Canada’s multibillion-dollar sale of military equipment to Saudi Arabia this February, the largest advanced weapons contract in Canada’s history, is an affront to Ottawa’s alleged commitment to human rights in the Middle East.

In his visit to the region in January, Prime Minister Stephen Harper espoused the high-minded rhetoric that Canadian values of tolerance and human rights would underpin Canada’s Mideast policy. But this unprecedented $10-billion sale of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, a known human rights abuser, makes clear that these values hold no water when there is a profit to be made.

The weapons sale will see General Dynamics Land Systems Canada, a London, Ont.-based defence manufacturer, provide a fleet of light-armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia over the next 14 years. The federal government helped to secure the deal, which is underwritten by the Canadian Commercial Corp., a Crown corporation facilitating trade on behalf of Canadian industries including the defence and security sector. Federal officials see the deal as a success because of the jobs it will sustain as well as its supply chain effects for Canadian companies.

The deal is no doubt a multibillion-dollar injection into Canada’s economy, but the costs of the weapons deal will be borne by the region’s civilians. In 2011, the Saudi government is believed to have used Canadian-made armoured vehicles in its incursion into neighbouring Bahrain to crush that country’s democratic uprising — an intervention the Harper government was curiously silent about.

On its own territory, Saudi Arabia is noted as the worst country in the world for women. It has also stepped up arrests of peaceful dissidents, sentencing pro-democracy activists to lengthy prison terms and lashes. Canada’s arms export laws prohibit the sale of military equipment where it may be used to deny the human rights of civilians. It’s unclear the federal government has secured any guarantee that Saudi Arabia won’t be turning Canadian-made military equipment against civilians given its truly abysmal human rights record.

The sale is indicative of an even more troubling trend: the exponential increase in Canadian arms sales to oppressive regimes. The amount of military equipment licensed for export to Saudi Arabia in 2011 was more than 100 times greater than the 35 million approved in 2010. Last year, a Canadian Press analysis found Bahrain, Algeria and Iraq to be new buyers of Canadian-made weapons with weapons exports to Pakistan increasing by 98 per cent, Mexico by 93 per cent, and Egypt by 83 per cent from 2011 to 2012.

The federal government has evidently found a new source of revenue in Saudi Arabia and other anti-democratic regimes with economic expediency and the rhetoric of job creation trumping any real concern for human rights. The federal Conservatives have also stopped tabling annual reports on Canada’s weapons exports.

The Harper government’s moral outrage is reserved only for countries like Syria and Iran and totally absent when it comes to its Saudi Arabian ally. Foreign Minister John Baird has taken an uncompromising position on nuclear talks with Iran, for instance, citing a principled concern for human rights in the country as a reason not to engage with the Iranian government even when the United States and European countries have moved forward with talks.

As noted by Canadian author Derrick O’Keefe, Ottawa’s contradictory approach to when human rights matter is evident even in its rhetoric towards Saudi Arabia: “By [the Harper government’s] Conservative logic it’s unethical to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia because they’re a repressive government, but it’s ethical and praiseworthy to sell Saudi Arabia the very means of repression.”

In 2012, Baird outlining Canada’s policy in Washington stated, “We cannot be selective in which basic human rights we defend, nor can we be arbitrary in whose rights we protect.” But claiming to defend human rights in some countries while simultaneously selling arms to help suppress rights in others makes clear that selectivity and arbitrariness are in fact hallmarks of the Harper government’s Middle East policy.

Ottawa’s convenient blindness to human rights violation in Saudi Arabia is worthy of condemnation. By brazenly violating its own stated moral principles, the Harper government is undermining Canada’s image internationally. Worse, in the context of growing aspirations for democracy in the region, it is undermining the activists who are legitimately working to secure human rights and democracy. Canada cannot claim to be a champion of human rights in public while acting as an arms dealer to tyrannical regimes behind closed doors.

Humera Jabir is a law student at McGill University in Montreal. Murtaza Hussain is a journalist at First Look Media.

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