OTTAWA: The federal government has found no “conclusive” evidence Canadian-made armoured vehicles were used to commit human-rights violations in Saudi Arabia’s restive Eastern Province last summer, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told a parliamentary committee Thursday. That was the result of a “full and thorough” investigation by Global Affairs officials after videos and photos surfaced last July of Saudi special police and security forces using Canadian-made armoured vehicles in a crackdown against Shia Muslim minority militants in the town of Awamiyah. This experience did, however, cause her to pause and led her to re-examine Canada’s export permit system, Freeland said. Canada is not alone in the world in taking stock of how we allow and monitor the export of arms, and of the considerations that go into those decisions,” Freeland said. “I have spoken with my counterparts in Germany, Sweden and The Netherlands, for example, whose countries have all recently in one way or another questioned how arms are exported.”
To toughen Canada’s arms exports laws, Freeland said the Liberals plan to introduce a new clause in Bill C-47, a proposed legislation which would amend the Export and Import Permits Act to allow Canada to accede to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
