Placing Our Morals Where Our Trade Is (If its not Gender-Based Violence, it's A-OK)

"No update with respect to the progress of the review [of the $15-billion contract to sell light-armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia] has been offered, bringing the sincerity of the effort into question."
"Canadians are entitled to know the outcome of the government review, and a clear answer with respect to your government's position on the export of LAVs from Canada to Saudi Arabia."
Letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

A Canadian LAV (light armoured vehicle) arrives to escort a convoy at a forward operating base near Panjwaii, Afghanistan at sunrise in this Nov. 26, 2006 file photo. (Bill Graveland / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

"As we have said before, we are reviewing export permits to Saudi Arabia and no final decision has been made. While this review is ongoing, no new permits have been issued [for arms sales to the Saudis]."
"Bill C-47 [new legislation] creates a new legal requirement that the Canadian government must deny export permits if there is a substantial risk that the export would result in a serious violation of human rights, including serious acts of gender-based violence."
Adam Austen, spokesman, Global Affairs

"We think that that's something that Canadians would want to know about [obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty]."
"They would want to know and understand that, OK, Canada has a relationship with Saudi Arabia where we're exporting these vehicles -- but would be very concerned about the notion of Canadian-made weapons being used in a conflict [as in Yemen] where we know these types of crimes have been taking place."
Justin Mohammed, human rights law and policy campaigner, Amnesty International Canada

Canadian Forces LAV 25 Coyote and LAV III Vehicles seen at Patrol Base Marianne in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Canadian Forces Combat Camera

When Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs last year posted a Twitter comment on the arrest of human rights activist Raif Badawi's sister along with several other Saudi women activists, urging that they be released, that tweet unleashed a storm of consequences the like of which had Canada's head spinning. From Saudi Arabia divesting itself of all investments in Canada, recalling all its medical students attending Canadian universities and practising for their medical licenses in Canadian hospitals, to stopping trade with Canada, as a sign of its imperial displeasure.

For a country's foreign minister to register her disapproval of another nation's internal policies while enjoying trade and exchange relations with that nation was highly unusual; usually such contacts take place through diplomatic means, kept out of the public eye. This was a signal indiscretion whose consequences should have been foreseen, but like the arrest of Huawei's chief financial officer on a warrant for extradition to the United States, hadn't been, resulting in the kind of punishment that Bejing exerts in a demonstration of power, effectively kidnapping two Canadians as 'spies'.

Canada and its serial governments have been gripped with the need to diversify trade options. Its long-time reliance on its powerful southern neighbour for trade opportunities always came with a good dose of insecurity, none more so than at the present time with an irascible, impulsive president in the White House whose sense of fair play in trade is heavily weighted in sole favour of American profitability, a non-negotiable priority with the current U.S. government.

Which made Canada vulnerable to doing business with any country that is wealthy enough to hint at promoting the Canadian agenda for seeking other avenues of enriching Canada's outreach to other trading partners in view of the growing unreliability of U.S. fair play and interest in neighbourly trade. The reality is that Canada can sign trade agreements with any single or group of nations globally and the United States will always represent Canada's largest trading partner, regardless; proximity augurs that outcome.

But the  Canadian Export Development Corporation also helps Canadian industry to develop markets abroad, and the sales of military equipment and weapons and vehicles is extremely remunerative. In essence, Canada will, like most weapons-producing countries, sell to almost any other country eager to part with its treasury dollars to acquire updated technologically advanced weapons. In this instance, armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. Armoured vehicles, furthermore, that have also been weaponized.

Saudi Arabia's activities in the past few years, as a Sunni majority nation with clout in the Middle East as its powerhouse and steward of the two holiest sites in Islam, and its power-competitive relationship with aggressively Shiite-majority Iran attempting to co-opt regional influence from the Saudis has resulted in both countries backing opposite sectarian forces in conflict in Yemen, the region's most impoverished state. The Saudi-led military coalition has been bombing civilian targets in Yemen in its attempts to rout the Shia Houthis aligned with Iran which ousted a Sunni leadership.

Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, Getty Images

That, and the gruesomely amateurish murder of an irksome Saudi journalist with links to the Muslim Brotherhood who had been hugely critical of the Saudi Crown Prince, publishing embarrassing pieces of revelatory issues, turned world opinion in disgust against the crude crime. Condemnation from Western sources came fast and furious. And Canada was faced with the awkward situation of honouring a contract valued at $15-billion to provide light-armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. Vehicles which Prime Minister Trudeau initially shrugged off, as merely 'trucks', military trucks.

Under pressure from human rights groups to tear up the contract with the Saudis and pay the hefty penalty, the Canadian government suspended new export permits to the kingdom, sanctioned 17 Saudi nationals in the wake of the Khashoggi murder, and undertook a review of arms sales to the country, Data indicate nonetheless, that Canada sold $1.2 billion worth of military vehicles in the first six months of 2019 to the Saudis, providing a fleet of 127 vehicles last year alone.

Mr. Trudeau loves reminding his critics that it was under the previous government that the contract had been arranged. But it was also Mr. Trudeau who chose to sign off on that same contract and proceed with it.
From 2016 to 2018, Canada shipped 217 armoured combat vehicles – almost all of them light-armoured vehicles, to Saudi Arabia.