In the run-up to Canada’s 2015 federal election, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau promised voters a renewed vision of Canadian foreign policy, including hikes in foreign aid, deployments of Canadian UN peacekeepers, and the use of a feminist perspective. Under Trudeau, Canada was supposed to be a broker of peace and a beacon of progressive values.

However, during Trudeau’s time as prime minister, Canada has exported more weapons abroad than at any point in its history. Some of these arms sales have been directed to the most repressive regimes in the world.

Canada’s top customer for arms, apart from the United States, is Saudi Arabia, a regime that is guilty of human rights abuses at home and war crimes abroad. The Saudi Kingdom is the leader of a coalition that has committed well-documented international humanitarian law violations — including the indiscriminate targeting of civilians — in Yemen’s civil war. By approving the export of arms to the Saudi regime, Trudeau’s government is complicit in such atrocities.