I have two comments, Mr. Chair.
I want to start by thanking the witnesses for their extremely helpful and meaningful participation in the work of this committee.
I wanted to put my questions to my former colleague, Daniel Turp, who says that Canada has a double standard when it comes to arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Mr. Morantz brought up the fact that we asked Mr. Leuprecht a number of questions. I even asked him about this double standard. I was very surprised that he didn't seem to think that Canada had this type of policy. I would have liked Mr. Turp to elaborate on this issue.
I also want to follow up on Mr. Oliphant's question about Project Ploughshares' procedures. Committee witnesses have often said that Global Affairs Canada lacks sufficient resources to carry out the verifications properly. We found that few verifications are conducted, either before or after the fact. In contrast, Project Ploughshares, which has far fewer resources, can uncover extremely relevant information, such as the use of drones with Canadian remote sensing equipment in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
We should have been alerted to this situation. In December 2019, the United Nations panel of experts on Libya presented a report to the Security Council, which stated that Turkey had regularly supplied arms to parties involved in the conflict, including Canadian arms. This shows that Turkey has taken advantage of loopholes in the Canadian arms export system.
In light of this fairly harsh United Nations ruling, how can Global Affairs Canada continue to claim that Canada has one of the most stringent arms export control regimes in the world?