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They speak of Saudi Arabia, which apparently paused its targeting of schools, hospitals, marketplaces and weddings in Yemen to reload with some made-in-Canada ammo in its own Eastern Province. If video footage is to be believed, Canada, through yet another weapons deal (beyond that $15-billion one), has facilitated a multiple homicide by handing the murder weapons to a killer.

In defiance of domestic export rules, international treaties and basic respect for human life, two major Canadian political parties enable Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. And they will not rest, damn it, until they get to the bottom of their own terrible misdeeds.

They will, then, be relieved to know that there is indeed tangible evidence that the situation about which they are so deeply concerned has an obvious culprit, and it is themselves.

But to assist the prosecutors in establishing their own guilt, might I suggest that their investigation into these apparent murders begin with actual rules that have been broken, rather than with rather more relaxed rules they wish were written such that their transgressions would not be transgressive at all.

Some members of the guilty parties say – nay, declare! – that weapons contracts must be cancelled with Saudi Arabia if it is established with even greater certainty that Canadian weapons have been used to murder innocent Saudi people … and not one moment before. Unfortunately, Canadian export rules, as well as the moral principle of not being a sociopath, recognize that governments have a duty to decline to facilitate the killing of civilians, not merely to respond with indignation once some have been killed. These rules stipulate that weapons will not be sold where there is a chance that the buyer may aim them at its own people.