Earlier this month, a report from Human Rights Watch detailed a series of brutal killings carried out by Saudi Arabian guards on the country’s border with Yemen. Hundreds — many of them seeking asylum from the humanitarian crises created by Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen — have been killed since March 2022, with survivors recounting live-fire attacks. It’s ultimately just one snapshot of a war being that has reportedly killed hundreds of thousands of people, carried out by one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile, in June 2023 alone, Canada exported some $247 million worth of armored vehicles to the Saudis — a less-than-negligible figure, but also just a small snapshot in a much larger pattern. In recent years, Canada has emerged as a leading supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and the Canadian government’s own reporting shows that the value of shipments totaled $1.15 billion in 2022. Saudi Arabia, in fact, now accounts for a whopping 49 percent of all Canadian arms shipments, with the next biggest recipient (the United Arab Emirates) a distant second at just 17 percent.

While Canada has provided other equipment to the Saudi military, including thousands of rifles, the lion’s share of such exports have been light armored vehicles (LAVs) sold as part of a monster $15 billion arms contract brokered by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in 2014. The following year, having savaged the deal while in opposition, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals swept into office promising a more humane and multilateral foreign policy.