Senators are urging the Trudeau government to vastly improve Canada’s means of monitoring whether Canadian-made military goods are being employed to abuse human rights after they’re exported to foreign countries.
The standing Senate committee on human rights‘ recently released report, Promoting Human Rights: Canada’s Approach to its Export Sector, follows an investigation by the department of Global Affairs into the deployment of Canadian-made combat vehicles against minority Shia residents in eastern Saudi Arabia last year.
The recent probe concluded investigators could find “no verified credible information” that Canadian-made Terradyne vehicles had been used to oppress residents of Awamiyah, a minority Shia Muslim area in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia. This, despite video clips and photos that surfaced of Saudi forces using Canadian equipment in July, 2017, in this eastern Saudi Arabian enclave with a history of clashing with authorities.
The Senate report said Ottawa needs to do a better job of vetting how Canadian weapons and military equipment are used by foreign customers.
“The committee believes that Canada’s policy of promoting respect for internationally recognized human rights does not end once an export permit has been issued; it continues even when the exported goods and technologies have left the country,” the Senate report said.
Saudi Arabia, for instance, has an abysmal human-rights record but remains Canada’s largest buyer of military goods after the United States. This is because of a $15-billion multiyear agreement to provide the Saudis with weaponized armoured vehicles, which are made in London, Ont. The deal was struck by the Harper government and later approved by the Trudeau government.
The Senate committee is calling on Ottawa to give human-rights advocates, academics and stakeholders a role in gathering information on human-rights violations, or prospective violations committed by buyers of Canadian weapons.
The committee also calls on the government to construct a better way to “monitor the end-use and end users of military and strategic goods” outside Canada. “This monitoring should focus on identifying potential serious violations of internationally-recognized human rights ... and serious violations of international humanitarian law.” The Government of Canada, it said, should play a role in this monitoring.
The report also demonstrated the challenges Ottawa-based government bureaucrats faced trying to gather information about incidents 10,300 kilometres away.
One of the central pieces of evidence was a video showing a Canadian-made Terradyne Gurkha firing during the conflict.
Investigators said they drew little from the video because it gave them no “insight as to the context or nature of the activity,” including whether the Saudis were attacking or defending.
Instead, they relied on what the Saudis and allies told them, including an unnamed military source who assured investigators the kingdom’s use of force was “proportionate, necessary and timely.”
The Senate committee heard from trade experts who advised them that the law could be changed to require Ottawa to gather information about respect for human rights and international humanitarian law in a particular country before export permits are issued to allow military goods to be shipped to that destination. The committee also praised the idea of attaching a condition to arms export permits that stipulated subsequent permits could be refused if the end-use of the weapons violated human rights.
When she released the Saudi probe’s findings in February, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the Trudeau government would toughen up Canada’s arms export regime. A Liberal bill currently in the Senate would enshrine in law a “substantial risk” clause that the government said would apply more rigorous scrutiny to future arms exports.
This new measure would require the department of Global Affairs to ensure – before approving export permits for controlled goods such as military equipment – that there was no substantial risk such equipment could be used to commit human-rights violations. The effect of the change would be that Canada’s foreign affairs minister would be legally required to refuse an export permit application if a substantial risk were proved.
Steven Chase