Liberals introduced the bill in April after promising during the 2015 election campaign to join about 130 other UN signatories. To-the-letter adherence would make it difficult, for example, for Canada to approve the sale of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. The two biggest, in their view: the bill doesn’t put any hard legal limits on the discretionary power of the foreign minister to approve arms exports; and it doesn’t cover any of Canada’s arms exports to the United States. “Bill C-47 will not curb or even constrain arms exports like those to Saudi Arabia authorized by then Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion in 2016,” they write. In theory, this would let a future foreign minister cancel the current Saudi deal.

Source: National Post November 08, 2017 19:07 UTC