At a well-attended press conference on Parliament Hill today, Roy Culpeper (Group of 78), Peggy Mason (Rideau Institute), Alex Neve (Amnesty International Canada), and Cesar Jaramillo (Project Ploughshares) released an open letter to the Prime Minister on the Saudi arms deal. The letter had been signed by a total of 15 Canadian non-governmental organizations, listed below. The letter states in part:

We, the undersigned, wish to express our profound concerns about the issuance of export permits for Canada’s multi-billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia, despite the flagrant incompatibilities of this contract with the human rights safeguards of our export controls.

To provide such a large supply of lethal weapons to a regime with such an appalling record of human rights abuses is immoral and unethical. The spirit and letter of both domestic export controls and international law support this view. The government has had every opportunity to uphold this position, but has chosen not to. We therefore ask the government to rescind the export permits, ensuring that this deal does not go ahead unless and until relevant human rights concerns have been resolved. ….

Of this we are convinced, Prime Minister: the decision to proceed with this arms deal undermines not only the public’s trust in our export control system, but also the core values that define Canada’s character as a nation.