For more than half a century, Canadian arms manufacturers have been selling weapons to foreign states. Much of this economic activity is the direct result of government assistance. From brokering contracts to staffing international arms fairs, the Canadian government goes to bat for Canadian weapons manufacturers.
The government of Canada publishes federal arms export data in its annual Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada. The report for 2020 reveals that Canadian military exports were at historically high levels, and that some of the customers were among the world’s worst abusers of human rights. While the 2020 edition includes minor improvements in transparency, significant information is still missing or obscured.
Just before Canada halted certain weapons exports to Turkey in April 2021, the FAAE committee released nearly 1,000 pages of government documents on Canada’s arms deals with Turkey. Although heavily redacted, the documents provide an unmatched look into the Canadian arms trade, including previously confidential memoranda to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, hundreds of pages of internal correspondence by Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and never-before-seen Canadian export permits for weapon systems.
The Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), an independently operated Crown corporation, arranges contracts between Canadian manufacturers and foreign governments. Between 60 and 70 per cent of these contracts involve military goods, making the CCC Canada’s largest arms broker.
In the run-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Joe Biden pledged to end arms sales to countries fueling the war in Yemen—specifically, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. …
On October 24, Radio Canada International reported that Canadian-based Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) had suspended the export of aircraft engines to “countries with unclear usage.” This action followed reports that these engines were being used in Turkish-built Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that Turkey had sent to support Azeri forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Ploughshares Communications Officer Tasneem Jamal spoke with Kelsey Gallagher about the genesis of Killer Optics, the impact of its publication, and the role of open-source data in tracking arms transfers.
The most recently released federal records indicates that Canada transferred over $2-billion CAD in military exports to customers around the world in 2018. Left unpublished are the vast military exports …
Unfortunately, war zones are not immune to COVID-19. But conflict—particularly the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA)—does make an effective response to the virus almost impossible. UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted the relationship between COVID-19 and conflict in his March appeal for a global ceasefire.
In the fight against COVID-19, many manufacturers, in Canada and abroad, have already retooled or changed product lines to supply life-saving items such as personal protective equipment (PPE), hand sanitizer, …
