For years, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has whitewashed concerns about — and refused to terminate — a $14-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Trudeau government is now actively working to secure yet another contract between a Canadian arms manufacturer and an antidemocratic Gulf state. This time the prospective buyer is Qatar.

As with the Saudi deal, the pending agreement with Qatar signals the Trudeau government’s prioritization of Canada’s military-industrial base over its purported concerns about human rights and progressive values. It is also yet another reminder that Canada’s geopolitical and military priorities are not motivated by concerns for advancing liberal democracy, despite lip service that Trudeau pays to that claimed objective whenever it is convenient.

Finally, the deal further belies the Trudeau government’s representation of itself as a reluctant bystander to the Saudi exports. Liberal ministers have repeatedly suggested that they wanted to find a way out of the deal, but lamented that they were hamstrung by the fact that killing it would carry the cost of the full value of the contract. If Trudeau truly cared about keeping Canadian-made weapons out of the hands of authoritarian states — never a credible proposition in the first place — then his government would not be actively lobbying for a new deal with a similarly antidemocratic regime.