PBI-Canada and CFSC (Quakers) hold webinar on Canadian arms exports to Israel and the call for an arms embargo
On September 18, the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers) and PBI-Canada jointly organized a webinar, moderated by Sandra Wiens, to coincide with the six-month anniversary of the House of Commons vote (on March 18, 2024) to “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel.”
To watch the video of the webinar, click here.
The first speaker was Kelsey Gallagher with the Waterloo-based Project Ploughshares, a Canadian peace research institute. He monitors Canada’s export of weapons and military components. He is the author of numerous reports including Fanning the Flames: The grave risk of Canada’s arms exports to Israel.
Gallagher illustrated Canada’s legal obligations with respect to arms exports in this slide.
Gallagher shared this crucial slide in his PowerPoint presentation.
Our next speaker was Noam Perry with the Oakland, California-based American Friends Service Committee’s Action Center for Corporate Accountability. He researches corporate complicity in state violence and human rights violations. His organization, the AFSC, published the online resource: Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide.
Perry shared this slide.
Perry also highlighted through the following two slides that in at least some instances, the engines for the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Heron TP attack drone were manufactured by Pratt & Whitney (a Raytheon subsidiary) in Canada.
And our concluding speaker was Rachel Small, the Canada Organizer for World BEYOND War. She is now based just outside of Toronto. She has organized within local and international movements for over a decade and is a member of the Jews Say No To Genocide Coalition and the Arms Embargo Now! campaign.
Small shared this slide of an interactive map that shows the multiple companies located in Canada that contribute to the arming of the Israeli military, including the Pratt & Whitney plant, mentioned by Perry, located in Mississauga (just outside Toronto).
Small also showed this video highlighting the Arms Embargo Now campaign and how communities have mobilized their collective power to pressure the Canadian government to promise to end the approval of new military export permits. While emphasizing that as an important step, the video notes the Canadian government has yet to formalize this policy or stop the flow of arms they have already approved.
For more information and to take part in the Arms Embargo Now! campaign, we encourage you to check out that website here.
0 Comments