In the past decade, purchases of military products have increased dramatically in Latin America, and Canada, a relative latecomer to the trade, is starting to take a bigger piece of the action.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the past five years Canadian military exports to Latin American countries have averaged $137-million a year.
The success of 150 Canadian companies operating in the Latin American arms market is widely attributed to the ways in which the federal Government assists the defence industry.
Ottawa channels its aid to the industry through the International Defence Programs Branch, an agency of the Department of External Affairs whose function is to promote the sale of Canadian-made defence products abroad.
To keep track of the defence equipment and weapons needs of the Latin American armed forces, the branch has representatives stationed at strategic centres throughout the region.
The branch also assists Canadian suppliers when bidding on defence contracts and in generally coping with the administrative and diplomatic red tape that is an inevitable part of the international arms market.
The Canadian defence products offered in Latin America run from men's underwear to the CL-T4 Tutor jet armed trainer. An important sales aid is the 500-page Canadian Defence Products Catalogue, published by the Department of External Affairs and available free of charge at Canadian embassies throughout Latin America.
The catalogue includes an index of companies in the defence business, with brief descriptions of the specialties of each, with additional information such as that "combat underwear is dyed olive green to reduce camouflage problems when the items are drying in the field."
Underwear, however, is not the mainstay of Canada's defence industry exports to Latin America--aircraft are.
The most popular Canadian aircraft in Latin America is the DHC-4 Caribou. More than 90 Caribou are now flying with a dozen air force services--among them the Honduran, Peruvian and Ecuadorean air forces.
Montreal-based Canadair Lt. and Toronto-based de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd. are the most prominent companies in the field. These two companies account for almost 70 per cent of Canada's aircraft exports to Latin America.
A full range of crowd control and anti-riot equipment is also available from Canadian suppliers. Included in this is a special Canadian-made vomiting gas that paralyzes the victim for up to five minutes.
Highly sophisticated electronic and communications equipment, including gun direction computers, guided missile components and launchers, several types of detection aircraft equipment, as well as photo aerial reconnaissance systems are also sold to the Latin American armed forces.
"It helps when a product is first sold to our own armed forces," said the president of a Canadian arms exporting firm who has just completed a Latin American tour, citing the example of the Grizzly amphibious vehicle.
Manufactured by Oshawa-based General Motors of Canada Ltd., the Grizzly is advertised in the Canadian Defence Products Catalogue as "an all-around vehicle equipped with two machine-guns, an assault cannon and a mortar."
After the Canadian Forces ordered 350 Grizzlys, inquiries from Latin America began to arrive at the company's headquarters.
The president of the arms exporting company also said that sales of military products to Latin America and other Third World countries help the Canadian armed forces to acquire a sufficient quantity of sophisticated and costly military equipment.
He explained that the production in Canada of many modern weapons systems is often possible only if the production run is increased, so that each unit absorbs a smaller amount of the basic investment in tooling, labor and plant costs.
"In order to arm ourselves, we must help arm the world.
That is the reality of the Canadian defence industry," he
said.*
(text of article from September 9, 1988 Globe and
Mail)