Is EDC complicit in support of foreseeable human rights violations?

(Globe and Mail, Toronto, 21 September 2016) In 2015 Netsweeper Inc. of Waterloo Ontario, with support from Export Development Canada, sold Internet filtering technology to the government of Bahrain — a country criticized internationally for widespread suppression of human rights defenders through censorship, surveillance, arbitrary detention and torture. In 2016 Bahrain started using Netsweeper's Web-filtering software to keep a lid on dissent, a University of Toronto report said. It added that the Sunni-dominated monarchy is going so far as to use the software to deny Bahrain’s majority Shia citizens access to basic information about their religion and religious leaders. In 2015, the Netsweeper's software was also reported as being used to cut Yemen’s citizens off from learning about the civil war surrounding them. Following a February 2017 submission from ECA Watch member Above Ground which called for the adoption of regulatory and policy measures to ensure Canada is not complicit in foreseeable human rights violations associated with the use of digital censorship and surveillance technologies supplied by Canadian companies, EDC was called to to testify before Canada's Senate human rights committee. In their testemony, EDC stated that, at this point, the guarantee that is the subject of the complaint is no longer in place, nor is the company a customer of EDC.

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