Nine months after the U.S. State Department began probing how Canadian parts ended up in a Chinese attack helicopter, American officials were frustrated with Canada’s lack of co-operation in the investigation, a leaked cable shows.
That frustration extended beyond the perceived lack of help from Canadian security agencies, to a perception that Canada was ineffective in stopping weapons from being exported into the wrong hands.
At a meeting with the RCMP, CSIS and the Canada Border Services Agency, Frank Ruggiero, a senior State Department security strategist, stressed the need for Canada to do more to help with cracking down on weapons exporters, according to a cable posted on the website WikiLeaks.
“The (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers argued that until the price to be paid for export control violations is the same in Canada as it is in the U.S. – prison – adversaries will persist in abusing Canada as a venue from which they can illegally procure and export U.S. defence technologies,” said the cable, signed by former U.S. ambassador David Wilkins. Read more here.
