Should Canada arm Trump’s America?
Photo Credit: (Portland Resistance / Instagram)
Written by: Robert Prentice Clark
Recent changes in the behavior of the American government towards its citizens are prompting concerned Canadians to call on Ottawa to review exports of Canadian made weapons and police gear to the United States. The United Nations Human Rights Office has called upon US police to limit their use of force against US demonstrators. The government of Scotland has called for a halt to British arms exports to the US.
As images of American protesters being teargassed, beaten, and hauled off into unmarked vans continue to shock the world in the civil unrest which followed the police killing of George Floyd, concern is mounting that Canadian made products are being used to repress the constitutional rights of Americans, including their rights to free speech and assembly. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrines these rights as first principles for the making of all government policy and laws. But when it comes to weapons exports to the United States, the Charter does not apply.
There is ample precedent for the Canadian government to change its policy towards foreign countries when they take an authoritarian turn and abuse human rights.
The Canadian government temporarily halted new exports of arms to Saudi Arabia in the wake of public outrage at the Saudi war against Yemen, crackdowns against domestic dissidents and the 2018 murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. The Canadian government has since resumed arms exports to Saudi Arabia, which is the top destination for our armaments after the United States.
The Canadian government suspended export permits of police and military gear to Hong Kong after the Chinese government began to crack down on pro-western demonstrations in 2019.
The United States is not exempt from such scrutiny, at least in the Canadian courts.
The Canada Council for Refugees and the Canadian Council of Churches argued successfully in court that recent changes to the Trump administration’s treatment of refugees, including solitary confinement, and the degrading, prejudicial and humiliating treatment of Muslim refugees in particular, justified a review of the ‘Safe Third Country Agreement’ with the USA, by which rejected refugee claimants in Canada arriving via the USA can be returned to the USA. The court agreed, finding that deportation of refugees back to Trump’s America violated the Charter’s guarantee of “life, liberty and security of the person.” The Federal government’s response is awaited.
In light of these precedents, recent changes in the behaviour of the US government towards its own citizens may prompt a review of Canadian weapons exports to the United States. The reasoning goes like this: If the United States is no longer a safe place to send people, perhaps it is no longer an appropriate destination for the exports of the Canadian arms industry, which sold at least 13 billion dollars of product, much of it largely untraceable, to the USA since 2000. There is a legitimate concern that Canadian manufactured weapons, including armoured personnel carriers, pepper spray, riot gear, bullets, truncheons and hand guns, could be used by the US government against its own citizens engaged in constitutionally protected civil disobedience, or else in the many killings of citizens by American police which have so outraged the world.
Could the next George Floyd or Philando Castile be dispatched with a Canadian-made handgun firing a bullet made in Canada? It’s entirely possible. And there’s no way to stop it.
Richard Sanders, of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade: “Canada is America's largest supplier of military products and services. Canada does everything it can to play down, ignore or turn a blind eye to America's murderous police behaviour against completely innocent citizens who are not even demonstrating. For decades Canada required companies to acquire export permits for sales of military and police equipment to all countries other than the US. Similarly although the government did report some limited and generalized information about Canada's military/police exports, this information was not required for exports to the US.”
Some such reporting is required now however, as of September 2019. But these new requirements will not help us track the large quantity of Canadian armaments already shipped to the USA, and now in use there.
Have Canadian-made weapons systems actually been deployed against US protesters by the Trump administration? The answer is yes.
On July 26 this website reported that the Portland protests were being monitored by a US Air Force plane carrying high tech surveillance equipment typically used in war zones. The plane is powered by an aircraft engine made by Pratt & Whitney in Longueuil, Quebec. This plane is not part of any police department’s arsenal, and clearly represents the deployment by the US government of military forces, and Canadian made technology, against US citizens.
On July 21, a group called ‘Portland Resistance’ posted a photograph on Instagram, of a Canadian-made ‘Stryker’ assault vehicle on a flat-bed truck parked in Portland.
These vehicles carry armed troops into urban war zones, and we sell them to Saudi Arabia and the US military. If in fact this vehicle was deployed against US citizens exercising their constitutional rights, some ask if the Canadian government needs to explain how the export of this equipment is justifiable on human rights grounds, while the export of police gear to Hong Kong is not.
In addition to Canadian military tech being deployed by the US Federal Government against Americans, there is also the real possibility that such military equipment is being deployed by US police departments across the United States.
Since adoption by the Clinton Administration in 1997, the ‘1033 Program’ has funneled more than $7.4 billion dollars of military surplus from the US Department of Defense to police departments across America, including tanks, bayonets, grenade launchers, high tech optics and body armour that renders beat cops indistinguishable from soldiers in an occupying army.
How can we know if Canadian equipment has been transferred to the police under 1033? It is extremely difficult to track, because concerned Americans cannot even discover exactly what equipment has been transferred. The Pentagon only provides very incomplete information about such transfers, a phenomenon which is common to Canada. It’s also very convenient. If you don’t keep complete records, or if only specialists can interpret them, it becomes difficult for the public to discover what you’re up to.
Sometimes we can track our own weapons manufacturers based on their marketing efforts.
On June 17th, Sarnia based Lamperd Less Lethal tweeted its enthusiasm for the business opportunities opening up for it in the United States.
Lamperd has been licensed to import firearms, munitions and ‘implements of war’ into the United States since 2018, and is aggressively marketing its products and services via its Twitter feed and website.
Lamperd manufactures ‘crowd control spray tanks’ guns firing ‘incapacitating projectiles’, ‘flash bang grenades’ and launching systems, interlocking riot shields, pepper grenades and ‘rubber bullets’.
According to its news releases, Lamperd has multiple international orders for its products and markets itself in the United States.
Another Canadian firm, Arnprior based Pacific Safety, provides body armour to the US Department of Defense and US police departments, and has done so for years. They also manufacture their gear in Dover, Tennessee.
Midland based Raytheon / Elcan produces very popular military grade gun sights, and trains US police officers and soldiers in their use. . They have sold over 750,000 units.
General Dynamics Land Systems manufactures the now standard 9mm bullets which are increasingly the choice of police departments in the United States and around the world, although they certainly are not the only 9mm manufacturer. They also supply the US Department of Defense with bullets and assorted weapons.
PGW Defense manufactures sniper rifles used by the US military. Between 2000 and 2019 they won at least $414,000 worth of contracts from the US DOD. They’re some of the best such weapons in the world.
We only know about some of these relationships because the Canadian weapons and equipment suppliers decided to make them public information in order to promote their businesses. The vast majority of such sales however are ‘flying under the radar’ to borrow a military term. The standard tactical posture of Canadian arms makers is to stay deep in their foxholes and be very quiet. The Canadian government provides cover, via a byzantine reporting process that makes it extremely difficult to discover the most basic facts about the Canadian arms industry and its exports to the United States – who sold what, to whom and for how much.
In the Sysiphean effort to know what our own arms manufacturers are doing with the help of the governments we elect, concerned Canadians have a surprising ally – American watchdogs. Although the Canadian government does not publish a complete list of its arms export contracts, a simple search at the US website www.governmentcontractswon.com for ‘Canadian Commercial Corporation’ costing twenty US dollars divulges all 23,811 contracts since 2000, totalling some 13.2 billion dollars. These represent most, but not all Canadian weapons exports to the USA. The Excel file can be downloaded here.
Likewise, a partial list of DOD transfers of military equipment (not all of which represent weapons) under the 1033 Program can be obtained here at no cost. The country of origin of any weapons systems is not indicated.
The Canadian government has established a review process to screen weapons exports to foreign governments based on various criteria, including human rights, and more recently the rights of women and girls. These form part of Canada’s commitments under the ‘Arms Trade Treaty’ which came into force on September 1st, 2019. The Trudeau government has trumpeted its ‘feminist foreign policy.’
Under these new regulations, weapons exports from Canada which are found to contribute to any of the following abuses are supposed to be screened based on whether or not they:
“contribute to or undermine peace and security;
commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian or human rights law;
commit or facilitate terrorism or transnational organized crime; or
commit or facilitate serious acts of either gender-based violence or violence against women and children.”
Fewer than 1 per cent of weapons export applications were denied before the Treaty came into force. Under the new review process, Saudi Arabia remains Canada’s top non-US destination for arms exports, despite the fact that women and girls there are subject to the cruelest of abuses and have no equal rights.
Will the grotesque abuse of black and working-class Americans by militarized US police forces be considered a ‘serious violation of human rights law’? It’s unclear how the new provisions will affect Canadian arms exports to the United States of America under Donald Trump, which has until now been exempt even from minimal human rights scrutiny. There are other priorities to consider.
The Canadian government explains it thus:
“Export controls apply to all foreign destinations. However, due to Canada’s close and long-standing military cooperation with the United States, including the 1956 Defence Production Sharing Agreement that underpins the integrated nature of North America’s defence industry, Canada and the United States have reciprocal arrangements to ensure permit-free/licence-free movement of most military items between our two countries. For Canada, this has meant permit exemptions for most Group 2 exports destined to the United States. Consequently, Global Affairs Canada does not collect data on most exports of military items to the United States, except for exports of Group 9 goods and a small sub-set of goods for which individual permits are required, such as prohibited firearms, related parts and ammunition, and select items controlled under ECL number 2-4”
Unless one is familiar with the many layers of jargon and euphemism which cloak Canada’s monitoring of its own arms exports, it’s impossible to fully understand this ‘explanation’ which must itself be explained.
The Defense Production Sharing agreement is like a free trade agreement between Canada and the USA for weapons. Under the Agreement, Canadian firms are treated as if they were US firms. The Agreement is managed by a Crown Corporation few Canadians have ever heard of, the Canadian Commercial Corporation. www.ccc.ca This entity becomes the prime contractor with the US Department of Defense for contracts valued at more than $150,000.
The identities of most Canadian companies who contract with the DOD through the CCC are thus hidden from public view, while simultaneously protected with public funds. The CCC only makes public in its annual reports the few contracts it wishes to make public. Likewise, Canada’s Department of Global Affairs, desirous to “protect commercial confidentiality” does not publish a list of individual contracts, but only summaries of contracts, divided into “Groups” indicating the types of weapons systems being exported.
Weapons systems are divided into nine numbered ‘Groups’ on Canada’s ECL, or Export Control List. “Goods and technology listed in Group 2 are ‘specially designed or modified for military use.’ These items include, among others, ground vehicles, firearms, ammunition and imaging equipment made specifically for military use.” Canada sells all of these to the United States.
The new Arms Trade Treaty regulations may however provide an opening for concerned citizens to demand deeper scrutiny of our weapons exports to the USA on human rights grounds. Further from the Government of Canada’s report on 2019’s arms exports:
On September 1, 2019, Canada created a new Group in the ECL (Group 9), that lists all items that fall under the scope of the ATT (Arms Trade Treaty) and imposed a permit requirement to export these items to the U.S. (there already existed a permit requirement to export these items to all other destinations). These items are defined in Article 2 of the ATT as the following full-system conventional arms:
battle tanks;
armoured combat vehicles;
large-calibre artillery systems;
combat aircraft;
attack helicopters;
warships;
missiles and missile launchers; and
small arms and light weapons when destined for police and/or military end-use.”
Or it may not. Activists like Richard Sanders remain skeptical of the potential of the new ATT regulations to either shed additional light on exports of weapons to the US or cause a fundamental change in our arms export policies. “It [the ATT] is supported by the world’s largest arms exporting nations” he notes. It’s also supported by the largest arms exporting corporations, who helped draft it. Under the Treaty, the Canadian government will only be obligated to publish summaries of arms sales to the USA by ECL group. For those of us who wish to know a bit more, there is always www.governmentcontractswon.com.
More Articles