such an export permit is not compliant with domestic and international legal obligations,” the Government of Canada should – as in the case of export permits to Turkey – suspend and/or cancel the relevant permit(s).

Other recommendations call for regular and meaningful consultations with industry, civil society and independent experts, stricter controls in the end-use assurance documents that are attached to components and subsystems, and exploration of options for a post-shipment verification system.

The Committee wishes to thank all the witnesses who contributed to the Committee’s work through testimony and written briefs.

The full text of the Committee’s report is available on its website.