This past Friday, Canada’s International Trade Minister, Ed Fast, announced a major sale of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.
The announcement, said to be worth $10-billion during the multi year contract, was made at the General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada plant in London, Ontario on Friday.
GDLS-Canada makes Light Armoured Vehicles (LAV) for the Canadian Military such as used by Canada in Afghanistan, and similar Stryker vehicles for the US.
Minister Fast said Canada beat out competition from France and Germany to win the contract to supply vehicles, equipment and training deal and will provide about 3-thousand jobs a year over the life of the 14 year deal.
The Canadian Commercial Corporation, the government’s international contracting agency helped secure the deal but said Saudi Arabia did not want details released. It is expected that a deal of this size could involve many hundreds of vehicles.
Canada recently cancelled a contract with GDLS to purchase 108 heavy armoured personnel carriers that would have been worth $2 billion.
Canada has sold LAV’s to Saudi Arabia in the past with 1,000 delivered in the 1990’s and 700 more in 2009.
HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS
The deal is not without criticism. Human Rights Watch in its 2014 report said Saudi Arabia is a serious abuser of human rights.
Saudi Arabia permits beheading and stoning as forms of criminal punishment for murder and rape, alongside social crimes such as adultery. Homosexual acts are also punishable by flogging and imprisonment and even death, as is drug use. Saudi Arabia is also regularly condemned for its treatment of women, who will earn the right to vote in 2015, but who still won’t be allowed to drive.
Ken Epps, is a senior programme officer at Project Ploughshares, a group working to control arms proliferation. He said the criteria used to assess the deals is blanketed in secrecy.
“We see every day in Syria what a heavily-armed government can do to its civilian population,” Epps said. “Saudi Arabia, like many other states in the Middle East, is a country where there is, in UN terms, an ‘excessive and destabilizing accumulation’ of weapons. With this major contract, Canada is adding fuel to the fire.”
Canada sold 24 LAV’s to Colombia for $65 million just over a year ago, despite concerns about human rights violations there, including labour and indigenous rights.
For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.