A large number of people gathered in Repentigny, Que., Friday to call on the federal government to adopt an arms embargo on Israel, which is poised to receive a new shipment this weekend from one of Canada’s biggest arms companies.
The groups behind the protest, which have been tracking shipments of munitions to Israel, tell CBC News one shipment of cartridges went out Friday from the General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Cartridge Manufacturing Plant east of Montreal to Israel.
A spokesperson for General Dynamics, Berkley Whaley, said “the shipments are for non-lethal training materials not requiring an export permit.”
She did not answer specific questions around the calibre size, who the end-user of the ammunition was or who was being trained — questions Rama Al Malah, with the Montreal chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement and one of the organizations behind the protest, says she wants answered.
“Whether they are being used for training indirectly in Gaza, you are still directly contributing to the murder of Palestinians,” said Al Malah.
“The public has been, you know, demanding transparency as to what exactly is being manufactured in our backyards, what exactly is being shipped from our cities.”
Last month, a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including two of the groups behind Friday’s protest, published a report showing Canadian goods entering Israel, described by the Israeli government as military weapon parts and ammunition. In an Aug. 2 statement, federal officials said that a number of claims in the report are “misleading and significantly misrepresent the facts.”
Global Affairs Canada has a ban on the export of military equipment that could be used in Gaza — a half-measure according to Al Malah.
“Once these weapons leave Canada, they don’t have any oversight on where this is being used. So they’re sending weapons knowing that there is a possibility that it’s going to be used in Gaza, it’s going to be used to fuel this genocide,” she said.
In the statement, the Canadian government insisted it has not issued, as of January 2024, any new permits for military goods and technology that could be used in Gaza, and suspended existing permits — yet Israeli import data and publicly available shipping records appear to contradict that claim.
General Dynamics had sent out a similar cartridge shipment on July 17, telling CBC News at the time that the pallets contained “simunition” or blank training rounds for small arms.
When asked Friday about how Global Affairs Canada ensures Canadian-made military equipment isn’t used in the Gaza Strip or whether it would seek to regulate training equipment meant for the Israel Defence Forces, the federal department simply pointed CBC News back to that statement from earlier this month.
It also didn’t answer questions about why Canada hasn’t adopted a two-way arms embargo on Israel as the protestors are calling for.
Al Malah says that’s significant given the moral implications of buying Israeli-made weapons as the country is simultaneously using those weapons against Palestinians.
Dr. Sarah Lalonde says she’s seen first-hand the effect of weaponry on civilians while volunteering at the Gaza European Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, earlier this year. She was among the speakers at the protest.
She said she remembers watching a surgeon pull a bullet from a boy’s sternum and being horrified at the possibility that it might have been made in Canada once last month’s report came out.
Global Affairs Canada says items listed as “bullets” in that report — totalling over 420,000 — are paintball-style projectiles, accompanied by equipment that is inoperable with traditional rounds.
“These cannot be used in combat, and if they were, they would require a permit that would not be granted,” reads the department’s Aug. 2 statement.
Lalonde says she’ll continue advocating for her patients overseas, until she can return to Gaza once more.
She says an arms embargo on Israel is just one of several actions Canada should take in the wake of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza which she also describes as a genocide.
Al Malah says an embargo is not out of reach, pointing to the 13 states that agreed to an arms embargo at a conference in Bogotá in July, or to Ottawa-based Calian, which paused its shipments to Israel after they came under scrutiny.
“We know this is a long-term struggle,” said Al Malah. “We know that these companies are movable and so our job is just to continue, you know, pressuring our elected officials and these companies to drop these permits and stop these shipments.”
