Rifle exports from Canada to Saudi Arabia soared by 67 per cent — to $11.4 million — between January and August of this year compared to the same period in 2016, the latest federal export statistics show.

The surge in Canadian rifle exports to the region follows an even greater jump that took place in 2016 after Saudi Arabia launched a military intervention into a brutal civil war in neighbouring Yemen.

With Saudi Arabia’s war role in the background — along with the possibility that Canadian small arms could be finding their way into the conflict — a government bill that would bring Canada into an international treaty requiring stronger controls over small arms exports reached its first vote in the Commons earlier this month, six months after the government introduced the bill last April.

Liberal and NDP MPs supported the bill in a sudden vote last Oct. 3, two days after a deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas killed 58 people at a music festival, and voted to send it the Commons Foreign Affairs committee for witness and evidence hearings.

All Conservative MPs in the Commons that day voted against it on the grounds that it could lead to a new form of the gun registry the former Conservative government dismantled in 2015.

The Conservatives also claim the bill — which, if passed, would pave the way for Canada to join the 2013 UN Arms Trade Treaty to curb the burgeoning worldwide trade in small arms — would be “inferior” to existing Canadian arms export controls that have been in place since the Second World War.

Statistics Canada and Industry Canada data show the $11.4 million in exports in January through August this year involved 21,700 rifles manufactured in Canada — compared to $6.8 million in exports over the same period last year involving just over 7,000 Canadian-made rifles.

Even before the surge in Canadian rifle exports to Saudi Arabia this year, exports from Canada already had increased on a massive scale through 2016 — the year after Saudi Arabia took sides in the Yemen war and backed the Yemeni government as it was under siege by armed resistance supporting the country’s former president.

Canadian rifle exports from Canada to Saudi Arabia amounted to 19,800 rifles in 2016, with no rifle exports from Canada in 2015 and exports of only 235 rifles in 2014, valued at $1.8 million.

In 2016, and the first eight months of 2017, the value and numbers of rifle exports to Saudi Arabia were second only to the value and numbers of Canadian-made rifle exports to the U.S., the leading importer of Canadian-manufactured firearms.

Canadian arms exports to Saudi Arabia were under scrutiny earlier this year after the Globe and Mail reported the oil-rich state had deployed Canadian-made armoured vehicles against Shia citizens in its Eastern Province, a spillover of the violence in Yemen.

Although exports of Canadian-made rifles are captured in government data under a category titled ‘Rifles, sporting, hunting, target shooting,’ they would include semi-automatic rifles that have come to fire the same way as tactical rifles used by police and the military, and are classified as ‘small arms’ under the Arms Trade Treaty.

Wild game hunting is limited in Saudi Arabia; wealthy Saudi Arabians take excursions to Africa for larger and more plentiful prey, says an MP who has travelled to the country in official roles.

Under the Arms Trade Treaty, Canada — along with 92 other nations that have ratified the treaty — would be prohibited from authorizing exports of small arms and other conventional weapons if it had “knowledge” the guns would be used to commit major crimes against humanity or “against civilian objects or civilians protected as such” under the Geneva Conventions.

Although the government’s support for a range of gun control pledges made during the 2015 election had fallen off the radar prior to the Las Vegas shootings, its MPs stressed during the debate that led to the Oct. 3 vote that the Arms Trade Treaty also requires states to consider the potential impact on women, including gender-based violence, while reviewing requests for arms export authorizations.

Alberta Conservative MP Rob Zimmer said members of the general public, particular gun owners, are unaware of the scope of the treaty and believe it applies only to government “actors.”

“It doesn’t. It includes many importers or exporters,” Zimmer said. “If somebody buys a firearm from sports store X, and they’re an American and they order that and it crosses the border, then they are officially an exporter of a firearm, then they have to provide records to that effect to the minister, whenever the minister would like to see those records.

“What I’ve been saying is it has the potential of being a backdoor firearm registry.”