There was some chatter in the defence industry about how John Baird’s office inadvertently released the news that General Dynamics Land Systems Canada out of London had received a contract from Colombia for light armored vehicles. All this came before GD Land Systems Canada could put out its own news release.It all started with a Jan. 2 Canadian Press article that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird had recommended an order amending the Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL), paving the way for Canada – according to the news agency – to export “assault-style” weapons to Colombia.
Baird’s office weighed in Jan. 7 with letters to the editor to each of the newspapers who published the report.
The Canadian Press report, wrote Joseph Lavoie of the “Office of Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird” was inaccurate.
“Your readers deserve much better: the truth,” he wrote.
And what was the truth?
The change wasn’t related to assault rifles being sold to Colombia. It was so Canadian light armored vehicles could be sold to the Colombians, Lavoie wrote.
A collective groan could be heard across Canada’s defence industry. I had a couple of phone calls from industry representatives aghast that Baird’s office had sent out the letter. Others found it highly amusing.
As one defence contractor explained – “It’s like announcing to a bunch of journalists – hey, forget about assault rifles going to a military with a terrible human rights record. We’d like to draw your attention to the fact that we’re going to supply them with LAVs instead.”
(Editor’s note – it would probably be too difficult to hide this news even if anyone would wanted to - On Dec. 29, 2012 the Army Recognition website published the news out of Colombia that the country’s army had selected the LAV-3 for its mechanized infantry units but at that point it speculated on unconfirmed reports that the sale was for 40 vehicles.)
Lavoie’s confirmation of the LAV deal, however, mobilized disarmament advocates in Canada who, in turn, started raising alarm bells about the purchase.
Bill Robinson at Ceasefire.ca picked up on Lavoie’s letter. He wrote on Jan. 10:
“An internal armed conflict has been underway in Colombia since the 1940s, and paramilitary death squads with ties to the Colombian government, and the government itself, have consistently been linked to extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations, as noted in reporting by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even the U.S. State Department.
The Canadian government has long claimed that Canada’s arms export regulations “closely control” the export of military equipment to human rights violators and countries in or facing imminent armed conflict. But those rules often seem to lose their force when sizable contracts are at stake–as they did in 2011 when the Harper government’s “principled” foreign policy managed to accommodate billions of dollars of LAV sales to Saudi Arabia even as LAVs the Saudis had bought from Canada earlier were helping to crush pro-democracy demonstrators in neighbouring Bahrain.”
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: David Pugliese
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