We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period.
— Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, March 20 2024
It was a cynical lie. Now we have the evidence.
A damning new report from the Arms Embargo Now coalition traces hundreds of shipments of Canadian-made weapons and military tech that continued to reach Israel during its ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza.
Bullets. Explosives. Aircraft parts. High‑end surveillance and targeting systems. All from here — from factories in Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, the GTA, Halifax — to the runways and ports in Israel that feed Israel’s war machine.
Most of us already understood this was happening. Individual contracts and bits of evidence kept slipping through the cracks. But every time they did, the government would play whack-a-mole. This report ends that game. We now have ironclad evidence that Canadian weapons never stopped flowing to Israel. It shows a sustained, ongoing pipeline that continues to this day. It also exposes how the government systematically deceived Canadians about arming Israel.
In the frantic first three months after October 7th, the Trudeau government quietly approved a record-breaking number of export permits to Israel. Then you — and tens of thousands of people like you across the country — roared in protest. The pressure worked. By March 2024, then Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced a “pause” on new permits. She publicly insisted that no more arms would reach Gaza.
However Joly’s “pause” froze only new licences, leaving every previous permit untouched. Ottawa tried to soothe the public, claiming the ongoing shipments were only for “non-lethal” or “defensive” goods (i.e. Iron Dome parts, bullet-proof vests). In reality, a steady stream of lethal cargo kept moving: bullets, explosives, aircraft and helicopter parts, F-35 targeting tech. All funnelled from 21 suppliers in seven Canadian cities to Israeli arms companies like Elbit Systems.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t some bureaucratic oversight. It is a calculated breach of the Export and Import Permits Act, the Arms Trade Treaty, and the ICJ’s warning not to aid genocide.
Ottawa’s claim that it was no longer arming Israel served as a diplomatic fig leaf: soothing words that hid uninterrupted weapons shipments. This report rips that fig leaf away. The government must now own its complicity and decide — end the exports, or stand exposed before the world.
This report also shows something else: the power of civil society. A small group of researchers — activists with day jobs, family responsibilities, and limited resources — spent hundreds of hours digging through tax records, shipping manifests, flight records, and obscure government PDFs. They followed the paper trail and uncovered the reality that our government was trying to hide.
In the UK, a similar report created a political scandal that is still reverberating. This Canadian report is arguably even more damning and the potential impact is enormous—if we seize this moment.
On Tuesday, CJPME, Independent Jewish Voices, World Beyond War, and the Palestinian Youth Movement held a press conference in Parliament to share the findings. You can watch the recording of the press conference here.
The post Canada’s Complicity Laid Bare first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.