According to a leaked memo prepared by the Canadian Defence Department, Canada is upset about DDTC’s rules regarding transfer of technical data to Canadian dual nationals. This threatens a planned purchase by the Canadian government of U.S. helicopters, airplanes and other military equipment destined for Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

Under the Canadian exemption in the ITAR (22 C.F.R. § 126.5), technical data required to maintain U.S. defense articles may be transferred to “Canadian-registered” individuals. Canadian-registered is defined to include Canadian dual nationals except for dual nationals where the second country is one of the embargoed countries listed in § 126.1 — e.g. Cuba, Iran, China, etc. The Canadian Defence Department claims that “to undertake discriminatory employment practices based on nationality is contrary to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” As a result, Canadian firms cannot provide maintenance on U.S. exported products and, in response, Canada is threatening to purchase military equipment from non-U.S. sources.

Greg Suchan, Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at State, is negotiating this matter with the Canadians, but he doesn’t appear to be particularly swayed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Suchan, the senior State Department official leading the current negotiations, said he hoped a solution could be found but stressed his government controls access to its military technology because ”we have a feeling in our gut” about the link between nationality and possible threats.

”I understand there is concern here in Canada about the treatment of nationality,” Suchan told a symposium on Canada-U.S. military co-operation. ”If somebody is a citizen of a country that is very, very problematic for export-control purposes, we need to take that into account.”

Canada is hoping to persuade Suchan otherwise by proposing to establish a special security clearance procedure for affected dual nationals. My guess is that the State Department will be sceptical of any procedure that gives clearance to Canadians with dual citizenship given the dim view that the State Department gives to providing security clearances to U.S. citizens with dual nationality.

In an effort to deal with its ever increasing backlog of license applications and agreements, DDTC announced on Friday that it was locking up all its licensing officers in their offices and throwing away the keys until the backlog was cleared. Well, not exactly.

Instead, DDTC said that the Response Team would handle all incoming calls. They also made clear that licensing officers won’t be picking up their phones anymore:

We ask that you refrain from contacting licensing officers directly, as voice mail messages will simply direct you to the Response Team.

While efforts to rein in the out-of-control and growing backlog problem are commendable, the prospect of being remitted to the euphemistically monikered “Response Team” is not exactly inviting. I suppose that “Response Team” isn’t completely inaccurate in the sense that “Responses” are provided; the problem is that these “Responses” are often wrong. I’m sure we all have anecdotes of erroneous information coming from the Response Team, but my current favorite involves a member of the team telling an overseas agent that he didn’t have to register as a broker because he was not a consignee of the goods involved!

Perhaps the ultimate goal here is that by denying access to the licensing teams, more license applications will be deficient from the outset and can simply be returned without further action by the staff.